Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Uneasy Alliances: Traditional Leaders and Equality.

非洲传统领导人充满活力的价值观和做法往往与他们所在国家的民主价值观相冲突。特别令人关切的是，一些酋长支持父权习俗，这与许多非洲宪法所规定的平等价值相冲突。纳米比亚是研究传统领导人与平等政策互动的一个特别相关的案例。2007年，尽管法律禁止酋长参与治理，但纳米比亚政府开始协调努力，让酋长作为关键利益攸关方参与执行几项性别平等政策和运动。在一个近70%的人口承认传统领导人权威的国家，国家决定让酋长作为妇女权利问题的利益相关者，可能会影响其政策和运动的效力。酋长参与促进平等政策激发了该项目的中心问题：在什么条件下，传统领导人将促进妇女权利？为了回答这个问题，该项目审查了三个政策领域中与性别有关的内容，在这些领域中，酋长拥有法律权力或被国家招募担任利益攸关方：艾滋病毒/艾滋病教育和预防、社区土地分配和反基于性别的暴力运动。该项目预测，酋长们最有可能在其历史职权范围之外的事务中支持促进妇女权利的政策，从而扩大他们的影响范围。该项目将档案研究与对来自政府、非政府组织、农村社区和传统当局的线人的采访结合在一起。一项针对传统领导人的原始调查将收集人口统计信息，并检查他们政策偏好背后的动机。对具有不同政策偏好的酋长社区的案例研究将查明酋长支持的逻辑的因果机制。这项研究的学术价值来自于它努力促进对平等政策的理解，并有两个目标。首先，它阐明了传统机构促进民主原则的条件。其次，它考察了传统当局和国家之间的关系如何改变每个机构的目标和价值观。这个项目为三个学术团体做出了贡献。对于正式制度和非正式制度的研究，它引入了第三种准正式制度类型，质疑了大多数学者所接受的制度二分法。它加入了传统治理文献中日益增长的运动，超越了对酋长的讨论，认为这是对民主的威胁，而是审查了传统领导人可以协助完成巩固民主任务的情况。除了对女性参政的研究，该项目还增加了一个地方层面的视角，以了解女性在由传统领导人监督的社区游说酋长的努力。该项目也产生了更广泛的影响。对于政策制定者来说，了解传统领导人支持或拒绝政策决定背后的动机，将改善他们制定立法的战略，使主要获得支持的机会最大化。此外，这一案件的调查结果将远远超出纳米比亚，延伸到其他拥有强大酋长地位的非洲国家，以及其他以某种形式拥有传统领导人的国家，包括阿富汗、巴基斯坦和南太平洋国家。对于妇女权利组织来说，性别平等政策对改善妇女生活至关重要。该项目表明，酋长并不总是威胁妇女权利政策的成功，但在某些情况下，实际上可以加速实现政策目标。这种洞察力将使妇女团体能够更有效地游说传统领导人支持她们可能支持的政策。

The dynamic values and practices of African traditional leaders often clash with the democratic values underpinning the states in which they reside. Of particular concern is some chiefs' support of patriarchal customs that conflict with the value of equality enshrined in many African constitutions. Namibia is an especially relevant case to the study of traditional leaders' interaction with equality policies. In 2007, despite laws that prohibit chiefs' participation in governance, the Namibian government began a concerted effort to engage chiefs as key stakeholders in the implementation of several gender equality policies and campaigns. In a country in which nearly 70 percent of the population recognizes a traditional leader's authority, the state's decision to use chiefs as stakeholders in women's rights issues will likely impact the efficacy of its policies and campaigns. The engagement of chiefs in the promotion of equality policies motivates this project's central question: under what conditions will traditional leaders promote women's rights? To answer this question, the project examines the gender-related elements of three policy areas in which chiefs have legal power or have been recruited by the state to serve as stakeholders: HIV/AIDS education and prevention, communal land allocation, and anti-gender-based violence campaigns. The project predicts that chiefs are most likely to support policies that promote women's rights in matters outside their historical areas of authority, thereby enlarging their sphere of influence. The project combines archival research with interviews of informants from the government, NGOs, rural communities, and traditional authorities. An original survey of traditional leaders will capture demographic information and examine motivations behind their policy preferences. Case studies of chief-headed communities with varying policy preferences will pinpoint causal mechanisms accounting for the logic of chiefs' support. The intellectual merit of this research stems from its efforts to advance understanding of equality policies and has two goals. First, it illuminates conditions under which a traditional institution will promote democratic principles. Second, it examines the ways in which the relationship between traditional authorities and the state changes the goals and values of each institution. This project contributes to three bodies of scholarship. To studies of formal and informal institutions, it introduces a third, quasi-formal type of institution that questions the institutional dichotomy accepted by most scholars. It joins a growing movement in the traditional governance literature to move beyond discussions of chieftaincy as threatening to democracy and instead examines situations in which traditional leaders can assist in the task of democratic consolidation. To the research on women in politics, the project adds a local-level perspective on women's efforts to lobby chiefs in communities overseen by traditional leaders. The project has broader impacts as well. For policymakers, understanding the motivations behind traditional leaders' decisions to support or reject policies will improve their strategies for crafting legislation that maximize chances of chiefly endorsement. Findings in this case, moreover, will extend far beyond Namibia to other African countries with strong chieftaincies, along with other countries that have traditional leaders in some form, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Pacific nations. For women's rights organizations, gender equality policies are critical to the improvement of women's lives. The project suggests that chiefs do not always threaten the success of women's rights policies but can, in some cases, actually hasten the achievement of policy goals. This insight will allow women's groups to more effectively lobby traditional leaders for support of policies that they are likely to endorse.