Search

Begin New Search Topic Privatization Publishing Institution Institute for Development and Peace

1. The Democratic Legitimacy of Private Governance. An Analysis of the Ethical Trading Initiative

Author:
Susanne Schaller
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Private actors increasingly influence global governance and generate transnational rules and regulations. By creating soft law, they adopt governance tasks that were traditionally in the responsibility of sovereign states. These modes of “private governance” are quite disputed. Some hope that by including private actors, democracy on a global level can be enhanced. Others fear that private governance circumvents democratically legitimated governments and that private regulation competes with national and international law. Thus, questions arise about the legitimisation of private actors and about the democratic legitimacy of private governance.
Topic:
International Relations, Democratization, Government, and Privatization

2. Privatisation in Deep Water? Water Governance and Options for Development Cooperation, INEF-Report 84

Author:
Annabelle Houdret and Miriam Shabafrouz
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Water is an essential factor for human development and health, but also for agricultural production, the development of the tourism sector and industrial growth. The increasing scarcity of the resource contributes to high competition between these user groups. Growing tension and conflict over water allocation urge for new approaches in demand management.
Topic:
Development, Government, Health, and Privatization

3. Towards a New Profile? Development, Humanitarian and Conflict-Resolution NGOs in the Age of Globalization

Author:
Tobias Debiel and Monika Sticht
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Both the significance and the profile of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have undergone a fundamental transformation in the past twenty years. In development cooperation new fields such as ecological sustainability and the promotion of democracy have emerged besides 'traditional' issues like poverty reduction. Furthermore, confronted with the realities of war and state decline, developmental NGOs pay increasing attention to crisis prevention and the resolution of conflicts; even a new type of nongovernmental organization has appeared, conflict-resolution NGOs. The change has been particularly dramatic in the area of humanitarian aid: even before the end of the Cold War some NGOs – Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) at the head of all of them – freed themselves from the “straitjacket” of only conducting humanitarian operations with the permission of the (often illegitimate) local government; meanwhile the concept of sovereignty has been substantially redefined. NGOs, however, also con- formed to the imperatives of globalization and commercialization, and formed oligopolies on the market for humanitarian aid. At the same time, they are also confronted with their own “powerlessness” in conflict zones: actors of violence and power-holders successfully attempt to instrumentalize humanitarian aid for their own purposes, and western military forces threaten the independence of humanitarian work by demanding subordination to political and strategic goals.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, Humanitarian Aid, Non-Governmental Organization, Privatization, and Sovereignty