Localization in Development Aid

How Global Institutions enter Local Lifeworlds

Thorsten Bonacker, Judith von Heusinger, Kerstin Zimmer, Thorsten Bonacker, Judith von Heusinger, Kerstin Zimmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317203162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume brings together the work of scholars from different disciplines including sociology, political science and anthropology, and analyses how global institutions are embedded in local contexts within development aid. It examines theoretical and empirical implications of the diffusion and anchoring of world polity institutions at the local and global levels.

The volume furthers the understanding of the dynamics of norm negotiation and glocalization processes in culturally varied societies in an era of globalization. Themes and topics covered include: children and human rights, gender mainstreaming, multi-level actor partnerships, anti-corruption programming, local ownership, land rights and corporate social responsibility.

Bringing together expert contributors, this comprehensive volume will be an invaluable resource for all scholars of localization and globalization studies, as well as those in the field of international relations.

1 Introduction

Thorsten Bonacker, Judith von Heusinger and Kerstin Zimmer

Increasingly, global norms affect culturally very different local settings. This is especially true for so-called non-Western states, in which international development programmes contribute to the spreading and implementation of ‘good’ or ‘proper development’. In particular, this includes the introduction of human rights standards, anti-corruption and good governance programmes or ideas of social responsibility.

Global norms or global normative concepts can be considered an outcome of the contention between different international, transnational and state actors who agree at some point on the validity of norms and models for development policies. Norms are usually understood as standards of appropriate behaviour (Axelrod 1986); global norms can be conceptualized:

as ideas of varying degrees of abstraction and specification with respect of fundamental values, organizing principles or standardized procedures that resonate across many states and global actors, having gained support in multiple forums including official policies, laws, treaties or agreements.

(Wiener 2009, 183ff.)

Normative concepts, then, consist of more than just one norm and also comprise cognitive and policy elements. For example, the normative concept of social inclusion emerged in the global arena in the course of negotiation processes between human rights activists, politicians, scholars and other influential actors, leading to the anchoring of the concept in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Inclusive Education Agenda of 2008. Social inclusion can be described as a norm to include people with disabilities in the education system, as well as the norm to encourage them and to strengthen the capacities of people without disabilities to learn and work with them. Beyond these norms, the concept of social inclusion also refers to the general, and today largely uncontested, idea that education provides people with disabilities with necessary skills. In the same way, ‘development’ itself is a normative and globally institutionalized concept, as we will discuss below.

Once normative concepts such as social inclusion have become part of the global system of rules and standards they diffuse in societies worldwide, often through development policies. They are then incorporated into national legislation and the policies of state and civil society actors. Social inclusion has become an influential concept in education and development around the globe because it is widely presumed that the inclusion and participation of all social groups into the labour market (and society in general) will lead to more productivity and prosperity. However, even though there is a global consensus that inclusion is ‘good for development’, context-specific local dissent on which groups to include and how to include them is a prevalent phenomenon in different societies around the world. For example, whereas there is a partial consensus in European Union (EU) states to accept lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups in society and respect their rights, this is harshly rejected in most post-Soviet societies and wide sections of the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, diffusion of norms and establishment of the global norm of social inclusion spark off conflict between global development actors and local activists on how to deal with certain social groups. This may lead to a partial adoption and appropriation, or the complete neglect, of the global norm in the process of norm localization. In spite of the fact that norms are institutionalized and therefore taken for granted on the global level, on the local level a great deal of negotiation, interpretation, modification and sometimes disagreement and resistance take place.

The aim of this volume

So far research has focused mainly on norm diffusion, i.e. the horizontal and largely formal dissemination of norms. Vertical localization of global norms and their often controversial local understanding, as well as the practice of implementing and translating global norms are less well researched. Localization, or the embedding of global norms in the local social environment, brings about a number of challenges, obstacles and conflicts. Global norms are often contested, modified, appropriated, rejected or politicized and discussed by local actors in processes of sense making while being fitted into a specific local setting (Appadurai 1990, 1996; Capie 2008; Chan 2014; McGinty 2011; Zimmermann 2014). According to Acharya, who introduced the localization framework, localizing norms involves the ‘active construction (through discourse, framing, grafting and cultural selection) of foreign ideas by local actors, which results in the former developing significant congruence with local beliefs and practices’ (Acharya 2004, 245).

Localization can take place by various means and channels. The aim of this volume is to shed light on the processes of localization of global norms and normative concepts with a focus on development policies that are driven by normative concepts, and simultaneously function as a practice to implement concepts such as social inclusion, reproductive rights or gender equality.

