Import of human righrs institutions and their effectiveness in post-Soviet states

IMPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR
EFFECTIVENESS IN POST-
SOVIET STATES
Konstantin P. Kokarev
INION RAN
|Protection of Human Rights: Institutes and practices”
Saint-Petersburg, Pushkin, 13-14 June, 2013
Konstantin P. Kokarev, INION RAN 13.06.2013

●
It is often said that
ombudsperson is a
week institution.
●
It is often said that
in Russia and many
post-Soviet states
we see lack of
political institutions.
●
On the one, side we can agree with this
thesis: all institutions seem to be very
complex and fuzzy. On the other side, we
see that some habitualization and
reciprocal typification happens.
Problems and motive

Import and effectiveness
●
The import of institutions is a complicated
issue and the study of human rights
institutions (HRI) import proves to be
particularly challenging, because it shows
the value of proper institutional fields to get
good results. One of the main questions
here is the quality of recently established
institutions and their performance.

Role of institutions – 1
●
The role of institutions and
institutionalization is extremely high in
politics.
●
As political systems become more and
more complicated the importance and
multiplicity of political institutions grow, as
far as they deal with complex negotiation of
conflicting interests and provide more
sophisticated control.

Role of institutions – 2
●
Elaboration of various institutions of
mediation—including ombudspersons in
Russia—generally lies in this logic.
●
it is important to look at institutionalization
of HRI as long as it is hard to understand
quality of performance without the
understanding of institutional field and
position of certain organization in it.

Effectiveness and life cycle of
organization
●
A number of models of measurement
suggest special attention to specific points,
critical for the current state of
institutionalization. The process of
institutionalization is never ending.
Discursive institutionalism gives us some
instruments to get a better understating of
evolving institutions and organizations and
interaction between them.

Basic comcepts
●
“Organized anarchy” [Cameron, 1980];
●
Effectiveness;
●
Institutionalization;
●
Highly personalized institutions.

Organized anarchies
●
Goals are generally ill-defined, complex, changing,
and contradictory
●
Means-ends connections are not clear - that is, there
is no obvious connection between the technology or
the way work is done and the outcome.
●
More than one technology or strategy produces the
same outcome in the organized anarchies.
●
There is little or no feedback from the output to the
input, and little feed-forward from inputs to outputs,
so the casual connections between the two are not
testable [Cameron 1980: 66-67].

Effectiveness
It is a very complex concept, but the idea is
perfectly defined by Etzioni: effectiveness as
the degree to which an organization realizes
its goals.

Institutionalization
●
There is a basic understanding of
institutionalization by Berger and Luckman
[1966] that underlies sociological neo-
institutional approach: habitualization,
reciprocal typification of habitualized
actions, and legitimation. This process has
different components: emotional, cognitive,
behavioral. In some cases different
components grow congruent, in some
cases not.

Highly personalized
institutions
●
people can not perceive the institution
without the association with the person
holding the position;
●
strong demand to the person in position:
professional, ethical and so forth;
●
possibility of the head of the organization to
determine not only the priority areas of
work, but to some point the structure of the
organization itself.

Ombudsperson as a highly
personalized institution – 1
●
The person holding the position faces
significant professional and ethical
requirements. That is why ombudspersons
in Russia as well as regional governors and
the president of the federation are required
to take an oath. This is an extremely
important from the symbolical view point;

Ombudsperson as a highly
personalized institution – 2
●
The institution is widespread in the Russian
regions, and its variability is evident both
for the commissioners themselves,
researchers, and authorities;
●
The organization of work and priorities of
the ombusdpersons largely depend on their
personality. The change of a holder of the
position means a significant change in all
areas of the organizational work.

Conclusions – 1
●
The fact that the work of commissioners is highly
dependent on the personal qualities of a person
in office is normal and serves a resource for
institutional development. However, the fact that
the procedure for appointment and removal of
regional ombudspersons remains to be up to
regional authorities and this does not help to
uncover the full potential of diversity. To solve this
problem scholars and experts propose a bill on
status of a regional commissioner;

Conclusions – 2
●
low interest to the work of ombudspersons, non-
paternalistic character of this institution, and the lack
of legal awareness don't humper to clarifying of the
understanding who the commissioner is;
●
Features of the federal and regional Russian public
sphere, which is heavily controlled by the government
don't work on institutionalization of HRI because
human rights is associated within it almost only with
the ombudsperson. Commissioners see propaganda
of human rights as a priority in their work as well as a
great problem;

Conclusions – 3
●
Uncertainty in the situation with judicial and law
enforcement systems also make it difficult for
commissioners to elaborate and make public the
general criteria for assessing ombudspersons;
●
In many cases in contemporary Russia it is
impossible to understand what stage of
institutionalization we see because institutional fields
a shifting. That is why it is hard to elaborate proper
criteria for evaluation;

Conclusions – 4
●
Works of international and Russian scholars on
criteria topic show that criteria have to be local and
be well structured in case we want to evaluate the
real performance. That is why commissioners could
use any measurement instrument they need to boost
their productivity—but all the models shouldn't be
seen as a proper instrument for measuring
performance of effectiveness of different
organizations.

Conclusions – 5
●
The only test on effectiveness of HRI may be the
study of institutional field of human rights that is
coined by all the agencies and actors that violate and
protect these rights. If they are more and more stable
and organized, we observe the process of
institutionalization of HRI and this work can be
treated (named) effective. One of the main purposes
of HRI is generating this institutional field that is new
to Post-Soviet states.

Thank you.
E-mail: kokarev@inion.ru

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