Fellowships: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Keith Darden, Political Science: [renewal] Creation of New Forms of Regional Order in the Former Soviet Union. This project seeks to explain the changes in regional relations between the former republics of the Soviet Union from 1991 to the present, particularly the ongoing transfer of authority to supranational regional institutions of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Using extensive interviewing and ethnographic methods, the project will attempt to test a constructivist argument that the changes in the region, and particularly the shift towards collective institutions, are due to a conceptual change among state leaders: a shift from republican nationalisms to the conception of the Post-Soviet space as a single organic whole. To do this, the proposed research will examine developments in three areas (the armed forces, oil and natural gas, and macro-economic policy) and seek to explain the variation in regional order over three periods (1991-93, 1993-95, and 1996-present). The constructivist approach will be tested on its ability to account for the timing of the changes, and to establish a causal link between the changing ideas and changing interests of the states through process tracing.
Lise Howard, Political Science: Organizational Learning and Forgetting: The United Nations and Civil War Termination. Recent research
in civil war termination and in peacekeeping has demonstrated that civil wars
are most likely to end in negotiated settlements when there is outside
intervention. Since WWII, the UN has intervened in more civil wars than any
other international actor. What, if anything, have various branches of the UN
"learned" about civil war terminating activities? Does organizational learning
and forgetting in the UN Secretariat affect the way decisions are made in the
Security Council? In this dissertation, Ms. Howard argues that consensual
knowledge about how to engage in multifunctional peacekeeping in civil wars
(organizational learning) developed in the UN Secretariat and shapes the
formation of "political will" in the UN Security Council. There are no
well-formed counter-hypotheses to this one, thus, rather than
hypothesis-testing, Ms. Howard will hypothesis-build, based on empirical
evidence. By employing Ernst Haas' descriptive model of organizational change,
she will demonstrate learning and forgetting for four essential UN
war-terminating activities, including separation of forces, humanitarian
assistance, refugee management, and elections monitoring. She will then analyze
the effects that organizational learning/forgetting appear to have on Security
Council decision-making.
See more information on Lise Svenson (Howard)
David Hughes, Anthropology: [renewal] War, Refugees and Environmental Conflict on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique Border. How do civilian communities reshape broad-scale armed conflict to suit their own purposes? Mr. Hughes' dissertation addresses this question in the context of an environmental struggle in Zimbabwe induced by Mozambique's recently concluded war. His ethnographic fieldwork documents the ways in which certain Zimbabwean men have become "wealthy" by using three different categories of Mozambican migrants. Headmen have gained territory to rule by settling refugee families inside a national park (revealed in aerial photographs and interviews); elder men have enlarged their families by marrying Mozambican second and third wives (shown in a genealogical survey and interviews); and entrepreneurial farmers have entered the cash crop market with the help of underpaid Mozambican labor migrants (demonstrated by banana production statistics and interviews).
Nicolas Jabko, Political Science: The New Europe and the Market from Organizational Strategy to Institutional Change. Does globalization fuel European integration by nature or by design? Some argue that Europe's Single Market was no more than a logical response to various economic and technological trends, alias globalization. Mr. Jabko's hypothesis, however, spells out a political explanation of Europe's singular move toward the new economic institutions of a Single Market and of a soon-to-be Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). European Commission officals acted as the hidden hand behind the Single Market and EMU, fostering a region-wide political mobilization in favor of a market-building enterprise, ostensiby in the name of economic globalization, yet in pursuit of regional political integration. Drawing on written sources and interviews, he will conduct four case studies of institutional change in Europe's political economy.
See more information on Nicolas Jabko
Amy Ross, Geography: Geographies of Justice: Truth Commissions in Guatemala and South Africa. Truth commissions appear in places that have experienced intense violence and the systematic violation of human rights. And, in ways related to that history of violence, these societies generally have justice systems considered unable (or unwilling) to handle the project of prosecuting the perpetrators. What can we expect from these commissions that we acknowledge to be unattainable through existing systems of justice? Ms. Ross' doctoral thesis follows fourteen months of fieldwork observing the turth commissions in Guatemala and South Africa. She analyzes the activities and impact of these commissions on their own terms, i.e., on their abilities to fulfill the objectives established in their mandates. She argues that although truth commissions might be very useful political tools during negotiations of armed conflicts, the effectiveness of truth commissions in fulfilling their ethical objectives is much more problematic. Her research begins with the premise that the manner in which "the truth" is constructed must be seen within the context of the specific political and social conditions shaping the establishment and function of such commissions. Her methodology combines structured interviews, participatory observation, and institutional ethnography in order to determine how the reconstruction of the truth dialectically interacts with the transformation of power relations experienced in each nation.
©Copyright 1999, Regents of the University of California