Hilhorst and Warner Normality and Exception 030209

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NORMALITYAND EXCEPTION: LINKINGUPTHESECURITYCHAIN

Dorothea Hilhorst and Jeroen WarnerDisaster Studies group, Wageningen UniversityHollandseweg 1, Wageningen

Corresponding author: email: [email protected]

DRAFT PAPER WORK IN PROGRESS - PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUTPERMISSION FROM THE AUTHORS

Paper to be presented at the World Conference of Humanitarian Studies to be heldat Tufts University, the Netherlands 2-5 June 2011.

Abstract:In a crisis, the state of exceptionality is normally invoked, overturning normal rules

of deliberation, accountability and human rights ('securitisation'). 'Securitisation 'empowers certain agendas, modes of interventions and actors which in normaltimes need to compete for attention and resources. This makes crises highlypolitical, with at times - despite stated humanitarian objectives - inhumaneconsequences for vulnerable, disaster-affected stakeholders. The legitimation andorganization of military, diplomatic and aid interventions, and the ways in whichthese interrelate, depends on the status of the situation as crisis or non-crisis. Sucha separation rarely corresponds to the empirical reality at hand. This paper startsfrom the premise that 'normality' contains many everyday insecurities thatrequire preparing for 'exceptionality', while proclaimed 'states of exceptionality'(e.g. disaster areas) often contain pockets of normality. It explores the tension

between interventions driven by normality and exceptionality discourses, bydiscussing on the one hand the currently emerging 'security chain' (prevention,pro - action, preparedness, repression, aftercare) and on the other the challengesto link relief, rehabilitation and development. This may point the way to theintegration of normal politics and the politics of exceptionality.

NORMALITYANDEXCEPTION

the analysis of the political strategies surrounding the construction of insecurity isnecessary to understanding some of the most influential social and political processes

of our time. This is why more research on the politics of insecurity is needed (Bland,2005: 20).

It seems so simple: we have crisis services for crisis events, after which normal liferesumes. Liberal democracies have constrained the role of the army services toemergencies like war and natural disasters, and policing to public security.Normality and exceptionality are intimately linked. Normality and its institutionslike states, law is built on the state of exception (e.g. war made states and statesmade war, Tilly 1985)1, while the state of exception in turn is predicated on thespace these rules and institutions give to transgress them for the sake of survival.

We associate exceptionality with crisis - disaster, war, terrorism, pandemics which

upset the normal order. But what is the normal order? Empirically, the distinctionbetween emergency and post-emergency or as we call it the distinction between


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crisis and normality is hard to draw, and far from self-evident in many parts of theworld. The definition of humanitarian crisis as a large scale immediate lifethreatening situation, is not at all clear-cut and is in practice highly situational.Mortality and morbidity percentages in war situations are often not different fromthose in urban slums or marginal rural areas around the world, and for manypeople the risk to be exposed to violence can be higher in peacetime than duringconflict. Hence, when the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative defines theobjectives of humanitarian action are to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintainhuman dignity during and in the aftermath of man-made crises and naturaldisasters, it incorporates an artificial restriction into what can legitimately bedefined as a humanitarian crisis. It is not clear where natural disaster begins orends in situations of long-term environmental and climate system changes. Thedefinition of conflict is likewise increasingly unclear. A peace agreement is aninternational marker of peace and sets into motion a reconstruction response. Yet,conflict does not operate according to a single logic, and its drivers, interests andpractices are redefined by actors creating their own localised and largelyunintended conflict dynamics of varying intensity. Crises are the outcome of

conditions that build up over long periods of time and the transition to normality isalso often marked by long periods of no war no peace situations. Violence andpredatory behaviour may continue long after war is formally over (Keen 2001). Atthe same time, conflicts and political states of emergency may last for decades(e.g. since 1990 in South Egypt), and assume many characteristics of normality.

When the distinction between crisis and normality is not empirically given, thedeclaration of crisis becomes a political reality instead. The Copenhagen School ofSecurity Studies has called attention to the constructed nature of crisis, emergencyand security, and its potentially worrying political effects (such as the unnecessarydiversion of resources needed elsewhere, and the de/emphasis of precautionarymeasures so that politicians can act as heroes and saviours when disaster strikes

and voters call for action). This process of securitization, or constructingsituations as crises, has strongly come to attention in relation to the war on terror,but can be identified in many situations.

