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Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt

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Abstract:

Islamic charities occupied a critical space in Mubarak-era Egypt. While there are a plethora of organizational types and activities, Mona Atia describes a particular type of work performed by Islamic charities as a merging of religious and capitalist subjectivity, or pious neoliberalism. Pious neoliberalism describes how Islamism works in conjunction with neoliberalism rather than as an alternative to it. It represents a new compatibility between business and piety that is not specific to any religion, but rather is a result of the ways in which religion and economy interact in the contemporary moment. In Egypt, pious neoliberalism produces new institutions, systems of knowledge production and subjectivities. This lecture explores the relationship between Islamic charity and Egypt’s variegated religious landscape. The author will discuss how Islamic charities helped spread Islamic practices outside the space of the mosque and into everyday life/spaces and their impact on development in Egypt.

Speaker Bio:

mona atia

Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She received her PhD in Geography at the University of Washington, where she received the 2008 Distinguished Dissertation Award. She holds a MSc in Cities, Space and Society from the London School of Economics and a BS in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Atia is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise include Islamic charity and finance, philanthropy and humanitarianism, and the production of poverty knowledge. She is author of Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). She currently holds an NSF CAREER Award for her project "The Impact of Poverty Mapping on the Geography of Development."

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

 

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Reuben Hills Conference Room
2nd Floor East Wing E207
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305

Mona Atia Associate Professor The George Washington University
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

Sheila Carapico examines the paradoxes of political aid in the Arab world [VIDEO]

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As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, University of Richmond Political Scientist Sheila Carapico discussed findings from her ground-breaking study Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation (Cambridge University Press, 2013) which explores two decades’ worth of projects sponsored by American, European, and other transnational agencies in four key sub-fields: the rule of law, electoral design and monitoring, female empowerment, and civil society. European and US-based scholars and practitioners have debated the purposes and sometimes the (limited) macro-effects of programs designed to promote transitions from authoritarianism to democracy in Middle East countries. Yet this discussion often lacks analysis of on-the-ground experiences or ignores the cumulative wisdom of local counterparts and intermediaries. Carapico discussed controversies and contradictions surrounding projects in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq (the three main cases) and Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon (where democracy brokers also work) to help explain why so many feminists and other advocates for justice, free elections, and civic agency concluded that foreign funding is inherently political and paradoxical.

 

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Stanford historian Joel Beinin analyzes role of workers in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions [VIDEO]

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As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, Stanford Historian Joel Beinin discussed the role of workers in advancing revolutionary struggles in Egypt and Tunisia. Arab workers participated prominently in the popular uprisings of 2011. They shared the outrage of many of their compatriots over daily abuse by internal security forces, widespread corruption, and foreign policies subservient to U.S. interests. Their participation in those uprisings was also informed by struggles against the neoliberal economic restructuring of the region since the 1970s, which resulted in an indecent chasm between rich and poor, deteriorating working conditions and public social services, and high youth unemployment.

Egypt experienced a strike wave of unprecedented magnitude in the 2000s. Tunisia, with one exception, experienced less intense contestation by workers and others. Egyptian workers’ have had very limited influence on national politics in the post-Mubarak era. Democratic development seems unlikely in the near future. The Tunisian national trade union federation and its affiliates were the central force in installing procedural democracy. The nature of workers’ social movements in the 2000s partially explains these divergent outcomes.

 

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ARD scholar on resurgence of authoritarianism in Egypt

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On the fourth anniversary of Egypt's January 25 Revolution, Hesham Sallam, associate director of CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and Jadaliyya co-editor, remarks on the return of authoritarianism in Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Sallam argues that the ruling military regime has become more repressive than that of President Hosni Mubarak, highlighting growing victimization of civil society members. Listen to Sallam's interview with KPFA 94.1 Berkeley below.

 

 

 

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Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) speaker series seeks to promote critical discussions around questions of political change, social and economic rights, power and resistance in the countries of the Arab world. Scholars from across disciplines are invited to present new, innovative research that sheds light on the nuances of ongoing, salient developments and trends in the Arab world, while situating them in a rich historical context.

