The dynamic values and practices of African traditional leaders often clash with the democratic values underpinning the states in which they reside. Of particular concern is some chiefs' support of patriarchal customs that conflict with the value of equality enshrined in many African constitutions. Namibia is an especially relevant case to the study of traditional leaders' interaction with equality policies. In 2007, despite laws that prohibit chiefs' participation in governance, the Namibian government began a concerted effort to engage chiefs as key stakeholders in the implementation of several gender equality policies and campaigns. In a country in which nearly 70 percent of the population recognizes a traditional leader's authority, the state's decision to use chiefs as stakeholders in women's rights issues will likely impact the efficacy of its policies and campaigns. The engagement of chiefs in the promotion of equality policies motivates this project's central question: under what conditions will traditional leaders promote women's rights?
To answer this question, the project examines the gender-related elements of three policy areas in which chiefs have legal power or have been recruited by the state to serve as stakeholders: HIV/AIDS education and prevention, communal land allocation, and anti-gender-based violence campaigns. The project predicts that chiefs are most likely to support policies that promote women's rights in matters outside their historical areas of authority, thereby enlarging their sphere of influence. The project combines archival research with interviews of informants from the government, NGOs, rural communities, and traditional authorities. An original survey of traditional leaders will capture demographic information and examine motivations behind their policy preferences. Case studies of chief-headed communities with varying policy preferences will pinpoint causal mechanisms accounting for the logic of chiefs' support.
The intellectual merit of this research stems from its efforts to advance understanding of equality policies and has two goals. First, it illuminates conditions under which a traditional institution will promote democratic principles. Second, it examines the ways in which the relationship between traditional authorities and the state changes the goals and values of each institution. This project contributes to three bodies of scholarship. To studies of formal and informal institutions, it introduces a third, quasi-formal type of institution that questions the institutional dichotomy accepted by most scholars. It joins a growing movement in the traditional governance literature to move beyond discussions of chieftaincy as threatening to democracy and instead examines situations in which traditional leaders can assist in the task of democratic consolidation. To the research on women in politics, the project adds a local-level perspective on women's efforts to lobby chiefs in communities overseen by traditional leaders.
The project has broader impacts as well. For policymakers, understanding the motivations behind traditional leaders' decisions to support or reject policies will improve their strategies for crafting legislation that maximize chances of chiefly endorsement. Findings in this case, moreover, will extend far beyond Namibia to other African countries with strong chieftaincies, along with other countries that have traditional leaders in some form, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Pacific nations. For women's rights organizations, gender equality policies are critical to the improvement of women's lives. The project suggests that chiefs do not always threaten the success of women's rights policies but can, in some cases, actually hasten the achievement of policy goals. This insight will allow women's groups to more effectively lobby traditional leaders for support of policies that they are likely to endorse.
This project examined the role of traditional leaders – a term that includes chiefs, kings/queens and headmen/women – in the implementation of women's rights policies in the southern African country of Namibia. It sought to answer the question, under what conditions will traditional leaders support women's rights policies? Two major research activities were undertaken with support from the NSF: 1) qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in northern Namibia (the geographic region in which all of the project's case study communities are located), including traditional leaders, women's group representatives, and regional elected officials and civil servants, and 2) a survey of 280 citizens in northern Namibia that live under the authority of traditional leaders. Findings revealed that traditional leaders are neither categorically opposed to, nor uniformly supportive of, women's rights policies. Instead, traditional leaders evaluate individually each policy that the state has requested they assist in implementing in their rural communities, and chiefs determine on a policy-by-policy basis whether participating in the implementation process conforms with their chiefly rights and responsibilities as well as with community expectations of chiefly involvement. Specifically, chiefs’ participation in women's rights policy implementation depends upon two factors: 1) whether traditional leaders frame an issue as a matter that affects the entire community, and 2) whether consistent state oversight of chiefs’ policy implementation exists. When traditional leaders frame an issue as communal and consistent state oversight is in place, chiefs will implement the policy as requested by the state, as in the case of communal land allocation and inheritance. By contrast, when chiefs frame the issue as impacting only individuals and state oversight is lacking, traditional leaders ignore entirely their implementation duties, as the case of domestic violence prevention policies illustrates. In situations in which no state oversight exists but traditional leaders have framed the issue as affecting community wellbeing, policy implementation will occur but may not follow state directives. This project was developed in part to address a question that has troubled political scientists, policymakers and women's rights activists for over a decade: why have progressive laws intended to promote gender equality and improve women's lives failed to do so? During the democratization wave of the 1990s, many developing countries, including several African states, passed laws and policies intended to improve political representation, socioeconomic status, economic and educational opportunities, health outcomes and personal safety for women. While scholars, policymakers and activists bemoan the ineffectiveness of these measures, little has been done to investigate the causes of the failure. This project was motivated in part by the need to uncover and address the roots of these legal and policy failures. By examining the implementation process for three sets of policies that were intended to improve women's lives in an African country with a strong commitment to promoting gender equality, this project illuminates important factors driving policy success or failure. This project finds that, under the right conditions, traditional leaders can be powerful allies in implementation of women's rights policies in rural areas, where conditions for women are often particularly difficult and which developing states often struggle to reach. The survey undertaken as part of this project revealed that chiefs are uniquely well-positioned to implement women's rights policies in rural communities because their subjects view them as knowledgeable and trustworthy leaders. Moreover, because many practices and customs that contribute to women's unequal treatment are justified as components of "traditional belief systems," chiefs are uniquely qualified to redefine or renounce harmful customs within their communities. Case studies in traditional communities in rural northern Namibia carried out as part of this project augmented the surrey's findings. Specifically, the case studies revealed that traditional leaders have indeed been effective at implementing, and educating their communities about women's rights policies when those measures are regarded by traditional leaders as potentially beneficial to the wellbeing of communities as a whole. When traditional leaders' implementation activities receive state oversight or review, policies are even more likely to be successful. It is hoped that the findings of this study will influence the way that legislators write and frame gender equality legislation, and the way that bureaucrats implement these policies, in the future. Framing women's rights policies as benefiting the wellbeing of entire communities increases the likelihood that traditional leaders will support the policy implementation process. Including provisions for an advisory body or review process also increases the likelihood of policy success.