Another pressing question is whether it is possible to rethink and reform socialorganization in such a way as to accommodate the fact that crisis and normalityare not dichotomous realities. How can the two spheres of life be integrated andwhat are the consequences if we do, for instance in relation to these securitizationprocesses? In the past decades, agencies concerned with disasters andhumanitarian action have started to address these questions in their practice. Inthis paper, we deal with two emerging body of practices that aim to bridge therealities of normality and exception: the security chain and linking relief,rehabilitation and development (LRRD). Although these developments, as weargue, open up avenues to expand the space for deliberation and accountability forwhat happens in the state of exception, and enhance greater resilience in the stateof normality, they also may carry problems in light of human security.

SECURITYASPOLITICALCAPITAL: SECURITISATION

Security is a state of mind - the state of being since cura - without a care. Whatmake one person secure may be highly risky to another, and highly intersubjective.A danger to security is rarely clear and present, and needs to be framed as such.

Certain issues will become elevated to security status (securitized), while anotherremains unaddressed. Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) have argued that out of the


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many threats we are faced with, we select only those that protect the (political)community.

The Westphalian state system, instated in 1648 to put an end to several longEuropean wars, vests the power to declare a state of exception solely in thesovereign state. Citizens have, in this system, delegated their security to the state.States can make, but also break the law for the sake of order in the face ofperceived chaos. According the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (Schmitt,1922) this decision is even the very essence of the political: it determines thedistinction between friends and enemies, reconstituting actors as political actors(those with rights) and outcasts (those without rights) who find themselvesreduced to what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998) has called barelife. They are outside civil rights - you can do with them what you want. Althoughstate sovereignty continues to be the core of the global political system,securitization today is also instigated in other spaces, including the SecurityCouncil of the United Nations. With regard to disasters, it has even been suggestedthat media are the most effective in declaring a state of emergency (the CNN

effect). Hardt and Negri (2004) and others have noted that the US have claimed apermanent state of exception, to act as the worlds self-interested policeman.Coaffee and Rogers note that in the UK likewise anti-terrorist urban resiliencepolicy is at risk of creepingly disasterising all kinds of social undesirables, such asantisocial behavior (Coaffee and Rogers 2008)

Logic of Securitization( war, emergency)

Logic of Non-securitizedPolicymaking (peace,routine)

Applicability For extraordinary, urgent

events

For ongoing concerns

Governance Vertical (Top-downmanagement, patronagein protection)

Network (co-management,negotiation amongautonomous actors)

Degree of powersharing

Bypassing democracy andstakeholder participation

Stakeholder participation andinfluence

Role of market Bypassing marketmechanism and cost-benefit analysis

Market for security goods andservices

Mode of securingcompliance

Compliance through forceand rules

Compliance throughpersuasion and marketing ofsecurity

Transparency Secrecy, informationdistribution on need-toknow basis,unaccountability

Openness, free exchange ofinformation, publicaccountability

FIG.1.3 Logics of securitized and non-securitized policy making. Authorsinterpretation of Buzan et al. (1998) and Roe (2004: 283).

Because states of emergency come with exceptional powers, the discourse of(in)security and its isotopes (threat, destruction, crisis, chaos) potentially has a


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high political impact. Buzan, and De Wilde have influentially argued thatsuccessfully declaring an issue security means to legitimise a state ofexceptionality, in which normal rights are pushed to one side for the sake ofsurvival. It releases extraordinary measures and powers for actors who areendowed, or arrogate themselves, the wherewithal to ward off threats to corevalues. The securitisation of (still elusive) Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraqobviously legitimised the state of emergency, a blank cheque and drafting ofAmerican troops. Securitization is rewarding for actors seeking to expand theirpower or resource-base. Politicians benefit from the high-profile decisivenessshown after a disaster, which is much more glamorous than prevention andpreparedness (Bull-Kamanga 2003: 200). Military, seeking to legitimize theirexistence often seek to become more prominent in disaster response.Humanitarian agencies may inflate needs-statistics or expand the definition ofcrisis response to open up new charity markets and areas of intervention. Extrememeasures thus benefit certain solutions, actors, institutions over others. Aninstrumentalist (strategic) analytical perspective holds out the possibility thatactors project threats for their own political gain. As Blaug points out, power

corrupts, and emergency power seems to corrupt even more.2

The power to close the frame not only ends quarrelling but also gives access to the resources ofsecurity (for oneself or ones constituency) legal, financial, informational,institutional. This makes it attractive to seek to shape the closure. As the politicalstakes in security are so high, it becomes an important question if emergencies areproblems searching to be solved, or whether it is instigated by solutions in searchof a problem.

