Introduction: Development practice, power and public authority
| Published date | 01 July 2024 |
| Author | Tom Kirk,Rose Pinnington |
| Date | 01 July 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13393 |
Global Policy. 2024;15(Suppl. 4):5–10.
|
5
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gpol
Christian Lund developed the idea of ‘public author-
ity’ in response to the inadequac ies of the ‘fragile’ and
‘failed’ states discourses o n African governance that
predominated among academics and po licymakers in
the 1990s and early 2000s (Lund, 2006). Others took
up the concept to further respo nd to the heuristic limita-
tions and normative biases of ideal- type Weberian state
conceptions that dominated mainstream development
literature in the 2010s (Hoffmann & Kirk, 2013). Through
long- term fieldwork, a mixture of political so ciologists
and scientists, economists, geographers, anthropolo-
gists and development studies scholars revealed the
variety of contemporary modes of so cial and political
order and institutionalisation in areas of central an d east
Africa often written off as cri sis- affected, ungoverned,
or ungovernable. They used Lund's lens to contribute
to an empirically grounded interdisci plinary academic
literature on ‘actually existing’ governance and asso-
ciated concepts such as ‘mediated states’, ‘negotiated
states’, ‘governance without government’ and ‘practical
norms’ (Hagmann & Peclard, 2010; Menkhaus, 2008;
Olivier de Sardan, 2008; Raeymaekers et al., 2008).
They showed that far from anarchic or isolated periph-
eries, such places are alive with contests over claims to
positions of authority and the provisio n of public goods.
A core empirical and scholarly c ontribution of
those using a public authority lens h as been the
identification of multi- scalar linkages bet ween ‘actu-
ally existing’ governance dynamics in specific places
and governance structures and institutions as more
conventionally understood. This has often focussed
on how the responses of public authorities to cr ises
are shaped and can be shaped by national and in-
ternational political economie s (Kirk & Allen,2022).
This includes those presided over by states and
their allies, and those driven by the agendas of the
development and humanitarian sector. In particular,
the lens has been used to show how crises present
moments within which public authorities (re)define
who is included and excluded from par ticular identity
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
Introduction: Development practice, power and public
authority
TomKirk1,2 | RosePinnington3
Received: 3 May 2024
|
Accepted: 7 May 2024
DO I: 10 .1111/17 58- 589 9.13 393
This is an open ac cess article under t he terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2024 The Author(s). Global Policy published by D urham University and Jo hn Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1London School of Economics and
Political Science, London, UK
2Faculty of Humanities, University of
Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South
Africa
3King's College London, London, UK
Correspondence
Tom Kirk, London School of Economics
and Political Science, London, UK.
Email: t.k irk@lse. ac.uk
Funding information
Centre for Public Au thority and
International Development, Grant/Award
Number: ES/P008038/1
Abstract
Drawing upon research across multiple co untries, the papers in this special issue
explore how public authority dynamic s affect development and humanitarian
practices and processes. Some foc us on places commonly labelled as in crisis
or understood to be subject to multiple overlappin g crises, where responses to
epidemics, persistent conflic t and migrations are in progress. Others examine how
public authority dynamics af fect the everyday governance of development in out-
wardly more stable contexts. The seven empirical paper s are complimented by
a conceptual framework for analysing how power permeates the foundations of
public authority dynamics. Vi ewed together, they illuminate why exclusions, coer-
cion and violence are often used by those c laiming the legitimacy to govern, and
how grasping what this may mean for well- intended interventions or reform efforts
remains a challenge for practitioners. However, they also point towards a pressing
need for outsiders to recognise their own rol es in constructing and legitimising,
sometimes harmful, forms of public authority in t he places they work. And they sug-
gest the first step is to confront a reluctance to ac knowledge public authority dy-
namics in their official depi ctions of programmes' progress, learnings and impacts.
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