Local Dimensions of Sustainable Democracy Building: Lessons from the Southern Balkans

About this grant

Since 2001, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies has conducted research in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro on the impact of community efforts regarding development, reconstruction and democratization. The project addresses two vital questions: 1) What have international efforts to build peace and democracy in the former Yugoslavia achieved? and 2) How can this knowledge inform future policy initiatives?Multiyear funding will support continued efforts to assess and guide international democracy-building initiatives that focus on community-based action programs. Activities will include identifying and training local researchers to use a combination of research methodologies — critical oral history and political ethnography; designing and conducting field-based research to address aspects of the democratization process in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro; preparing reports on the research findings; and disseminating a final report.Watson Institute for International Studies evolved from Thomas J. Watson Jr.’s (Brown University class of 1937) vision for a research and teaching center that would address the most pressing problems of its time.