Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
This event is co-sponsored by the "Ten Years on Project" and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is deeply saddened by the loss of beloved Draper Hills alumnus José Luis Martín C. (“Chito”) Gascón, who passed away after a short battle with COVID-19 on October 9, 2021, at the age of 57.
A Filipino lawyer, human rights activist, and civil organizer, Gascón served as the Chair of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights from 2015 to 2021, having been appointed by President Benigno S. Aquino III. Prior to this, he also served as a member of the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board and as a member of the Philippine Congress, where he helped to pass monumental legislation to promote the prevention of human rights abuses. He contributed to the founding of the International Center for Innovation, Transformation, and Excellence in Governance; the Institute for Leadership, Empowerment, and Democracy; and the Asian Policy Network. Gascón’s career also included teaching law and political science at Ateneo de Manila University and De la Salle University.
Reacting to the news of Chito's death on Twitter, FSI Director Michael McFaul called him “a true hero for human rights.” Larry Diamond also paid tribute, noting that “he was eloquent, fearless, humble, and deeply devoted to democracy” and one of the Philippines’ “great civil society leaders.”
In 2005, Chito was a member of the first class of CDDRL's Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, which trains global leaders working on the front lines of democratic change. Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, noted that he was "a pioneer with us and with all that he did."
In addition to his time as a Draper Hills Summer Fellow, Chito Gascón was a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 2007. Former NED president and frequent Draper Hills contributor Carl Gershman shared that “Chito was a brilliant and dedicated democracy activist, a gentle personality with a tough inner core and immense courage. He will be sorely missed by countless friends, myself included, and by people around the world who are fighting for democracy and human dignity.”
A member of the inaugural Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program cohort in 2005, Chito died from COVID-19 on October 9, 2021.
This panel will examine the evolving political conflicts in Tunisia since the July 25 power grab executed by President Kais Saied that has been widely characterized as a step toward cementing authoritarian rule. Our panelists will examine the challenges recent developments have posed to Tunisia’s struggling democracy and the prospects for building consensus around an inclusive process of political reform.
This event is co-sponsored by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at CDDRL, Stanford University's Center for African Studies, and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
Osman Kavala, a Turkish philanthropist and civil society leader, has been in jail for four years without conviction. He was previously acquitted from two lawsuits to attempt to overthrow the government and the constitutional order; now, he is standing trial for a third. The European Convention on Human Rights ruled in December 2020 that Turkey violated European Convention on Human Rights and ordered his immediate release.
Join us in this webinar about Kavala's work for democracy and his ongoing imprisonment at the intersection of law, politics, and human rights in Turkey.
Hosted by Francis Fukuyama (Stanford University) and Silvia von Steinsdorff (Humboldt University Berlin)
Speakers
Co-organized by the Center for Comparative Research on Democracy (CCRD) at Humboldt University Berlin and the Transatlantic Platform for Democracy in Turkey
Online via Zoom. Register Now
Nariman Ustaiev is co-founder and Director at Gasprinski Institute for Geostrategy. He is also an external advisor for the Committee on Human Rights, Deoccupation and Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Donetsk, Luhansk Regions and Autonomous Republic of Crimea, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
His work explores the multiple dimensions of Ukraine’s foreign and security policy and their intersection with good governance based on human rights. His areas of expertise are foreign policy; political and security challenges in the Black Sea Region; and human rights and Crimean Tatar issues.
Prior to this Nariman had worked for governmental institutions responsible for Ukraine’s security policy, namely the National Security and Defense Council, the Secretariat of the Cabinet Ministers and the State Service for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol for many years.
Nariman graduated from the Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Academy for Foreign Trade and Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.
I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where I was also a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development. Broadly, my research interests encompass the political economy of development of Latin America and of sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, I study questions concerning crime, human capital, immigration, and policing in developing countries. I am from San Salvador, El Salvador.
