1 / 17

Rights, Power and Civic Action

Rights, Power and Civic Action. Gordon Crawford University of Leeds, 3 December 2010 . Background. Rise of rights-based approach Focus on empowering organisations to claim rights

zlata
Download Presentation

Rights, Power and Civic Action

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Rights, Power and Civic Action Gordon Crawford University of Leeds, 3 December 2010

  2. Background • Rise of rights-based approach • Focus on empowering organisations to claim rights • Neglect of power as constraint, ie “deeply embedded power relations and structural barriers to securing rights” (Pettit and Wheeler 2005: 5)

  3. Introduction • The missing dimension of power in the human rights and development literature • Emphasis on empowerment but not on power as obstacle to securing rights • “deeply embedded power relations and structural barriers to securing rights” (Pettit and Wheeler 2005: 5)

  4. Aim • To understand the interrelationship between forms and uses of power and the securing of human rights

  5. Objectives • To examine the socio-political contexts in which rights initiatives are undertaken, identifying structures of power at local, national and international levels. • To examine the approaches and strategies of rights promoting organisations. • To identify the obstacles and constraints on securing rights embedded in existing power structures. • To explore whether rights promoters have challenged and altered power structures. • To examine the capacity and agency of rights promoters, inclusive of whether empowerment has occurred. • To synthesise lessons through comparative analysis. • To contribute to debates about the relationship between cpr and escr, and between democracy and human rights promotion.

  6. Methodology • Qualitative. In-depth studies of selected rights-promoting organisations within distinct country contexts. • Country selection: differing political contexts with regard to political regime and degrees of democratisation, and thus differential ‘opportunity structures’ for civic action.

  7. Country cases • Ghana and South Africa: relatively successful democratic consolidation, protection of civil and political rights. • Kenya: hybrid regime, partly democratic and partly patrimonial and autocratic • Cambodia: democratic hopes not realised after chaos and civil war; elements of autocracy coexisting with fragile democratic foundations.

  8. Country cases [cont.] • Zimbabwe: civil and political rights abuses combined with a severe deterioration in economic and social rights. • China: authoritarian, Party-state running a liberalised market economy with rapid economic growth.

  9. Organisational studies • Within each country case, we selected three social movements and/or advocacy NGOs, and explore the power dynamics involved.

  10. What is Power? • Complex and contested concept • Exercised minds of famous social theorists • Lukes (1974) and the three dimensions of (coercive) power • visible power: “A has power over B to the extent that s/he can get B to do something that B would not do otherwise”, • hidden power: control over the agenda of political decision-making, including what’s excluded. • Invisible / internalised power: by “influencing, shaping or determining” people’s very wants

  11. Typology of power • Power over: the strong over the weak, including the power to exclude others [ie Lukes’s 3 dimensions] • Power to: the capability to decide actions and carry them out. • Power with: collective power, through organisation, solidarity and joint action. • Power within: personal self-confidence and self-esteem • [Empowerment] • See Rowlands 1998, VeneKlasen and Miller 2002, Eyben 2005

  12. Power analysis • Power analysis means identifying and exploring the multiple power dimensions that affect a given situation, so as to better understand the different factors that interact to reinforce poverty [or constrain the securing of human rights]. • As power is not static, it will often cut across the different forms, spaces and levels, and show itself in more than one way. Rough Guide to Power Analysis - Oxfam

  13. Power

  14. Forms • Combines both structure and agency. • Focus on ‘power over’, with forms of power representing Lukes’s visible, hidden and invisible power [ie structural dimension]

  15. Spaces • Closed spaces: formal decisions made by closed groups • Invited spaces: selected people asked to participate but within set boundaries • Claimed and created spaces: “claimed by less powerful actors from or against the power holders, or created more autonomously by them” and where determine own agenda (Gaventa 2006: 27).

  16. Levels • Global, • National • Local • Household • “The dynamics of power depend on the type of space in which it is found, the level at which it operates and the form it takes” (Gaventa 2006: 30, emphasis added).

  17. Applying power cube • Dynamics of power investigated examination of activities of rights-promoting organisations • Research questions: • In what ways have struggles for human rights been constrained by power relations and structural inequalities? • In seeking to secure rights, how and to what extent have rights-promoting organisations been able to challenge power structures at both local and national levels? • To what extent have rights-promoting organisations been successful in building countervailing power and in transforming power structures and securing rights?

More Related