Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Ghanaian Slums: Constructing Democracy in Unexpected Places

政治学博士论文研究：加纳贫民窟：在意想不到的地方建设民主

• 批准号: 1226588
• 负责人: Michael Schatzberg
• 金额: $ 1.76万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-08-01 至 2013-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1226588&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Scholars and international media commonly portray slums as ungoverned urban communities outside the reach of the state. Yet African slums reveal considerable variation in their ability to access and maintain public services. Some slums are able to attract state resources to build toilets, construct sewers, pave roads, collect garbage, and provide security. Other slums secure resources but are unable to maintain them--sewers overflow, roads deteriorate, and police do not secure order. A third type of slum struggles to access or maintain any public services. The central question of this dissertation asks: Despite similar contexts of weak formal institutions and poor living conditions, why are some slum communities able to attract and maintain public services while others are unable to attract and manage these same services? By examining the variation in how slum communities demand, secure, and maintain public services, this dissertation provides important and overlooked insights into the process of local-level democratization in Africa.The dissertation hypothesizes that a slum's success depends on three underlying political conditions--the type of community leadership, the form of community organization, and the degree of state legal recognition. These conditions enable or impede the development of accountability mechanisms that residents use to hold their leaders to account.The project combines ethnographic methods, focus groups, and a household survey in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The comparative ethnographic case studies are based in slum communities with similar population profiles, but with varying levels of public service access and maintenance. The survey is novel because it will consider all slum communities in Ghana and will include embedded experiments that test trust in leaders and informal institutions.The intellectual merit of the project is significant. First, it contributes to investigations of state and society. The project re-conceptualizes slums as political spaces where a slum's position toward the state--specifically its degree of legal recognition and level of state investment that it attracts--provides a potentially powerful formula to understand variation between slums. Second, the dissertation shifts the study of democracy away from national institutions to the community-level where informal institutions shape political activity. Third, the project treats public goods provision as a political process that includes demands (from the residents), distribution (by the government), and maintenance (by the community). Fourth, the dissertation advances scholarship on the rule of law in developing countries.The project also has broader implications because it has the potential to impact policy-making aimed at democracy promotion, development, and slum-upgrading initiatives. As the number of individuals living in slums approaches one billion people, there is an emerging need to treat slums as dynamic spaces and analytic sites for political inquiry.

学者和国际媒体通常将贫民窟描述为国家管辖范围之外的无人管理的城市社区。然而，非洲贫民窟在获得和维持公共服务的能力方面表现出相当大的差异。一些贫民窟能够吸引国家资源来修建厕所、下水道、铺路、收集垃圾和提供安全保障。其他贫民窟虽然拥有资源，但却无法维护这些资源——下水道溢出，道路恶化，警察无法维持秩序。第三类贫民窟难以获得或维持任何公共服务。本论文的核心问题是：尽管正规制度薄弱、生活条件恶劣，但为什么一些贫民窟社区能够吸引和维持公共服务，而另一些贫民窟社区却无法吸引和管理这些服务？通过研究贫民窟社区如何需求、保障和维持公共服务的差异，本论文为非洲地方层面的民主化进程提供了重要而被忽视的见解。本文假设贫民窟的成功取决于三个潜在的政治条件——社区领导的类型、社区组织的形式和国家法律承认的程度。这些条件促进或阻碍了问责机制的发展，居民可以用这些机制来问责他们的领导人。该项目结合了民族志方法、焦点小组和加纳大阿克拉地区的家庭调查。比较人种学案例研究的基础是人口状况相似的贫民窟社区，但公共服务的获取和维护水平不同。这项调查是新颖的，因为它将考虑加纳所有的贫民窟社区，并将包括嵌入式实验，以测试对领导人和非正式机构的信任。这个项目的智力价值是显著的。首先，它有助于对国家和社会的调查。该项目将贫民窟重新定义为政治空间，贫民窟对国家的地位——特别是它的法律认可程度和它所吸引的国家投资水平——提供了一个潜在的强大公式来理解贫民窟之间的差异。其次，本文将民主的研究从国家机构转移到非正式机构塑造政治活动的社区层面。第三，该项目将公共产品的提供视为一个政治过程，包括（居民）要求、（政府）分配和（社区）维护。第四，推进发展中国家法治研究。该项目还具有更广泛的影响，因为它有可能影响旨在促进民主、发展和贫民窟改造倡议的决策。随着居住在贫民窟的人数接近10亿人，越来越需要将贫民窟视为动态空间和政治探究的分析场所。