We discuss the localization of ‘development’ with a particular focus on how global normative concepts are translated into national and local contexts within the framework of development programmes, and what kinds of negotiation processes can be observed in this context. In doing so, the volume combines localization research with sociological perspectives, ethnographic methods and post-development studies in order to make sense of local practices and the behavioural patterns of actors involved in the development enterprise. The contributions in this edited volume study various processes of localization through development policies in different empirical contexts and from various scholarly fields.

This volume is positioned within constructivist norm localization research and enriched by insights from other strands of research such as post-development theory and aid ethnography, which add empirical knowledge about development and deploy a broad methodological toolbox with sociological and ethnographic expertise. Even though scholars from both localization studies and post-development theory have recently claimed that local responses to global expectations should be taken into account, the two strands of research have rarely been linked. In what follows, we will present both approaches, indicate their interconnectedness, and show how the contributions to this volume fit with, and contribute to, understanding the nexus of both.

Norms, diffusion and localization

Norm diffusion research frequently tends to underestimate cultural conflict and friction in localization processes as it tends to pay little attention to the vertical anchoring of global institutions (Cobb 2014, 289).

The localization framework pays more attention to how norms are embedded culturally in order to explain how transnational norms are contested, adapted and incorporated in new settings.

According to that framework global normative concepts are to a large extent cross-culturally negotiated rather than simply imposed (Zwingel 2012, 126), so that uncertainty of outcome is an inherent part of context-specific anchoring of norms (Brake and Katzenstein 2013, 730). Norm entrepreneurs make sense of normative concepts from a cultural and context-specific perspective and reshape normative concepts in order to fit them into local normative orders. In the course of localization processes conflictual interpretations of global norms and cultural conflict emerge (Börzel and Risse 2009; Cortell and Davis 2000; Reus-Smit 2001; Sandholtz 2008; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007; Wiener 2004). This can lead to the ‘erosion’ (Rosert and Schirmbeck 2007) of norms, which might otherwise be perceived as ‘non-compliance’ with global norms and standards (Goodman and Jinks 2008). Negotiation processes about the meaning of global norms frequently continue even after the norms have been formally appropriated (Capie 2008, 639). From this perspective, there might be a global consensus – for example, about human rights – on paper, but in practice a context-specific process of redefining and reshaping continues in various cultural settings (Harris-Short 2003; Liese 2009; Wiener 2009), which may redesign the global norm in such a way that it is no longer recognizable (Biukovic 2008). In other cases localization processes materialize in the form of a ‘local struggle’ for meaning (Reus-Smit 2001; Sandholtz 2008; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007). Sometimes, local actors are very strategic as norm entrepreneurs who adapt to global standards in order to advocate local interests (Kaelble 2005, 2). They can be highly selective, only taking on parts of global norms and leaving other aspects aside (Zimmermann 2010, 8). From a theoretical perspective these complex processes of localization and sense making in different normative orders and local settings have yet to be systematized.

In general, norm diffusion research seems to be less interested in analysing how global normative concepts arise and what factors initiate institutional change in the global community (Dierkes and Koenig 2006, 133). Commenting on this gap, the first generation of constructivists dealt with norm socialization (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse et al. 1999; Risse 2000). These studies have often been labelled ‘mainstream constructivist scholarship’ (Björkdahl 2013, 80), and can be subdivided into two seminal approaches (Aharoni 2014, 3). On the one hand, the ‘norm life-cycle’ theory of Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) elaborates three stages of global norm formation, namely emergence, institutionalization and internalization. On the other hand, the ‘spiral model’ (Risse et al. 1999; Cortell and Davis 2000) explains national change and resistance to the local anchoring of global norms in a spiral institutionalization process. The first generation of constructivist scholars highlighted the importance of ‘norm makers’ for emergence of norms and institutional change but failed to show that non-Western and local actors are not simply passive ‘norm takers’ who receive and absorb global norms and standards.

Norm localization research began with a critique of the first and second generations of constructivists (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse et al. 1999; Risse 2000), based on three perceived shortcomings. First, it was argued that they portrayed non-Western actors mostly as passive ‘norm takers’. If there was an exception to this, it was most often in the case of local norm makers who have been educated in Western universities and who belong to influential political elites (Björkdahl 2013, 80; Checkel 1998).

