The sum of its parts? Sources of local legitimacy

Abstract

The article analyses the sources of local actors’ legitimacy perceptions towards international peacebuilding operations. Local legitimacy perceptions are increasingly recognised as shaping local behaviour towards international peacebuilding, which influences the effective functioning of the operation. Legitimacy debates in peacebuilding are either absent or imported from the literature on domestic legitimacy, without respect to the specific temporal and spatial situation of international operations. The article first explores which legitimacy sources influence local legitimacy perceptions of international peacebuilding operations. It finds that two sources are relevant: output and procedure. Second, it investigates how exactly legitimacy arises from them. In doing so, it demonstrates that output and procedure are umbrella terms comprising several sub-elements which influence legitimacy in different, sometimes contradictory, ways. Finally, the article empirically explores which of the sources are important to local actors’ legitimacy perceptions using field data from the EU peacebuilding operations EULEX in Kosovo and EUPM Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Of locals and insiders

“…The perceived legitimacy of state actors is convoluted. For example, local authorities may only have the trust of certain community groups, whereas national authorities may be perceived as entirely illegitimate (Gizelis and Kosek, 2005; Gippert, 2016). Local actors may find that taking sides helps them in gaining and maintaining the trust needed to deliver aid (Smits and Wright, 2012), thus compromising their neutrality as a humanitarian actor.…”

“…In other cases, both national and local state actors may be viewed as illegitimate or distrustful, and international actors present competing legitimacy claims, e.g. because they have been trustfully and credibly running programs in the area for several years (Egeland et al , 2011; Van Brabant, 2010; Gippert, 2016).…”

“…In post-tsunami Aceh for example, collaboration between aid and state helped facilitate peace talks between rebel groups and the Indonesian Government (Gaillard et al , 2008; Waizenegger and Hyndman, 2010). When communities know that actors will remain in the area and will have to live with the consequences of their own programs, humanitarian programs earn trust (Gippert, 2016) and cultivate more sustainable improvements.…”

When the Virtuous Circle Unravels: Unfair Service Provision and State De-legitimation in Divided Societies

“…A similar finding is made by Fisk and Cherney (2016) in post-conflict Nepal, where people primarily evaluate institutional legitimacy on the basis of the fairness of decision-making and the quality of treatment, rather than on outcome favourability and material gain. 25 Other studies have shown that in practice people do not evaluate state legitimacy in such neat categories of outputs, inputs, and procedures (Gippert 2016;Lindgren and Persson 2010). Categorizing service delivery as exclusively 'output legitimacy' may therefore be misleading in implying that improving material well-being improves legitimacy.…”

Legitimacy in Conflict: Concepts, Practices, Challenges

“…International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) are concerned with their legitimacy standing in the eyes of their member states (Beetham and Lord 1998;Lord and Magnette 2004;Hurd 2007;Zaum 2013). Similarly, international peace operations seek to legitimize themselves in the eyes of several audiences, including domestic publics in the states seconding staff or providing funds, local populations in the host states, and the key states who mandate the missions (often the UN Security Council; see Coleman 2007;Whalan 2013;von Billerbeck 2016;Gippert 2016b). While the recent shift in legitimacy studies away from a focus exclusively on the state shows an appreciation of the wider applicability of this relational characteristic, many of the theoretical and conceptual assumptions born out of the state-focused literature survive.…”