In light of the dictatorial powers it unleashes and the limits it imposes on civilliberties, the Copenhagen School sees securitization as mostly a bad thing to beavoided (e.g. Buzan et al 1998). Human security tends to be sacrificed at the altarof national security. Critical scholars such as Daniel Deudney and Keith Krause

have also questioned if the apparatus of national security is adequate to furtherthe expanding security agenda - can the army provide environmental security, canthe police further human security?

The Copenhagen School is therefore concerned with desecuritisation, a state inwhich war is no longer imminent, and normality is restored.

However, it only takes a perfunctory look at humanitarian crises, to realize thatsecuritization can also be valued in a more positive light: as the concentration ofresources to protect people from starvation or violent death. Stefan Elbe haspointedly asked if securitization cannot be a positive thing when it concerns ahealth challenge such as HIV/AIDS. If successfully securitized its emergency status

forces corporate actors to forego market profits and make medicine available ataffordable prices in epidemic-stricken areas. Likewise, in the 1990s many arguedthat states failed to securitize environment crisis and climate change. With regardto humanitarian crises, political actors can commit the error of seeking an excessof control, but also the error of neglect - an excess of abandonment when facedwith peoples vulnerability. Lukes (2005) blames the authorities of Louisiana fordowngrading Hurricane Katrina, so that the National Guard was initially not calledin. Looking at the systematic neglect of victims in creeping catastrophies,undersecuritisation of grave humanitarian concerns can be as much or more aproblem than securitization.

The normality of everyday life can therefore legitimately be punctured by

temporary declarations of the state of exception to forestall disorder. In times ofcrisis, this state of affairs is defended on the ground of order, and even of


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humanitarianism itself. Exceptional means are in order, but should always raise alot of questions. Addressing crises commands exceptional means, that are oftendehumanizing and may infringe on the most basic human rights, as critics ofrefugee regimes rightly point out. What measures are acceptable, and for whatduration of time? How can emergency regimes be made accountable, and whereare the checks and balances to limit the abuse of the large powers invested in thecrisis managers?

BLURRINGBOUNDARIES

Complicated as these questions regarding securitization already are, another layerto add is the blurring between exception and normality. The transition fromnormality to crisis and back does not constitute a break between two differentrealities. Instead, we can view them as new ways of ordering and disordering ofspaces, power, regulation and interaction. Conflicts and disasters are breakpointsof social order, with a considerable degree of chaos and disruption, but they are

also marked by processes of continuity and re-ordering, or the creation of newinstitutions and linkages (Hilhorst 2007).

Normality situations do often not represent the ideal-normality that one shouldseek to restore. In many cases of protracted crises there is hardly a normality to goback to. After 30 years of consecutive conflicts, the majority of Angolan people hasever experienced normality. Moreover, conditions of conflict as well asvulnerabilities build up in the political, economic and social processes of normality,and it is there that the causes of crisis are to be found. Finally, as was alreadyreferred to above, in area of climatic extremes or dire poverty, it makes little senseto provide for exceptionality (Courtenay and Wilhite 2005). Van Dijk and deBruijns study of the Fulbe (1995) and Katrina Allens study of the impact of floods

on everyday life in Panay, Philippines (2002) are examples showing that a floodcan be a minor inconvenience compared to the problems of everyday life. In mostAfrican urban areas, these [everyday hazards] remain the main cause of prematuredeath and serious injury (Bull-Kamanga, 2003).

