Browsing by Subject "Institutions"

In this study I address the moral and cultural disagreement and conflict regarding the interpretation of human rights norms that threatens the legitimacy of the human rights enterprise. Such disagreements present an opportunity to probe, question and dissect beliefs to uncover inconsistencies and false assumptions and attain a deeper insight into human rights norms that are presently left in a rather abstract form in international human rights documents and conventions.

I describe and defend an institutionally-driven dialogical approach that promises to systematically address these moral and cultural disagreements. My approach rests on two claims. First, clearer content for human rights norms will emerge from within particular cultures if critical cultural and moral investigation through dialogue is encouraged. By engaging in dialogical processes, we not only discharge our obligation to aid in a process that leads to a fair specification of human rights norms, but we also come to understand how human rights norms are, at their very core, participative.

Second, one way that international human rights institutions (IHRIs) can legitimately fulfill their function of supporting human rights is by encouraging critical moral investigation through dialogue. I make this proposal more concrete by discussing the case law on the issue of transsexuals that has come before the European Court of Human Rights.

A theology of institutions is dependent upon an imagination sparked by the cross and shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Creative destruction is the institutional process of dying so that new life might flourish for the sake of others. Relying upon the institutional imagination of James K.A. Smith, the institutional particularity of David Fitch, and L. Gregory Jones’ traditioned innovation, creative destruction becomes a means of institutional discipleship. When an institution practices creative destruction, it learns to remember, imagine, and be present so that it might cultivate habits of faithful innovation. As institutions learn to take up their cross a clearer telos comes into view and collaboration across various organizations becomes possible for a greater good. Institutions that take up the practice of creative destruction can reimagine, reset, restart or resurrect themselves through a kind of dying so that new life can emerge. Creative destruction is an apologetic for an institutional way of being-in-the-world for the sake of all beings-in-the-world.

This dissertation is a collection of three chapters all pertaining to institutional economics. In short, the eld of institutional economics is an outgrowth of public economics, in the sense that in many cases he key institutions that frame economic decisionmaking are the product of public policy. However this is not exclusive. Institutional economics' key contribution is the acknowledgement that cultural and social institutions --- often developed organically over the course of centuries --- can play as signicant a role in individuals' economic choices as governmental policy. In the pages that follow, we will address the economic impact of cultural and political institutions in three contexts: Judicial decisionmaking in Islamic courts, the effects

of negative health shocks on retirement savings, and the tradeoff between retirement savings and investment in durable goods.

Over the last thirty years successful national economic development is considered participation in global industries, particularly in global value chains. Frequently, however, inclusion in these chains brings forth varied socioeconomic benefits for chain actors, acutely different ethnic and racial groups. Costa Rican participation in the tourism global value chain while heralded as a success story shows varied impacts for ethnoracial groups who are incorporated, excluded, and stratified in various forms. By comparing two communities in Costa Rica, Tamarindo and Cahuita, three main practices are apparent in determining the position of foreigners from the global North, Costa Ricans from the Central Valley, Afro-Costa Ricans, and Guanacastecans in the industry as workers or entrepreneur suppliers: (1) the role of governance structures, i.e., power dynamics between firms along the value chain and the importance of standards, formal and subjective; (2) institutions, including global private travel fairs, national tourism boards, and specific development policies; and (3) the dominance of environmental imagery and rural democracy narratives to market Costa Rica. Concretely, the development of global tourism in Costa Rica and its impact upon different groups is nuanced and it is a testament to both opportunities for local economic and social empowerment and stratification and marginalization.

Maintenance Works: The Aesthetics and Politics of Collective Support investigates the cultural visibility and value of maintenance labor through a critical examination of American visual and material culture, post-1969. Starting from the visual and performance practice of self-proclaimed “maintenance artist” Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969!, I develop a conceptual definition of maintenance as sustaining activity that occurs across scales, from the intimate labor of caring for bodies, to the collective, macro-scale problems of sustaining infrastructures and environments. I argue that, with the gesture of assigning her own and others’ maintenance labor the status of “artwork”, Ukeles prompts a critical re-valuation of the visibility and social and economic value of maintenance that resonates with a host of historical and contemporary discourses on the gendered and stratified distribution of material and social reproduction, including Marxist-feminist approaches to care work, critiques of innovation discourse in science and technology studies, and concern with issues of social and economic precarity in recent cultural criticism and critical theory. At the center of both Ukeles’ project and these discussions lie important questions about the status, conditions, and social distribution of care and support: Who is doing it? How does it get done? How does it feel to maintain or be maintained? What happens when practices and structures of social and material support fail, whether through immediate crisis or prolonged neglect? How do those affected find ways of maintaining otherwise? Each chapter of Maintenance Works approaches these questions by examining the visual and material culture around what I define as late 20th-century “crises of maintenance”: shifting economies of care and support, global environmental destruction, and institutionalized abandonment and neglect. The cultural objects I discuss span decades and genres, including land and environmental art, feminist and queer performance, and social practice. Through these material case studies I add important theoretical and cultural foundation to contemporary discussions on care, precarity, and sustainability across disciplines from queer and feminist theory to eco-critical humanities, to science and technology studies, and center the production and reception of artwork as sites for critical inquiry and knowledge production.

