This research in cultural anthropology studies the effect of personal insecurity on people's attitudes toward and tolerance of democratic values and human rights in a democratizing context. The central hypothesis is that insecurity and lack of access to a democratic rule of law create conditions that threaten the preservation of democracy in societies recently transformed from authoritarian governance. The research hypothesizes that personal security correlates with tolerance for basic democratic principles and human rights, and that urban residents of Cochabamba, Bolivia who lack personal security are more likely to adopt violent remedies to address their situations than are those who have access to other ways to ensure security. Using ethnographic methods of investigation (including participant-observation, focus groups, and personal interviews), the research compares the responses of residents of three different communities in Cochabamba, all of whom lack access to official justice, but who have compensated for this lack in three different ways: by employing private security firms; by maintaining a system of community justice brought through migration from the countryside; and by resorting to vigilante violence. It hypothesizes that in the two communities that have developed non-violent alternatives to compensate for the lack of official policing and judicial services, tolerance for democracy and human rights will be greater than in the community that employs vigilante violence as a crime-control measure. Broader Impacts: The new knowledge produced by this research will be useful to governments and planners concerned with improving the democratic transition, to support not only formal democratic measures like elections but the implementation of a rule of law in newly democratic societies, and so reduce the violence and insecurity with which so many of the world's people now live.
