2021 Report Centre for Public Authority and International Development | 5
Conceptual framework and logics
A DDR outreach activity in El Srief. Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran - UNAMID
The term ‘public authority’ has long been used to refer to instruments of formal government, and to institutions of the state, such as the police, army, and various sanctioned forms of local administration. More generally, public authority is a term used to refer to matters associated with public rather than private law. However, even in places where the idea of public authority has a long legal history, there is, in practice, a large arena of social life that occurs between the private spaces of the family and the public domain of formal governance.
In a flexible way, CPAID researchers have developed ‘logics’ to explain how public authority is claimed, accrued, and employed. These logics have been useful in drawing out comparisons between places, specific public authorities, and delineating patterns. Examples of these logics include moral populism, political marketplace, social harmony, public mutuality, and intimate governance. They have been used to refer to ways in which actors and organisations
appeal to social norms and provide public goods, thereby gaining a modicum of legitimacy to govern others. Over the course of the programme, the strengths and weaknesses of the logics’ interpretive value has become clearer, and directions for how they could be analytically used and improved upon in future research have emerged. An important aspect of the latter is the way in which researchers have drawn on fieldwork in
Africa to explore how logics of public authority are discerned elsewhere, including in the Global North. The logics encourage investigations of public authority’s fluidity and, potentially, its fragility, as actors seize opportunities to advance or resist one another’s claims. This was illustrated by a recent collaborative working paper for which CPAID’s researchers contributed vignettes from across five countries. Each provided insights into how actors were responding to the COVID-19 crisis, with some viewing it as an opportunity to solidify their power, others as a moment to challenge the status quo, and some as a threat to their livelihood networks.
