Gizelis, T.I. and Joseph, J. (2016) Decoupling Local Ownership? The Lost Opportunities for Grassroots Women’s Involvement in Liberian Peacebuilding. Cooperation and Conflict, 51 (4). pp. 539-556. ISSN 1460-3691
Abstract
Civil society organizations and grassroots groups are often unable to play an active role in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. A possible explanation for the observed challenges in peacebuilding is the gap or decoupling between international expectations and norms from practical action, local norms and capacities. External actors are often overly instrumental and operate according to a general template that fails to start from what the local capacities might actually be. This often leads to the decoupling of general values from practical action, which helps account for the observed barriers of engaging local civil and community organizations in reconstruction. We examine the different types of decoupling and the challenges these present. We evaluate our general theoretical argument using evidence based on the experiences of Liberian women’s civil society organizations. Given the compliance of the Liberian government with international norms, we should expect external actors to have an easier task in incorporating civil society and women’s organizations in the post-conflict reconstruction process; yet, the record appears to be the opposite. While we present the ‘tragic’ aspect of this relationship between international norms and local practice, we also suggest opportunities for ‘hybrid’ alternatives.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jun 2016 11:31 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2017 15:08 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836716672897 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0010836716672897 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:100907 |