Local Governance in Timor-Leste - Secretaria de Estado da Arte e ...

also miss political forces and influences from the levels of suku and subdistrict thatshape, enable and constrain people's daily lives. Equally, focussing at the subdistrictlevel would give a better picture of 'local elite' politics, but would miss importantconsiderations within more localised communities. For this study, with its emphasison the coexistence of modern and traditional governance, I chose to focus on thekonsellu de suku—the community representative body that acts as a 'gateway'between modern and traditional institutional domains across the suku of Timor-Leste.The konsellu de suku is recognised as a 'modern' community representative institution,legitimated through Decree Law 3/2009. However, it also openly incorporates many'traditional' authority figures who are elected to serve on the council and deliberatelyco-opts traditional modes of dispute resolution. In an effort to draw in some of theinfluences from aldeia and subdistrict, the work of konsellu de suku members iscontextualised within the work of other local leaders at the aldeia, suku andsubdistrict levels.As every community is unique in terms of its local politics and history, I took acomparative approach using two case study sites: the subdistricts of Venilale andAinaro. Undertaking comparative analysis is useful in attempting to move beyond thevery localised, individual focus of single case studies in order to draw out broaderthemes (George and Bennett, 2004: 68). It has been rightly noted that comparativeanalysis does not transform qualitative research into a 'scientific' experimental method(Lijphart, 1971: 685), however that was not the aim with this research. Rather, myfocus was to provide a more nuanced analysis that moved beyond the unique politicaland historical circumstances within each subdistrict—and in particular to provide amore nuanced picture of the importance of political parties in framing local politics, afactor that was particularly important in my first case study site. These twosubdistricts were chosen on the basis of their similarities (both up in the mountains,both many hours' drive from Dili), as well as their differences (one in the east, theother in the west, populated by different language groups, with different politicalparty affiliations and different experiences of Indonesian occupation and resistance.)To enable comparative analysis, research in each community followed a similarformat, using a combination of purposeful and then snowball sampling, whichinvolved first identifying interviewees based on their importance for my research and33