CDDRL News
Marco Widodo receives a Firestone Medal, Shayla Fitzsimmons-Call wins CDDRL's Outstanding Thesis Award, and Zoya Fasihuddin is named the inaugural recipient of the Zoe Savellos Memorial Award for Community Building.
The awards recognize Folsz’s research on how aspiring autocrats use economic pressure to undermine electoral competition.
The award recognizes Samet's research on the opportunities and risks of foreign support for opposition movements.
Katya Bigman, John Churchill, Elizabeth Jerstad, George Porteous, Emma Wang, and Marco Widodo are among the newest members of this prestigious academic honors society.
The partnership will open opportunities for Stanford faculty and students at one of the world's leading forums for democratic thought and practice, and further position CDDRL as a global leader among research centers in the field.
The CDDRL-affiliated scholar is among the newly appointed council leadership advising on economic trends, federal shifts, and emerging challenges facing California.
The Class of 2026-27 will spend the next year and a half conducting original thesis research on democracy, development, and the rule of law — from post-Soviet privatization to the politics of interfaith marriage in India.
From parliament to regional government to independent media, alumni of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program are implementing reform initiatives under wartime conditions.
By combining rigorous research with practitioner collaborations, the Democracy Action Lab at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law turns ideas into action.
The program will run from Sunday, July 19, to Friday, August 7, 2026. Applications are due by 11:59 pm PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026.
The award recognizes their book, “Propaganda in Autocracies” (Cambridge University Press, 2023), as the best book in political economy published in the past three years.
Golden received the 2025 Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Best Dataset Award for her “Global Legislator Database,” a cross-national dataset on the characteristics of 19,704 national parliamentarians in 97 of the world's 103 electoral democracies.
The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law welcomes applications from pre-doctoral students at the write-up stage and from post-doctoral scholars working in any of the four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law.
We are delighted to welcome Oliver Kaplan, Sanjeev Khagram, and Denis Morozov to our scholarly community.
The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to welcome five pre- and postdoctoral fellows who will join us for the 2025-26 academic year. These scholars will spend the academic year focusing on the Center's four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law.
From September 14 to 20, the Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2026 will attend CDDRL’s annual Honors College, where they will participate in a week of site visits and discussions with leading scholars and practitioners working to strengthen democracy worldwide.
The Fellow Spotlight Series is an inspiring and moving series of "TED"-style talks given by each of our 2025 Fisher Family Summer Fellows to share their backstories and discuss their work.
Meet the four fellows participating in CDDRL’s Strengthening Democracy and Development Program and learn how they are forging solutions to help Ukraine rise stronger from the challenges of war.
The award-winning article is entitled “Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation.”
Recognized for her groundbreaking research on migration, identity, and intergroup relations, Fouka joins an elite group of Greek scientists shaping global scholarship.
Charles Sheiner ('25) is a recipient of the 2025 Firestone Medal, and Adrian Feinberg ('25) and Adelaide Madary ('25) have won CDDRL's Outstanding Thesis Awards.
In July 2025, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law will welcome a diverse cohort of 27 experienced practitioners from 18 countries who are working to advance democratic practices and economic and legal reform in contexts where freedom, human development, and good governance are fragile or at risk.
Seniors Alex Borthwick, Adrian Feinberg, Malaina Kapoor, and Avinash Thakkar (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2025), and junior Emma Wang (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2026) are among the newest members of this prestigious academic honors society.
The award, decreed by President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, is Mongolia’s highest state honor and recognizes Fishkin for his pioneering contributions to deliberative democracy.
Liza Goldberg (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2023-24) is among 84 scholars in the Knight-Hennessy Scholars' eighth cohort.