Graduate student Jason Cross, supervised by Dr. William M. O'Barr will undertake research on the role of monitoring technologies, such as monitoring and evaluation procedures, in the implementation of democratic governance reforms. Although governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and foreign-aid agencies routinely use monitoring technologies to assess institutional reform, little attention has been paid to the effects of the monitoring practices themselves on the social process of democratic governance.
The research will be carried in El Salvador. The researcher will focus on agencies and NGOs that have been central in the design and implementation of democratic reforms, and local political actors in three municipalities undergoing reform. The research objectives are to examine the making, use, and meaning of monitoring technologies for diverse participants in democratic governance, in order to understand how these technologies affect local political culture and facilitate the globalization of specific forms of governance. Therefore, the researcher will use ethnographic, historical and legal methods to conduct a qualitative analysis of the construction, circulation, and use of monitoring technologies in programs addressing citizen participation, accountability, and rule of law.
Examining closely the legacy of democratization in El Salvador is important because the country often serves as a model for post-conflict democratization and as a laboratory for decentralization policies with global reach. This study will identify ways in which global discourses of governance take root and are adapted to particular locales with diverse notions of what democracy is, or can be. Additionally, it will provide an in-depth and systematic examination of how legal and technological governance practices emerge together and depend on each other for their reliability and efficacy, as they rework social relations, historical legacies and desired futures. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.