The Middle East, North Africa and the World, 1907-2008

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Abstract

Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

 

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

9:00 -10:30 Political Economy

Chair: Robert Crews (Stanford University)

Toby Jones (Rutgers University) “Energy and War in the Persian Gulf” (Abstract)

Brandon Wolfe-Honnicutt (California State University, Stanislaus) “Oil, Guns, and Dollars: U.S. Arms Transfers and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods” (Abstract)

10:45-12:15 Ideas and Institutions

Chair: Aishwary Kumar (Stanford University)

Yoav Di-Capua (University of Texas at Austin) “An Iconic Betrayal: Jean Paul Sartre and the Arab World” (Abstract)

Omnia El Shakry (University of California, Davis) “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Psyche in postwar Egypt” (Abstract)

1:30-3:30 Global Palestine

Chair: Hesham Sallam (Stanford University)

Laleh Khalili (University of London, SOAS) “Palestine and Circuits of Coercion” (Abstract)

Ilana Feldman (George Washington University) “Humanitarianism and Revolution: Samed, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and the work of liberation” (Abstract)

3:15-4:45 Circulation of Popular Culture

Chair: Alexander Key (Stanford University)

Hisham Aidi (Columbia University)  “Frantz Fanon and Judeo-Arab Music” (Abstract)

Paul A. Silverstein (Reed College) “A Global Maghreb: Crossroads, Borderlands, and Frontiers in the Rethinking of Area Studies” (Abstract)

5:00 pm Concluding Remarks

Chair: Joel Beinin (Stanford University)

For more information, please contact The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

*Organized by the The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and co-sponsored by the History Department, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Global Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center*

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Conferences

Workers and Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia

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Abstract:

Arab workers participated prominently in the popular uprisings of 2011.  They shared the outrage of many of their compatriots over daily abuse by internal security forces, widespread corruption, and foreign policies subservient to U.S. interests. Their participation in those uprisings was also informed by struggles against the neoliberal economic restructuring of the region since the 1970s, which resulted in an indecent chasm between rich and poor, deteriorating working conditions and public social services, and high youth unemployment.

Egypt experienced a strike wave of unprecedented magnitude in the 2000s. Tunisia, with one exception, experienced less intense contestation by workers and others. Egyptian workers’ have had very limited influence on national politics in the post-Mubarak era.  Democratic development seems unlikely in the near future.  The Tunisian national trade union federation and its affiliates were the central force in installing procedural democracy. The nature of workers’ social movements in the 2000s partially explains these divergent outcomes.

Speaker Bio:

Joel Beinin

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, his M.A. from Harvard University in 1974, and his A.M.L.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978 and 1982. He also studied at the American University of Cairo and and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lived in Egypt in 1969, 1980-81, 1985, 1986, 1994, 2004-05, and 2006-08 and in Israel in 1965-66, 1970-73, 1987, 1988, 1993, and 1993. He has taught Middle East history at Stanford University since 1983. From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. His research and writing focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East and on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

Beinin has written or edited nine books, most recently Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa; co-edited with Frédéric Vairel (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Solidarity Center, 2010). His articles have been published in leading scholarly journals as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde Diplomatique, and others. He has appeared on Al-Jazeera TV, BBC radio, National Public Radio, and many other TV and radio programs throughout North America, and in France, Egypt, Singapore, and Australia, and has given frequent interviews to the global media. In 2002 he served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute.

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Goldman Conference Room
4th Floor East Wing E409
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305

Joel Beinin Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Stanford University
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

The Ties that Bind: Elite Networks and Stability in Iraq and Syria

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Abstract: Why and how do elite arrangements vary across authoritarian regimes? Why do some arrangements persist, while others are dissolved through coup d’état, failed coup attempts, and extensive purges? Existing political science explanations of authoritarian stability broadly emphasize three factors: individual members’ attributes, material payoffs, and formal institutions. Yet historians and country experts emphasize the centrality of social and informal ties between actors. I argue that, to understand the variation in the source and extent of coalitional breakdown, scholars must situate the holders of political and military office in their organizational and social context. Authoritarian coalitions differ in systematic ways in their members’ patterns of organizational and social relationships; these different relational configurations have distinct implications for coalitional trajectories. This paper employs original archival and interview evidence to trace the emergence and evolution of authoritarian networks in Iraq and Syria. It demonstrates that the extent of overlap between organizational and social networks explains the type of elite breakdown (and its breadth) over time. 

About the Speaker: Julia Choucair-Vizoso is a joint predoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) for 2014-2015. She is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Yale University.

Choucair-Vizoso studies coalitional politics and elite networks in nondemocratic settings. Her dissertation examines how elites organize to enforce authoritarian rule, and how and why these organizational structures evolve. Drawing on network theory and analysis, her study examines ruling coalitions in Iraq and Syria.

Her research has been supported by fellowships from the United States Institute of Peace and Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She holds a B.S. in International Politics and an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 

This event is sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. 

