Jennifer Thomson. International Studies Review. Volume 21, Issue 4. December 2019.
Introduction
Since the original inception of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) in 2000, an enormous amount of academic energy has been focused on the WPS agenda. The majority of this work has emerged from within feminist international relations (for example: Shepherd 2008; McLeod 2011a,b, 2015; Gizelis and Olsson 2015; see also special issues of the Australian Journal of International Affairs [Shepherd and True 2014]; International Affairs [Paul and Shepherd 2016]; and the International Feminist Journal of Politics [Davies, George, and True 2017]), although key contributions have also been made from feminist academic legal scholars (for example: Ní Aoláin et al. 2011; O’Rourke 2013, 2014; Heathcote and Otto 2014). Less attention has been paid by feminist political science, within either comparative politics or institutional theory. Although feminist political science has had much interest in transitions to democracy (Htun 2003; Tripp 2015; Walsh 2011; Waylen 2007), there has been less interaction with the WPS agenda. As a result, there has been less consideration of the role that political institutions have to play in implementing the WPS agenda. There has also been less reflection given to how institutional design and women’s participation within political institutions might affect the interpretation and focus of the WPS agenda.
Feminist institutional (FI) theory is an increasingly influential field in (feminist) political science. It has had much interest in the design of new institutions, the formal and informal gendered nature of institutions, and in how political institutions can be made more gender equitable (an overview of the breadth of FI work can be found in Krook and Mackay 2011). This article argues that the design and implementation of postconflict political institutions are an important component of the WPS agenda, and one that deserves greater attention within academic literature that considers it. The article argues that FI theory, now widely adopted within feminist political science, can offer key insights into conceptualizing the importance of political institutions within postconflict societies. Furthermore, it argues that, in doing so, academic literature on WPS can help to encourage a return to the emancipatory roots of the agenda and a focus on women’s political participation, which many argue have been lost in recent years. Firstly, however, it begins with a brief overview of the WPS agenda, its contemporary development, and the relevant Security Council resolutions passed since 2000.
The Development of the WPS Agenda
The WPS agenda was formalized in various United Nations Security Council Resolutions, beginning with resolution 1325 in 2000. However, the agenda can trace its roots back to a century of transnational feminist campaigning for global peace, including the decades-long work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF: Confortini 2012). As a result of sustained action on the part of this coordinated women’s movement, Resolution 1325 was adopted by the United Nations Security Council at its 4213th meeting on October 31, 2000. Its inception marks a key point in the institutionalization of the WPS agenda within global governance, signaling that “the world’s largest security institution has now publicly declared that attention to gender is integral to ‘doing security’” (Cohn et al. 2004, 139). In recent years, the WPS agenda has been further integrated into international women’s human rights mechanisms. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and 1325 are now firmly linked. Furthermore, National Action Plans (NAPs) have cemented the WPS agenda into the work of individual nations’ foreign and development policy. As of the end of 2017, seventy-four countries now have NAPs, with several countries now into their third reiteration, displaying a long-lasting, entrenched commitment to the WPS agenda. The greater integration of 1325 into human rights mechanisms, the wide body of UNSCR resolutions, and the growing number of countries developing NAPs demonstrate that the WPS agenda is now well established within the discourse and practice of global governance.
The initial resolution focuses on women’s involvement in three main areas— participation, protection, and the incorporation of a gender perspective/gender mainstreaming in UN activities (Gibbings 2011, 528; Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011, 492; Duncanson 2016). In terms of participation, 1325 argues for greater female participation at all levels of global society: it “urges Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions” and calls on the secretary-general “to appoint more women as special representatives and envoys.” In terms of protection, the resolution acknowledges that girls and women suffer from “gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse” and that women and girls have “special needs … during repatriation and resettlement.” With regards to gender mainstreaming, the resolution acknowledges the Security Council’s “willingness to incorporate a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations” and encourages the secretary-general to provide “training guidelines and materials on the protection, rights and the particular needs of women” to member states. In its stated aims, 1325 provides a comprehensive tool to approach women’s descriptive and substantive involvement in peacebuilding and postconflict societies.
