The Non-Exclusive Role for Civil Society Actors in the Legitimisation Process

Actors like civil society are no doubt involved in both the outcome and participation-characteristics of the legitimisation process, as has been shown throughout the thesis. Nevertheless, the type of role civil society actors have in the participation-based characteristics of legitimisation is different to what the current literature assumes. This is because civil society actors are not ubiquitous in the legitimisation process, since they are not involved in all parts of the legitimisation process. In addition, the actors are

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to a certain degree interchangeable - as was shown for the constitutive component of recognised guarantor of legitimacy. This is outlined in the next sections, as well as further discussing the political agency of the guarantors of legitimacy and the meaning of the ‘local’ in relation to the beneficiary of legitimacy.

6.2.1 Actors in the Legitimisation Process

The basis of the literature on which this research is based on, argues that when civil society takes part in peace negotiations, the negotiations become more legitimate and as a result the agreement that follows is more likely to last (e.g. Barnes 2002; Paffenholz 2014a; Wanis-St. John and Kew 2008). Sustainable peace is possible because of civil society involvement making the peace negotiations more legitimate.

This research has questioned this idea, by discerning what exactly the legitimisation process entails.

Importantly, and therefore the second part to the theory on legitimate peace negotiations, the exclusive role of the civil society actors in the legitimisation process has been questioned. From the empirical case studies it was shown that peace negotiations do not necessarily become more or less legitimate solely because of the involvement of civil society actors, in relation to the participation-based characteristics of legitimisation. Firstly, participation can also ensue through alternative ways to mere representation by civil society actors such as for example one-sided participative communication through the artistic expression of grievances. Secondly, other actors, including the mediators can also act as guarantors of legitimacy.

On the first point, the active role of the beneficiary of legitimacy in the legitimisation process as part of the participation-based characteristics is best highlighted by the elements of participative communication. In the Kenyan case, beneficiaries could feel involved in the negotiation process, constituting a part of the legitimisation process. This engagement happened in two ways. Either ordinary civilians could participate in the Open Forum set up by a civil society group, in order to air their grievances and help contribute to the Citizens Agenda for Peace. Alternatively, and this time with no civil society involvement, persons were involved in the process by simply expressing their concerns, impressions and reflections on the process artistically or otherwise. This included for example artistic forms of expressing narratives such as the Kenyan ‘Kwami?’ books, as illustrated by Image 5.1 in the previous chapter. In essence, this part of the legitimisation process comes from within. This also highlights a more pro-active role for the beneficiaries of legitimacy, who can involve themselves in the legitimisation process, rather than the somewhat passive notion of feeling represented.

The onus on participation through communication in contributing to legitimisation has been recognised by other scholars. In a completely different setting, Bougeanvilleans seeking independence from Papua New Guinea were recorded to have spent large parts of peace negotiations singing and praying. Volker Boege explains that these may be ‘activities that, from a internationals’ point of view, can easily be

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misjudged as folkloristic … [but] … are expressions of commitment and trust and can be more powerful than mere spoken or written words,’ in order to make the negotiations more ‘acceptable and legitimate’

(2012, 97). Subsequently, at least in part the empirical construction of legitimacy is related to participative communication, which does not necessitate the involvement of civil society actors at all.

In addition, when civil society actors do play a role for the participation-based characteristics, they are to a degree interchangeable. What matters is not so much who they are, but rather how they are perceived, amounting to being representative or recognised guarantors of legitimacy, both of which are components that constitute a part of the legitimisation process. In the Kenyan case, overwhelming evidence points to the recognition of a self-referential legitimation narrative from Kofi Annan, the AU Panel and ‘an African solution for an African problem.’ The mediation team was perceived just as legitimate, if not more so, than the civil society actors. They were a recognised guarantor of legitimacy, and thus contributed a part in the legitimisation process. As a woman writes to a national newspaper ‘we endorsed your team long ago … you and gracious Graça [Machel] … have struck a chord with Kenyans.

You feel the suffering of the ordinary people” (Mburu 2008). In summary, civil society involvement in peace negotiations cannot be automatically equated to more legitimacy. The legitimisation process can involve actors as guarantors of legitimacy that are not civil society actors, and also involve communication channels that involve no guarantor of legitimacy at all.

