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Global rules and regulatory institutions have major and ever-growing importance in contemporary governance. However, connections between global governance and citizens are often weak, compromising effectiveness and legitimacy. Civil society organisations (CSOs - including Non- Governmental Organisations, business forums, trade unions, think tanks and social movements) offer major potential to link global governance institutions (GGIs) with affected publics. Professor Scholte's sustained programme of research in this area, and related provision of resources and training to international beneficiaries such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has had significant social impact in raising both the quantity and the quality of GGI-CSO relations.
The impact was on public, professional and policy discussion of the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in British society and politics. Specifically:
(a) Preservation and conservation practices: the research impacted library and museum practices through the deposition of several archives of NGOs now accessible to a broader public, and to a campaign to encourage NGOs to make further depositions.
Research undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM) highlights the need to address issues of accountability and reflexivity within the NGO sector, and has contributed towards both performance improvements within individual NGOs, as well as the strengthening of sector-wide policies. Impacts have been achieved through a process of ongoing consultation and feedback: identifying, anticipating and analysing key challenges, generating new conceptual frameworks, and building critical relations between the academy and practitioners. This contribution has been clearly acknowledged by both NGOs and other development agencies. In particular, the research has directly assisted the work of organisations and groups as varied as: governments (e.g. El Salvador's); major international NGOs based in both the global north (e.g. The One World Trust, Mango) and south (SDI, BRAC); and bilateral and multilateral aid agencies (e.g. DFID, UNRISD).
The research conducted by Professor Timothy Edmunds has had three primary impacts. First, it has played a role in framing policy and setting the operational agenda for security sector reform (SSR) programmes by national governments and international organisations. Second, the research has had a direct influence on the substance of security and defence reforms in parts of the post-communist and western Balkan regions, particularly in relation to the consolidation of democratic control over the security sector. Finally, it has had an impact on the evolution of British defence policy and armed forces since 2007, and on the debate leading up to the introduction of a new Armed Forces Covenant in May 2011. The research addresses change and transformation in military, police and intelligence agencies through the development and evolution of the concept of SSR. In so doing, it examines how security actors can both threaten and facilitate democratisation and human security goals in post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies, and the manner in which these issues can be addressed through international policy. It also `reverse engineers' the questions and lessons of SSR to interrogate wider challenges of defence transformation and civil-military relations in western democracies, and particularly the UK.
Professor Mark Duffield's research on the relationship between development and security has had a significant impact on the understandings and work of practitioners in many agencies worldwide, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), the UK Department for International Development (DfID), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Independent Diplomat in South Sudan and the Enough Project against genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Professor Iftikhar Malik's research on the cultural and political history of South Asia has informed public discourse in the UK, and has been particularly influential in informing British and EU policy and practice in Pakistan. This has resulted from Malik's involvement in the briefing of British diplomats and the training of EU officials, including election monitors for Pakistan, 2007-13.
An extensive body of research by Adrian Zuckerman has resulted in a significant improvement in the management of civil trials in England and Wales, and therefore to an improvement in access to justice for litigants. Zuckerman made a sustained argument that litigants are entitled only to a fair share of court resources, and not to an excessive share. His critical defence of this view changed the courts' use of their powers under the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR), and persuaded the Civil Procedure Rules Committee to change the rules themselves, regarding sanctions for failure to comply with procedural rules and court orders. The result is an important move toward the approach that Zuckerman has advocated: that parties should not be allowed to depart from deadlines imposed by rules and court orders unless they could not reasonably have complied in time, or had good reasons for the default.
This case study examines the impact of research relating to the conceptual foundations of democracy promotion on thought and practice of the relevant practitioner communities. Practitioners affected include: officials, desk officers, policy drafters, and implementers of democracy promotion in governmental organisations and international organisations; consultants involved in democracy promotion; and members of non-governmental organisations involved in delivery and planning of democracy promotion. The impact has been primarily on enhanced awareness among practitioners of the multiple meanings of democracy; on the capacity of practitioners to identify and reflect on conceptual underpinnings of their work; and on the thought frameworks relating to practitioners' work. Additional impacts on behavioural practices have also been generated.