Paula M. Pickering

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at William & Mary

This chapter describes and evaluates a 23-year long service partnership- The American-Bosnian Collaboration (ABC) Project– designed to use non-formal education to promote a culture of peace and intercultural understanding among Bosnian youth. It describes the founding principles of the sustained collaborative work that resulted in different forms o...

Undergraduates today face a more demanding and competitive labor market than their parents' generation. In response, some pursue double majors to signal breadth to potential employers and improve their job prospects. Some also realize that a strong signal of workplace readiness is having in-demand skills acquired through independent and collaborati...

Qualitative studies featuring in-depth research have recently pushed back against characterizations of citizens in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) as passive. After mobilizations in 2014, how do citizens in BiH engage in public action, and what factors explain their public participation? This article uses data from an original, nationally re...

Mobile communication technologies can provide citizens access to information that is tailored to their specific circumstances. Such technologies may therefore increase citizens’ ability to vote in line with their interests and hold politicians accountable. In a large-scale randomized controlled trial in Uganda (n=16,083), we investigated whether ci...

Voters may be unable to hold politicians to account if they lack basic information about their representatives’ performance. Civil society groups and international donors therefore advocate using voter information campaigns to improve democratic accountability. Yet, are these campaigns effective? Limited replication, measurement heterogeneity, and...

Significance Text messages providing salient, nonpartisan, official information on budget corruption prompted Ugandan voters to take the performance of some politicians into account when voting. Holding politicians accountable via elections is a fundamental precursor to effective governance, economic development, and high-quality public services. T...

Why has international investment into reforming local governance in post-conflict societies produced mixed results? Drawing on new institutionalism, the authors expect reform outcomes, even of comprehensive assistance, to be shaped by the interaction between new and old rules, an interaction mediated by local elites. This expectation is explored in...

Despite decades of Western assistance seeking to develop civil societies in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, many local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) lack strong bases in their societies. This field-based study of citizens’ views of Western-aided women’s organisations in four Serbian towns uses frame resonance to explore why. In inte...

Democratic theorists and development practitioners both consider local governance, as the level of governance closest to the people, to be a foundation of good democratic governance. This paper uses field-based research and statistical analysis to investigate how international and domestic factors explain the varying levels of progress that interna...

International assistance programs for local governance in Bosnia have been most effective in situations where the initial level of governing capacity is low; where local office is competitive; and where local leaders are practical, entrepreneurial consensus builders. Politicization, however, frustrates citizen participation, and civic organizations...

This research investigates the impact of international donor efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the post-war Western Balkans. It explores the hypothesis that the greater the degree of international authority in domestic decision-making, the more significant the obstacles to developing domestic instituti...

Parties willing to engage in cross-ethnic political cooperation are essential for the stability and democracy of ethnically divided post-conflict states. The investigation of voting in Macedonia and Bosnia, which are similarly small, impoverished, ethnically fragmented and threatened states that arose out of Yugoslavia, helps uncover factors that e...

Croatia’s complex and violent transition contributed to conditions under which ex-communists have exerted significant influence over multiple post-Communist parties. In the 1990s, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by President Franjo Tudjman employed war to impose a semi-authoritarian system that further weakened the electoral prospects of th...

After suffering years of war, Bosnia is now the target of international efforts to reconstruct and democratize a culturally divided society. The global community's strategy has focused on reforming political institutions, influencing the behavior of elite populations, and cultivating nongovernmental organizations. But expensive efforts to promote a...

One of the major goals of the international community's intervention into the Balkans is the rebuilding of “viable multiethnic societies”. Such societies require support from a population that builds inclusive social capital. I applied social network theory to interethnic relations to help identify the conditions under which minorities could embark...

Abstract will be provided by author.

One of the major goals of the international community's intervention into the Balkans is the rebuilding of 'viable multiethnic societies.' Such societies require support from a population that builds inclusive social capital. I applied social network theory to interethnic relations to help identify the conditions under which minorities could embark...