In the second annual “Reimagining Democracy” webinar series, professor Francis Fukuyama dove into the root causes of democracy’s current crisis. He discussed how declining trust, civic disengagement among youth, and other societal challenges have weakened democratic systems and what actions are needed to revive them.
Professor Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, shares insights from his new book on Cold War lessons and the autocracy-democracy struggle.
CDDRL postdoctoral scholar Maria Nagawa examines how foreign aid projects influence bureaucrats’ incentives, effort, and the capacity of bureaucratic institutions.
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.
In Nigeria, women are far less likely than men to attend meetings or contact leaders. Claire Adida’s research reveals interventions that make a difference.
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.
A new journal explores the legal landscape of outer space. “On the West Coast, and especially in Silicon Valley, space is happening all around us … Stanford is uniquely positioned to bring law into that conversation.” Stanford Law School lecturer Erik Jensen and Dinsha Mistree, an affiliate of the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, are serving as advisors to the Stanford Space Law Society.
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.
A new paper by Stanford Graduate School of Business finance professors Anat Admati and Paul Pfleiderer, and Nathan Atkinson, PhD ’19, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, explores how the rules governing corporate misconduct can fall short of their objectives and even encourage worse behavior.
Landsbergis, formerly the minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, will have simultaneous affiliations across the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The inclusion of these companies in the Industry-Wide Deliberative Forum, convened by Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, speaks to its importance and the need to engage the public on the future of AI agents.
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.
