Cultural Recognition and Effective Democratic Transition

治理的定义往往是公民希望由中央政府提供服务的愿望与他们对自治的要求之间的微妙平衡，不受同一政府的影响。有效运作的民主政体取决于对这种平衡的有效管理。这在多民族国家中更具挑战性，因为文化、种族或宗教差异可能在国家是否愿意提供保护和援助方面发挥核心作用。这种差异也可能成为文化少数群体要求自决权的依据。在多民族民主国家，要求承认、被统计、投票、被平等对待的权利与要求退出政体、承担独立带来的风险和潜在回报之间往往会产生紧张关系。本项目调查在民主转型的背景下，援引文化而不是领土要求的战略是否能有效地获得国家服务和承认。项目研究结果也将提交给参与有效治理、冲突解决标准和可持续民主过渡发展途径的组织。密歇根大学安阿伯分校的迈克尔·麦戈文博士将探讨文化作为向中央治理机构提出主张的和平手段的战略部署。这项研究是在缅甸掸邦南部的达努人正在经历民主转型的背景下进行的，该地区被选为调查这一问题的地点，因为它与缅甸大多数其他少数民族群体的主张形成鲜明对比，这些少数民族群体的主张是由领土主张和武装抵抗国家的历史所定义的。研究将在掸邦的三个相邻乡镇进行，分别位于1.在半自治的自治区（SAZ）的达努，一个混合掸，缅甸人口，2。在一个由Pa-O民族组织统治的SAZ中，该组织是一个前分离主义组织，一直与缅甸族占主导地位的中央政府（以及当地占主导地位的掸族）战斗到1994年。位于两个特区之间的一个掸族乡镇，不属于特区。以村庄为基础的参与式观察，对地方精英和中央政府代表的半结构化访谈，以及村民和地方精英的生活史，将使研究者能够调查文化的工具性使用以及武装抵抗和文化斗争之间的交替是否会导致不同形式的日常治理，文化实践，以及普通平民村民和代表他们说话的当地精英的政治情绪。这项研究将有助于理解国家和少数群体利用文化主张的方式，并有助于理解文化创造、领土主张和暴力之间的关系。

Governance is frequently defined by a delicate balance between citizens' desires to be provided services by a central government and their demands for autonomy, to be left alone by that same government. Functioning democracies depend on the effective management of this balance. This proves even more challenging in multiethnic nation-states, where cultural, ethnic, or religious difference can come to play central roles in the state's willingness or unwillingness to provide protection and assistance. Such difference can also become the basis for cultural minorities claiming the right to self-determination. In multiethnic democracies, there often results a tension between demands for recognition, the right to be counted, to vote, to be treated as an equal; and demands to exit the polity, to take on the risks and potential rewards that accompany independence. This project investigates whether strategies that invoke cultural rather than territorial claims are effective for obtaining state services and recognition in the context of democratic transition. Project findings will also be presented to organizations involved in development pathways for effective governance, conflict resolution standards, and sustainable transition to democracy.Dr. Michael McGovern of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor will explore the strategic deployment of culture as a peaceful means of making claims on the central governing apparatus. The research takes place in a context undergoing democratic transition, among the Danu people in southern Shan State, Myanmar, which is selected as a site for investigating this question because it contrasts with claims-making practices of most other ethnic minority groups in Myanmar, defined by territorial claims and a history of armed resistance to the state. Research will take place in three adjacent townships in Shan State, located 1. in a semi-autonomous self-administered zone (SAZ) of the Danu, a hybrid Shan-Burmese population, 2. in an SAZ governed by the Pa-O National Organization, a former separatist group that fought the ethnic Burman-dominated central government (as well as the locally dominant Shan) until 1994, and 3. in an ethnic Shan township that is not part of an SAZ, but that sits between the two SAZs. Village-based participant observation, semi-structured interviews with local elites and representatives of the central state, and life histories with both villagers and local elites will allow the researcher to investigate the ways in which instrumental use of culture and alternation between armed resistance and cultural struggle do or do not lead to different forms of everyday governance, cultural practice, and political sentiment among ordinary civilian villagers and the local elites who speak on their behalf. The research will contribute to understanding the ways both states and minority groups utilize cultural claims, and to understanding the relations among culture-making, territorial claims and violence.