Civil society in war-to-democracy transitions

Belloni, Roberto

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511755859.008

Cited by 61 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 155 publications

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“…This propensity towards exclusivity is what Putnam (2000) terms the 'dark side' of social capital or what Chambers and Kopstein (2001) refer to as 'bad civil society'. Belloni (2008), meanwhile, notes that in ethnically divided societies, as well as unifying, multi-ethnic, civil society groups (for example, human rights groups, trade unions, ecumenical movements) and groups which explicitly foster violence and division (for example, paramilitaries), there is a third type: groups which, although eschewing violence, are culturally homogenous and are thus de facto perpetuators of difference and separation.…”

Section: Sport Political Division and Peacementioning

confidence: 99%

Sport for peace in Northern Ireland? Civil society, change and constraint after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement

Mitchell

Somerville

Hargie

2016

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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Section: Sport Political Division and Peacementioning

confidence: 99%

Sport for peace in Northern Ireland? Civil society, change and constraint after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement

Mitchell

Somerville

Hargie

2016

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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“…In the midst of armed ethnopolitical conflicts, the social fragmentation along ethnic lines dissolves social cohesion, significantly determining the political landscape of operating civil society organizations. Discourses reproducing hostile stereotypes and securitizing the ethnic 'other' favor the rise of securitizing CSOs with a clear ethnicist agenda and aggravate the work of CSOs trying to build up inter-groups relationships (Belloni 2008, Tocci and Kaliber 2011, also Lederach 1997.…”

Section: Context -Civil Society In Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Rights Activism and the (De-)securitization of the ‘Other’

Georgi¹

2016

IAPSS Politikon

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The article contributes to the scholarly debate through casting light on the (de-)securitizing character of human rights invocations by civil society organizations (CSOs) in ethno-political conflicts. The securitization concept is an innovative tool for understanding the effects of human rights activism on inter-group relationships: A securitizing move asserts an existential threat to a reference object and demands all necessary means to prevent it. Securitization reinforces the hostile 'self'-'other' conflict divide and, thus, contributes to violent escalation. Reversing securitization necessitates de-securitizing communication challenging the portrayal of the 'other' as a threat. Asking under which conditions human rights CSOs issue a securitizing or desecuritizing move, puts the interface between contextual factors, organizational behavior, and political opportunity structure at the center of interest. The empirical part examines two human rights organizations in the Zapatista conflict, highlighting the influence of the social capital from which the CSOs emerge and the applied discursive strategies.

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“…69 These multi-level and multi-stakeholder initiatives are held to be necessary to enable the behavioural and ideational transformation of subjects through their participatory engagement in a wide range of policy activities. 70 Other academic commentators have similarly focused on the 'hybrid' outcomes when there are attempts to impose global democratic norms on non-or a-liberal societies, arguing, in effect, that the process of 'norm socialization' becomes blocked by countervailing practices and institutions. 71 Here, critical international relations theorizing, about democratic norms and the barriers to their promotion, lays stress on the cognitive and sociological institutional context in which shared meanings are produced and transmitted.…”

Section: Chandlermentioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting democratic norms? Social constructivism and the ‘subjective’ limits to liberalism

Chandler

2013

Democratization

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This article argues that, since the end of the Cold War, the understanding of democratic norm promotion has shifted through three conceptually distinct and chronologically distinguishable stages: the early 1990s view that democratic norms would be universalized with the Cold War victory of liberal ideals and the spread of new global norms of good governance; the mid-to late-1990s view that barriers to the promotion of democratic norms could be understood as the product of state or elite self-interests; and the perspective dominant since the 2000s, that the promotion of democratic norms necessarily involves much deeper and more extensive external intervention in order to transform social institutions and societal practices. Through charting the shifts in the understanding of democratic norm promotion, this article seeks to highlight the problems inherent in norm promotion discourses that emphasize the importance of subjective agency, normative choices, and cultural and ideational frameworks of understanding.A key problem being that, in the downplaying of social and economic context, agency-based understandings tend to degrade the rational capacities of -and to exoticize and problematize -the non-Western subject. The social constructivist approach, which presupposes a closed or endogenous framework of societal reproduction, has thereby been a crucial paradigm through which Western democracy promotion discourses have shifted to emphasizing the subjective policy barrier posed by the allegedly 'nonliberal' mindset of the non-Western subject.

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Civil society in war-to-democracy transitions

Cited by 61 publications

References 155 publications

Sport for peace in Northern Ireland? Civil society, change and constraint after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement

Sport for peace in Northern Ireland? Civil society, change and constraint after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement

Human Rights Activism and the (De-)securitization of the ‘Other’

Promoting democratic norms? Social constructivism and the ‘subjective’ limits to liberalism

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