Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on experiences with community score cards in the education and health fields in Morocco in the wake of its 'Arab Spring'. It questions these social accountability initiatives as tools used by donors to help enhance state legitimacy.

Paper long abstract:

In the wake of the Arab Spring, governments in the Middle East and North Africa region have responded to calls for greater accountability by creating new "participatory" institutions in the context of increased decentralization to municipal levels, often with the support of international donors. The focus in this paper is on Morocco and local experiences with community score cards (CSCs) in the education and health fields. They serve as examples of potentially innovative, even if foreign-inspired, mechanisms to renew the "social contract" between citizens and the state after a period of upheaval and social contestations of state power. The paper will present the initial findings from three case studies. The projects are funded by the European Union and The World Bank, and implemented by the international NGO CARE in partnership with Moroccan NGOs. The paper will first focus on the role of citizens and civil-society participation in achieving accountable outcomes, and how they perceive the (still largely authoritarian) state. Then it will address the role of new intermediaries in translating global discourses and tools for social accountability into local language and context. Finally, it will discuss the organizational incentives of civil servants to deliver better social services. The paper argues that while CSCs as implemented in Morocco do bring about collective mobilization that results in improved service delivery, their potentially positive effects on state legitimacy are mitigated by the practice of government authorities to use them to co-opt potential regime critics.

Paper short abstract:

Service delivery is seen to create more legitimate states. But the evidence for this view is thinly spread. Drawing on survey data from almost 10,000 respondents across five countries, this paper sheds new empirical light on the links between service delivery and people’s perceptions of government.

Paper long abstract:

The conversion of 'rule by domination' into 'rule by authority' is dependent on an accumulation of legitimacy. But how do actors gain the trust, confidence and consent of those they seek to rule, both during and after conflict? And what can aid agencies do to support this? The governance literature suggests that legitimacy comes in different forms, and can thus be built through various means. One approach sees legitimacy as an output- or performance-based product. This view predicts that governments become legitimate when they deliver stuff that's good for citizens (security, jobs, basic services). Historical evidence from particular contexts lends broad support to the idea that public services can help cement in a social contract between citizens and young states, but recent research has raised questions over whether legitimacy can simply be bought through delivery. Drawing on survey data from five fragile and conflict-affected countries (FCAS), this paper argues that the provision of basic services is a necessary but insufficient condition for the accumulation of legitimacy. We show that how services get delivered - the processes of planning, implementation and accountability - matter just as much than what is actually provided. These findings suggest that legitimacy is the outcome of both performance and process functions. There are two implications: 1) it demands that donors pay closer attention to the everyday detail of how services are delivered; and 2) it reinforces the notion that public services have the potential act as vehicles of interaction and engagement between states and citizens.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will report on an in-depth qualitative study of the two-way relationship between university education and state legitimacy over time in Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract:

Public services are considered a significant source of state legitimacy, yet few studies have examined this relationship in-depth, or over time. Likewise, the reverse proposition, that how public services are distributed or delivered can de-legitimise a state, remains relatively neglected. Based on process tracing and archival analysis, this paper examines the two-way relationship between university education and state legitimacy over time in Sri Lanka. It asks why policies governing access to university education aggravated the emergence of the dual challenge to the Sri Lankan state - insurrection in the South and armed separatism in the North - during the critical juncture of 1970-1973. This double de-legitimation has its origins in the state's own political legitimation strategies that escalated from 1956 and set in motion a series of unintended feedback effects. They were part of a long-term process of setting expectations, getting feedback, and performing (or not) to those expectations. Research on sources of state legitimacy might usefully broaden its time horizons beyond snapshots, and capture attitudinal and behavioural markers of legitimacy beyond surveys.

Paper short abstract:

In this article, I argue that post-war recovery is more likely to succeed if it factors in multiple layers of authority ‘below’ and ‘outside’ the state, using the Ebola outbreak of 2014/2015 in Liberia as a case study.

Paper long abstract:

In this article, I argue that post-war recovery is more likely to succeed if it factors in multiple layers of authority 'below' and 'outside' the state, using the Ebola outbreak of 2014/2015 in Liberia as a case study. Moving beyond the structural violence framework, I demonstrate that while Liberia's pursuit of a vertical state-building agenda at the behest of international donors unraveled during Ebola, the tactics employed by non-state Liberian domestic and transnational actors were constituted by horizontal nation-building objectives and therefore appeared more legitimate. My major contribution is the beginnings of a systematic documentation of how Liberians 'below' and 'outside' the state used their individual and collective agency to eradicate Ebola thereby becoming the legitimate nodes of authority during the outbreak, and why their interventions are important for a larger discussion about the trajectory of post-Ebola recovery. While it is difficult to prove a causal relationship between the interventions of non-state Liberian actors and the gradual decline in Ebola incidence rates, I underscore important correlations between their public health measures and Ebola eradication. This article provides a firm foundation for deeper analysis about the scope and magnitude of Liberian-led efforts during Ebola, thereby showcasing the need to document these initiatives further.

