Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Communicative Citizenship and Participatory Democracy

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University of California at San Diego graduate student, Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, under the guidance of Dr. Nancy G. Postero, will undertake research on participatory democracy. Her focus will be on why some instances of participatory democracy are more effective than others in distributing state resources among competing social classes and interest groups. Social science findings regarding the efficacy of participatory institutions are often inconsistent. To explain these inconsistencies, this research will explore the hypotheses, that 1) a political party's ideology of participatory democracy has an impact on the redistribution of state resources; and 2) different designs of participatory institutions produce disparate redistributive outcomes. The research will be conducted in Brazil, where several forms of participatory institutions are now mandatory. However, the municipalities implementing them are governed by political parties that disagree about the goals of participatory democracy, which allows for a comparative research design. The comparative fieldwork will be done in two districts in the Sao Paolo Municipal Area, which differ in their views of participation. The researcher will begin with a sociolinguistic analysis of the communicative interactions and discursive practices that take place at participatory meetings, where ideas of what constitutes a good citizen are developed as what the researcher terms "communicative citizenship." In addition to sociolinguistic analysis, the research will include direct and participant observation at meetings; analysis of policy documents, census information, and budget data; textual analysis of political tracts; interviews with residents of both districts; and a survey. Besides clarifying some of the contradictory findings of the participatory democracy literature, this study will provide further insight into the relationship between institutions, ideologies, and locally-situated understandings of citizenship and entitlements. Research findings can also aid policymakers and activists in promoting institutional reforms. Funding this research also contributes to the education of a social scientist.