A further seven resolutions have been enacted since 2000. In certain regards, this demonstrates an institutional commitment by the Security Council to continue the work on WPS that was begun with 1325. Although the successive resolutions reiterate the language and aims of the initial resolution, as Table 1 illustrates, the focus of later resolutions has been, to a large extent, on sexual violence (Meger 2016). This growing emphasis on the “protection” pillar has largely been to the detriment of the “participation” and “perspective” pillars. As Gina Heathcote and Diane Otto argue, this suggests that “the Council’s nod towards women’s empowerment in SCR 1325 was very precarious” (2014, 2) and has largely faded from view as far as the formal texts of the resolutions is concerned. Although Resolution 2122, enacted in 2013, has been cited as a movement by the Security Council against this growing focus on sexual violence (Duncanson 2016, 105), empirical work suggests that the initial focus that the WPS agenda had on the understanding that women’s participation and action can help to build peace is being lost (Anderlini et al. 2010, 4). Instead, many feminist scholars argue that the increased focus on sexual violence has seen “women returned … to the singular destination of victimhood” (Heathcote and Otto 2014, 2), and the emphasis on women’s agency and the role they could play in building peace recede into the background. This focus on sexual violence has also been reflected in institutional changes, most especially the creation of the UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict in 2007 and the appointment of a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict in 2009.
Table 1. The United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security
| Resolution | Year | Brief summary of aims |
| 1325 | 2000 | Participation of women in peace talks and negotiations; protection of women and girls during and after conflict; gender mainstreaming to UN peacekeeping |
| 1820 | 2008 | Stresses the importance of addressing sexual violence and protecting and supporting survivors of sexual violence |
| 1888 | 2009 | Reaffirms the importance of addressing sexual violence in conflict settings |
| 1889 | 2009 | Reaffirms the importance of women’s involvement in all stages of peace processes |
| 1960 | 2010 | Reaffirms the importance of addressing sexual violence in conflict settings |
| 2106 | 2013 | Reaffirms the importance of addressing sexual violence in conflict settings |
| 2122 | 2013 | Recognizes the importance of consistent implementation of resolution 1325 and reiterates the main aims of 1325 |
| 2422 | 2015 | Urges continued implementation of 1325 and the participation of women and women’s groups in a bid to counter violent extremism |
This embedding of sexual violence within the WPS agenda masks the fact that the WPS resolutions do contain fitful, albeit inconsistent, reference to political institutions and women’s participation within them. From the initial resolution, a key strand of the discourse on WPS emanating from the Security Council has concerned itself with institutions. The initial SCR 1325 declared: “Recognizing that an understanding of the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, effective institutional arrangements to guarantee their protection and full participation in the peace process can significantly contribute to the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security” (emphasis added). It went on to urge member states “to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.” From the initial resolution, a key component of the WPS agenda has been the importance of the institutional representation of women.
This language around institutions and gendered representation has continued in subsequent resolutions, if somewhat sporadically. In 2009, Resolution 1889 echoed the language of 1325 in urging “Member States to ensure gender mainstreaming in all post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery processes and sectors.” More recently, in 2013, Resolution 2122 declared that the actions of the Security Council now intend “to focus more attention on women’s leadership and participation in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.” Again, echoing language seen in earlier resolutions, 2122 urged “all parties concerned, including Member States, United Nations entities and financial institutions, to support the development and capacities of national institutions.” The focus on political institutions and embedding women and a gendered perspective within them has thus continued in successive resolutions, even if it has not received the consistency that might have been expected given the centrality of these concerns in the initial SCR 1325.
Feminist scholarship has been wary of the urge to institutionalize women’s participation within the WPS agenda. As Heathcote points out, the way in which 1325 frames participation may obscure the more fundamental, structural inequalities that exist. As she argues, the agenda’s focus is partial, as it aims at “getting more women into decision-making roles, rather than on changing the gendered structures themselves or challenging the gendered norms that operate to disadvantage women” (2014, 64). Furthermore, there is a danger that women’s participation in new institutions becomes merely a tick-box exercise or “technocratic tool” (Heathcote and Otto 2014, 4), promoted as “an efficiency measure … rather than a liberating move for women” (Otto 2014, 163). The urge to “try to slot women in” (Ní Aoláin et al. 2011, 232) might reduce capacity for real, substantive change in the postconflict environment. The institutionalization of women’s participation may have unwanted or unanticipated outcomes—a reification of a handful of individual women at the expense of broader, structural change.
