What is it about?
There is growing demand for an understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence. As such research focuses increasingly on the issue of state legitimacy as a tool to assess and understand peace processes. In this paper the relationship between service provision and state legitimacy is studied to assess whether the provision of services like electricity to rural communities of war-torn countries through state actors contributes to the consolidation of the post-war political system. The qualitative analysis of two localities in post-war Nepal highlights that service provision in the form of electricity through micro-hydropower yields tremendously positive socio-economic effects for rural communities. However, socio-economic development in combination with interactions among villagers has strengthened local autonomy through emphasising alternative local governance structures. This highlights that the relationship between service provision and state legitimacy is more complex than previous research anticipates. The absence of a positive effect on state legitimacy raises the question of whether in its current case-specific form service provision is conducive to the broader peace-building efforts in post-war Nepal, because it stresses the divide between state and society.
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Why is it important?
Even though micro-hydropower development is not a specific peace-building strategy of the Nepali government, policy-makers and experts consider micro-hydropower as a crucial tool for rural development in the country, because these systems utilise renewable resources and address social, economic and environmental concerns of rural communities.5 This combined effect makes micro-hydropower in Nepal an influential development effort that should have significant socio-economic consequences and affect state actors’ legitimacy. However, we have only a very limited understanding of how service provision actually affects communities in the peace process in Nepal. The need to understand this research gap has become ever more urgent with the series of earthquakes that hit Nepal in April 2015.
Perspectives
Florian Krampe is a political scientist, specialising in peace and conflict research, international relations, and political ecology at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. He currently works on peacebuilding, the social and political impacts of climate change, water security and governance, as well as environmental peacebuilding. Since 2014 he is Director of the Forum for South Asia Studies, an interdisciplinary forum that supports and facilitates research on South Asia within the Humanities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University.
Florian Krampe
Uppsala Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Empowering peace: service provision and state legitimacy in Nepal’s peace-building process, Conflict Security and Development, January 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2016.1136138.
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Resources
Community Empowerment vs. State Stability? Lessons From Nepal’s Micro-Hydropower Projects
Post-war countries are among the most difficult policy arenas. The challenge is not only to stop violence and prevent violence from rekindling, but moreover to help countries reset their internal relations on a peaceful path. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners are interested in the potential of natural resources in post-war settings in the hope that good governance and sustainable management can contribute to this reset. Indeed, the international community acknowledged the relevance of the link between peaceful societies and environmental issues by including both in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Starke Gemeinschaft oder starker Staat? Lehren für die internationale Friedensförderung aus Nepals Kleinwasserkraftwerkprojekten
Nachkriegsländer gehören zu den schwierigsten politischen Arenen. Die Herausforderungen bestehen nicht nur darin, diese Länder dabei zu unterstützen Kriege zu beenden und neue Gewaltausbrüche zu verhindern, sondern vielmehr zu einem friedlichen Zusammenleben zurückzukehren. In diesem Zusammenhang ist in den letzten Jahren das Interesse vieler Wissenschaftler als auch vieler internationaler Akteure gestiegen, das mögliche Potential des nachhaltigen Managements natürlicher Ressourcen zu nutzen um Friedensprozesse zu unterstützen. Die Hoffnung liegt dabei darin, dass eine gute Regierungsführung („Good Governance“) und insbesondere die nachhaltige Entwicklung und Nutzung von Ressourcen wie Wasser, Wald oder landwirtschaftlichen Flächen, Kooperation zwischen Konfliktparteien ermöglichen und dabei zum Neustart der internen Beziehungen beitragen. Die wachsende Bedeutung des Zusammenspiels zwischen der Entwicklung von Frieden und Umweltschutz sowie der nachhaltigen Nutzung von Ressourcen wurde erst kürzlich durch die Ziele nachhaltiger Entwicklung der Vereinten Nationen bestätigt.
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