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  Neglect of power as constraint, ie “deeply embedded power relations and structural barriers to securing rights” (Pettit and Wheeler 2005: 5)

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)

Aim  To understand the interrelationship between forms and uses of power and the securing of human rights

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Power

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]

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).

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).

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?