Margit Van Wessel
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1047873 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Margit Van Wessel |
| NOMBRES | Margit |
| APELLIDO | Van Wessel |
| FIRMA | VAN WESSEL M |
| AFILIACIONES | Wageningen University & Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3611-5817 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 38 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 154 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2004 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Locally led development through country-level CSO coalitions? The case of a climate advocacy program
This article examines an (I)NGO-administered effort at advancing locally led development by supporting social movement coalition building to promote locally led climate action in an East-African context. The puzzle examined here is the tension between requirements of social movement coalition-building and power relations in the development sector. Applying sociological theory on coalition building, the paper considers the specific requirements of…
Power and its discontents
NGOs are taking incremental steps to reconfigure power dynamics and foster more equal relationships between Northern and Southern actors. • Most actions to address North-South power imbalances do not fundamentally change power dynamics or tackle the root causes of inequality. • Most actions are Northern-led, running the risk of reinforcing power relations in the aid system. • NGO are making slow progress in shifting power and individual actions c…
What We Are to ‘Marginalized Groups’
This study explores the way Indian civil society organizations (CSOs) in the state of Jharkhand that work from rights-based approaches construct the legitimacy of their advocacy roles regarding marginalized groups. Finding that they typically do so from a stance of solidarity, the article shows that solidarity in this context supports access to rights and entitlements, but can be delimited in terms of its emancipatory quality. The article identif…
From top-down to locally led
It is increasingly acknowledged that development should be ‘locally led’, taking the starting point that national and local actors are best placed to achieve timely, appropriate and effective outcomes. Approaches of ‘localisation’, ‘decolonisation’ and ‘shifting the power’ that seek to fundamentally transform power relations have gained traction within international development and humanitarian action. When it comes to evidence-based working, how…
Theory of Change in Multi-country Advocacy Programmes
Theory of change is often endorsed and used to support within-country programming. This country-level use, however, remains unexplored. This study investigates country-level use in a multi-country advocacy programme to understand its local operation and effects. In line with prescriptions, it focuses on adaptability to country-specific conditions. Examining experiences of staff of civil society organizations involved, this article finds that theo…
How civil society in India is marginalized. Civic space as relational process
Restriction of civic space is widely understood as a condition that constrains the autonomous role of civil society organizations. However, this conceptualization is delimiting. This paper explores civic space as constituted in the dynamics between civil society organizations and state actors, contributing to an emergent shift to a more processual, relational and agential understanding of civic space, involving a redefining of civil society roles…
Cross-sector collaboration by endowed foundations
Collaboration between corporations, government and non-profit organizations is necessary for tackling complex social issues, but Dutch philanthropic endowed foundations hardly collaborate with these actors and therefore seem to miss opportunities for reaching more social results, even as their financial independence appears to provide unique possibilities for them to contribute. Organizational identity theory offers a new perspective to studying …
Faith-based organizations and religious nationalism
Faith-based organizations that are rooted in India’s diverse faiths give shape to their roles in an operational space shaped by the Hindu nationalist government. This paper, based on interviews with 34 FBOs, compares how FBOs rooted in five different faith traditions perceive that operational space, and how they relate to the state based on their perceptions of these conditions. One key finding is that there are important similarities in these FB…
Northern NGO-centrism in localisation processes
This paper examines the process of discussing and designing actions to tackle power inequities by Northern and Southern NGOs. Drawing on 53 interviews with Northern and Southern NGOs, and NNGO networks, we argue that current localisation processes produce a form of cultural capital leveraged by competing Northern NGOs rooted in signalling solidarity with SNGOs and/or communities to donors through rhetorical and symbolic practices, reinforcing the…
Reimagining Transcalar Civil Society Advocacy Collaborations
Addressing the currently highly salient topic of power in civil society collaborations, this article seeks to contribute to reimagining advocacy collaborations in the context of contractual relations between civil society organizations in development. It explores the integration of common aims: (1) relating between levels, commonly sought in civil society advocacy programmes in development and (2) local ownership for civil society organizations i…
Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development
Chickens, Inc