However, these negative potentials have not had the opportunity to come to pass because, as Table 1 illustrates, the resolutions have increasingly come to focus on sexual violence. The initial focus that 1325 had on women’s participation has largely fallen by the wayside in official Security Council discourse. Yet, as illustrated above, the emphasis on participation is still there in the formal wording and, although it has not been as central in later resolutions, is still an important and repeated component of the WPS agenda. This language retains the revolutionary promise of women’s inclusion inherent in the initial impetus behind the agenda. As Catherine O’Rourke notes in her extensive consideration of the conceptualization of “participation” in the WPS resolutions, the acknowledgement of women’s participation is a “watershed” moment, in that “formal recognition has been secured from the international community, at the highest institutional level, of the importance of women’s participation in peace and security” (2014, 3). The continued inclusion of this language within the resolutions means that a door remains open for further agitation around women’s involvement from both civil society and commentators on the agenda’s development. Here, this article argues that this goal must be taken up with greater consistency by the academic community working on WPS.
Feminist International Relations and WPS—Room for Institutions?
Reflecting the development of this agenda, there has been a great proliferation of literature on the WPS agenda since the original enactment of 1325 in 2000, the majority of which has been from within the field of feminist international relations. Much feminist IR (and feminist social science more generally) is interested in speaking from (and to) the margins of interest within the discipline. As Laura Shepherd describes it, feminist IR is concerned with drawing attention to “the well-defined and equally well-defended boundaries” of the discipline of IR but is equally interested in “the potential of transgressing those boundaries” (2008, 2). As such, feminist IR is often revisionist—it is concerned with looking again at what has been accepted as field of study and asking how gender created it/was created by it:
The mainstream takes the appearance of a predominantly male-constructed reality as a given, and thus as the beginning and end of investigation and knowledge-building. Feminism requires an ontological revisionism: a recognition that it is necessary to go behind the appearance and examine how differentiated and gendered power constructs the social relations that form that reality. (Youngs 2004, 77)
In order to do so, feminist IR often looks beyond the state to broader mechanisms of power and meaning-making globally. For example, Cynthia Enloe’s canonical Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (1989), addresses, amongst many other issues, tourism, sex work, and advertising, in a bid to illustrate how gender “makes the world go round.”
Working from this inherently critical perspective, feminist IR has forwarded many appraisals of the WPS agenda that question its use and intentions. Many feminist scholars argue that the initial resolution 1325 and its three central pillars betray an implicit linkage between women and peace. Whilst the involvement of women as equal citizens in peacebuilding is doubtlessly important, the agenda often creates a problematic picture of women as inherently peaceful beings, working with the sole aim of peace and justice in mind. Such a portrayal appears to develop an exaggeration of women’s capabilities above and over men (Cohn et al. 2004 136). There is also an implicit association in the resolution that “most women speak for all women” (Shepherd 2011, 510, emphasis added) and, thus, that women’s descriptive representation always equals women’s substantive representation. For the majority of feminist IR, therefore, there is an understanding that 1325 conceives of women as peaceable agents, working in unison for the betterment of all women. This representation of women means that there is no space for women as agents of violence or subversion. 1325 is a place of “exclusion” as much as it is about including women—there are “no angry women” envisioned in its discourse (Gibbings 2011, 533).
Much of the contemporary feminist IR that addresses 1325 is interested in language. This literature is predominantly poststructural—it tends to be interested in discourse and the ways in which language has shaped the agenda. Laura Shepherd’s landmark study of 1325, Gender, Violence and Security: Discourse as Practice (2008), addresses the texts of the resolutions and of the various UN documents that surround them, by treating “1325 as a site at which discourses of (international) security and (gender) violence are in contact, a site at which it is possible to identify different articulations of the concepts of gender, violence, security and the international that constitute different discourses of (gender) violence and (international) security” (2008, 6). In doing so, she argues that 1325 is a “productive force” (2008, 8), creating certain conceptions of women, gender, violence and the international. In work on the broader range of WPS resolutions (2011), she argues that the discourse of later resolutions goes further to acknowledge women as agents but that this may be an “additional burden” (510), with women forced to take on peacebuilding roles as “agents of their own salvation, capable of representing the needs and priorities of others and with the capacity to effect positive transformation in their given environments” (511). Similarly, Puechguirbal (2010) argues that the discursive construction of women in the WPS resolutions reinforces the image of women as victim and the patriarchy of the global transnational bodies such as the UN. Cook (2016) argues that the “woman-in-conflict” constructed through the language of the resolutions becomes an “almost mythical figure” (365), a largely empty signifier, able to be filled at will by an understanding of women as victim, rather than “soldiers, peace negotiators, holders of political office or perpetrators of horrific violence” (361). Furthermore, Martín de Almagro (2017) argues that this problematic “production” of women also extends to other power relations, including race, sexuality, and class. Discursive analysis of the resolutions reiterates an understanding that WPS, in its formal language, largely sees women as victims of conflict, and the UNSCR and its member states’ role as one of protection.