During the violence and chaos of complex emergencies, on the other hand, thereare considerable pockets of normality, a strange, tense kind of normality perhaps,but persistent and therefore, stable. Although economies may largely collapseduring war, people hold on to normality as much as they can and continue plantingtheir fields and trading their products (White and Nooteboom 2006).3 Informalsafety nets continue to be operative to some extent. Where national governments

have collapsed or are party in the conflict, line ministries in many casesnonetheless continue to be responsive to peoples needs, even though theirservices have become severely restricted (Hilhorst 2007). Even in todays totalwars, opponent forces have been seen to exchange courtesies, make Christmastruces, or given space to new routines. The late Polish journalist RyszardKapuscinski (2008) for example relates African war scenes in which the fighting isin the morning only; in the afternoon, weapons are checked at reception so thateveryone can go to the market. Much attention has been given as well on howtreaties of international water management often are upheld despite ongoingconflict between the two parties.

In the case of todays humanitarian crises, there is also a large continuity in the

actors dealing with the two kinds of situations. Most of these crises are located indeveloping countries, that are for a number of reasons more vulnerable to crisis.


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Despite the distinctions made on paper between emergency response and normalconditions of development, in reality the majority of actors is active in both fields.

There are only few specialized international humanitarian agencies, and mostintervening agencies have a dual mandate that also involves development activity.Nonetheless, there can be a large fissure in practice, because the two situationsare dealt with by different departments that have little interconnection andbecause many agencies set up new programmes during an emergency andbecome active in areas where they have not been before (sometimes with theexplicit objective to open up a new area for intervention).

The blurring of normality and exception further complicates questions ofsecuritization. Yet, in this blurring we may also find opportunity to define a newpractice of emergency response. In the past decades, humanitarian responsemechanisms have evolved that aim to bridge some of the gaps between normalityand exception. We examine here the security chain and the LRRD debate.

FROMDISASTERCYCLEAND TO SECURITYCHAIN

While disasters continue to be depicted in press as Act of God, the control ofdisasters and adversity has increasingly become a concern for science, and for thestate. The state is now expected to be \ providential - to see adversity coming, toprevent or control it and to provide for relief (cf. Ophir 200x) A desire to preventpeople from any risk has invited a drive for control and routinization - Science andtechnology are deployed to prevent and control calamitous events. Restoringorder in the middle of chaos legitimises a multitude of sins. Critical scholars havenoted that this drive is conservative. Calamity and the madness of unruly masse(disorderly otherness) is very disturbing to those who have vested interests in thestatus quo ante (Hewitt 1983). Complex emergencies can also open windows of

opportunity for social change, as did for example the Second World War forwomens emancipation.

The risk approach accepts that no matter how well protected, risks can stillhappen. This has also invited an economic and actuarial approach seeking tocalculate acceptable risk to assets and people, expressed in cold indicators suchas acceptable deaths per region in 100 years\A very different human ecology perspective (Hewitt 1983 is a forerunner) hashighlighted the degree to which hazard is human-induced a mutuality of naturaland human factors together producing disasters. Human action triggers,precipitates or increases exposure and vulnerability to freaks of nature. Natural

events moreover would not be disastrous if the humans exposed to them are notvulnerable to them Such a perspective also highlights that; a disaster processdoes not end with the death of the individual, or the repatriation or resettlementof a given population segment (Anderskov,http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/A/Anderskov_C_03.htm)

There are several points of intervention that can help reduce the frequency of,exposure to and impact of disaster events. This however should be done

judiciously an overemphasis on one of these elements can have negative spill-over effects on another. The work of Ulrich Beck on reflexive modernity(Beck1992() (1992 etc) has alerted us to the risky side effects of our own intervention,even if they are aimed at making the world safer. In the Netherlands, for example,focusing on maximising protection against (coastal) floods (resistance, reduces

the awareness of the residual risk communities living behind protective structuresare still exposed. The lack of awareness means normality goes on without the


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shadow of hazard, so that people are not resilient in the case disaster strikes4.Similarly in river areas, diking up a flood-prone area can create a bathtub,trapping embanked citizens with no escape in floods. High-incidence low-consequence hazards become low-consequence-high-incidence events. As aconsequence, events become more rare, the memory fades and if the inevitablehappens, people are ill-prepared for it. The need for an integrated risk chainapproach based on the disaster risk management cycle (Fig 2 below) has takenhold in disaster management.

The security chain approach is reminiscent of the disaster cycle depicted below(Fig. 1). It seeks to reduce risk and increase preparedness for a mishap.