On August 9, 2020 citizens in the Republic of Belarus went to the polls to vote for their next president. The incumbent was Alexander Lukashenko, a 67-year-old military officer who has kept an iron grip on the presidency for the entire 26 years Bealrus has held elections. But the challenger was an unexpected, new face. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is a 38-year-old English teacher, mother and pro-democracy activist who stepped into a campaign following her husband's arrest and imprisonment in May 2020 for political dissension. In four short months, she galvanized the nation with a message of democracy, freedom and fair elections that reached across opposition factions and gained enough momentum to become a serious contender for the presidency.
On election day, projections estimated an initial win for Tsikhanouskaya at 60%. But when the country's Central Elections Commission announced the election results, Lukashenko carried 80% of the vote, and Tsikhanouskaya a mere 10%. Given the long history of election engineering in Belarus, the results were expected. But what happened next was not. Outraged by the fraud, Tsikhanouskaya's supporters poured into city centers in Brest and Minsk by the tens of thousands, instigating the largest public protests in the history of post-Soviet Belarus. Caught off-guard, the regime hit back with a ruthless wave of violence and political imprisonments, prompting the European Union, NATO and other countries to impose sanctions and condemn Lukashenko as an illegitimate leader.
While Tsikhanouskaya's presidential campaign ended last August, her role as a democratic leader in Eastern Europe has not. In the year since the election, she has traveled the globe to meet with lawmakers, policy experts and heads of state to speak out against the ongoing repression of Lukashenko's regime and advocate for support of Belarus by the international community. The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) was honored to host Tsikhanouskaya and her delegation at Stanford for a roundtable discussion on the challenges that lay ahead in preparing Belarus for a democratic transition. Director Michael McFaul hosted the discussion, which brought together scholars from across FSI, the Hoover Institute and the Belarusian expatriate community. The full recording is below.
Rather than holding a typical press conference, Tsikhanouskaya's visit at FSI gave members of the Belarusian delegation an opportunity to engage in back-and-forth dialogue with an interdisciplinary panel of experts on governance, history and policy. Tsikhanouskaya and her senior advisors shared their perspectives on the challenges they are facing to build and maintain pro-democracy efforts, while Stanford scholars offered insights from their extensive research and scholarship.
As leader of the delegation, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya gave an overview of the brutality of Lukashenko's regime and the lawlessness that has enveloped the country. But she also reaffirmed the commitment of everyday Belarusians to defending their independence and continuing the work of building new systems to push back against the dictatorship, and encouraged the support of the international democratic community.
"Belarusians are doing their homework. But we also understand that we need the assistance and help of other democratic countries," said Tsikhanouskaya. "That support is vital, because our struggle relates not just to Belarusians, but to all countries who share these common values."
Speaking to the work that Belarusians have already undertaken, Franak Viačorka, a senior advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, described how citizens are creating new means of protesting and organizing. Though they learned some tactics from recent protests in Hong Kong and classic theories by political scientists like Gene Sharp, organizers in Belarus quickly realized that they needed to innovate in order to keep ahead of Lukashenko's crack-downs. Today the opposition is a tech-driven movement that spreads awareness and support quickly through digital spaces and underground channels while avoiding large in-person gatherings that attract government brutality.
By Tanya Bayeva's assessment, these methods of organizing have been effective in capturing widespread support amongst people. A member of the Belarusian diaspora, Bayeva described the sense of empowerment she felt in coming together in a common cause with like-minded people.
"By coming out like this, people have started realizing that it is up to us, the people, and our individual willpower to make a difference," said Bayeva. "We are realizing that the king has no clothes, and that working together we can forward the process of democratization."
But there is still plenty of work ahead. In order to facilitate a more peaceful future transition to a democratic system, there will need to be frameworks in place to bridge the divide between old systems and new. Valery Kavaleuski, the representative on foreign affairs in Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's delegation, is focusing extensively on these issues, such as reconciliation processes and plans for future investments between Belarus and the European Union.
"These are political moves that reinforce hope among Belarusians and tells that that they are not alone and that when the change comes, they will have friends by their side to overcome the challenges of the transition period," said Kavaleuski.
Responding to the Belarusian delegation's questions and comments, the faculty from FSI and the broader Stanford community offered insights and considerations from a variety of perspectives and disciplines on 'next steps' for the pro-democracy movement.
Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI and Mosbacher Director at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), cautioned against the impulse to immediately take down the state and bureaucratic systems of the existing regime. While dismantling the mechanisms from the old state may feel emotionally satisfying, examples from history such as post-Nazi Germany and post-invasion Iraq illustrate the crippling effect on efficiency, functionality and the ability of the new order to govern in a vacuum of bureaucratic expertise.
FSI's Deputy Director, Kathryn Stoner, gave similar advice in regard to drafting and implementing a new constitution and conventions.
"People care to a great degree [about a new constitution], but not to months and months of debate and politicians yelling at one another. People can't eat constitutions," said Stoner. "You have to demonstrate that your system is going to be better than what was. When things have not gone well in transitioning countries, it's been because people don't see concrete change. So have a constitutional convention, but make it fast."
Amr Hamzawy, a senior research scholar for the Middle East Initiative at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, also pointed to the importance of engaging the public and building alliances within both the old and new political systems. Based on his observations of the failed Egyptian and Tunisian efforts at democratic transition, he cautioned against discussions of impunity, arguing that while politically and morally symbolic, this practice often backfires and alienates important factions of the state apparatus which are vital for the function and success of a new government.
Hamzawy similarly encouraged carefully blending nationalism and populism to keep divisions within the public sector in check. Imbuing such narratives with pro-democracy rhetoric, he believes, can create a powerful tool for unifying the population around the new government and emerging national identity.
The advice from the Europe Center's director, Anna Grzymala-Busse, succinctly brought together many of the points made by the faculty panel: "No post-transitional government can achieve all the promises they've made right away," said Grzymala-Busse. "So make the transition about processes rather than specific outcomes, about ensuring the losers are heard along with the winners, and about making sure all people can participate."
Additional participants in the roundtable discussion not noted above include Hanna Liubakova, a journalist and non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, Dmytro Kushneruk, the Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco, and Stanford scholars Larry Diamond, David Holloway, Norman Naimark, Erik Jensen, Kiyoteru Tsutsui and John Dunlop.
Democratic leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and her delegation joined an interdisciplinary panel of Stanford scholars and members of the Belarusian community to discuss the future of democracy in Belarus.
The faculty and staff of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, as well as the undersigned alumni of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, wish to protest the completely unjustified arrest and pending trial of the researcher Tatiana Kouzina on June 28, 2021 by Belarusian authorities. Ms. Kouzina now faces unspecified criminal charges that could lead to her extended detention.
Following a fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, there have been ongoing peaceful protests and demonstrations in opposition of the Belarusian government and President Alexander Lukashenko. During this time, the government has unjustly arrested thousands of activists and protesters. Waves of repression reached politicians, civil society organizations, media, the research community, and ordinary citizens. The arrest of Ms. Kouzina is another in a series of troubling steps that the Belarusian government has taken against its people. We call for the release of Ms. Kouzina and other political prisoners currently being held in Belarus.
Ms. Kouzina is a highly respected Belarusian expert who was the co-founder, teacher, and researcher at the School of Young Managers in Public Administration (SYMPA) and the Belarusian Institute for Public Administration Reform and Transformation (BIPART). In this capacity, she conducted substantial research in the field and contributed to numerous policy and research documents, including as part of SYMPA's participation in EU-STRAT, an international research project implemented by a consortium of the leading European universities (including the Free University of Berlin and Leiden University, Netherlands) and think tanks in 2016-2019. As a long-time recognized member of the Belarusian research community, Ms. Kouzina has contributed immensely to its development and sustainability. From 2010-2015, she was the Executive Director of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS) and has cooperated with the Belarus Research Council (BRC), other Belarusian think tanks, and civil society organizations throughout her career.
Ms. Kouzina's arrest is a shocking example of the current Belarusian regime's repressive policies that have attacked other members of the Belarusian research and expert community. As researchers ourselves and members of the broader global democratic community, we strongly protest this arbitrary arrest and demand that Ms. Kouzina be released immediately.
