Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Design of Legal Power in Authoritarian Regimes

博士论文研究：威权政权中的法律权力设计

• 批准号: 1535721
• 负责人: Tsering Youdon
• 金额: $ 1.63万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2017-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1535721&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Design; Legal

Stable governance in developing countries, especially in nascent democracies with long histories of authoritarian rule, is a national security interest of the United States. While rule of law is considered a hallmark of stable governance, it is often lacking in these regions. Over the past half-century, American efforts to build democratic rule of law in developing countries have encountered limited successes and repeated failures. This project aims to uncover the origins of undemocratic legal systems in the developing world and why they are so resistant to reform during transitions to more democratic governance by focusing on the institutional choices made by governments during key periods of authoritarian consolidation. During the early years of dictatorship, some dictators confer legal authority to the formal judiciary, while others choose to erect ad hoc legal forums. These decisions have lasting legacies in determining the locus of judicial authority in developing countries, which ultimately affects how justice operates and who it ultimately serves. This has further implications for the protection of human rights under dictatorship. For American policymakers, identifying the stakeholders in authoritarian legal systems is thus an imperative first step towards creating effectively targeted reforms and building democratic rule of law abroad.To understand how authoritarian legal systems in developing countries have emerged and evolved over time, this project utilizes mixed-methods analysis that combines both qualitative process-tracing techniques and statistical analysis. Original data will be gathered from British and American archives containing records on the political and legal development of developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Archival research will leverage a variety of underutilized historical documents -- including party documents, official correspondences, judicial registers, court rulings, and memoires -- to understand how legal institutional design emerged and evolved across a large portion of the developing world. Using process-tracing techniques, case studies of countries such as Malawi, Kenya, and Burma will provide insight into how legal and authoritarian power was structured in the postcolonial period, and also examine how early legal decisions had lasting legacies that persist until today. Archival data will also be instrumental in creating an original cross-national dataset of cases that have been adjudicated in a variety of legal forums. This dataset, covering the period from independence to the modern day, will help identify generalizable patterns of legal decision-making across countries and over time. This research project contributes to the understanding of authoritarian legal systems and the consolidation of dictatorships across a large portion of the developing world. It will deepen theoretical and empirical understanding of these themes in three important ways. First, it will help identify how despotic power can have long-lasting effects on the design and operation of legal institutions, even after the transition to democracy. Second, it will draw attention to the political effects of legal institutions in countries of Sub-Saharan-Africa and Southeast Asia, regions that have become critical economic and diplomatic partners of the United States. Third, it will provide new data on legal design from a critical period of nation-building in developing countries that can be employed for other studies extending beyond the scope of this project. This data will be made publicly available upon publication of the findings.

在发展中国家，特别是在具有长期专制统治历史的新生民主国家，稳定的治理是美国的国家安全利益。虽然法治被认为是稳定治理的标志，但这些地区往往缺乏法治。半个多世纪以来，美国在发展中国家建设民主法治的努力取得了有限的成功，也遭遇了多次失败。该项目旨在通过关注政府在威权巩固的关键时期所作的制度选择，揭示发展中国家不民主的法律的制度的根源，以及在向更民主的治理过渡期间这些制度为何如此抵制改革。在独裁统治的最初几年，一些独裁者将法律的权威授予正式的司法机构，而另一些独裁者则选择建立临时的法律的论坛。这些决定在确定发展中国家司法权威的所在地方面具有持久的影响，最终影响到司法如何运作以及司法最终为谁服务。这对独裁统治下的人权保护产生了进一步的影响。因此，对美国的政策制定者来说，确定威权法律的制度中的利益相关者是在国外进行有效的有针对性的改革和建立民主法治的第一步。为了了解发展中国家威权法律的制度是如何随着时间的推移而出现和演变的，本项目采用了定性过程跟踪技术和统计分析相结合的混合方法分析。原始数据将从英国和美国的档案中收集，这些档案记录了撒哈拉以南非洲和东南亚发展中国家的政治和法律的发展情况。档案研究将利用各种未充分利用的历史文件-包括党的文件，官方信件，司法登记册，法院裁决和备忘录-了解法律的制度设计是如何出现和发展的大部分发展中国家。使用过程跟踪技术，马拉维，肯尼亚和缅甸等国家的案例研究将提供如何法律的和专制权力的结构在后殖民时期的洞察力，并检查如何早期的法律的决定有持久的遗产，坚持到今天。档案数据还将有助于建立一个原始的跨国数据集，收集在各种法律的论坛上裁定的案件。这一数据集涵盖了从独立到现代的时期，将有助于查明各国和各时期法律的决策的普遍模式。该研究项目有助于了解专制法律的制度和巩固发展中世界大部分地区的主权。它将从三个重要方面深化对这些主题的理论和经验理解。首先，它将有助于确定专制权力如何对法律的机构的设计和运作产生长期影响，即使是在向民主过渡之后。其次，它将提请注意撒哈拉以南非洲和东南亚国家的法律的制度的政治影响，这些地区已成为美国重要的经济和外交伙伴。第三，它将提供关于发展中国家建国关键时期法律的设计的新数据，可用于本项目范围以外的其他研究。这些数据将在调查结果公布后公布。