Feminist IR work on 1325 which is more empirical tends to focus on nonstate rather than state actors and how such actors have mobilized around the WPS agenda (McLeod 2011a,b, 2015; Anderlini et al. 2010). Mcleod’s study of the life of 1325 in “post-conflict” Serbia focuses on the actions of women’s groups, including the Serbian chapter of Women in Black, and how they have adopted 1325 within their activism (2011, 2015). Hall-Martin addresses how 1325 was taken up by nonviolent Kosovan women’s activists (2012). Furthermore, academic work on the NAPs produced to address 1325 has also focused on the ways in which they produce only a “scripted and empty agency” (Björkdahl and Mannergen Semilovic 2015, 329) for women, with little real potential to exist beyond the “subject positions of the ‘perpetual victim’ or ‘the inherently peaceful woman’” (Björkdahl and Mannergen Semilovic 2015, 330; see also Basini and Ryan 2016; Shepherd 2016). More recent work on 1325 has also been more methodologically and thematically diverse— focusing on the political economy of the WPS resolutions and the relative lack of financial backing they receive (Basu, 2017), while more quantitative work looks at the development of global data sets on WPS (True, 2016).
Within this, some academic work has looked at institutions and processes of institutionalization. Wright (2016), for example, looks at how NATO adopts and institutionalizes 1325 in its workings. Similarly, Wright and Guerrina (2016) address how the WPS agenda has been taken up within the EU institutions. Work on the NAPs also addresses how state institutions address 1325, interpret it, and adopt it within their own state architecture and norms (Basini and Ryan 2016). Whilst this research all has an institutional focus, the literature in general still has less to say about institutional design or the inner workings of political institutions.
In general, feminist legal scholarship has taken more interest in institutional design and institution building, especially in the process of constitutional design (Ní Aoláin et al. 2011). There is much legal consideration of transitional justice and institutional measures to provide accountability as a society moves from conflict (Bell and O’Rourke 2007). Yet, within feminist IR, very little literature has explicitly considered institutional design and institution building in the WPS agenda. The grey literature has been far clearer at thinking about the ways in which WPS can be used to shape postconflict institutions and how such institutional design might ensure both the impact and longevity of the WPS agenda in specific contexts (for one such example addressing the Afghan context, see Strand et al., 2017). The academic work that does consider the political institutional aspects of gender equality in postconflict contexts is prolific but rarely does so from within the context of WPS. Gizelis and Pierre (2013) and Gizelis (2011) address postconflict reconstruction and 1325, but from the perspective of broader socioeconomic equality and the social status of women, not political institutions. Political quotas for women have been given much consideration, including the link between peace processes and quota adoption (Anderson and Swiss, 2014), the role of the postconflict factor (Burnet 2011; Tajali 2013), and the involvement of grassroots support from women’s groups (Krook, O’Brien, and Swip 2010). The specific role that the WPS agenda and the successive SCR resolutions might play in quota design and uptake have received less consideration outside of the grey literature.
Likewise, there has been great attentiveness within feminist IR to the new women’s policy machinery in postconflict states, including legal efforts to eradicate violence against women in Afghanistan (Wimpelmann 2015) and the politicization of women’s rights in postconflict reconstruction in the same country (Kandiyoti 2007a,b). There has also been consideration given to “femocrats” within the UN institutions themselves. Sandler details in particular how feminists “on the ground” influenced the ways in which the SC addressed sexual violence in the WPS resolutions (Sandler 2015). Yet there is little attention paid within this literature to either the specific influence that the WPS agenda has on the development of postconflict political institutions or the ways in which postconflict institutions shape the workings and implementation of the WPS agenda itself. There is a call, therefore, for feminist IR to explicitly address the way that WPS creates / is created by postconflict institutions.
