Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Knowledge-Making: the Relationship between Science, Democracy, and Development

近年来，民间社会组织、墨西哥和国际专家、国家官僚和民选官员都提出了要求，并参与了国家和社会政策改革的项目。这一具有挑战性的任务得到了一个强有力的、动员人心的想法的支持，即“知识和证据”政策的潜力，可以使负责设计和管理社会政策的官僚机构民主化和现代化，从而更有效、更高效、更透明地实现这个新生民主国家的公民所得到的承诺。墨西哥向民主形式的社会政策转变仍然是一个正在进行的项目，通过这个项目正在形成新的专门知识形式，建立新的关系，并通过这个项目正在谈判墨西哥民主的意义和发展的未来。本文试图解释参与社会政策现代化和民主化的国家、专家和民间社会行动者如何想象和理解这一政治项目；占据这个项目中心的专业知识的形式是如何产生的，并在当代墨西哥社会政策制定中使用；以及这个正在进行的过程对国家福利和未来发展的影响。这一定性案例研究包括对社会政策知识和政策证据的生产和流通的民族志观察；对专家、民间社会领袖和国家官员进行深入访谈；并对关键文件和媒体进行分析。通过对塑造墨西哥社会政策的微观基础进行民族志描述，本研究希望为全球南方新兴福利国家的跨学科文献做出贡献；国家权力与治国理论；以及对专业知识和民主之间关系的日益理解。更广泛的影响首先，随着社会发展政策朝着“循证”干预的方向发展，随着科学越来越多地被动员为民主的工具，本论文的研究结果将被证明是美国、墨西哥和整个全球南方的学者和政策实践者的宝贵资源。其次，考虑到国际实地考察的组成部分，这项研究将加强合作，并有助于跨学科的国际对话。

SES-1303560PI: Patrick Heller Co-PI: Diana Graizbord Brown UniversityIn recent years, civil society organizations, Mexican and international experts, state bureaucrats and elected officials have made demands for, and joined in the project of state and social policy reform. This challenging task is undergirded by a powerful and mobilizing idea about the potential for "knowledge- and evidence-based" policy to democratize and modernize the bureaucracy responsible for the design and administration of social policy, and thus, to deliver more effectively, efficiently and transparently that which the citizens of this nascent democracy have been promised. The transformation toward democratic forms of social policy in Mexico remains an ongoing project through which new forms of expertise are being crafted, new relationships forged, and through which the meaning of democracy and future of development in Mexico are being negotiated. This dissertation seeks to explain how state, expert and civil society actors involved in social policy modernization and democratization imagine and understand this political project; how the forms of expertise that occupy the epicenter of this project are produced and used in contemporary Mexican social policymaking; and what the effects of this ongoing process are on the country's welfare and development future. This qualitative case study includes ethnographic observation of the production and circulation of social policy knowledge and policy evidence; in-depth interviews with experts, civil society leaders and state officials; and analysis of key documents and media. By providing an ethnographic account of the micro-foundations that shape social policy in Mexico this research hopes to contribute to an interdisciplinary literature on emergent welfare states in the Global South; theories of state power and statecraft; and to the growing understanding of the relationship between expertise and democracy.BROADER IMPACTSFirst, as social development policy moves in the direction of "evidence-based" interventions, and as science is increasingly mobilized as a tool of democracy the findings of this dissertation will prove a valuable resource for scholars and policy practitioners in the US, Mexico and throughout the Global South. Second, given the international fieldwork component this research will enhance collaboration and contribute to a cross-disciplinary, international dialogue.