This security chain reduces these phases to five steps- pro-action (where do you plan the safest place for potentially unsafe

activities and vulnerable sites); Separating risk sources and occupation oreconomic activity to reduce extreme disaster scenarios. Many interests pulloccupation towards risky locations.

- prevention (avoid and restrain unsafe activities - the choice of materials thatcan prevent an emergency or limit its consequences.); Ex ante measures toreduce the frequency of occurrence of a disaster, or their impact when ithappens.

- preparedness (in relation to the object and subject of risk; the actualpreparation of actions if a major emergency arises, such as planning,education and exercises, processes and procedures and the purchase ofmaterials);

- response (incident handling - actual emergency management, such assalvage/rescue, firefighting, medical intervention, detecting dangeroussubstances, protecting the environment.) Implementation of disaster plan

The Netherlands did not have such plans for floods until 1994. Then in 1995

it was implemented but the flood did not happen, see also the events in NewOrleans in 2005 and 2008.

- aftercare (recovery to the safe situation - the provision of care for victimsand relief workers, the restoration of normality, settling claims, andevaluation


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Fig. 1 The Disaster Cyclehttp://www.developmentgateway.com.au/jahia/webdav/site/adg/shared/disaster_risk_management_cycle.jpg.

The security chain approach permits a more integrated approach to security including learning through evaluation that allows a rethinking of what a restorednormal order should look like The proactive element rather than reactiveapproach has the potential of preventing great loss and distress. Yet theinstitutional consequences are substantial. A proactive risk approach has the built-in risk of labelling everything a security concern, and thus an extension ofsecuritization, handing more powers and controls to the security sector. Concernedliberal scholars in France (Bigo and Huysmans at Sciences Po in Paris) and Britain(the Security and Liberty programme at the University of Birmingham, theAberystwyth School of Security Studies) have warned against the risk of generatingan atmosphere of fear and pormoting a security governmentality, of atechnocratic state panopticon seeking to normalize the behavior of its citizens (e.g.Aradau 2001) practices such as risk profiling and preventive detention Atechnocratic interpretation of adaptivity in flood (and climate change) proactionand preparedness is likewise observable. Yet, the same integrated approach alsoharbours opportunities for widening the range of actors involved in hazard and riskgovernance and giving them a say in its decisions. It invites opening the arena ofdisaster management to a wider actor group exactly because public awareness hasthe potential of preventing false sense of security and as a consequence, inducingcooperative resilience.5

The below section will expound this point.


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Security chain and networked security governance

The first disaster response, salvage and debris removal usually falls to locallyaffected communities and social organizations (Kirschenbaum 2004). It is thereforedisingenuous and even counterproductive to push civic initiative aside to givesecurity services maximum room for manoeuvre.

While disaster response will remain associated with dedicated relief services, asthere is little time for deliberation, but there is more space for this in the context ofdisaster prevention, pro-action andpreparedness, where the crisis is not imminent,as well as aftercare and evaluation. Indeed, because these are normally non-urgency phases, public involvement may also promote awareness and co-ordination which should also boost effective disaster response in an event. Theurgency involved in developing and instating protection schemes and policies,rarely warrants full securitization. The research noted that other (social andenvironmental) agendas were co-opted and adopted in these schemes, and

different alternatives possible for which there was no urgent reason to overlook.Flood preparedness provides an opportunity to arrange this institutionally, toguarantee democratic accountability in the aftermath of the next crisis.

An integrated security chain management approach has the potential of mixingsecurity and non-security modes of risk governance. In the integrated securitychain, crisis response is the fourth phase out of five:prevention, pro-action,

preparation, repression and aftercare. While the initial disaster repression phase isprobably best tackled by actors with coercive powers, the other phases are notrestricted by urgency. These desecuritised phases widen the range of actors andbring in diversity of likely candidates, whose roles and identities may differbetween the stages.

First, such mechanisms require a level of structural awareness (forewarned isforearmed) and engagement more likely to be raised in a conflict situation. Inpeacetime, security non-professionals tend not to spend time on the first threephases before the event happens. This privileges the professional state and NGOactors at the table until someone re-securitizes the issue.