The vast majority of feminist literature on 1325 thus looks at the discourse of the WPS agenda and the types of ideas that this discourse produces about gender, peace, and the international. Feminist IR work on 1325 (and feminist IR more broadly) largely has a different logic of inquiry from mainstream IR. It is primarily interested in the margins, the silences, the space where more dominant IR theorizing has little interest—as a result of this, feminist IR has been less concerned with the state and key institutional bodies. Yet the participation of women in peacebuilding and postconflict structures is a central (although, in recent years, less clearly stated) tenet of the WPS agenda and successive SCR resolutions. Furthermore, not only is this participatory and institutional focus inherent in the agenda itself, it is also part of normative feminist commitments, academic and otherwise. O’Rourke (2014) argues that women’s participation is understood in five separate ways in the successive WPS resolutions: participation as the presence of role models (the role model argument); participation as representation (the justice argument); participation as inclusion (the “different agenda” argument); participation as expertise (the expertise argument); and participation as deliberation (the “larger dream” argument). It is this final understanding of participation that feminist academia needs a stronger turn to when considering the WPS agenda. Thinking about the gendered nature of postconflict institutions, and women’s inclusion/exclusion from them, forces us to think about the “larger dream” of peace and security. This not only encourages the notion of the inclusion of women (although doubtlessly important) by mean of quotas or other measurable outcomes but also aims at the “transformation of international peace and security more broadly” (O’Rourke 2014, 5, emphasis added). Considering how postconflict institutions will govern, and what kind of gendered governance and peace that will manifest as a result of them, encourages a return to the roots of the WPS agenda—will peace include women? Will it consider their needs, their voices, their diversity? Will postconflict governance work with them and for them? Will the design of political structures facilitate their presence and their perspectives? Thinking about institutions, both inside and outside of academic work, encourages this return to the transformative aims that underpin the WPS agenda. This article argues that, for academic work on WPS to do so, feminist institutional theory can be a key part of our tool kit. Before considering feminist institutionalism particularly, it turns to think more specifically about what scholarship on WPS can gain from addressing institutions.
Why Does Scholarship on WPS Need to Study Institutions?
As discussed above, work on political institutions is not central to much feminist IR that considers WPS. Yet there is no escaping the fact that institutions matter; they often frame debates and issues, they create policy, they enact legal change and they often most overtly represent the workings of a state. In a postconflict context, stable political institutions are fundamental to providing a successful transition to peace, as well as safeguarding rights. I extrapolate here on what might be gained from addressing postconflict institutions and the WPS agenda, and outline three main arguments for a greater consideration of institutions within the feminist literature on WPS:
Political Institutions Can Help to Embed the WPS Agenda in Postconflict Contexts
In the context of the WPS agenda, political institutions can be pivotal in postconflict situations. Formal political institutions can help to work to embed the WPS agenda within domestic practice—through policy creation to aid women and girls, legal reform to address past injustices and ensure gender equality legislation, and moves to create more equal political representation between men and women (Anderlini et al. 2010). The adoption of a NAP can be a clear signal that a political institution is taking the WPS agenda seriously and is working to cement it into its policy and practices. Political institutions are pivotal to creating the circumstances in which the WPS agenda can become embedded within the practices of the state as it moves into the postconflict era. Political institutions can help to create central, top-down cohesion to further the WPS agenda in the postconflict context—indeed, “a cohesive set of initiatives, rather than a fragmented approach, is most likely to serve the vulnerable and the stigmatised” (Ní Aoláin et al. 2011, 252). Theorizing the ways in which WPS is taken up by different institutional contexts has the potential to tell us much about what works in terms of the implementation of the agenda.
Different Types of Institution Have Different Gendered Effects
Injecting gender into any consideration of postconflict transitions and the (re)formation of political institutions is incredibly important. Fundamental questions around institutional design are also gendered. The type of political institution enacted in a postconflict situation matters greatly for how it will address the descriptive and substantive representation of women. Power-sharing (or “consociational” government) between different ethnic, religious or national groupings is often a prescription for postconflict political reconstruction. Developing research (Byrne and McCulloch 2012; Kennedy et al. 2016) suggests that this type of institution can be detrimental to women’s full political participation. Formal mechanisms that might appear to be minutiae in postconflict contexts (the type of voting system to be used; the makeup of cabinet positions; guidelines for debating procedures) can exert huge influence over how easy or difficult it will be for women to get elected in future legislatures or how and where women’s issues will be addressed. Much feminist research has explored the greater likelihood that different voting systems have in encouraging women’s representation, with systems built around proportional representation or single transferable vote generally understood to encourage higher levels of women’s representation than first-past-the-post systems (Kaminsky and White 2007; Golder et al. 2017). Feminist literature on WPS can pay greater attention to the types of institutions created in the postconflict context and the impact that this design has (or does not have) on women’s representation and the implementation of the WPS agenda.