Second, it was noted that constructivists suffer from a ‘liberal’ (Adamson, 2005), ‘cosmopolitan’ (Acharya 2004) or ‘secular’ (Kubálková 2000) bias and therefore have a simplistic understanding of norm diffusion. Instead, studies in norm localization have pointed to the fact that local norm negotiation is often messy, and that norm anchoring is influenced by global and local, as well as Western and non-Western, actors alike (see also Acharya 2013; Adamson 2005; Bettiza and Dionigi 2014; Boesenecker and Vinjamuri 2011; Brake and Katzenstein 2013; Capie 2012; Zwingel 2012).

Third, norm takers who have not been socialized according to global discourse and principles, are mostly neglected in constructivist studies. Non-Western normative agency remains largely overlooked, since global norms are presented as ‘traveling from a western core to a non-western periphery, from western norm-makers to non-western norm-takers’ (Bettiza and Dionigi 2014, 1). Norm entrepreneurs such as civil society actors and activists, states (to a certain extent), or local community leaders can take on various roles and act as ‘mimickers’ (Katsumata 2011), selective ‘localizers’ (Acharya 2004) or ‘vernacularizers’ (Levitt and Merry 2009; Merry 2006; Michelutti 2007), ‘glocalizers’ (Robertson 1994, 1995) and in ‘resistance’ (Kinzelbach 2013) when faced with global norm diffusion. In this volume we add more empirical cases of different actors and the roles they take on in the norm localization process.

In summary, research on norm localization has contributed three seminal insights which are of relevance for this volume. It shows, first, that the vertical anchoring of global norms is often conflictual and leads to processes of sense making in various local settings. The phenomena of conflict and friction (Buttel 2000; Finnemore 1996; Hirsch 1997; Koenig and Dierkes 2012) are normal in development politics. Second, norm localization research highlights the agency of actors for the emergence, establishment and anchoring of global norms in macro as well as micro settings with actors following context-specific logics of action (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Constructivist research stresses the role of norm entrepreneurs in localization processes, which in our case highlights that global development politics are put into question or reshaped by local actors in various cultural settings. Third, constructivist norm localization research highlights the importance of the local culture for norm institutionalization that has been neglected by other research strands.

Development and post-development

Post-development theory locates the beginning of the development discourse in the second inaugural speech of US President Harry S. Truman in 1949, when he postulated: ‘we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.’¹ The notion of development is much older and can be traced back to Herder and Kant, but it only became a potent part of international politics after World War II, as part of a geo-political containment strategy in the context of the Cold War and decolonization where Western states tried to retain socialist movements in countries of the ‘Global South’ through economic and ideological support. Initially, the development discourse postulated processes of social transformation and poverty reduction in favour of non-Western – less industrialized – societies, and takes on a modernist embodiment with a Western-centric perspective that distinguishes between ‘developed’ donor countries and ‘underdeveloped’ countries that need help to advance according to ‘global’ norms and standards that originate in Western enlightenment and modernity. Similar thought patterns have been used in colonial discourse where the world was divided into ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ societies that needed Western support for social advancement. Global development politics changed with a crisis in development theory in the 1980s when global activists and researchers alike unmasked the authoritarian structures in the arguments used to promote development (Ziai 2010). The global community has since seen an immense number of new global concepts and paradigm shifts in development politics such as ‘local ownership’, ‘participation’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘donor alignment’, which try to discursively compensate for unequal power structures among donor and recipient countries in the global community. Still, a prevailing aspect of current development politics is that nation-states, local actors and activists attempt to acquire legitimacy in world society through the adoption of global norms and standards into local settings using a discourse of advancement and development.

Post-development research and ethnographic studies on development aid have pointed out that ‘development’ is a Western concept that transports hegemonic ideas about the ‘proper’ behaviour for local actors which is being transmitted through development aid interventions across the globe (Easterly 2007; Escobar 1995; Esteva 1992, 1995; Latouche 1993, 134–5; Mignolo 2008; Quijano 2008; Rahnema 1997; Sachs 1992; Woods 2005; Ziai 2010). Post-development research has argued that globally constructed ideas about good development comprise unidirectional models of modernization and progress that marginalize non-Western thought (Crewe and Harrison 1998; Ferguson 1994; Lepenies 2014). Decoupling between global discourse and local development practice is, therefore, a daily phenomenon where development aid experts broker global ideas and concepts in order to fit them into the local setting (Baaz 2005; Roth 2015; Rottenburg 2002...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction
• PART I: The localization of human rights
• PART II: The localization of gender
• PART III: The localization of agency
• PART IV: The localization in economic development cooperation
• Index