Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Uneasy Alliances: Traditional Leaders and Equality.

非洲传统领导人充满活力的价值观和做法经常与他们所居住国家的民主价值观发生冲突。特别令人担忧的是，一些酋长支持父权习俗，这与许多非洲宪法中所载的平等价值观相冲突。纳米比亚是研究传统领导人与平等政策相互作用的一个特别相关的案例。2007年，尽管法律禁止酋长参与治理，纳米比亚政府还是开始协同努力，让酋长作为关键利益相关者参与实施几项性别平等政策和运动。在一个近70%的人口承认传统领导人权威的国家，国家决定让酋长作为妇女权利问题的利益相关者，可能会影响其政策和运动的效力。酋长参与促进平等政策激发了这个项目的核心问题：在什么条件下，传统领导人将促进妇女权利？为了回答这个问题，该项目考察了酋长拥有法律权力或被国家聘用担任利益相关者的三个政策领域中与性别相关的要素：艾滋病毒/艾滋病教育和预防、公共土地分配和反性别暴力运动。该项目预测，酋长们最有可能支持在其历史权力范围之外的事务中促进妇女权利的政策，从而扩大其影响范围。该项目将档案研究与对来自政府、非政府组织、农村社区和传统权威机构的举报人的采访相结合。一项针对传统领导人的原始调查将获取人口统计信息，并研究他们的政策偏好背后的动机。对具有不同政策偏好的酋长社区进行个案研究，将查明酋长支持逻辑的因果机制。这项研究的智力价值源于它努力促进对平等政策的理解，它有两个目标。首先，它阐明了一个传统机构将促进民主原则的条件。其次，它考察了传统权威和国家之间的关系如何改变每个机构的目标和价值观。该项目为三个学术机构做出了贡献。对于正式和非正式制度的研究，它引入了第三种准正式类型的制度，对大多数学者所接受的制度二分法提出了质疑。它加入了传统治理文献中日益增长的运动，超越了酋长统治对民主的威胁的讨论，而是研究了传统领导人可以协助巩固民主的情况。在对妇女参政的研究中，该项目增加了一个地方层面的视角，研究妇女在传统领导人监督的社区中游说酋长的努力。该项目也有更广泛的影响。对于政策制定者来说，了解传统领导人支持或拒绝政策的决定背后的动机，将改善他们制定立法的策略，从而最大限度地提高获得主要支持的机会。此外，在这种情况下的调查结果将远远超出纳米比亚，延伸到其他有强大酋长统治的非洲国家，以及其他有某种形式的传统领导人的国家，包括阿富汗、巴基斯坦和南太平洋国家。对于女权组织来说，性别平等政策对改善妇女生活至关重要。该项目表明，酋长并不总是威胁到妇女权利政策的成功，但在某些情况下，实际上可以加速政策目标的实现。这种洞察力将使妇女团体能够更有效地游说传统领导人支持他们可能赞同的政策。

The dynamic values and practices of African traditional leaders often clash with the democratic values underpinning the states in which they reside. Of particular concern is some chiefs' support of patriarchal customs that conflict with the value of equality enshrined in many African constitutions. Namibia is an especially relevant case to the study of traditional leaders' interaction with equality policies. In 2007, despite laws that prohibit chiefs' participation in governance, the Namibian government began a concerted effort to engage chiefs as key stakeholders in the implementation of several gender equality policies and campaigns. In a country in which nearly 70 percent of the population recognizes a traditional leader's authority, the state's decision to use chiefs as stakeholders in women's rights issues will likely impact the efficacy of its policies and campaigns. The engagement of chiefs in the promotion of equality policies motivates this project's central question: under what conditions will traditional leaders promote women's rights? To answer this question, the project examines the gender-related elements of three policy areas in which chiefs have legal power or have been recruited by the state to serve as stakeholders: HIV/AIDS education and prevention, communal land allocation, and anti-gender-based violence campaigns. The project predicts that chiefs are most likely to support policies that promote women's rights in matters outside their historical areas of authority, thereby enlarging their sphere of influence. The project combines archival research with interviews of informants from the government, NGOs, rural communities, and traditional authorities. An original survey of traditional leaders will capture demographic information and examine motivations behind their policy preferences. Case studies of chief-headed communities with varying policy preferences will pinpoint causal mechanisms accounting for the logic of chiefs' support. The intellectual merit of this research stems from its efforts to advance understanding of equality policies and has two goals. First, it illuminates conditions under which a traditional institution will promote democratic principles. Second, it examines the ways in which the relationship between traditional authorities and the state changes the goals and values of each institution. This project contributes to three bodies of scholarship. To studies of formal and informal institutions, it introduces a third, quasi-formal type of institution that questions the institutional dichotomy accepted by most scholars. It joins a growing movement in the traditional governance literature to move beyond discussions of chieftaincy as threatening to democracy and instead examines situations in which traditional leaders can assist in the task of democratic consolidation. To the research on women in politics, the project adds a local-level perspective on women's efforts to lobby chiefs in communities overseen by traditional leaders. The project has broader impacts as well. For policymakers, understanding the motivations behind traditional leaders' decisions to support or reject policies will improve their strategies for crafting legislation that maximize chances of chiefly endorsement. Findings in this case, moreover, will extend far beyond Namibia to other African countries with strong chieftaincies, along with other countries that have traditional leaders in some form, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Pacific nations. For women's rights organizations, gender equality policies are critical to the improvement of women's lives. The project suggests that chiefs do not always threaten the success of women's rights policies but can, in some cases, actually hasten the achievement of policy goals. This insight will allow women's groups to more effectively lobby traditional leaders for support of policies that they are likely to endorse.