Disruption as Opportunity: What Can We Learn From Localization to Inform a More Responsive Aid System for the Future?

This special issue convenes research on localization, a reform movement that aspires to transform structural inequality in aid systems, by positioning decision‐making power and financial resources in the hands of those most affected by disaster, conflict, and insecurity. Predominant approaches to localization emphasize top‐down or bottom‐up mechanisms for reform. To this conversation we add a third approach: intermediated localization, which is relational, context‐based, and dynamic. Intermediated localization shifts attention from who holds power to how power is mediated through relationships among actors. Using this localization lens we problematize recent disruptions to foreign aid and suggest there are “hegemonic” and “non‐hegemonic” systems of aid that co‐exist, conflict, intersect, and experience transformation and reform differently. Intermediated localization better reveals these intersections, interactions, and conflicts by focusing on mapping power and relationships rather than assuming power is held by hegemonic actors. The nine articles in this special issue collectively examine top‐down reforms instituted by the U.N. and international non‐governmental organizations; relationships between local aid actors and systems and their national and international counterparts; processes where programs, practices, and ways of working are changed through interactions; and failures to reform.