Journalism is presented as fundamental to democratic accountability in that news media are both able and expected to hold power to account. Such normative expectations, which justify the protections given journalists and news media, are most frequently studied with regards to state power as the natural object of press scrutiny. This article reports on a successful effort to conduct a replicable analysis of a paradigmatic case of corporate power, …
Representation by Development Organizations
This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with …
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricte…
Examining the promise of ‘the local’ for improving gender equality in agriculture and climate change adaptation
Building on the conceptualisation of ‘the local’ in gender and development discourse, we explore how national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda perceive gender equality policy in the context of agriculture and climate change, to assess the potential of localised solutions to achieve gender equality. Using data from national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda (37 semi-structured interviews, 78 questionnaires), the study found that pol…
The Construction of (Non-)Responsibility in Governance Networks
The notion of governance networks urges study of complex interaction processes rather than formal institutions. We argue that the study of interaction in governance networks should be widened to include different ways in which interaction shapes network outcomes. Here, we focus on a dimension of governance networks that is understood as fundamental and problematic, but that as yet has not been researched through the study of interaction: the cons…
Government and civil society organizations
The power of narratives
What does it Mean to Make a ‘Joint’ Decision? Unpacking Intra-household Decision Making in Agriculture
Strategies to empower women in development contexts frequently address their authority to take decisions within their household, including decisions that are taken jointly by couples. Assessing empowerment in joint decision-making has traditionally followed a dichotomous approach: decisions are either joint or not, with the former associated with women’s empowerment. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the empowerment effect…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Negotiating autonomy in capacity development
A central goal of capacity development is transforming participants into autonomous agents. However, there is often an inherent tension between capacity development and autonomy because capacity development programs are frequently set up to fill an externally predefined lack in capacity. In this article, we argue that this tension can be addressed when capacity development is set up to advance what we call “narrative autonomy” (Williams, 1997). N…
Something wicked this way comes
The news media in general, and newspapers in particular, are supposed to provide a forum for public debate. These expectations of news media take on a heightened relevance in the case of wicked problems precisely because of the irreducible complexity, the inherent tensions, and the multiplicity of stakeholders and conflicting interests involved in such issues. Both their material complexity and lack of consensus make wicked problems difficult to …
The Chick Diffusion
Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of ne…
Discursive translations of gender mainstreaming norms
While the international norm on gender mainstreaming, UN-backed since 1995, has been widely adopted in national policies, gender inequalities are rarely systematically addressed on the ground. To explain this limited effectiveness, this paper takes a discourse analytical perspective on gender policy and budgeting, with a focus on the translation of the international norm into domestic norms and policies. An in-depth, inductive analysis of 107 pol…
Narrative Assessment
This article proposes an approach to monitoring and evaluating advocacy that integrates theory of change and storytelling. This approach, called Narrative Assessment, addresses the feasibility of objectivity and evidence in the complex context of advocacy and proposes an evaluation methodology rooted in alternative conceptualizations of rigour and of evaluator roles. The approach centres on practical judgment and the construction and examination …
Talking about Consumption
Members of the middle class in the Indian city of Baroda employ a common moral discourse on consumption, one that is shaped through the operationalization of historically rooted ideals of community, family solidarity and asceticism. These ideals are set against the experience of urban middle-class life. This discourse describes consumer culture as debased materialism, while at the same time presenting it as central to middle-class social life. Th…
Communication Practices and Political Engagement with Climate Change
In this article, we call for a refocusing of research on citizens' political engagement with climate change. In doing so, we argue that communication practices not only help create the conditions for political engagement but they also comprise the modes of such engagement. Our argument proceeds in four steps. First, we review the literature on public engagement with climate change, concluding that there is a lack of attention to issues regarding …
Discursive translations of gender mainstreaming norms
While the international norm on gender mainstreaming, UN-backed since 1995, has been widely adopted in national policies, gender inequalities are rarely systematically addressed on the ground. To explain this limited effectiveness, this paper takes a discourse analytical perspective on gender policy and budgeting, with a focus on the translation of the international norm into domestic norms and policies. An in-depth, inductive analysis of 107 pol…
Political Disaffection
