This talk will be based on Lankina's 2022 award-winning book, The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia. She will discuss how tsarist social divides and the institution of sosloviye (estate) shaped social structure during communism and why the social longue durée matters for understanding post-Communist political regime trajectories.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Tomila Lankina is professor of International Relations at the IR Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has worked on democracy and authoritarianism, mass protests and historical drivers of human capital and political regime change in Russia and other countries; she has also analyzed the propaganda and disinformation campaigns in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. Her latest research is on social structure and inequality. Her book, The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press 2022), won the 2023 J. David Greenstone Prize for the best book in the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association and the 2023 Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in the previous calendar year. The book also received “Honorable Mention” for the Sartori Book Award of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

How do regimes instrumentalize ascriptive identity to maintain political power? In this paper, I document, analyze, and seek to explain patterns of elite continuity in Kuwait. To do this, I establish the pre-oil wealth and "rootedness" of Kuwaiti families and connect this status to post-oil measures of social prestige. Next, I analyze survey data from 13,000 respondents from across the region to show that local "rootedness" positively impacts the ability of Arab Gulf nationals to obtain services from their governments. Taken together, my evidence suggests that ascriptive identity associated with one's historical family lineage impacts economic, political, and social outcomes for citizens in ways that maintain historical rank hierarchies.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Lisa Blaydes is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak's Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

As we navigate the complexities of global security in the 21st century, it is essential to confront the broader implications of Russia's actions in Ukraine for the world at large. The conflict serves as a stark reminder of the challenges posed by authoritarian aggression and the erosion of international norms and institutions. In this panel, Ms. Oleksandra Matviichuk will explore the interconnectedness of global security dynamics, examining how Russia's human rights violations in Ukraine reverberate across borders. Join us for a timely and thought-provoking conversation that transcends borders as we collectively strive to confront the challenges of the 21st century and build a more secure and resilient world for all.

The S.T. Lee Lectureship is named for Seng Tee Lee, a business executive and noted philanthropist. Dr. Lee is the director of the Lee group of companies in Singapore and of the Lee Foundation.

Dr. Lee endowed the annual lectureship at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation. The S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader in international political, economic, social, and health issues and strategic policy-making concerns.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties, is a human rights lawyer focused on issues within Ukraine and the OSCE region. She leads initiatives aimed at fostering democracy and safeguarding human rights. The organization supports legislative reforms, monitors law enforcement and judiciary, conducts wide education programs, and leads international solidarity efforts. In response to the full-scale war, Matviichuk co-founded the "Tribunal for Putin" initiative, documenting war crimes across affected Ukrainian regions. Recognized for her unwavering commitment, she received the Democracy Defender Award and participated in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at Stanford University.

In 2022, she earned the prestigious Right Livelihood Award and was named one of the Financial Times' 25 Most Influential Women, while the Center for Civil Liberties received the Nobel Peace Prize under her leadership.

This talk overviews the state of governance in the Arab world and the conditions undermining governance improvement in the countries of the region, including corruption, rentier states, and social factionalism. The talk situates these realities in different conceptions and measurements of governance, including those informed by historical, governmental, economic, and sociocultural perspectives. Finally, it reflects on the prospects for a "governance renaissance" in the Arab world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Raed H. Charafeddine was first vice-governor at Banque du Liban, Lebanon’s central bank, from April 2009 till March 2019 and served as alternate Governor for Lebanon at the International Monetary Fund. An expert in financial markets, his career spans thirty-five years in central and commercial banking. He is currently a partner and executive board director of Vita F&B Capital, a MEA-focused strategic advisory firm. Charafeddine served as a board member and advisor for several NGOs that focus on alleviating poverty, improving education, healthcare, social justice, and women's empowerment. He was also a volunteer consultant for the United Nations Development Program in Beirut on conflict transformation. He holds a BA and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Perspective-getting and correcting misconceptions are common interventions to promote inclusion toward outgroups. However, each strategy has limitations. Information corrections yield ambiguous effects, and empathy-based interventions may reproduce the biases they are meant to alleviate. We develop a theoretical framework that clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy, and offer a design to identify the conditions under which they are most effective. Using three studies on refugee inclusion with nearly 15,000 Americans over three years, we find that information and perspective-getting affect different outcomes. Perspective-getting affects warmth, policy preferences, and behavior, while information leads to factual updating only. We show that combining both interventions produces an additive effect on all outcomes, that neither strategy enhances the other, but that bundling the strategies may prevent backfire effects of information. Our results underscore the promise and limits of information and perspective-getting for promoting inclusion, highlighting the benefits of integrating the two strategies.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Claire Adida is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego. She is also a faculty affiliate with the UCSD Policy Design and Evaluation Lab, the UCSD Future of Democracy Initiative, the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab, the Evidence in Governance and Politics Groups, and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). Professor Adida uses quantitative methods to study how countries manage new and existing forms of diversity. Her work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, PLoS ONE, and several other very prestigious outlets. She has written two books on immigrant exclusion, her 2010 Cambridge University Press book on Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa and her 2016 Harvard University Press co-authored book on Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies. Professor Adida’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, and the Evidence in Governance and Politics Group. Professor Adida serves on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review and is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Experimental Political Science. She received her PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2010.

Bartels dismantles the pervasive myth of a "populist wave" in contemporary European public opinion. He shows that attitudes regarding immigration, European integration, trust in politicians, and satisfaction with democracy have remained largely unchanged over the past two decades. Electoral gains by right-wing populist parties have mostly reflected idiosyncratic failures of mainstream parties; both their magnitude and their implications have been exaggerated by the press. Europe's most sobering examples of democratic backsliding--in Hungary and Poland--occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Larry Bartels's research and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and democracy. His books include Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd edition) and (with Christopher Achen) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. He has also published dozens of scholarly articles and brief pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, and other popular media outlets. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Philippines Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

How do nations grapple with a history of past atrocities? Does recognition of historical crimes in public discourse lead citizens to embrace a past that may devalue their national identity, or does it foster backlash and illiberal nationalism? Perhaps no better example of a paradigm of confronting the past exists than the case of post-war Germany, a country marked by the legacy of the Nazi atrocities in World War II.

More than half a century later, we ask how public recognition of collective culpability in public discourse, education, and culture, has affected German national identity and attitudes towards the country's history. We conducted a nationwide representative survey of German-born adults and relied on an experimental treatment to distinguish between private preferences and their public expression. Our findings suggest that the low levels of national pride and muted emotional connection to German history that are expressed by the German public have been internalized and are not the result of social desirability concerns. Yet a stigma surrounds the public expression of a desire to move on from the historical narrative that emphasizes Germany's role as a perpetrator of atrocities. Our study highlights both the potential for success and the costs of public recognition of a nation's historical sins.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vasiliki Fouka is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER, and a Research Affiliate at CEPR. Her research interests include historical political economy, political behavior, and cultural economics, with a main focus on immigrant assimilation, the determinants of prejudice against ethnic and racial minorities, and the long-run effects of history for inter-group relations.  

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.