Collaborative Research: Transparency and the Rule of Law

合作研究：透明度和法治

• 批准号: 1921271
• 负责人: Timothy Frye
• 金额: $ 9.26万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1921271&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Transparency; Rule; Law

Scholars and policymakers agree that strong legal institutions are essential for economic development and democratic governance, yet efforts to improve the rule of law in post-communist and developing countries have frequently been stymied. Recent experience offers little hope for successful top-down reforms, as entrenched elites are well-placed to undermine such efforts. This project therefore contributes to the study of law and social science and to the development of effective policies for building the rule of law by shifting attention to an innovative bottom-up, citizen-led effort to improve judicial transparency: the videotaping of court hearings by civil society organizations. The study's focus on Ukraine is particularly timely given that the United States has in recent years devoted extensive resources to support Ukrainian rule-of-law reforms in recognition of Ukraine's prominent role in ongoing geopolitical conflicts between Russia and the West. The study will consist of a large-scale field experiment. Random assignment of court sessions to "treatment" (videotaping) and "control" (no videotaping) conditions will facilitate rigorous evaluation of citizen-led transparency initiatives' impact on key elements of the rule of law, including judicial outcomes, judges' and prosecutors' adherence to procedural rules, and lawyers' perceptions of the judiciary's fairness and independence. Analyses will draw on surveys of lawyers and administrative data collected from Ukrainian courts. The research will result in a novel data set covering approximately 2000 court sessions from five Ukrainian cities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

学者和决策者一致认为，强有力的法律的机构对于经济发展和民主治理至关重要，但在后共产主义国家和发展中国家，改善法治的努力经常受到阻碍。最近的经验表明，自上而下的改革取得成功的希望不大，因为根深蒂固的精英阶层有能力破坏这种努力。因此，该项目有助于研究法律和社会科学，并通过将注意力转移到一种创新的、自下而上的、公民主导的提高司法透明度的努力，即由民间社会组织对法庭听证进行录像，来制定建设法治的有效政策。鉴于美国近年来投入了大量资源支持乌克兰的法治改革，以认识到乌克兰在俄罗斯和西方之间持续的地缘政治冲突中的突出作用，这项研究对乌克兰的关注尤为及时。这项研究将包括一个大规模的实地实验。随机将庭审分为“处理”（录像）和“控制”（不录像）两种情况，将有助于严格评估公民主导的透明度举措对法治关键要素的影响，包括司法结果、法官和检察官遵守程序规则的情况以及律师对司法公正和独立性的看法。分析将利用对律师的调查和从乌克兰法院收集的行政数据。该研究将产生一个新的数据集，涵盖来自乌克兰五个城市的约2000次法庭会议。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。