Journal Article Political Disaffection: What We Can Learn from Asking the People Get access Margit van Wessel Margit van Wessel Wageningen UniversityWageningenThe Netherlands [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 63, Issue 3, July 2010, Pages 504–523, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsq004 Published: 01 March 2010
Citizens as Sense-Makers
An important literature has emerged that seeks to explain political disaffection and the resulting problem of disengagement by looking into citizens’ understandings of democratic politics and approaching understanding in cognitive terms. On the basis of an empirical study, this article proposes an alternative approach that can contribute to a deeper appreciation of the way in which citizens approach democratic politics; one that we need in order …
Twinning “Practices of Change” With “Theory of Change”
Theory of change (ToC) is currently the approach for the evaluation and planning of international development programs. This approach is considered especially suitable for complex interventions. We question this assumption and argue that ToC's focus on cause-effect logic and intended outcomes does not do justice to the recursive nature of complex interventions such as advocacy. Supported by our work as evaluators, and specifically our case study …
Aid Relations and Aid Legitimacy
This paper considers mutual imaging of aid workers and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. Based on a theoretical perspective of aid as a socially negotiated arena, the contextual and interactionist concept of imaging is used, rather than labelling (which is done to people), or perceptions (located in one actor's head). The paper uses a Q-methodology that symmetrically researches different groups of actors by posing the same questions. Our data confirm …
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricte…
Narrative Assessment
This article proposes an approach to monitoring and evaluating advocacy that integrates theory of change and storytelling. This approach, called Narrative Assessment, addresses the feasibility of objectivity and evidence in the complex context of advocacy and proposes an evaluation methodology rooted in alternative conceptualizations of rigour and of evaluator roles. The approach centres on practical judgment and the construction and examination …
Does local ownership bring about effectiveness? The case of a transnational advocacy network
In international development, shared ownership is assumed to be a condition for effectiveness. Academic studies question this relation, claiming shared ownership can instead lead to ineffectiveness. This study analysed the interplay between ownership and effectiveness in a transnational advocacy network for conflict prevention observed 2012–2015. Building on recent discussions about balancing unity and diversity in networks, this article unpacks …
Citizens and Their Understandings and Evaluations of Representation
This study introduces an interpretive approach to the study of citizens’ ways of relating to democratic politics, arguing that such an approach can enable access to citizens’ constructions and evaluations of political reality. Using a case study from the Netherlands, we show that Dutch citizens’ difficulties in relating to democratic institutions reflect at least partly a clash between their ideals of national representative democracy and their e…
Something wicked this way comes
The news media in general, and newspapers in particular, are supposed to provide a forum for public debate. These expectations of news media take on a heightened relevance in the case of wicked problems precisely because of the irreducible complexity, the inherent tensions, and the multiplicity of stakeholders and conflicting interests involved in such issues. Both their material complexity and lack of consensus make wicked problems difficult to …
Reimagining Transcalar Civil Society Advocacy Collaborations
Addressing the currently highly salient topic of power in civil society collaborations, this article seeks to contribute to reimagining advocacy collaborations in the context of contractual relations between civil society organizations in development. It explores the integration of common aims: (1) relating between levels, commonly sought in civil society advocacy programmes in development and (2) local ownership for civil society organizations i…
Examining the promise of ‘the local’ for improving gender equality in agriculture and climate change adaptation
Building on the conceptualisation of ‘the local’ in gender and development discourse, we explore how national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda perceive gender equality policy in the context of agriculture and climate change, to assess the potential of localised solutions to achieve gender equality. Using data from national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda (37 semi-structured interviews, 78 questionnaires), the study found that pol…
Negotiating autonomy in capacity development
A central goal of capacity development is transforming participants into autonomous agents. However, there is often an inherent tension between capacity development and autonomy because capacity development programs are frequently set up to fill an externally predefined lack in capacity. In this article, we argue that this tension can be addressed when capacity development is set up to advance what we call “narrative autonomy” (Williams, 1997). N…
The Chick Diffusion
Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of ne…
Depoliticisation in Livestock Farming Governance
The Dutch livestock farming sector faces complex challenges concerning its sustainability and social license to operate. Engaging with what is widely understood as a legitimacy crisis, the Dutch government organised a two-day multi-stakeholder meetings to explore future directions. Participants engaged with the public as a key but absent stakeholder, in ways that contributed to the outcome of the meetings in important ways. The paper charts and a…
