2021 Year In Review
Dear CDDRL community and supporters,
It was an honor to step into the Mosbacher Directorship at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the fall quarter of 2021. I took the baton from Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, who led the Center for just over 7 incredibly creative and productive years. I am grateful for all that Frank has done as Director and for leaving the Center in such excellent shape, despite the considerable challenges presented by COVID-19 this last year and a half.
As you know, 2021 began with the world still under the dark shadow of the pandemic. Despite the restrictions that COVID has created for us all, as you will see in what follows in this annual report, the CDDRL community adapted quickly to continue our important work. This has included a record number of online seminars throughout the winter and spring, and our teaching and training programs transitioned well to our new online-only world. Indeed, we were able to hold an amazingly effective although abbreviated Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program by Zoom this summer with 34 fellows in attendance (no easy feat considering the number of time zones we all had to juggle).
Happily, we were able to return to campus in September. We were thrilled to welcome students back to in-person classes, including our undergraduate course, PS/IR 114D with a five-year record in enrollment of 120 students. Our 11 Fisher Family Undergraduate Honors Program students were also able to gather in-person to work on their fascinating research projects under the careful mentoring of Associate Director for Research, Didi Kuo, and Senior Fellow Steve Stedman. We welcomed The World House Project under the leadership of Stanford historian, Clayborne Carson to CDDRL in addition to hosting former Ukrainian prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk as the Susan and Bernard Liautaud Visiting Fellow for the fall quarter. In September we also welcomed three Ukrainian Emerging Leaders to campus to work on projects that will advance their country’s political and economic development, along with seven pre- and postdoctoral fellows and a visiting scholar who are working with our various researchers and research programs. We ended the year with an in-person conference reflecting on the state of democracy thirty years (almost to the day) of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Finally, our faculty have continued to produce outstanding research and analysis on topics like poverty and governance in Latin America, global responses to the pandemic, American democratic survival, global democratic recession (and what to do about it), as well as the effects of information technology on human values and democratic governance.
The Center has been fortunate to receive several transformational gifts in 2021. We are particularly grateful to Bruce and Nancy Mosbacher and their family for creating our new Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy in honor of Larry Diamond’s pathbreaking contributions. Another new gift will fund five postdoctoral scholars at CDDRL in honor of Gerhard Casper. We are also grateful to Rudolf and Bernice Moos for the creation of the new Einstein-Moos Family Postdoctoral Fellowship.
I have only just skimmed the surface of our activities over the year. I hope that you will spend some time perusing this report to get a far better understanding of all that we have accomplished at CDDRL in 2021.
With all the best wishes for a healthier 2022,
Kathryn Stoner
Mosbacher Director and Senior Fellow
Professor of Political Science (by Courtesy)
Honors & Awards
Beatriz
Magaloni
Professor Beatriz Magaloni
Beatriz Magaloni, professor of political science, FSI senior fellow, and faculty director of the Program on Poverty, Violence & Governance has been named the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, an endowed professorship established at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. This year she was also the winner of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in American Political Science Review.
Clayborne
Carson
In his June round of nominations, President Biden nominated Clayborne Carson, FSI's MLK, Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus and director of The World House Project, to the Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. In this role, Carson, a seminal scholar on the life and writing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will review dozens of unsolved and racially motivated murder cases from the civil rights era.
Avner
Greif
Professor Avner Greif was the co-recipient of the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics' Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Gary Liebcap (UC Santa Barbara). This prestigious award recognizes sustained significant academic contributions to institutional and organizational economics.
Larry
Diamond
Larry Diamond has been named the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The new position was made possible by a generous donation from Nancy and Bruce Mosbacher, in recognition of Diamond’s distinguished contributions as a researcher, teacher and mentor at FSI and its Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.
The Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective conducts policy-relevant research related to effective governance in the United States.
In February, the Program hosted a webinar series on HR1, the For the People Act, bringing together scholars, lawyers, and reform activists for a four-part deep dive into President Joseph Biden's signature democratic reform legislation.
Scholars also signed on to a statement of concern regarding threats to American democracy and the need for national voting and election administration standards, and a statement urging Congress to support the Freedom to Vote Act.
Didi Kuo
Associate Director for Research
Senior Research Scholar
The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) continues to provide a critical forum for examining innovative research on Arab social and political development and discussing pressing public policy concerns related to the Arab world. To mark the 10-year anniversary of the Arab Uprisings, the program held several high-profile events in 2021 to take stock of how politics in Arab countries have evolved in the decade that followed that monumental event.
