Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Communicative Citizenship and Participatory Democracy

加州大学圣地亚哥分校研究生安娜·保拉·皮门特尔·沃克将在南希·G·波斯托博士的指导下，进行参与式民主的研究。她的重点将是为什么参与式民主的一些实例在相互竞争的社会阶层和利益集团之间分配国家资源时比其他实例更有效。关于参与性机构效力的社会科学调查结果往往不一致。为了解释这些不一致，本研究将探索以下假设：1)一个政党的参与式民主思想会影响国家资源的再分配；2)不同的参与式制度设计会产生不同的再分配结果。这项研究将在巴西进行，在巴西，几种形式的参与性机构现在是强制性的。然而，实施这些政策的市政当局由不同意参与式民主目标的政党管理，参与式民主的目标允许进行比较研究设计。比较实地考察工作将在圣保罗市的两个区进行，这两个区对参与的看法不同。研究人员将首先对参与性会议上发生的交际互动和话语实践进行社会语言学分析，在这些会议上，关于什么是好公民的想法被形成为研究人员所称的“交际性公民”。除了社会语言学分析，研究还将包括在会议上的直接和参与者观察；政策文件、人口普查信息和预算数据的分析；政治区域的文本分析；对两个区居民的访谈；以及一项调查。除了澄清参与式民主文献中一些相互矛盾的发现外，这项研究还将进一步深入了解机构、意识形态以及对公民身份和权利的本地理解之间的关系。研究结果还可以帮助政策制定者和活动人士推动机构改革。资助这项研究还有助于社会科学家的教育。

University of California at San Diego graduate student, Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, under the guidance of Dr. Nancy G. Postero, will undertake research on participatory democracy. Her focus will be on why some instances of participatory democracy are more effective than others in distributing state resources among competing social classes and interest groups. Social science findings regarding the efficacy of participatory institutions are often inconsistent. To explain these inconsistencies, this research will explore the hypotheses, that 1) a political party's ideology of participatory democracy has an impact on the redistribution of state resources; and 2) different designs of participatory institutions produce disparate redistributive outcomes. The research will be conducted in Brazil, where several forms of participatory institutions are now mandatory. However, the municipalities implementing them are governed by political parties that disagree about the goals of participatory democracy, which allows for a comparative research design. The comparative fieldwork will be done in two districts in the Sao Paolo Municipal Area, which differ in their views of participation. The researcher will begin with a sociolinguistic analysis of the communicative interactions and discursive practices that take place at participatory meetings, where ideas of what constitutes a good citizen are developed as what the researcher terms "communicative citizenship." In addition to sociolinguistic analysis, the research will include direct and participant observation at meetings; analysis of policy documents, census information, and budget data; textual analysis of political tracts; interviews with residents of both districts; and a survey. Besides clarifying some of the contradictory findings of the participatory democracy literature, this study will provide further insight into the relationship between institutions, ideologies, and locally-situated understandings of citizenship and entitlements. Research findings can also aid policymakers and activists in promoting institutional reforms. Funding this research also contributes to the education of a social scientist.