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

布朗大学博士生苏珊·h·埃里森（Susan H. Ellison）将在凯·b·沃伦（Kay B. Warren）博士的指导下，研究外资“替代性争议解决”（ADR）项目对当地的影响。这样的调解项目正在世界各地激增。这项研究旨在了解ADR产生或抑制了哪些类型的政治实践，以及人们如何看待自己和作为政治参与者的行为，以及传统形式的权力和政治参与的后果。此外，本研究将考虑冲突管理课程的政治和实用主义，暴力预防运动，以及更广泛的和平建设项目，如联合国等组织在全球范围内推广的项目。这项研究将在玻利维亚的埃尔阿尔托市开展。2003年，玻利维亚农村和城市的贫困人口发起了一场起义，在此之后，ADR项目开始实施。埃尔阿尔托目前提供的许多冲突解决方案都为居民提供无偿法律援助，同时强调调解是一种比正式法律体系更能满足个人需求的选择。然而，自2008年以来，冲突解决方案陷入了一场更大的全国性辩论，即谁来设定玻利维亚的民主条件，以及如何定义正义。通过深入和半结构化的访谈、档案研究和文件分析，本研究将重建玻利维亚参与类似adr倡议的历史，并探讨该国冲突解决计划的既定目标和争议意义。为了在实践中检验这一制度，本研究的大部分将致力于在埃尔阿尔托的调解中心以及针对公众的公民教育和调解讲习班中进行广泛的参与性观察。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于从社会科学的角度理解针对日常或微观层面的暴力和冲突经验的干预措施与针对更大规模的社会紧张局势和民主不和谐的干预措施之间的相互作用。这项研究还将产生新的数据，为有关长期冲突和对外援助的政策提供信息。资助这项研究也支持了研究生的教育。

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.