Structures, values, and interaction in field-level partnerships
This article discusses the process of transforming partnership from a conceptual framework into a practical, operational framework for field-level interaction among humanitarian organisations. The authors approach this transformation from the perspective of the core values of the partnership concept and the ability of field workers to behave in ways that are consistent with these core values, illustrated by an empirical study of the relationships…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Negotiating effectiveness in transnational advocacy evaluation
International development organizations increasingly use advocacy as a strategy to pursue effectiveness. However, establishing the effectiveness of advocacy is problematic and dependent on the interpretations of the stakeholders involved, as well as the interactions between them. This article challenges the idea of objective and rational evaluation, showing that advocacy evaluation is an inherently political process in which space for interaction…
The communicative constitution of representation and exclusion
In the light of current debate on representation, specifically engaging with literature showing how representation is communicatively constituted, this paper empirically shows how exclusion also can be seen as communicatively constituted. The interpretive approach toward communication employed in this study presents new insights on how, for citizens, government communicates its responsiveness, and how citizens' interpretations that arise from the…
Talking about Consumption
Members of the middle class in the Indian city of Baroda employ a common moral discourse on consumption, one that is shaped through the operationalization of historically rooted ideals of community, family solidarity and asceticism. These ideals are set against the experience of urban middle-class life. This discourse describes consumer culture as debased materialism, while at the same time presenting it as central to middle-class social life. Th…
Structures, values, and interaction in field-level partnerships
This article discusses the process of transforming partnership from a conceptual framework into a practical, operational framework for field-level interaction among humanitarian organisations. The authors approach this transformation from the perspective of the core values of the partnership concept and the ability of field workers to behave in ways that are consistent with these core values, illustrated by an empirical study of the relationships…
Citizens and Their Understandings and Evaluations of Representation
This study introduces an interpretive approach to the study of citizens’ ways of relating to democratic politics, arguing that such an approach can enable access to citizens’ constructions and evaluations of political reality. Using a case study from the Netherlands, we show that Dutch citizens’ difficulties in relating to democratic institutions reflect at least partly a clash between their ideals of national representative democracy and their e…
Political Disaffection
Journal Article Political Disaffection: What We Can Learn from Asking the People Get access Margit van Wessel Margit van Wessel Wageningen UniversityWageningenThe Netherlands [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 63, Issue 3, July 2010, Pages 504–523, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsq004 Published: 01 March 2010
Aid Relations and Aid Legitimacy
This paper considers mutual imaging of aid workers and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. Based on a theoretical perspective of aid as a socially negotiated arena, the contextual and interactionist concept of imaging is used, rather than labelling (which is done to people), or perceptions (located in one actor's head). The paper uses a Q-methodology that symmetrically researches different groups of actors by posing the same questions. Our data confirm …
The communicative constitution of representation and exclusion
In the light of current debate on representation, specifically engaging with literature showing how representation is communicatively constituted, this paper empirically shows how exclusion also can be seen as communicatively constituted. The interpretive approach toward communication employed in this study presents new insights on how, for citizens, government communicates its responsiveness, and how citizens' interpretations that arise from the…
Communication Practices and Political Engagement with Climate Change
In this article, we call for a refocusing of research on citizens' political engagement with climate change. In doing so, we argue that communication practices not only help create the conditions for political engagement but they also comprise the modes of such engagement. Our argument proceeds in four steps. First, we review the literature on public engagement with climate change, concluding that there is a lack of attention to issues regarding …
Europeanised or European? Representation by civil society organizations in EU policy making, by Sandra Kröger
Negotiating effectiveness in transnational advocacy evaluation
International development organizations increasingly use advocacy as a strategy to pursue effectiveness. However, establishing the effectiveness of advocacy is problematic and dependent on the interpretations of the stakeholders involved, as well as the interactions between them. This article challenges the idea of objective and rational evaluation, showing that advocacy evaluation is an inherently political process in which space for interaction…