Paper short abstract:

Does service delivery help to foster legitimacy, social stability and cohesion at the municipal level and beyond? This paper explores this question drawing on empirical evidence from Lebanon, against the backdrop of the refugee crisis.

Paper long abstract:

The massive influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon has increased pressure on the provision of vital public services at municipal level and heightened inter-group tensions. International actors have increased aid to service delivery in these areas on the assumption this will help to prevent further deterioration of social stability and foster the legitimacy of both local and national level authorities in the eyes of the host population. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project which is testing these assumptions in municipalities across Lebanon. Findings suggest that, whilst maintaining adequate service provision can help to reduce tensions and increase trust at the local level, it does not necessarily enhance the legitimacy of higher levels of government. Moreover, there are potential unintended consequences of supporting service delivery as a pathway to stability in divided societies under pressure, which can generate tensions of their own.

Paper short abstract:

Our paper proposes a new research agenda to explore the factors that determine the success and/or failure of urban governance structures in delivering essential water and sanitation services to populations in response to large, conflict-induced migration movements, focusing on Amman, in Jordan.

Paper long abstract:

Drinking water and sanitation are basic services that all people necessitate for their survival and livelihoods. However, providing them can be an enormous challenge - especially in cities in low-income and middle-income countries, and in the face of climate change, conflict, and the rise of a middle class with more and new needs and expectations. Large and unexpected influxes of migrants and refugees pose yet one more constraint to local service providers. But they also provide opportunities to improve services, for example as migrants bring in new skills and coping mechanisms that can be scaled up; or as governments, businesses and other actors experiment with alternative models for the delivery of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. Our paper explores the existing literature on urbanisation, migration and WASH service delivery to identify gaps in our understanding of how conflict-induced migration affects urban infrastructure and systems for the provision of basic services, with a focus on sanitation. It then analyses how some of these dynamics play out in the case of Amman, in Jordan. In conclusion, we make suggestions for a research agenda that can assist utilities, governments, NGOs, and other service providers understanding and overcoming the challenges of water and sanitation provision in urban contexts 'under stress', without reinforcing existing inequalities or creating new ones, and towards realising the SDGs' aspirations for 'universal access to adequate and equitable sanitation' by 2030.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores what role caste plays in the access to and provision of education services for a low-caste community in Jaffna Town.

Paper long abstract:

In Jaffna caste identity continues to shape access to both government and private educational institutions. Barriers to entry to better schools not only limit options in further studies or employment but also prevent school going children from completing secondary education; and reinforce historical legacies of marginalization and exclusion.

However, schooling is not solely fixed around an axis of caste identity. A broadening and deepening of the analytical lens allows us to see interrelated phenomena that intersect with caste and shape the experience of children and parents accessing education.

I have identified four phenomena - nationalism, religion (Roman Catholic Church), globalization and class that give a deeper understanding to the relationship between community members and schooling. I have understood and presented these phenomena as co-constitutive, that is, they are not only inter linked but also draw on each other to confirm and consolidate an overarching discourse of homogeniety.

The hegemonic discourse attempts to conceal and disavow ideas or realities that contest them. There is a dual veiling of masking and silencing of caste-speak and a silencing of voices of dissent from marginalized caste groups.

People belonging to lower castes are by no means powerless or without agency, and do have access to schools. However, the quality of education both in terms of the standard of the school and experience within the classroom is shaped by the domination of higher caste/class persons and the active marginalisation and discrimination of low castes.

Paper short abstract:

Capacity building lies at the heart of much development work yet is poorly theorised – often reduced to training or equipment supply. Drawing on research from eight conflict-affected countries this paper critiques existing approaches to capacity building and suggests elements of a smarter approach.

Paper long abstract:

Capacity building lies at the heart of much development work yet remains poorly theorised in practice. Too often, capacity building is reduced to training programmes or equipment supply, crowding out more creative development methods. Drawing on research investigating how capacity building has been approached across eight post-conflict and conflict-affected countries, this paper argues that capacity building is operationalised in a narrow manner, focused on technical knowledge and tangible outputs that ignore the capacity of systems, the human face of service delivery, the plurality of the health system and the complexity of seemingly simple change processes.

What is needed is a smarter model of capacity building that is people-centred and systematically aware. Three changes to current approaches are suggested. First, capacity building should pay closer attention to the intangible dimensions of capacity, including state-society relations. Public perceptions of the quality of a service matter as much as its 'objective quality'. When people have little confidence in the capacity of a provider to deliver, they are unlikely to use that service. Second, capacity building should engage with how people actually use services. Donors tend to focus on state systems to the detriment of the plurality of providers that people actually use. Finally, donors need to lose the modular approach to capacity building, which attempts to improve the performance of discrete organisations and individuals in the hope that this will 'aggregate up' into stronger systems. Support should not only target the units within a system but also the connections between them.