Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation
Purpose of SSIPI
FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
Democratic Transition in Egypt
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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at CDDRL is pleased to announce a one-day conference to be held on Friday April 29, 2011, entitled, "Democratic Transition in Egypt." This event, co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, will focus on Egypt's current revolutionary period, to examine this pivotal moment in Egypt's political history and prospects for future reform. The conference brings to Stanford leading Egypt academics from American, European, and Egyptian universities and think tanks. Panels will examine the background to the revolution, discuss the role of oppositions parties and civil society, and forecast Egypt's political future.
For those who can't make it in person, the conference will be tweeted live from 9:00-5:30 PST on Twitter @StanfordCDDRL, #ARDEG for those interested in following virtually.
Co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.
8:30 Welcome
9:00-10:30 Panel 1: The Popular Revolt against the Mubarak Regime
Chair: Joel Beinin, Stanford University
- The popular movement - Emad Shahin, Notre Dame University
- The response of the regime: the effort of the old order to re-establish itself - Samer Shehata , Georgetown University
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:45 Panel 2: The Process of Regime Transition - Till the Presidential Election and Beyond
Chair: Lina Khatib, Stanford University
- The process of negotiations between the regime and opposition groups; how will things look like till the presidential election? - Joshua Stacher, Kent State University
- Crafting Egyptian democracy: the agenda for constitutional and institutional reform - Tarek Masoud, Harvard University
- Internal security and external pressure: is Egypt becoming less repressive? - Jason Brownlee, University of Texas at Austin
12:45-1:45 Lunch
1:45-3:45 Panel 3: Egypt's Changing Political Party Landscape
Chair: Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University
- Secular opposition paries - Samer Soliman, American University in Cairo
- The Muslim Brotherhood: what next? - Omar Ashour, University of Exeter
- Newcomers and veterans in a changing political arena- Hesham Sallam, Georgetown University
3:45-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30 Panel 4: Looking Forwards
Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University
- Connecting digital activists to power: new approaches to democracy promotion - Ben Rowswell, Stanford University
- The presidential and parliamentary elections - Shadi Hamid, Brookings Doha Center
Bechtel Conference Center
Larry Diamond
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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ldiamond@stanford.edu
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Lisa Blaydes
Encina Hall West, Room 408
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
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blaydes@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Lina Khatib
Moderator
Stanford University
Joel Beinin
Moderator
Stanford University
Hesham Sallam
Speaker
Georgetown University
Joshua Stacher
Speaker
Kent State University
Tarek Masoud
Speaker
Harvard University
Emad Shahin
Speaker
Notre Dame University
Samer Shehata
Speaker
Geoergetown University
Jason Brownlee
Speaker
University of Texas at Austin
Shadi Hamid
Speaker
Brookings Doha Center
Omar Ashour
Speaker
University of Exeter
Ben Rowswell
Speaker
Stanford University
Samer Soliman
Speaker
American University in Cairo
Conferences
Music Videos and Arab Public Life: Contention and Circulation
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Music videos are ubiquitous in contemporary Arab public life. As captivating audio-visual blurbs, music videos attract attention; they are interesting not only because of their provocative aesthetics, but because they spotlight controversial issues and elicit impassioned reactions from public figures and ordinary people alike. Discussing religious videos that elaborate an Islamic vision of globalization, pop videos that subvert dominant social norms, play with Christian imagery, and create a fantasy world, in addition to focusing the discussion on videos about the US occupation of Iraq, Kraidy considers music videos as instruments of visibility in a saturated media economy suffering from attention scarcity.
Marwan M. Kraidy is Associate Professor of Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (Cambridge, 2009), which won the 2010 Best Book Award in Global Communication and Social Change, from the International Communication Association, Arab Television Industries (BFI/Palgrave, 2009, with J. Khalil), Hybridity, or, The Cultural Logic of Globalization (Temple, 2005), and the edited volumes Global Media Studies: Ethnographic Perspectives (Routledge, 2003), and The Politics of Reality Television: Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2010).
Sponsored by:
- Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, CDDRL
- Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
- Humanities Center
- African and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures Program
- Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
Levinthal Hall
Marwan Kraidy
Associate Professor of Global Communication
Speaker
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Conferences
Parliamentary Elections and Authoritarian Rule in Bahrain
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Fred H. Lawson is Professor of Government at Mills College. In 2009-10 he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. His publications include Constructing International Relations in the Arab World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), Why Syria Goes to War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) and The Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the Muhammad 'Ali Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Fred Lawson
Professor, Government, Department Head
Speaker
Mills College
Seminars
Elizabeth Buckner
CDDRL
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ebuckner@stanford.edu
Buckner4.jpg
Elizabeth Buckner is the President of the Arab Studies Table at Stanford University. She is a PhD Candidate at Stanford University School of Education, specializing in International and Comparative Education, where she is also pursuing a MA in Sociology. She is interested broadly in education and globalization in the Middle East and North Africa region, including the expansion of higher education in the region, and the link between education and employment. She was a Fulbright grantee to Morocco in 2006, and was a recipient of a Critical Language Scholarship to Oman in 2008. She has presented her research in conferences in Morocco, Egypt and Turkey and throughout the US. She has also conducted research for the Academy for Educational Development (AED) in Morocco, Save the Children (SC) in Egypt, and the Syrian Trust for Development in Damascus. Elizabeth graduated with Highest Honors from Swarthmore College in 2006 with a B.A. in Educational Studies and Sociology. She is fluent in Modern Standard Arabic and Moroccan Dirija, and is trying to learn the Levantine dialect for her future dissertation research. She also supported various research ARD projects over the past three years.
You Vote, We Decide! Analyzing the 2010 Iraqi Elections and the Ensuing Political Process
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Abbas Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He also holds a Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University since 2005. Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
His recent publications include: "a Case of Partial Cooperation: the 1920 Revolution and Iraqi Sectarian Identities" (forthcoming); "Forging a Third Way: Sistani's Marja‘iyya between Quietism and Wilāyat al-Faqīh, in Iraq, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, edited by Ali Paya and John Esposito, Routledge, July 2010; "Widows' Doomsday: Women and War in the Poetry of Hassan al-Nassar," in Women and War in Muslim Countries, ed. Faegheh Shirazi, Austin: The University of Texas Press, June 2010; "Opting for the Lesser Evil: US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq, 1958-2008," in Bob Looney (ed.) Handbook of US Middle East Relations, London: Routledge, 2009; and Shi`i Perceptions of the Iraq Study Group, Strategic Insights, vol. VI, issue 2 (March 2007).
His book translations include Shi‘a Sects: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes, London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (2007); Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar (Arabic Translation), Köln, Germany: Dar al-Jamal (2006); and Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives, by Anthony Giddens (Arabic Translation), with Dr. Hassan Nadhem, Beirut: (2003).
His current projects include editing the Routledge Handbook of Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge (forthcoming 2011) and finishing a manuscript on The 1920 Revolution and the Making of the Modern Iraqi State (under review).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Abbas Kadhim
Assistant Professor
Speaker
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California
Seminars
