Transition and empowerment: experience of conflicts and legal empowerment in transitioning countries

Abstract

This article presents data from over 3300 respondents from two transition countries: Kenya and Yemen. The data from each of these countries indicate that, in transition, individuals feel less empowerment regarding employment problems than they do regarding family and neighbour problems. It is suggested that this low empowerment in relation to employment problems is due to the inaccessibility of formal dispute resolution mechanisms, and the inability of informal mechanisms to overcome power imbalances. This indicates that, in accordance with recent thinking in the development agenda, there should be a stronger focus on addressing how individuals experience and use low-level dispute mechanisms, as well as top-down organisational change. Implications are discussed, and recommendations for future evaluation of the success of transitions are made.

Keywords:

• legal empowerment
• transition
• access to justice
• empirical
• Kenya
• Yemen

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Robert Porter is a PhD student at the University of Tilburg and Justice Sector Advisor at the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law, The Netherlands. His research interests concern the access to justice, legal empowerment, rule of law and development, as well as the empirical measurement of legal systems. He is currently resident in Scotland.

ORCID

Robert Porter http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8732-7705

Notes

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10. Robert B. Porter, ‘Measurement of Legal Empowerment through the Subjective Perceptions of Individuals’, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 32, no. 3 (2014): 213–21, doi:10.1080/14615517.2014.927556.

11. M.A. Gramatikov and Robert B. Porter, ‘Yes, I Can: Subjective Legal Empowerment', Georgetown Journal of Povery Law and Policy 18, no. 2 (2011): 169–99.

12. Albert Bandura, ‘Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioural Change', Psychological Review 84, no. 2 (1977): 191–215, 0151407616 of social change.pdf; Albert Bandura, ‘Self-Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency', American Psychologist 37, no. 2 (1982): 122–47.

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14. EU-EOM, Doubting about the Credibility of the Presidential Results Hamper Kenya's Democratic Progress. Preliminary Statement on Kenya's General Elections. (Nairobi: EU-EOM, 2008).

15. Rutten and Owuor, ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction'.

16. Mueller, ‘The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis’.

17. M.J. Roberts, ‘Conflict Analysis of the 2007 Post Election Violence in Kenya', in Managing Conflicts in Africa's Democratic Transitions, ed. Akanmu G. Adebayo (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012), 141–55.

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20. Christine S. Pratt et al., The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2014 (New York: World Justice Project, 2014).

21. Erica Gaston and Nadwa Al-Dawsari, ‘Waiting for Change: The Impact of Transition on Local Justice and Security in Yemen', Lancet 369 (June 2013), doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60899-X.

22. April Longley Alley, ‘Assessing (In)security after the Arab Spring: The Case of Yemen', PS: Political Science & Politics 46, no. 4 (2013): 721–26, doi:10.1017/S1049096513001182.

23. HiiL, Justice Needs of Yemenis From Problems to Fairness (The Hague: HiiL, 2014).

24. April Longley Alley, ‘Yemen Changes Everything … And Nothing', Journal of Democracy 24, no. 4 (2014): 74, doi:10.1353/jod.2013.0070.

25. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014: Middle East and North Africa Factsheet (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014).

26. Khalid Malik, Human Development Report 2013 (New York: UNDP, 2013).

27. Porter, ‘Measurement of Legal Empowerment through the Subjective Perceptions of Individuals’.

28. Robert B. Porter, ‘SLE in Kenyan Slum Communities: Development of the Concept’, European Journal of Development Research, (2014), doi:10.1057/ejdr.2014.24.

29. HiiL, Justice Needs of Yemenis From Problems to Fairness.

30. A more thorough research design, covering larger geographic areas and a greater variety of countries, with the comparative measurement of SLE as its sole focus would be required to replicate and elaborate on these preliminary findings.

31. Independent t-tests split by gender were carried out on each problem domain: family; t=14.762, df=3022, p<0.001, neighbour; t=0.717, df=3206, p=0.474, employment; t=7.311, df=2965, p<0.001.

32. A repeated measures ANOVA is a statistical test to determine if three or more groups differ from each other when using the same measure. The results on overall empowerment levels for each domain demonstrate non-significant differences between family and neighbour problems empowerment ratings (p=0.188), while both are significantly different from the empowerment rating for employment issues (p<0.001 in both cases).

33. For the overall repeated measures ANOVA, see note 34. For Yemen, empowerment in relation to family and neighbour problems is not significantly different (p=0.607), while they are both significantly different from empowerment in relation to employment problems (p<0.001 in both cases). In the Kenyan sample, empowerment in relation to family problems is significantly different than in relation to neighbour problems (p<0.01) and employment problems (p<0.001), while empowerment in relation to neighbour problems is also significantly different in relation to employment problems (p<0.001).

34. Ewa Wojkowska, Doing Justice: How Informal Justice Systems Can Contribute (Oslo: United Nations Development Programme, Oslo Governance Centre, The Democratic Governance Fellowship Programme, 2006).

35. Ibid.

36. Porter, Isser, and Berg, ‘The Justice-Security-Development Nexus';

OECD, Rethinking Policy, Changing Practice; Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap.

37. Martin A. Gramatikov and Laura Klaming, ‘Justice as Experienced by the User: A Study of the Costs and Quality of a Path to Justice in The Netherlands’, TISCO Working Paper Series on Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems No. 004/2009 (2008), http://ssrn.com/paper=1118311; Hazel Genn and Sarah Beinart, Paths to Justice. What People Do and Think about Going to Law? (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1999); Hazel Genn and Alan Paterson, Paths to Justice Scotland. What People in Scotland Do and Think About Going to Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001).

38. Pearson correlation = 0.379, p<0.001.

39. Albert Bandura and Nancy E. Adams, ‘Analysis of Self-Efficacy Theory of Behavioral Change', Cognitive Tehrapy and Research 1, no. 4 (1977): 287–310, doi:10.1007/BF01663995; Albert Bandura et al., ‘Tests of the Generality of Self-Efficacy Theory', Cognitive Therapy and Research 4, no. 1 (1980): 39–66, doi:10.1007/BF01173354.

40. Maurits Barendrecht et al., Towards Basic Justice Care for Everyone: Challenges and Promising Approaches (Den Haag: Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL), 2012), http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2229686.

41. Simon Robins, 'To Live as Other Kenyans Do': A Study of the Reparative Demands of Kenyan Victims of Human Rights Violations (New York: International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), 2011).