Well-Designed Institutions can Help to Prevent Side-Lining of Women
Considering the WPS agenda and political institutions is particularly important given that postconflict environments have long been understood as potentially regressive for women’s rights (Enloe 1993). As Mackenzie notes, “the post-conflict period seldom ushers in gender equality” (2016, 494) and, instead, can often see a return to traditional gender roles, where loyalty to the nation or ethnicity is more important than gender identity. In this context, “women who hold prominent and gender-bending roles during conflict tend to fade out of public view in the transition phase” (Ní Aoláin et al. 2011, 250; see also Enloe 1993). This is a common experience in many diverse postconflict zones, acknowledged as such in the 2015 Global Review on 1325 conducted by the UN (UN Women 2015, 168). Cementing practices, laws, and design into postconflict institutions that prioritize women’s representation and voices is one way of addressing this potential narrowing of space for feminist activism and voices in the postconflict world. Feminist academic work on 1325 needs to pay greater attention to how institutions do (or do not) address this.
Feminist Institutional Theory and Its Utility for Studying WPS
There are therefore key reasons for addressing institutions and institutional design in the context of the WPS agenda. This article argues that the key ideas and concepts within FI theory are as equally applicable to newly developed institutions within postconflict institutions as they are within stable liberal democracies. As such, FI theory is a useful tool to address the role of institutions and institution-building within the WPS agenda.
FI has been interested in gendering the “institutional turn” in political science. It explores the “gendered aspects of the norms, rules and practices at work within institutions and the concomitant effect these have on political outcomes” (Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell 2010, 573). Like new institutionalism more broadly, it is interested in the “co-constitutive” (Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell 2010, 573) nature of political institutions and the interactions between institutional rules and practices and individual actions. Perhaps more so than mainstream new institutionalism (and underpinned by an appreciation that “gender is not always easy to ‘see’ in institutions” [Kenny 2014, 679]), it has been concerned with exploring the informal ways in which gender influences and creates political institutions (Bjarnegård 2013; Waylen 2014a). It is concerned, in other words, with how the “formal structure and informal ‘rules of the game’” (Krook and Mackay 2011, 1; see also Waylen 2014b, 496) are gendered.
FI has been particularly interested in change, largely due to the potential inherent in moments of change and transition to insert new rules and ideas about gender and sensitivity to political practices. FI has been extensively interested in democratic transitions (Waylen 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014b); in the changing nature of devolution in the British context and European integration (Kenny 2011, 2013; Mackay 2010, 2014; Thomson 2016, 2018) and developments in federal, territorial, and multilevel governance, as well as developments in transnational architecture (Celis et al. 2012; Chappell 2002, 2014a,b, 2015; Grace 2011; Vickers 2011; Verge and Kenny 2013; Thomson 2016). In spite of this extensive literature on change and transitions, it has had less interest in postconflict institutions. Whilst there is a considerable amount of work on the gendered nature of democratization (Htun 2003; Walsh 2011; Waylen 2007, 2014b), there has been less thinking about the immediate postconflict context.
Yet FI has the potential to be of key interest to scholars working on the postconflict context, new political institutions, and peacebuilding. FI has addressed several key issues that are of interest to those studying postconflict institutions. Three central and overlapping concerns are addressed here—an interest in newness or the “nested newness” of political bodies, an interest in the “gender regime” of institutions, and an interest in formal mechanisms that can be embedded into the practice of institutions. All are profoundly important for addressing postconflict contexts.
New Institutions
First, FI brings a consideration of “newness.” Postconflict institutions resemble in many ways the new institutions that FI has been predominantly interested in. In recent years, FI has been particularly interested in the recently created devolved institutions in the United Kingdom (Kenny 2011, 2013; Mackay 2010, 2012; Thomson 2016, 2018) and the instigation and early years of the International Criminal Court (Chappell 2010, 2015). Like new institutions in liberal western democracies or transnational bodies, postconflict institutions are starting from the beginning, able to differentiate themselves from past or parent institutions by adopting different formal (such as voting system, quotas for underrepresented groups, official languages) and informal (the style of debate, dress) practices. Yet both modes of operation can also be inhibited by echoes of the past. Mackay (2014) writes of the difficulties that the Scottish Parliament has had since its inception in shaking off long existent practices from Westminster politics, such as prime minister’s question and the general argumentative style of debate within the House of Commons. Similarly, postconflict institutions can also suffer from a “nested newness” (Mackay 2014; see also Chappell 2010, 2014a; Ní Aoláin et al. 2011, 229), in that the divisions that fueled the conflict can seep into the newly created institution and can be replicated in voting patterns or policy decisions.