Second, functionalist and deliberative approaches to governance often assumesthat actors will work well with each other because the task at hands requires this. Amulti-stakeholder platform would seem a logical approach to facilitate coordinationand fine-tuning between actors and actor capacities (Warner 2007). In the field of

resource governance, however, Currie Alder (2007) has warned that participatoryresource management can be a foil for resource capture, if it ignores underlyingpower differentials. In the same vein, Warner, Waalewijn and Hilhorst (2002)qualify their recommendation for a multi-stakeholder approach to disasterpreparedness by emphasising the need to understand why cooperative platformsare promoted and how the interests of less powerful groups are safeguarded. Thefunctional co-ordination mechanisms in network governance can easily overlookthe hegemony element and thus exclude important actor identities, needs,interests.

Third, the stages are likely to overlap and go back and forth in time, while thedifferent links in the chain to be associated with different actors, institutions and

practices. As argued above, exceptionality and normality are not so easy toseparate out. This brings a level of complexity which the artifice\ial boundaries


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between the exception itself and the pre- and post-exception stages simplify withpotentially destructive effects. The below will delve more deeply into this in thecontext of post-disaster (and post-conflict) reconstruction.


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LINKING RELIEF, RECONSTRUCTIONAND DEVELOPMENT

The last decade has witnessed intensive discussion in academic circles of policy aswell as practice on the links between relief, rehabilitation and development, knownunder the acronym of LRRD. Originally, the issue of linkage was represented as acontinuum running from relief via rehabilitation to development. As such itoriginates from natural disaster responses. In this linear thinking the crisis has animmediate impact that triggers a relief response. After the immediate needs areresolved, a phase of reconstruction can be entered, followed by a period in whichnormal development can be resumed. It has been realized that such a continuumdoes not exist, especially in the case of complex emergencies. Nonetheless,reference to such a sequential approach lingers on and continues to be a commonway in which agencies plan and organize their response in practice. For instance,when reference is made to the gap between relief and reconstruction, this usuallyrefers to a moment in time. This is the imaginary moment of transition betweenconflict and post-conflict reconstruction, or between the first two weeks after adisaster and the period that follows. Once we let go of the idea of the continuum

and take into account the continuities between normality and exceptionality, thegap issue turns into an amalgam of different issues.

Firstly, when we accept the notion of normality in crisis, linkage issues becomeapparent during all stages of crisis. The common notion of social service delivery incrisis is centered on the life-saving assistance of international humanitarianagencies. A first question that must be raised in these conditions is howhumanitarian activities be organized in such a way that they maintain or restorethe foundation of future development? International agencies have committedthemselves to work as much as possible through local channels, yet in practiceoften chose to implement relief programmes directly. There are many other waysin which agencies try to link to normality during crisis, for instance by working with

community organizations, by working with micro-credit rather than free aid, or byproviding cash relief more than food aid. The coverage of these approaches is notclear, and they have not become central in the mainstream humanitarian aid. Afurther implication of focusing on normality, is to expand the kind of servicesoffered beyond mere relief and focus on the continuation of markets, educationand normal health services. Jan Pronk, one of the early proponents of this ideamakes a plea for a new form of international development cooperation, which inwar-torn societies or failed states does not confine itself to short-term emergencyrelief, but instead promotes development cooperation during conflict. Suchcollaborative development assistance must reinforce the stabilizing role that localactors within civil society can play.(Pronk, 1996) Working on development in crisis

is also controversial, when the continuation of such activities play into the hands ofconflict parties, by legitimizing them or providing them with material power.

Secondly, when we consider the continuity of elements of crisis once it is formallyover, linkage becomes a question of how to cater to ongoing humanitarian needsand protection issues while reconstruction has started. Acute humanitarian needsoften continue until long after the formal resolution of conflict. In some cases,humanitarian assistance continues for years into the peace era. The cut-off point isoften not made on the basis of needs but on the basis of political considerationsthat steer attention away to other crises, or prioritizes institutional or sectordevelopment over the relief of immediate needs. Humanitarian aid is thenconsidered as undermining normality (by creating dependency among its

recipients) or gets backgrounded in view of other more structural developmentprogrammes. In Angola, for instance, many poor people consider themselves worse


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off since peace was established: they have no resources for income generation andwithout the aid they received in the years before they can barely cope. (Hilhorstand Serrano, forthcoming) As was stated above, many situations of developmenthide large proportions of the population that live far below the poverty line andwhose vulnerability to adverse conditions is extreme. The internationalhumanitarian system is designed for emergency operations and cannot cater tothese accumulated needs, whereas there are rarely alternative systems in place.Only recently, we can see a trend of social protection programmes, for instance inEthiopia, that help populations in need with direct asset transfers, while enrollingthem in development programmes to enhance their resilience. (Harvey et al.)