With regards to the outcome-based characteristics of legitimate peace negotiations, the civil society actors play a more distinctive and if you will ‘traditionally’ accepted role, by contributing to the civilian counterbalance and so on. Concerning the participation-based characteristics civil society can play a role as guarantors of legitimacy more generally, but do not do so exclusively, as is shown by the dotted arrow in Figure 6.2 below. In addition, the beneficiary of legitimacy can also actively contribute in the ways outlined previously.

Figure 6.2: The Role of Actors in the Theory of Legitimate Peace Negotiations

Outcome-Based Characteristics

Guarantors of

legitimacy Legitimate Peace

Negotiations

Participation-Based Characteristics Beneficiaries of

legitimacy

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This finding and theoretical conclusion also means a distancing from the literature on sources of legitimacy and legitimation strategies, because they do not on their own give a holistic picture of the legitimisation process. For example, as discussed in Chapter 2, a (relatively) newer field of legitimacy research has emerged that considers the legitimation of authority as an observable activity, through the study of self-justifying characteristics of rulers (e.g. Barker 2001). Authorities are engaged in activities of their own legitimation. In my own work however, the self-referential legitimation narratives shown in the empirical chapters are not solely an activity of legitimation or a strategy as such. The civil society actor or mediator has no time to work on a long legitimation strategy to make herself seem more legitimate to the beneficiaries of legitimacy. Of course, the prior reputation of the actor plays a role as was shown in the case studies, but when the ad-hoc, dynamic and non-institutionalised peace negotiations process starts, their self-referential legitimisation is either recognised or it is not.

Though the legitimisation process itself goes beyond the time period of the negotiations themselves, this is still the key moment in the legitimisation process, and usually takes no longer than a matter of weeks or months. This makes the legitimation narratives of the guarantors different to legitimation strategies used by authorities or leaders to enforce their own legitimacy over much longer periods of time (Barker 2001; Schatzberg 2001). In other words, whilst a study of the narratives as a strategy might help explain reasons why the actors are perceived as legitimate (as mothers, as ‘African peers’), they do not by itself explain the legitimation process.

The same limitation goes for the literature on the sources of legitimacy (e.g. Weber 1978b). Considering the sources of legitimacy of actors may help to provide an understanding of why certain actors are perceived as legitimate, related to reasons of history, tradition, charisma etc., but on its own this does not offer a theory of the broader legitimisation process. Both the empirical approaches to legitimacy by Weber, Easton and the more normative approach by Beetham, all consider legitimacy in terms of persons of authority and power and how this justified - be it empirically, legally, morally, or normatively.

Whilst civil society actors play a role - though not an omnipotent one - they are not by any means formalised or in positions of power or authority. In fact, by their very definition these are non-powerful actors in the negotiations setting, representing the population. Thus, the legal validity of power (as discussed by Beetham 1991); the structural sources of legitimacy (as proposed by Easton 1965) and the rational-legal source of legitimacy (Weber 1978b) can simply not apply here. However, the personal source of legitimacy which Easton proposes along with Weber’s personal sources of legitimacy, both traditional and charismatic, go some way to showing why specific actors come to be perceived as legitimate. The charismatic nature of some of the civil society actors and other legitimate actors is beyond doubt, including the IRCL in Liberia and Kofi Annan in Kenya. The relevance of tradition is shown to degrees, most notably in the consideration of women in Liberia through the recognised self-referential legitimation narrative, which confirms the studies of empirical legitimacy by Steady (2011) and Schatzberg (2001). Since the civil society actors are not equated to outright legitimacy however, as has

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been shown throughout the empirical chapters and for the theory of legitimate peace negotiations, the literature reviewed is nonetheless only partially relevant.

In conclusion, the process of peace negotiations becomes more legitimate not because the civil society actors are seen as legitimate authorities or legitimising a political system, but because on the basis of outcome and participation-related characteristics, negotiations become legitimised. In terms of agency, both guarantors and beneficiaries of legitimacy play a part in this, though not exclusively. The two forms of agency of both the guarantors and beneficiaries of legitimacy are further discussed in the next two sections.