A key example of the “nested newness” of postconflict institutions is the devolved Assembly at Stormont in Northern Ireland. Established in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland, the Assembly was a new political entity. Yet, in many ways, it remains inhibited by legacies of the decades-long conflict in the region. Ethnonational constituencies still overwhelmingly vote for separate political parties (Tonge and Evans 2015), key individuals who were dominant during the conflict continued to hold great sway in the Assembly for some years, and the physical space the Assembly inhabits echoes with memories of both the conflict and the schisms that initially brought it about. Being “nested” in these ways has meant that it is difficult for politics in Northern Ireland to break from the past and for other concerns (especially gender policy, and in particular in areas such as reproductive rights, women’s political representation, and same-sex marriage) to gain political attention (Kennedy et al. 2016). Similar difficulties around the dominance of ethnonational identity and women’s political representation can be seen in Bosnia-Herzegovina, amongst other deeply divided postconflict societies.
A “Gender Regime”
Second, FI is centrally concerned with the “gender regime” (Connell 1987) of institutions. Such an interest reflects a concern with the informal (and often difficult to see) ways in which gender exists in and shapes institutions. FI work has explored how political discourse and long-held political practices shape the gendered make-up of political institutions. Feminist IR has also been concerned with the gender regime of conflicts—how conflicts encourage and create specific types of masculinity and femininity, how conflicts have differing gendered effects in terms of the violence they enact, and how they change the gendered nature of both the public and private sphere. Such a “gender regime” might be likely to spill over into new political institutions created following the cessation of conflict.
In this focus on gender regimes, FI work explores the link between formal rules and informal norms at work in institutions (for one such example, see Franceschet and Piscopo 2008). As such, it can get beyond the visible rules, to those which are invisible yet still vitally important to the workings of an institution (the times at which key meetings are held, standards around dress and behavior, candidate selection practices, etc.). Methodologically, this might encourage feminist work on WPS in different directions—to move, for example, from textual and discourse analysis to consider more participatory or ethnographic research. Such potential work might explore the ways in which formal, stated practice often masks what is happening within institutions and the implementation of WPS. In the Northern Irish context, to continue the above example, the WPS agenda appears, from an outsider’s perspective, well integrated into the formal political institutions. A working group on 1325 has been in existence since 2007 and has enjoyed diverse party membership. Civil society and women’s groups are highly active around the agenda. Yet in-depth interviews conducted in 2014 suggested that the group was relatively inactive and that membership did not necessarily translate into attendance or any clear commitment to that agenda on the part of representatives. Similarly, NGO meetings that were also attended by elected representatives betrayed a disjoint between officially stated practice and real commitment beyond political party rhetoric. This type of in-depth, participatory research and consideration of the interplay between formal practice and the reality “on the ground” of institutions, may help to more clearly articulate how the agenda is being implemented in postconflict contexts.
Formal Mechanisms
Third, FI has been very interested in the ways in which formal mechanisms in political institutions can encourage more women-friendly institutions. FI has addressed political recruitment and the paths women take to becoming elected representatives (Bjarnegård and Kenny 2016; Kenny 2011), and there has been extensive work on the role that quotas for women can play in increasing female representation in political institutions (for example, Freidenvall and Krook 2011). Indeed, quotas appear as one of the most immediate ways that postconflict institutions can address what may be stark gender inequalities created by conflict. Quotas have been highlighted by the 2015 Global Study on 1325, which stresses that they “are most effective when they are adapted to the country context and accompanied by enforcement mechanisms” such as training for women, public awareness campaigns, and greater integration with women’s agencies and development mechanisms (UN Women 2015, 175). Quotas have been implemented to great effect in many postconflict institutions, including Afghanistan, Iraq (Krook, O’Brien and Swip 2010), and Rwanda (Burnet 2011).