- Among them was a February panel discussing the legacy of the 2011 January 25 Uprising in Egypt and how the workings of authoritarian governance have adapted under the regime of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi.
- In a June talk, Georgetown University Historian Abdullah Al-Arian analyzed the long-term impact of the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath on Islamist movements throughout the region.
- In a November webinar, New York University Political Scientist Mona El-Ghobashy presented findings from her latest book on the origins and trajectories of Egypt’s 2011 uprising.
In response to the growing threats against Tunisia’s struggling democracy in the wake of President Kais Saied’s executive power grab of July 25, ARD organized a panel featuring two prominent Tunisian activists, namely Member of Parliament Saida Ounissi and anti-corruption advocate and former CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellow Achraf Aouadi. The panelists examined the threat of authoritarian resurgence in the country and the prospects for building consensus around an inclusive process of political reform. ARD had conducted a video interview with Tunisia Scholar Daniel Brumberg, who analyzed the implications of Saied’s power grab for various political actors in the country, as well as the political legacies that are shaping the ongoing political conflicts. The discussion inaugurated ARD’s newly launched interview series entitled CARDs (Conversations on Arab Reform and Democracy), which offers a venue for scholars to address salient, timely developments in the Arab world based on their recent publications and long-term research engagement.
As part of its research efforts to build foundational resources for understanding the impact of COVID-19 on Arab politics, ARD launched Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast discussing state responses to the pandemic in the region. Mofeed-19 is supported in part by the Open Society Foundation. Cohosted by ARD Scholars Amr Hamzawy and Hesham Sallam, the podcast’s latest episodes discussed a variety of relevant topics, including Arab public attitudes toward governments’ handling of the pandemic and vaccination efforts, state responses to COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy in Jordan, as well as the challenges facing independent journalists in reporting about the pandemic in Egypt. Recent guests include Princeton University Professor of Politics and Arab Barometer Cofounder and Principal Investigator Amaney Jamal, Professor of Virology and former President of the University of Jordan Azmi Mahafzah, and Egyptian award-winning journalist and Mada Masr Editor Lina Attalah.
ARD’s scholarly contributions to knowledge production on the Arab world continued to grow in 2021. The summer issue of Democracy and Autocracy, the newsletter of the American Political Science Association’s “Democracy & Autocracy Section,” featured a series of ARD-sponsored articles focusing on international and regional dimensions of authoritarianism in the Arab region. The articles draw on research that will appear in a forthcoming ARD-produced volume entitled Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World, which is scheduled for publishing by the University of Michigan Press in the fall of 2022. Coedited by ARD scholars Lisa Blaydes, Amr Hamzawy, and Hesham Sallam, the volume offers a comprehensive analysis of how regimes, opposition movements, and international actors have adapted in response to the Arab Uprisings. Finally, research papers from a two-week online seminar entitled “Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East” and cosponsored by ARD appeared in the August POMEPS Studies #43. The seminar was organized in partnership with the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS).
Hesham Sallam
Research Scholar
Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy
This year the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative completed a series of case studies on the Belt and Road Initiative, focusing on renegotiations between BRI lending institutions and heavily indebted or financially distressed borrowers globally. We are also continuing research on the interactions between BRI lending institutions and other multilateral or bilateral lending institutions globally going into next year.
We also completed research on infrastructure governance and permitting at home, including a duration analysis of federal permitting for large infrastructure projects and other major federal actions.
The program was one of more than a dozen research teams participating in the California 100 Initiative in 2021. Our project focused on California's Progressive Era governance reforms along with the California Environmental Quality Act, the impact of those policies on state governance, and potential policy reforms.
In 2021 we also began a new partnership with the Asian Development Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study sanitation infrastructure finance in emerging markets, and in late 2021 began a new research initiative on comparative industrial policy.
Publications:
- Qualms with Quayside: Public Engagement with the Toronto Smart City Project (case study)
- The Obsolescing Bargain Crosses the Belt and Road Initiative: Renegotiations on BRI Projects (forthcoming journal article)
- A Hazard Analysis of Federal Permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (working paper)
- The Past, Present and Future of California's Progressive Era Governance Reforms, with a Focus on the California Environmental Quality Act (working paper)
- The California 100 Governance Initiative: The Past, Present and Future of California's Progressive Era Governance Reforms, with a Focus on the California Environmental Quality Act (working paper)
Michael Bennon
Research Scholar
Program Manager, Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative
Our research aims to provide solutions to lawlessness and violence. We evaluate programs and policies designed to contain violence, provide security to excluded communities, enhance the transparency and democratic accountability of law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and constrain human rights abuses.
