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Benequista, N & J, Wheeler
IDS Working Paper
Forthcoming
Forthcoming
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Wheeler, J, Pearce, J & R, McGee
IDS Working Paper
The impact of violence on the everyday lives of citizens in a number of countries, regions and cities of the global S...
The impact of violence on the everyday lives of citizens in a number of countries, regions and cities of the global South has been the central theme of five years’ work in the Violence, Participation and Citizenship (VPC) group of the DRC on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability. Important questions arose from this work about security provision and democracy in contexts of violence, particularly chronic violence. In the contexts in which we worked, security provision did not necessarily diminish violence and enable democratic participation and the meaningful exercise of citizenship rights - which should define security - but the opposite often occurred.
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Wheeler, J
IDS Bulletin, 40(3)
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Wheeler, J
IDS Bulletin, 40(3)
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Wheeler, J
IDS Bulletin, 40(3)
An important dimension of the research process in the case of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas was linking the research to po...
An important dimension of the research process in the case of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas was linking the research to policy dialogues on public security. This briefing note explores some of the issues that emerged through these dialogues. These include the paucity of legitimate community representatives, the way that the government uses information, and the importance of time and timing in building policy dialogues. In order for there to be a productive dialogue with policymakers at the municipal, state, or other level, interlocutors between the favelas and government institutions are also key.
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Wheeler, J
IDS Bulletin, 40(3)
Carrying out research in areas controlled by armed actors requires an ongoing process of negotiation along a series o...
Carrying out research in areas controlled by armed actors requires an ongoing process of negotiation along a series of different axes. Permission from these non-state groups is essential in order to have access to the communities they dominate, yet independence from them is also fundamental to the integrity of the research. External research engages in negotiations which mirror the compromises that residents make on a daily basis. This briefing note traces the process of negotiating access with militias and drug dealers for research to take place in Rio’s favelas. The challenge throughout these negotiations was demonstrating enough flexibility to appear not to be a threat, while at the same time maintaining the neutrality of the research. Militias and drug dealers each set different ‘terms’ for allowing the research to go ahead in relation to their specific concerns.
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Wheeler, J
Citizenship DRC Working Paper
Given the growing emphasis on the links between research and policy, it is crucial to examine how these connections o...
Given the growing emphasis on the links between research and policy, it is crucial to examine how these connections occur. This report draws on the experiences from over six years of an international research network – the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability(Citizenship DRC)– to understand research and social change.
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Wheeler, J & P, Newell
In P Newell & J Wheeler (eds) Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability. London: Zed
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordere...
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.
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Wheeler, J & P, Newell
In P Newell & J Wheeler (eds) Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability. London: Zed.
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordere...
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.
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Wheeler, J & P, Newell
IDS Policy Briefing, No. 33
A policy briefing which looks at the central debates on accountability, dispels some myths, identifies some cases dra...
A policy briefing which looks at the central debates on accountability, dispels some myths, identifies some cases drawn from recent research on citizen participation and accountability and addresses policy implications.
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Wheeler, J & P, Newell
In P Newell & J Wheeler (eds) Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability. London: Zed.
Many conflicts in development can be understood as struggles by the poor to hold the powerful to account. Contests ov...
Many conflicts in development can be understood as struggles by the poor to hold the powerful to account. Contests over the rights and responsibilities of actors in development are increasing in intensity amid clashes between the promotion of a rights-based approach to development and market-based notions of access and entitlement to resources. How these conflicts are played out has enormous implications for efforts to tackle poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Understanding how the poor claim their rights and demand accountability for the realisation of those rights becomes critical. This book contributes to such an understanding by exploring how poorer groups mobilise around rights to resources in a diversity of settings, employing a broad range of strategies to achieve accountability. It places accountability at the intersection between rights and resources, asking: what is the relationship between greater accountability and people’s ability to realise their rights to resources?
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Wheeler, J
In N Kabeer (ed.) Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions. London: Zed
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Wheeler, J & J, Petit
IDS Bulletin, 36(1)
As increasing attention is focused on rights-based approaches, there is the danger that a rights-based agenda will be...
As increasing attention is focused on rights-based approaches, there is the danger that a rights-based agenda will become narrowed into a top-down, donor-led trend. on the other hand, much of the current focus on right-based approaches derives from struggles for rights that are rooted both historically and contextually in experiences of exclusion and marginalisation, and have the capacity to contribute positively to change. This article highlights some of the key lessons about using rights effectively. First, important historical and geopolitical forces are behind the timing and framing of the rights-based discourse, which bear careful examination. Second, the contexts of actual struggles are crucial to understanding how rights become substantive. Third, the process of making rights real is a political one, rather than a technical or procedural one, because it entails confronting the structural inequalities that underlie the negotiation of rights. Understanding how rights can shift power relations is essential to realising the potential of rights to contribute to change. Finally, a rights perspective, when understood within particular contexts and linked to strategies to shift power relations, has the potential to confront some of the most prominent assumptions of development orthodoxy and emerging agendas of security.
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Clark, C, Reilly, M & J, Wheeler
IDS Bulletin, 36(1)
Since the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 50 years ago, there has been a proliferation of international...
Since the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 50 years ago, there has been a proliferation of international conventions on rights. Currently, the international legal framework encompasses an astounding variety, stretching from women’s rights to rights of indigenous peoples to knowledge rights. But despite the burgeoning number of formal rights at the international and national level, substantive rights in practice remain elusive for most. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that innovative approaches that integrate rights into development practice can have real impact on entrenched problems of poverty and injustice. Using rights in development to address marginalisation and exclusion requires new thinking about understanding how rights can be made substantive.
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Wheeler, J, Hughes, A & R, Eyben
IDS Bulletin, 36(1)
Many international development agencies have incorporated rights into their policy approaches but the relationship be...
Many international development agencies have incorporated rights into their policy approaches but the relationship between rights and shifting power relations is still rarely addressed. In this article, the authors consider that rights-based approaches should inherently politicise development by inviting power structures to be challenged, from the policy and programme levels to the organisations and individual actors involved and the values, cultures and principles that underpin them. This was the theme of a recent workshop for donor representatives at the Institute of Development Studies. Participants explored meanings and expressions of power and reflected on the significance of these for their own individual and organisational behaviour as powerful development actors. This article discusses key issues emerging from the workshop and the challenges faced by staff when they seek to promote rights-based approaches in their organisations.
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Wheeler, J, Hughes, A, Eyben, R & P, Scott-Villiers
Rights and Power Workshop Report. Citizenship DRC: Brighton
This document is not currently available
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Wheeler, J
Gender and Development, 11(3): 36-44.