6.2.2 The Political Agency of the Guarantors of Legitimacy

The process-orientated theory of legitimacy emphasises outcomes and participation over specific actors;

yet indubitably actors are involved. These actors do not emerge from a political vacuum, nor can they remain completely apolitical by taking part in the negotiation process - in whatever form. Jacob Bercovitch notes that “mediation should not be confused with altruism; mediators are usually cognizant of their own interests and they have motives, consciously expressed or not, that they wish to see promoted or protected” (1996, 9). The same can be said for civil society actors.

At the most basic level, this is because of jobs and other benefits these actors receive after participating in the process. Civil society organisations themselves are made up of individuals, who may be perceived as more or less legitimate themselves, yet overall they are a heterogeneous group of actors. Nonetheless, actors have frequently been erroneously tarred with the same brush. This has repercussions that go in two separate directions: Firstly, the role of civil society actors in peace negotiations and peace processes is simplified with one stroke as ‘positive’ and ‘legitimate’ obfuscating more complex legitimisation processes (notable exceptions include McClintock and Nahimana 2008; Pearce 2011). Secondly, as soon as any civil society actor is seen as ‘politicised’, all of the civil society are rejected in one stroke. Perhaps civil society cannot act as well as they intend as their subsumed into the politics of the other actors or are co-opted by them. This was the case in the DRC where some civil society actors received monetary gifts or promises of future political positions in return for political favours (Paffenholz 2014a, 79), an accusation which was also mirrored in Liberia. As was shown in both case studies, the civil society actors under review were accused and found to be political and politicised entities. This should however not be surprising. Speaking of peacebuilding interventions, Jarat Chopra and Tanja Hohe note “there is never a vacuum of power on the ground” (2004, 298). Something similar could be said about the civil society actors: Yes, the actors are involved - and without a doubt genuinely at times - in representing collective concerns and so on, but this does not mean that they act in a political vacuum.

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Neutrality is part of the constitutive component of legitimisation of feeling represented, but this does not mean that overall all civil society actors or other guarantors of legitimacy for that matter, will be neutral at all times. Nor that being political and not neutral by definition is necessarily detrimental to legitimisation either. A guarantor of legitimacy can be overtly political and take a stance - but the political stance can be different to that of the conflict parties or represent a particular grievance and thus the group can be acknowledged for their importance.¹³⁵ Civil society actors come with a certain background, experience and relation to others. For example even WIPNET - which perhaps is the most ‘genuine’

grassroots organisation of all of the civil society actors reviewed in this work - did not emerge out of a vacuum. Several of the women involved, participated in extensive training on the role of women in peacebuilding after UN Security Resolution 1325 (Alaga 2011a, 9). A more differentiated picture of civil society actors, acknowledging their political nature, would allow for a better understanding of legitimisation processes (see also Ferguson 1994).

In conclusion, the guarantors of legitimacy are not exempt from networks of power and politics, but this does not have to be to the detriment of the legitimisation process, as long as they are still contributing to the feeling of representation or recognised as guarantors of legitimacy etc. Granted, the influence and power-hold of the guarantors of legitimacy is likely to be less than that of the conflict parties but this does not mean it is entirely absent either as has been shown throughout. The meaning of power and politics may simply pertain to different features. Civil society actors may for example not be involved in the political agendas of the conflict actors, but tangled in other power struggles or political movements.

6.2.3 The Meaning of the “Local” and the Beneficiary of Legitimacy

One of the most puzzling finding in this dissertation has been on the disregard and distinction of ‘local grievances’, which contrasts to much of the literature from critical peacebuilding on the role of local peacebuilding processes (e.g. Lidén, Mac Ginty, and Richmond 2009; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013;

Richmond and Mitchell 2011). Especially in the Liberian case, the fact that local concerns were not addressed was not perceived to be a detriment to the legitimisation process. This was only partially confirmed in the Kenyan setting. To make matters more complicated, the same cannot be said for ‘local’

representation, viewed as missing in both cases and as a result acting detrimentally for the legitimisation process. The meaning of the ‘local’ is not the focus of the research question, and I argued elsewhere that

‘the incoherence and complexity of the local sphere … [has been largely ignored], as well as the power relations through which it is characterized, particularly with regard to the legitimacy of actors and concepts. Power and authority are in fact locally as contested as on the national level’ (Simons and Zanker 2014, 14). The discussions on local grievances and local representation do however reveal two

135 In fact, argues Autessere, the neutrality of expatriates can help to deteriorate their relationship to the intended beneficiaries (2014b, 235–236).