Beyond quotas, there are numerous other types of formal political mechanism that might be used to encourage political institutions that pay greater attention to women—the creation of women’s ministries or mechanisms to encourage women’s election (such as all-women shortlists). As Anderlini et al point out, responsibility for the WPS agenda is normally housed in a ministry of gender or similar state structure (2010, 31). This is the case in both Sri Lanka and Liberia—yet both respective institutions have very different briefs, responsibilities, and roles within the state (Anderlini et al, 2010, 31). Considering where and how WPS is enmeshed within state structures, and what the specifics are regarding the body that is responsible for it, is key to understanding its implementation and success (or lack thereof) in a particular setting.
Furthermore, in its frequent focus on the interplay between civil society/women’s movements and formal political institutions, FI work can also provide a framework for considering the interactions created through the implementation of the WPS agenda. Waylen (2011) explores how the women’s movements and civil society in Argentina and Chile have had very different impacts on formal policy-making concerning women and the impact that the institutional configuration in the respective legislatures has had on this. Chappell (2002) explores how the differing state structures in Australia and Canada change the space for feminist activism in each. She argues that the relationship between activists and state structure is “co-constitutive, with agents and structures continuously informing one another” (4, emphasis in original), such that institutions change and shape feminist claims. Indeed, it is important to remember that the WPS agenda emerged from feminist civil society, and NGOs remain a key site of activity for its development and implementation across multiple postconflict contexts (Anderlini et al. 2010; Martín de Almagro 2017, 42). FI work provides a blueprint for theorizing this interaction between the state and nonstate actors who are driving the agenda, and how this interaction might frame and change the claims made possible under WPS.
This brief overview of FI illustrates how it is well placed to help academic work on WPS address how formal mechanisms cement women’s descriptive and substantive representation in postconflict institutions and the impact that different state and institutional configurations can have on the implementation of WPS. It has shown how a consideration of WPS and postconflict political institutions might move the academic literature on WPS in new directions, encouraging methodological innovation and a new focus on aspects of the development and implementation of the agenda that have hitherto had less attention.
Conclusion: Looking Backward to Move Forward
The WPS agenda began as a transnational women’s movement dedicated to peace. Increasingly, feminist scholars are dissatisfied with where the agenda is at present, most especially the almost dominant focus on sexual violence at the expense of all other issues or arguments (Meger 2016). Of the three initial ideas that underpinned UNSCR 1325—protection, participation, and gender mainstreaming—the notion of protection has most clearly overwhelmed the agenda to date. Within both the text of the resolutions (especially the adoption of resolution 2122 in 2013) and academic work, focus is steadily shifting to a consideration of the other components of the agenda and how they might be reinvigorated (Heathcote and Otto 2014; O’Rourke 2014).
This article is interested, in one sense, to bring political institutions more pointedly into academic work on the WPS agenda. The aim of this article is not to suggest that political institutions should be the central or sole focus of feminist literature in this area, or that they are the only means of women’s political activity or, indeed, emancipation. It is rather to suggest that institutions have been underconsidered within academic work on the WPS agenda. Political institutions are an important part of the puzzle when it comes to implementing the WPS agenda and furthering women’s rights in postconflict societies. In order to more fully understand the agenda at work, FI theory can help to provide feminist scholars with key insights into the nature of postconflict institutions and the ways in which WPS plays out within them in terms of both their policy-making and their institutional practice.
The WPS agenda had origins in radical ideas about feminism and peace and was a global, activist lead movement (Confortini 2012). The literature now increasingly acknowledges that the agenda has “failed to live up to the transformative promise of UNSCR 1325” (Cook 2016, 372; see also O’Rourke 2014; Meger 2016). The initial impetus of 1325 does remain active, as seen in the language of the most recent resolutions discussed above, but we need more consideration of how this is concretized in new institutions and how these ideas can be truly embedded in postconflict politics and societies as they transition to peace. Furthermore, the WPS agenda has been continually critiqued since its inception for focusing overly on what is done to women by conflict (sexual violence, displacement, the denial of rights), rather than emphasizing the active role women can play in building peace. The increasing focus on sexual violence in particular has lead Karen Engle to describe the WPS agenda as “projecting a Victorian idea of the effects of loss of honour” (2014, 33) onto women. Thinking about feminized political institutions and women in public positions of power encourages a change of focus to the discourse around the WPS agenda. Addressing the design and rules of new institutions encourages us to think of women as owners of rights that can and should be exercised in the public sphere. It reminds us, in other words, that women can be full participants in rebuilding a society, not merely passive victims requiring support. A consideration of political institutions can add more agential focus, bringing back to academic work the emancipatory potential that was part of the original aim of the movement that lead to UNSCR 1325.