Signed,
Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA
Michael McFaul, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA
Olga Stuzhinskaya, international affairs and development expert, founder and former director of the Office for a Democratic Belarus in Brussels, CDDRL alumni 2006
Victor Liakh, East Europe Foundation, Ukraine
Hoi Trịnh, Board Member, VOICE, USA
Anna Dobrovolskaya, Memorial Human Rights Center, Россия
Mahdi Al Hajat, free journalist, Iraq
Haykuhi Harutyunyan, Corruption prevention commission, Armenia
Ruby Tetteh, Deputy Director, MOTI, Ghana
Denis Volkov, CDDRL alumni, Russia
Dmytro Potekhin, CEO, Factology.Systems, Ukraine
Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, Stanford University, USA
Sasha Jason, Program Manager, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA
Professor Donald Emmerson, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Stanford University, USA
Jamie O'Connell, Lecturer in Residence, Stanford Law School, and CDDRL affiliated faculty, USA
Belinda Byrne, Program Administrator, Stanford University, USA
Katherine Welsh, Administrative Associate at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA
Amr Hamzawy, Senior research scholar, Stanford University, USA
Erik Jensen, Professor of the Practice of Law, Director, Rule of Law Program, Stanford Law School, USA
Anna Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, Stanford University, USA
Marcel Fafchamps, Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Stanford University, USA
Yusmadi Yusoff, People's Justice Party (KEADILAN), Malaysia
Olga Aivazovska, Head of Board, Civil Network OPORA, Ukraine
Befekadu Hailu, Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD), Ethiopia
Varvara Pakhomenko, Consultant, Russia
Olena Sotnyk, Human rights defender, Ukraine
Elsa Marie DSilva, Red Dot Foundation, India
Laila Kiki, The Syria Campaign, Syria
Alla Kos, Austria
Nino Evgenidze, EPRC, Georgia
James D. Fearon, Professor, Stanford University, USA
Nino Chichua, Georgia Healthcare Group, Georgia
Janaína Homerin, Draper Hills Summer Fellow, Brazil
David Smolansky, Mayor in Exile, Venezuela
Hadeel AlQaq, Jordan
Eka Kemularia, Director, Green Line, Georgia
Yuriy Bugay, Independent consultant, NGO activist, Ukraine
Lauren Weitzman, Program Manager CDDRL, Stanford University, USA
Steve Luby, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, USA
The faculty and staff of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, as well as the undersigned alumni of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, wish to protest the completely unjustified arrest and pending trial of the researcher Tatiana Kouzina on June 28 by Belarusian authorities.
During the height of the mass uprisings against authoritarian rule, excitement about the prospects for a more just and representative political order across the Arab region was often tempered by questions concerning the role that Islamist parties would play in post-authoritarian transitions. Movements that maintained deep social roots but were often on the margins of state power were poised to implement an Islamist political project decades in the making. The outcomes of the subsequent transitions, particularly the legacy of destructive civil conflicts, foreign interventions, and authoritarian resurgence, have frequently obscured attempts to understand the impact of the Arab uprisings on Islamism.
This talk examines these recent developments by placing them within a broader historical analysis that traces the evolution of Islamist thought and activism from its tentative embrace of the nation state to its wholehearted entry into national party politics. It argues that, by the eve of the uprisings, the posture of Islamist movements reflected a set of political commitments that had emerged largely at the expense of their ideological program and social mission. Rooted in the historical and recent acceptance of state institutions and political structures, expressions of Islamism by parties across the Arab region reflected a shift that subsumed long held beliefs beneath the needs of (alternately or in combination) democratic pluralism and political expediency, most clearly visible in the transformation of Tunisia’s Ennahda Party. That tension has been exacerbated in the wake of political defeats experienced by many of these movements, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. While the “Islamist idea” is likely to endure its current bout with state repression, its survival as a political force in the future will depend on its determination to complete this evolution, a process that was both accelerated and interrupted during the critical moments of the Arab uprisings.
Abdullah Al-Arian is an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar where he specializes in the modern Middle East and the study of Islamic social movements. He is the author of Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat's Egypt (Oxford University Press). His upcoming book compares the historical experiences of Islamist movements in six different Arab states and will be published by Cambridge University Press. He is also editor of the Critical Currents in Islam page on Jadaliyya ezine.
*Note: Event time listed above is PST.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
