Religious NGOs in the United Nations: Mediators or Polarizers?

在文献中，跨国非政府组织通常被视为有原则的行为者，它们帮助制定和执行普遍的全球规范(如人权、民主或可持续发展)，从而为全球治理作出应有的贡献。拟议的研究项目将重点放在一些非政府组织身上，这些非政府组织将基于宗教的规范性取向纳入全球治理背景下政策目标的制定和谈判之中，从而仔细审查了这一期望。首先，我们希望探讨宗教非政府组织(RNGO)参与联合国系统是否阻碍或促进就政策目标和战略达成一致。其次，我们问为什么区域非政府组织选择以合作或对抗的方式行事。为了回答第一个问题，我们将分析区域非政府组织和联合国机构在四个政策领域的关系，这四个领域一方面反映了联合国议程的核心方案目标，另一方面区域非政府组织积极参与其中：宗教自由、国际刑事司法、以巴冲突和生殖权利。区域非政府组织和联合国机构之间的关系将被归类为合作、互补、增选或对抗，以确定这些不同类型的分布中的模式或集群。从新出现的矩阵中，我们将选择反映关系变化的RNGO，以便进行深入的启发式案例研究，使我们能够产生假设，为什么RNGO合作或选择对抗性行为。鉴于迄今为止缺乏关于区域非政府组织在全球治理中的研究，对回答第二个问题采取这种归纳性方法是必要的。关于宗教和政治的一般文献只为研究提供了一个广泛的方向，侧重于作为制定政策目标和战略的工具包的宗教规范、原则和解释图式。就宗教非政府组织而言，它们的行动主要受宗教伦理和正义概念的指导。我们试图假设，宗教伦理的哪些模式或配置通常会导致追求特定的政治目标和战略。

Transnational NGOs are generally regarded in the literature as principled actors who help to set and implement universal global norms (such as human rights, democracy or sustainable development) and thereby make desirable contributions to global governance. The proposed research project scrutinizes this expectation by focusing on a group of NGOs who insert religion-based normative orientations into the formulation and negotiation of policy goals in the context of global governance. We want to explore, first, whether the participation of religious NGOs (RNGOs) in the UN system hampers or facilitates the agreement on policy goals and strategies. Second, we ask why RNGOs choose to act either in a cooperative or in a confrontational manner. In order to answer the first question, we will analyze the relationships between RNGOs and UN-agencies in four policy fields which on the one hand reflect central programmatic goals of the UN-agenda and in which on the other hand RNGOs are actively engaged: Freedom of religion, international criminal justice, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and reproduction rights. The relationships between RNGOs and UN-agencies will be categorized as co-operation, complementarity, co-optation, or confrontation in order to identify patterns or clusters in the distribution of these different types. From the emerging matrix, we will choose RNGOs which reflect the variance of relationships in order to conduct in-depth heuristic case studies that allow us to generate hypotheses why RNGOs co-operate or choose confrontational behavior. Such an inductive approach to answering the second question is necessary given the scarcity of research on RNGOs in global governance to date. The general literature on religion and politics only provides a broad direction for research by focusing on religious norms, principles and schemata for interpretation which serve as tool kits for the formulation of policy goals and strategies. In the case of religious NGOs, their actions are predominantly guided by religious ethics and conceptions of justice. We seek to hypothesize which patterns or configurations of religious ethics typically result in the pursuit of specific political goals and strategies.