Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mediating Democracy: External Aid and Local Conflict Resolution

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Brown University doctoral student Susan H. Ellison, supervised by Dr. Kay B. Warren, will examine the local effects of foreign-funded "Alternative Dispute Resolution" (ADR) programs. Such mediation programs are proliferating throughout the world. This research seeks to understand what kinds of political practices ADR engenders or inhibits, and with what consequences for how people think about themselves and behave as political actors, and for traditional forms of power and political engagement. Additionally, this research will consider the politics and pragmatics of conflict management courses, violence prevention campaigns, and broader peace-building programs such as those promoted globally by organizations such as the United Nations.The research will be carried out in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, where ADR programs were introduced in the wake of a 2003 uprising led by rural and urban poor Bolivians. Many of the conflict resolution programs currently offered in El Alto provide residents pro-bono legal aid while stressing mediation as a more individually satisfying alternative to the formal legal system. Since 2008, however, conflict resolution programs have become entangled in a much larger national debate over who sets the terms of democracy in Bolivia and how justice will be defined. Through in-depth and semi-structured interviews, archival research, and document analysis, this research will reconstruct the history of Bolivian engagements with ADR-like initiatives and probe the stated aims and contested meaning of conflict resolution programs in the country. To examine this system in practice, the bulk of this research will be dedicated to extensive participant observation in El Alto-based mediation centers and in civic education and mediation workshops aimed at the general public.This research is important because it will contribute to social scientific understanding of the interplay between interventions aimed at everyday or micro-level experiences of violence and conflict, and those addressing larger-scale social tensions and democratic discord. The research also will produce new data that can inform policy concerned with chronic conflict and foreign aid. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.