Twinning “Practices of Change” With “Theory of Change”
Theory of change (ToC) is currently the approach for the evaluation and planning of international development programs. This approach is considered especially suitable for complex interventions. We question this assumption and argue that ToC's focus on cause-effect logic and intended outcomes does not do justice to the recursive nature of complex interventions such as advocacy. Supported by our work as evaluators, and specifically our case study …
Does local ownership bring about effectiveness? The case of a transnational advocacy network
In international development, shared ownership is assumed to be a condition for effectiveness. Academic studies question this relation, claiming shared ownership can instead lead to ineffectiveness. This study analysed the interplay between ownership and effectiveness in a transnational advocacy network for conflict prevention observed 2012–2015. Building on recent discussions about balancing unity and diversity in networks, this article unpacks …
Citizens as Sense-Makers
An important literature has emerged that seeks to explain political disaffection and the resulting problem of disengagement by looking into citizens’ understandings of democratic politics and approaching understanding in cognitive terms. On the basis of an empirical study, this article proposes an alternative approach that can contribute to a deeper appreciation of the way in which citizens approach democratic politics; one that we need in order …
Narrative Assessment
This article proposes an approach to monitoring and evaluating advocacy that integrates theory of change and storytelling. This approach, called Narrative Assessment, addresses the feasibility of objectivity and evidence in the complex context of advocacy and proposes an evaluation methodology rooted in alternative conceptualizations of rigour and of evaluator roles. The approach centres on practical judgment and the construction and examination …
Depoliticisation in Livestock Farming Governance
The Dutch livestock farming sector faces complex challenges concerning its sustainability and social license to operate. Engaging with what is widely understood as a legitimacy crisis, the Dutch government organised a two-day multi-stakeholder meetings to explore future directions. Participants engaged with the public as a key but absent stakeholder, in ways that contributed to the outcome of the meetings in important ways. The paper charts and a…
The Chick Diffusion
Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of ne…
Discursive translations of gender mainstreaming norms
While the international norm on gender mainstreaming, UN-backed since 1995, has been widely adopted in national policies, gender inequalities are rarely systematically addressed on the ground. To explain this limited effectiveness, this paper takes a discourse analytical perspective on gender policy and budgeting, with a focus on the translation of the international norm into domestic norms and policies. An in-depth, inductive analysis of 107 pol…
Government and civil society organizations
The power of narratives
What does it Mean to Make a ‘Joint’ Decision? Unpacking Intra-household Decision Making in Agriculture
Strategies to empower women in development contexts frequently address their authority to take decisions within their household, including decisions that are taken jointly by couples. Assessing empowerment in joint decision-making has traditionally followed a dichotomous approach: decisions are either joint or not, with the former associated with women’s empowerment. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the empowerment effect…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Negotiating autonomy in capacity development
A central goal of capacity development is transforming participants into autonomous agents. However, there is often an inherent tension between capacity development and autonomy because capacity development programs are frequently set up to fill an externally predefined lack in capacity. In this article, we argue that this tension can be addressed when capacity development is set up to advance what we call “narrative autonomy” (Williams, 1997). N…
Something wicked this way comes
The news media in general, and newspapers in particular, are supposed to provide a forum for public debate. These expectations of news media take on a heightened relevance in the case of wicked problems precisely because of the irreducible complexity, the inherent tensions, and the multiplicity of stakeholders and conflicting interests involved in such issues. Both their material complexity and lack of consensus make wicked problems difficult to …
Representation by Development Organizations
This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with …
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricte…
Examining the promise of ‘the local’ for improving gender equality in agriculture and climate change adaptation
Building on the conceptualisation of ‘the local’ in gender and development discourse, we explore how national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda perceive gender equality policy in the context of agriculture and climate change, to assess the potential of localised solutions to achieve gender equality. Using data from national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda (37 semi-structured interviews, 78 questionnaires), the study found that pol…
Political science (32 obras) · Sociology (30 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Politics (19 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Public relations (15 obras) · Economics (11 obras) · International Development and Aid (11 obras) · Civil society (10 obras) · Public Administration (10 obras)