2021 Highlights:
- Concluded a major multi-year U.S.Department of State grant on police accountability and citizen trust in Mexico.
- Completed baseline work on gender-based violence project funded by Stanford's King Center, Beatriz Magaloni and Lisa Blaydes, co-principal investigators.
- Launched field survey for the project, "Bringing an innovative Brazilian youth agency program to Mexico." Beatriz Magaloni, principal investigator, with research scholar Stephanie Gimenez Stahlberg.
- Launched design and development for project, "Crowdsourcing social and political determinants of COVID-19 mortality in Mexico and Latin America," Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, principal investigator.
Awards:
- Beatriz Magaloni won the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in American Political Science Review, for the article, “Killing in the Slums: The Problems of Social Order, Criminal Governance and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro” (2020) American Political Science Review, with Edgar Franco and Vanessa Melo.
- Beatriz Magaloni was named the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, an endowed professorship established at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) most recently held by former CDDRL Director Steve Krasner since 1991.
- Tinker Foundation award for the project "Bringing an innovative Brazilian youth agency program to Mexico," Beatriz Magaloni, principal investigator.
- Tinker Foundation award funding for project “Crowdsourcing statistical models and forecasting social and political determinants of COVID-19 mortality in Mexico and Latin America," Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, principal investigator.
PovGov Lab research fellows and assistants include: Social Impact Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, who joined in August 2021 from UC Berkeley; research scholar Stephanie Gimenez Stahlberg whose PhD was conferred in October 2021 from Johns Hopkins; graduate students Alice Wang, Sarah Thompson, Madison Dalton, Isabelle Montini, Hannah Folzs, Emily Russell, and Kim Jensen; and undergraduates Jose Luis Sabau, Tara Hein, and Valeria Gonzalez.
Longstanding PovGov Lab research assistant and co-author Luis Rodriguez departed for an industry position after receiving his PhD in June 2021.
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Senior Fellow, FSI
The Program on Turkey at Stanford University is a platform for critical analysis and research on politics and society in Turkey. Using the country as a case, we seek to examine the global challenges of achieving just, sustainable, and participatory development.
Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Associate Director of the Program on Turkey, completed a research report on the university and authoritarianism in Turkey, and the subsequent paper on this research is under review. She also recently embarked on a new research project on US-Turkey relations in the Cold-War context and is particularly motivated by the discovery of an important collection of work by Paul Henze, a CIA station chief between 1974-1977, in Hoover Library.
In 2021, the Program on Turkey hosted five events:
- The University and Authoritarian Resilience in Turkey, CDDRL Research Seminar with Ayça Alemdaroğlu
- Reckoning the Cold War's Legacy in Turkey, conversation with Behlul Özkan and Mehmet Ali Tuğtan
- Why is Osman Kavala in jail? Law, politics and human rights in Turkey, with Seyla Benhabib, Dani Rodrik, and Ayşe Bingöl Demir, moderated by Francis Fukuyama
- The American Passport in Turkey, book talk with Özlem Altan-Olcay and Evren Balta
- Turkey-US Relations: Can the Vicious Cycle be Broken?, with Oya Dursun-Özkanca
Recent publications:
- How Authoritarians Win When They Lose, Journal of Democracy 32 (4): 87-101, 2021
- Turkey in Syria: From Soft Power Projection to Militarist Expansion, Democracy and Autocracy 19(2): 15-20, 2021
- Vahap Avşar, Gece Vardiyası 3/ Night Shift, in Who Says Who Shows What Counts: Thinking about history with the Block’s collection, edited by Essi Rönkkö and Kate Hadley Toftness, 70-72, Northwestern Block Museum of Art, 2021
- Youth Politics, chapter in The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Turkey, edited by Joost Jongerden, Routledge, 205-219, 2021
- Church, Mosque, Museum? Reflections on Monuments in Turkey and Spain, MERIP, March 2021
- Boğaziçi Resists Authoritarian Control of the Academy in Turkey, MERIP, February 2021
- Governing youth in times of dissent: essay competitions, politics of history, and emotions, Turkish Studies (peer-review), 22(2):222-41, 2021
Ayça Alemdaroğlu
Research Scholar
Associate Director of the Program on Turkey
Recent Publications
In 2021 we launched the long-awaited 17th year of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's Draper Hills Summer Fellowship Program, having postponed the 2020 program due to COVID-19. We were thrilled to welcome 34 leaders hailing from 30 countries around the world who are pioneering new approaches and models to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. Over the course of two weeks, they participated in virtual programming led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty to study new theories and approaches to democratic development.