CISAC Central Conference Room
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor
616 Serra St
Stanford, CA 94305

Julia Choucair-Vizoso Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC/CDDRL
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

Program on Arab Reform and Democracy welcomes new leadership

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This summer Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is welcoming new leadership to oversee the growth and development of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD), one of the Center's principal research programs examining contemporary issues of political development in the Arab world.

Lisa Blaydes, assistant professor of political science at Stanford, will assume the role of faculty co-director, working together with CDDRL Director Larry Diamond to help shape the program's research agenda. Blaydes will be joined by Hesham Sallam, currently a CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow completing his Ph.D. in government at Georgetown University. He will serve as the program's new associate director, assuming operational management and developing the program's research initiatives and activities at Stanford and throughout the Arab world, in partnership with the faculty co-directors. Sallam is also joining CDDRL as a research associate. In that capacity he will produce research and publications on questions related to political and economic reform in the Arab World.

Sallam is replacing ARD's founding director Lina Khatib, who left CDDRL last year to assume directorship of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace's Middle East office in Beirut.

"We are very excited to have Hesham Sallam assuming this leadership role in the ARD program, and joining the research staff of CDDRL,” said Diamond. “Hesham is not only a superb scholar of Arab politics and political economy, but has also been deeply engaged in analytic and public policy debates about the future of the region. His deep knowledge and broad credibility in the field will be strong and immediate assets to the program, and will help us build on the strong foundation laid by our founding program leader, Lina Khatib."

“I am extremely delighted to join the CDDRL and FSI family,” said Sallam. “I look forward to working closely with the Stanford community, faculty, students, and staff, to expand interdisciplinary discussions of Arab politics and society on campus.”

“By enhancing its intellectual engagement with scholars and activists in Arab world, ARD will continue to nuance our understanding of conflicts over political, social and economic rights in the region by supporting critical scholarship and by developing innovative research agendas,” he said.

Sallam’s dissertation examines how Islamist movements have impacted the politics of economic reform in Egypt before and after the Arab uprisings in 2011. His previous research has received the support of the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council. Sallam also serves as co-editor of the Jadaliyya, a leading online magazine, which invites critical debate and analysis of current events in the Arab world from academics, activists and journalists. 

Diamond expressed great enthusiasm over the addition of Lisa Blaydes to the program’s faculty leadership. “Over the past several years, Lisa has rapidly emerged as one of the most original and influential scholars of politics and social change in the Arab world,” he said. “She brings to the program intense intellectual curiosity, scholarly distinction and a keen interest in advancing social science studies of the Arab world."

Blaydes, a specialist in comparative politics and politics in the Middle East, recently published the book, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt, which examines the complex relationships among regimes, rent-seeking elites and citizens fostered by authoritarian elections.

“The Arab world is at a critical juncture,” said Blaydes. “Although mass protests have transformed public political consciousness, the long-term impact of the protest movement on more concrete forms of power has yet to be determined. Policy-relevant scholarly research such as that conducted by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy may help us to identify pathways to political reform.”

Blaydes and Sallam, together with Diamond, participated in the most recent ARD Program conference on political change in the Arab world. Held in collaboration with the Center for Research on Globalization and Democratic Governance at Koc University in Turkey, the conference brought together leaders in policy, academia and government to address issues of violence and government transitions in the region following continuous civil unrest and political uncertainty.

Founded in 2010 with annual support from the Moulay Hicham Foundation, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy aims to be a hub for intellectual capital about issues related to good governance, social change and political reform in the region, producing rigorous and policy-relevant academic research. Conferences and seminars in the U.S. and the Arab world provide innovative forums for academics and policy-makers to advance new ideas and approaches to the most pressing issues facing the region today.

For more information on the Program on Arab Reform and Development, please visit: http://arabreform.stanford.edu/. 

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Arabic Conversation Session with Zahera Harb

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*Open only to Stanford students.* 

Speaker Bio: 

Zahera Harb is one of the six 2013-2014 FSI-Humanities Center International Visitors and will be in residence at Stanford in May 2014. She is Senior Lecturer in International Journalism at City University London. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in journalism studies from Cardiff University (United Kingdom). As an expert on Arab media, she has published widely on journalism ethics, conflict and war reporting, political communication and representation of Muslims and Islam in western media. Her recent publications include Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (2013) and Channels of Resistance: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media (2011). Dr. Harb also has 11 years of experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organizations.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Humanities Center, Arab Studies Table, Stanford Language Center. 

Building 30, Room 102

Zahera Harb Senior Lecturer in International Journalism Speaker City University London
Seminars
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