At the beginning of and throughout each Congress, Members adopt institutional regimes to organize the House. Their choice of regime determines how power is distributed in the chamber and, critically, where along the ideological spectrum United States public policy is produced. In this work, I (we) compare the validity of two prominent theories of congressional organization: floor theory, which contends that power is vested with all Members voting on the floor; and party theory, which contends that power is at least conditionally vested with the majority party. I examine the question of institutional regime, power distribution, and the location of public policy through two lenses: first, I take a macro view in analyzing final passage coalitions in the post-Reconstruction (1881) House; next, I take a micro view in analyzing the motion to recommit in the post-Republican Revolution (1994) House. I find that Members adopted an institutional regime empowering the majority party from approximately the adoption of Reed’s Rules (1890) to the Great Depression (1932) and again from approximately the congressional reforms of the 1970s to at least the modern decade. These results indicate that U.S. public policy likely reflected the ideal point of the median Member in the majority party during these two periods. However, I also find that neither floor nor party theory adequately explains congressional organization in the intervening mid-century period, indicating the need for further research.

American voters understand that elections have consequences, but they have become so disillusioned by their political system that approximately 40 percent have self-selected out of the two-party circus, choosing instead to identify as independent or unaffiliated which often requires them to forego their primary election voting rights. They understand that the process no longer serves its intended purpose of providing for representative government. Nevertheless, when it comes to elections, Americans get it wrong in just about every way possible. They spend so much time debating which superficial features of the electoral system—voter ID laws, polling place hours and locations, voter registration deadlines, etc.—are destroying the political process that they overlook the real cause of its decay: that political parties exercise control over the rules of the electoral system.

At the end of the day, people want a government that works. It is quite clear that the political system we have now simply does not allow for that. Less obvious are exactly why this is so, and what can be done. The role of this paper, then, is as a sort of citizen’s primer to our electoral crisis. I begin by tracing the origins of American political parties and describe how they and their agents in government mold the electoral system to their advantage in getting and maintaining control of government. Next, I discuss the ways in which that system is so deleterious to stable, functioning government and “national attachment” in the body politic. I then propose an alternative electoral system that would allow for fair and effective representation of more people, helping to rebuild the necessary trust and confidence in our fundamental political institutions. Finally, I reflect on the dangers of continuing to use a system in which political parties—private organizations—abuse state power and the fundamental institution of democracy—the election—to protect and advance their private interests, and how institutional collapse might be avoided.

Background: Although used previously as a function of the judiciary primarily in custody battles, the best interest of the child because an international human rights standard with the 1989 adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) by the UN General Assembly. The ‘best interest’ standard has consequently been adopted and used in many State-level child protection polices, particularly in reference to orphans and separated children (OSC), in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), including India. However, little attention has been paid to how State-level actors, including both policy stakeholders as well as direct carers of OSC, interpret and implement this standard in their local contexts.

Objective: This study’s objective was to explore how the best interest of the child as a norm of international human rights is interpreted and applied to the care and protection of OSC in residential care policy in India.

Methods: Using a qualitative, experimental, design we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews and focused group discussions with two distinct groups: 1) Child Protection Policy Stakeholders and 2) Direct caregivers of OSC in a residential care center (RCC). Policy group participants completed in-depth interviews about current child protection policies in India and their interpretation of the best interest of the child. Direct caregivers of OSC completed in-depth interviews and, for certain caregiver sub-categories, focused-group discussions on their daily lived experience working with and, sometimes, living with OSC in residential care settings.

Results: Thirty-eight direct caregivers of OSC from one particular residential care center in New Delhi took part in the study. Eighteen policy stakeholders, including government bureaucrats, policy researchers, child rights advocates, and directors of RCCs also took part. Interview results were grouped into ‘key area domains’, with five domains emerging per participant group. Ultimately three domains were overlapping between the groups: Resources, Accountability, and Approaches to Care while two domains were distinct for each group: Policy Frameworks and Reforms (Policy Stakeholders) and Institutional Processes and Perceptions of the Experience of the Child (Direct caregiver group). Distinct differences and similarities were noted amongst all of the domains between the two participant groups. All domains were somehow related to the attempt to construct the best interest of the child in RCCs in India.

Conclusion: Although a de jure standard, both internationally and nationally, the best interest of the child seems to be a de facto reality in India, especially as defined by direct caregivers of OSC. In this setting, the best interest emerged not as a standard that individuals and organizations held themselves to, but as a construct that was created and re-created based on , in particular, availability of resources, accountability mechanisms, and the way in which individuals approached caring for children.

