Laws, Judiciaries, and National Security Agencies: Advancing Theory and Concepts of Civil Society Laws

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This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and SBE's Law and Science program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Jeffrey K. Staton at Emory University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating how and why governments regulate civil society. The human rights community has grown increasingly concerned with legal crackdowns or regulatory restrictions of civil society organizations (CSOs) around the globe. The standard explanation is that these civil society laws and enforcement actions are less likely in open, democratic societies and more likely in undemocratic or authoritarian settings. The data generally accord with this expectation but there is a non-trivial number of exceptions, and data show many undemocratic regimes routinely enact liberal laws. In explaining these cases, we give special attention to the judiciary and national security agencies as actors that change and enforce these legal institutions.The research makes substantive contributions to research topics in judicial politics, political economy, democratization and development, law and political institutions, legal processes, public policy, and comparative public administration. Its primary research objectives are to examine how the judiciary affects the evolution of civil society laws through court rulings. Depending on the context, courts have the power to declare laws unconstitutional, identify statutes as appropriate but enforcement actions unjust, or legitimize enforcement actions and legal institutions. Two, analyze the role of security agencies in the enforcement of civil society laws over a multi-decade period. Three, publish an original dataset on the Qualitative Data Repository created by coding a legal corpus used in the fellow's earlier research. These objectives are interconnected and rely on a mixed-methods research design. Deskwork codes primary source materials collected from [a country's] National Legislative Library, Commission on Laws and Judicial Reporting, and the Ministry of Laws and Justice. Fieldwork conducts in-depth interviews with instructors at [the country's] Centre for Training and Developing Judges.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.