Thirdly, in the many prolonged situations of no-peace-no-war, linkage issues arecomplicated by the fact that agencies are not clear under which modes theyoperate: the modus of exceptionality or that of normality? This is particularlyvisible in the complicated interfaces between international assistance and localauthorities. Reconstruction is a fluid process, where social relations and themeaning of institutions are renegotiated while people carefully probe their room for

manoeuvre waiting if the conditions of relative peace will hold. International actorsface the challenge to meaningfully engage with local actors in these fluidconstellations, while they are often unsure about the motivations of local actorsand the extent in which they are indeed favouring peace. The often used slogan oflocal ownership in reconstruction is often not very helpful, as it remains unclearwho should or could own these processes, and in practice external actors often endup taking more central roles than they claimed to have hoped for.

Hence, there are different linkage issues that each in their own way hasimplications for the continuity between normality and exception. Linkage issuesare associated with a developmental mode of service provision. In practice,however, we also see how linkage is drawn into the emergency mode of working.

An example is the post-genocide reconstruction of Rwanda, when far-fetchingdevelopment programmes for village formation were introduced that had vastimplications for peoples use of space, their livelihoods, their social relations, andthe environment. These long-term development interventions were, however,planned and executed in a clear emergency mode, with little time for feasibilitystudies or participation in decision-making. The powers that were concentrated toface the crisis were used to push through developments that would normally besubjected to much more scrutiny and political process (Hilhorst and van Leeuwen).In this case, the powers of exception invaded the processes and realities ofnormality. It has been suggested that in many cases the best way to achievelinkage is for the emergency humanitarians to withdraw from the disaster scene as

soon as possible to leave linkage to existing development actors (Christoplos).

CONCLUSION

The artificial separation between the worlds of exceptionality and normality isunrealistic and often counterproductive. Emergency mode decisions and actionscan easily create dependency and promote sidestepping democratic deliberationand accountability, leaving people worse off and disempowered as a result. Thesecurity chain approach in itself offers possibilities for integrating normality andexceptionality, which can enhance public accountability but also mean moreunobtrusive controls and more


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On the other hand, as we reiterate, the emergency mode also has distinctadvantages in maintaining the sense of crisis that is needed to mobilize resourcesand political attention for humanitarian situations. The Catch-22 to be resolvedcurrently seems to be that securitization leads to emergency measures thatundermine normal development, yet mobilizing support for restoring order isusually impossible without securitizing the situation. We may need to think harderand out of the box to generate the sense of urgency and preparedness with awider range of stakeholder to enable supple movement between the worlds ofnormality and exceptionality, and boundary spanning practices and institutions tosupport this.


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1 Historically, states have not always enjoyed supremacy, and have often needed to legitimize

themselves through warfare (Tilly, 1985).

2http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-

absolutely.pdf

3 For a satirised account of the continued normality of war, including economic opportunism. see

the play of Bertolt Brechts (1898-1956) war play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder.4 In 1992 the Netherlands the home affairs department adopted a security chain approach the riskmanagement, which is also encountered in different varieties in other countries. The Dutch watersector does notuse the internationally current vulnerability concept. The myth of zero risk remains,boosted by a strong belief in technological solutions (engineerability of the environment) and, morerecently, green engineering (working with nature), which has so far gone at the expense of land-usecontrols and investing in citizen awareness and preparedness. The sectors embracing of thesecurity chain in part comes from an acceptance that accidents will happen.5 Like the disaster chain, the security chain can be faulted for toogiving an uncomplicated [picture ofseparate stages THAT in fact overlap.
http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-absolutely.pdfhttp://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-absolutely.pdfhttp://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-absolutely.pdfhttp://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-absolutely.pdfhttp://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/abstracts/drrblaug-emergency-powers-correct-absolutely.pdf

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