I present a study of how water users, namely farmers, choose to participate in new institutions for irrigation governance and how these new institutions contribute to irrigation infrastructure conditions. Institutions are the sets of working rules or rules in use for manage natural resources. In the process of decentralizing irrigation management since the late 1990’s, the government of Tajikistan has created over 400 formal Water User Associations (WUAs). WUAs are non-governmental organizations, which aim to increase the participation of local water users in the management of irrigation systems. Despite significant governmental and international organization efforts to establish new WUA institutions, the degree to which water users participate in and adopt WUA institutions in Tajikistan in new WUAs remains uncertain. I explore the following research questions in this dissertation: 1) How do water users participate in new WUA institutions in Tajikistan? 2) How do new WUA institutions in Tajikistan affect irrigation infrastructure conditions? 3) How do the contextual features of a locale affect the adoption of new WUA institutions in Tajikistan?

I used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and theories of institutional change from the literature on governing common pool resources, as well as the disciplines of sociology, political science, and evolutionary economic geography. I collected data in Tajikistan in 2015-2016. Qualitative data consist of field observations and water user focus groups in four WUAs in southwestern Tajikistan, and semi-structured and narrative interviews with key actors involved in the development of new WUA institutions across three 100-kilometer rural-urban study sites in Tajikistan. Quantitative data include structured interviews with 159 WUA conducted in the same three rural-urban study sites.

First, I examined how four preconditions for self-organization (trust and reciprocity, common understanding, water user and WUA autonomy, and prior organizational experience) drive water user participation in irrigation infrastructure maintenance activities. I conducted a qualitative comparative case study of four WUAs using data from my field observations, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews. The four WUA case studies were selected based on water availability and estimated levels of trust among water users that were obtained from structured interviews. Results showed that the preconditions for self-organization were positively associated with farmer and WUA contributions to irrigation infrastructure maintenance activities. However, water user participation in maintenance activities was not associated with better irrigation infrastructure conditions.

Second, I investigated how new WUA institutions predicted the participation of water users in irrigation governance and irrigation infrastructure conditions. Using the Institutional Development and Analysis (IAD) framework to pose my hypotheses, I examined how collective choice arrangements, monitoring, and sanctions affected water user rule compliance, water user participation in maintenance activities, and irrigation infrastructure conditions. I performed ordered logistic regression analyses on data from structured interviews with 159 WUA leaders. Results revealed that collective choice arrangements, rather than monitoring and sanctions, positively predicted water user compliance of WUA rules. Water user compliance of WUA rules, rather than water user participation in maintenance activities, was positively associated with irrigation infrastructure conditions. Implications of the findings suggested that collective choice arrangements and rule compliance play a critical role in facilitating irrigation infrastructure conditions, yet monitoring and sanctioning rules have not been fully established in new, yet evolving WUA institutions in Tajikistan.

Finally, I studied how the contextual features of a locale affect water user adoption of new WUA institutions. I hypothesized that water users are more likely to adopt WUA institutions when WUA service areas are located close to urban centers, have greater frequencies of interactions with state officials, and have a limited history of irrigation practices. Using data from 159 structured interviews with WUA leaders, results from ordinal logistic regression analyses illustrated that WUA adoption was associated with endogenous variables that affect water users’ choice to adopt WUA institutions, such as WUA service areas’ distance to urban centers and the dependence on food production as a means of supporting livelihoods. In addition, WUA adoption was also associated with exogenous variables, such as the frequency of government officials’ visits to the locales where the WUA service areas were located, as well as household consumption of food products from beyond WUA service areas. I conducted a narrative analysis based on narrative interviews to corroborate these findings.

Broader implications of my dissertation revealed that water user adoption of new WUA institutions was contingent on local contexts and levels of trust, reciprocity, and common understanding amongst all actors in Tajikistan’s irrigation sector. Water user and WUA autonomy were important for sustaining WUA institutions beyond the initial WUA formations. Yet, some level of financial and technical contributions from the government of Tajikistan and international organization were necessary for maintaining larger irrigation infrastructure, especially since the scales of infrastructures that water users inherited from the Soviet Union did not match smaller scale WUA irrigation infrastructure maintenance efforts. Finally, existing institutional frameworks and literatures for studying common pool resources did not sufficiently capture the characteristics and evolution of new institutions (i.e., institutions as young as one to thirty years), especially since most common pool resource studies have focused on characterizing long-enduring institutions (i.e., institutions greater than 100 years). I highlighted some key features of new institutions for natural resource systems: 1) a certain amount of time for learning and adaptation is necessary for formal rules to promote normative behaviors among resource users (i.e., monitoring and sanctioning rules); 2) credible commitments and communication foster trust in and common understanding of new institutions for resource governance; 3) in the early stages of developing and implementing new institutions, resource user autonomy and participation contribute to the ongoing use of those institutions; and 4) geographic, historical, and social contexts can influence resource users’ considerations and incentives regarding whether new institutions are worth pursuing. In my concluding chapter, I emphasized the need for further study of the characteristics and evolution of new institutions for natural resource governance beyond current frameworks of well established, long enduring institutions.