Localising aid: Urban displacement, contested public authority and legitimacy in Jordan and Lebanon
| Published date | 01 July 2024 |
| Author | Dolf J. H. Lintelo,Tim Liptrot |
| Date | 01 July 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13266 |
36
|
Global Policy. 2024;15(Suppl. 4):36 –47.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gpol
1 | LOCALISING AID IN URBAN
DISPLACEMENT SETTINGS
WITH MULTIPLE PUBLIC
AUTHORITY ACTORS
The governance of urban agglomeration and mixed mi-
gration are key global development challenges for the
21st century. By 2050, around seven billion people are
projected to live in cities. As poverty is urbanising (Sat-
terthwaite,2004), so is refuge (Sanyal,2014 ): by 2019,
over half of all 26 million refugees and every one in
two internally displaced persons were estimated to live
in urban areas (UNHCR, 2020). Urban municipalities
therefore have a critical role in managing displacement
as first responders to sudden refugee inflows (Boustani
et al.,2016 ). Moreover, migration management respon-
sibilities are increasingly scaled downwards from cen-
tral states to municipalities (Kreichauf & Glorius,2021).
Simultaneously, municipalities not only administer
but also drive displacement within cities, for instance
through regeneration efforts and settlement evictions.
In recognition of the vital role of urban autho rities
in providing support and ser vices in acute and chronic
crises, the World Humanitarian Summit(2016) set out
a ‘localisation’ agenda with the aim of dire cting greater
attention and financing to municipalit ies. Yet, aid and
humanitarian organisations often stru ggle to adjust
programming to complex urban conditio ns as a range
of state and non- state bodies compete to govern.
A rich body of literature on hybrid governance inves-
tigates the contestation for legitimacy and the competi-
tion for public authority in conflic t- affected or post- conflict
settings (e.g. Bagayoko et al.,2016; Hans en & Steppu-
tat, 2005; Lund,200 6a). It asserts that where the state
is absent or weakly present, non- state (and sometimes
armed) actors play significant roles in governance to
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Localising aid: Urban displacement, contested public
authority and legitimacy in Jordan and Lebanon
Dolf J. H.te Lintelo1 | TimLiptrot2
Received: 17 Januar y 2023
|
Revised: 14 August 2023
|
Accepted: 14 August 20 23
DO I: 10 .1111/17 58- 589 9.13 266
This is an open ac cess article under t he terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which perm its use and distributi on in
any medium, provi ded the original work is p roperly cited, the use i s non-commercial a nd no modifications o r adaptations are made.
© 2023 The Authors . Global Policy published by Durham Universi ty and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1Institute of Develop ment Studies,
University of S ussex, Brighton, UK
2Georgetown University, Washington DC,
USA
Correspondence
Dolf J. H. te Lintelo, In stitute of
Development Stu dies, University of
Sussex, Brighton UK.
Email: d.j.te-lintelo@sussex.ac.uk
Funding information
Dutch Researc h Council (NWO- WOTRO),
Grant/Award Numb er: W.08.400.199; UK
Foreign and Commonwealth Development
Office
Abstract
Globally, tens of millions of forcibly displaced people live in informal urb an
neighbourhoods. Although critical sites for humanitarian and development in-
tervention, municipal authorities may have only a limited presence. Especially
in conflict and post- co nflict settings, other non- state actors emerge to com pete
for public authority. While the localisation agenda of internatio nal donors seeks
to better engage local governance actors, lit tle is known about how aid donors
take account of non- state public authority actors as they seek to achieve stability,
state building, security and refugee resili ence objectives. Accordingly, this study
adopts a qualitative methodology to analyse how, why and to what effect donor s
conceive of and seek to address the legitimacy of st ate and non- state urban
public authority actors in their resp onse to urban displacement. Analysis of the
Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan and Lebano n shows that municipalities remain
the focus, as donors hold three key assumptions that inform t heir interventions.
Adopting sophisticated tools for underst anding non- state actors' pursuit of pub-
lic authority, donor interventions seek to undergird, shif t, work around, blank or
ban their legitimacy- making prac tices. We conclude that while donors embrace
empirical legitimacy approach es, development and humanitarian responses to
urban protracted displacement in marginal ur ban neighbourhoods are restricted
by powerful normative legitimacy approaches rooted in forei gn policy objectives.
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