Applications are now open for the Draper Hills Class of 2022 and we look forward to a robust applicant pool. The program is scheduled to run from Sunday, July 24 through Friday, August 12, 2022.
The Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) trains government officials and business leaders from developing countries to help the private sector be a constructive force for economic growth and development. It teaches carefully selected participants how to be effective reform leaders, promoting sound public policies in complex and contentious settings.
During the last year, LAD engaged with 96 participants through four courses held in partnership with other academic institutions:
- Training Program on Public Policy for Infrastructure (Asian Development Bank Institute)
- Case Study Writing for Public Policy (Asian Development Bank Institute)
- Developing Confident & Critical Thinkers Through Case Study Writing Workshop (joint program with the Chandler Institute and the Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration)
- Strategic Management of Policy Reform (Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom)
Now in its fourth year, the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program hosted at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University is delighted to welcome three leading reformers and activists to campus for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Yulia Bezvershenko, Denis Gutenko, and Nariman Ustaiev will join the growing network of Ukrainian leaders to participate in the program. While at Stanford, they will work on projects to improve Ukraine’s education and innovation sectors, reform the civil service, and strengthen the self-governing institutions for the Crimean Tatars.
This year Clayborne Carson and his colleagues launched a new project at CDDRL, The World House Project, to help realize King's vision of the world as a large house in which "we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”
In January, the program hosted a free, four-day webinar and film festival. On the eve of the presidential inauguration, the festival featured over 20 documentaries as well as musical performances and panel discussions that addressed Dr. King's unanswered question: "Where do we go from here?"
Clayborne Carson and his team welcomed the community at an Open House on October 1, 2021, to officially inaugurate The World House Project and its new office located in Encina Hall at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
During the year, the program hosted a weekly Office Hour for young people, most of whom are affiliated with the MLK Freedom Center in Oakland, CA. The World House Global Network hosted a weekly speaker series that attracted presenters and participants from many countries. And, Clayborne Carson and Mira Foster taught a well-received Stanford Continuing Studies course on the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Seven students from five disciplines graduated from the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program in 2021. Among them, three were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and two won awards for their thesis work:
- Hiroto Saito's thesis, "Colombia after the FARC: Has Peace Really Arrived?" received the CDDRL Award for Outstanding Thesis 2021.
- Audrey Bloom's thesis, "How Doctors Influence the Price of Healthcare in the United States and Japan: The Critical Role of Interest Group Politics in America’s Healthcare Cost Crisis" received a Firestone Medal, given to the top 10% of all honors theses.
The 2021-22 class is comprised of eleven students from seven disciplines.
Lina Hidalgo, a 2013 graduate of the honors program at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), was named to the Time100 Next List in 2021 for her work as Harris County Judge in Texas.
Each year the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law invites several pre and/or postdoctoral scholars to Stanford. Our fellows work in any of the three program areas of democracy, development, and rule of law. Over the course of the academic year, scholars use their fellowship to complete their projects, participate in seminars, and interact with each other and the resident faculty and research staff.
This year we are very excited to have Alejandra Aldridge, Samantha Bradshaw, Nick Kuipers, Hans Lueders, Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, and Aytuğ Şaşmaz with us at the Center.
Recent publications by fellows:
- The Gender Dimensions of Foreign Influence Operations (Samantha Bradshaw and Amélie Henle)
- Towards a unified approach to research on democratic backsliding (Haemin Jee, Hans Lueders, and Rachel Myrick)
- The Collapse of Tunisia’s Party System and the Rise of Kais Saied (Nate Grubman and Aytuğ Şaşmaz)
- How Voters Respond to Presidential Assaults on Checks and Balances: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey (forthcoming from Aytuğ Şaşmaz, Alper Yagci, and Daniel Ziblatt)
- Electoral Responsiveness in Closed Autocracies: Evidence from Petitions in the former German Democratic Republic (forthcoming from Hans Lueders)
New Faces
This year CDDRL was delighted to welcome Clayborne Carson (Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus and director of The World House Project), Oleksiy Honcharuk (former prime minister of Ukraine and the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow), and Marisa Kellam (2021-22 Visiting Scholar).
Event Highlights
