This event is co-sponsored with The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

Abstract:

Why were Islamists less polarizing in Tunisia than their counterparts in Egypt after the downfall of the autocratic regime in 2011? While the electoral processes that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt rapidly polarized society, the Muslim Brothers in Tunisia formed a coalition with secular groups to pry power from the old power centers immediately after the removal of Ben Ali. Different approaches focused on Tunisians’ liberal culture and their proximity to Europe. Scant attention paid to both the historical and political-strategic conditions that shaped boundaries of interactions between Islamists and non-Islamists. I argue that the historical relations between the state and Islamists affect the distribution of power between them on the one hand, and their secular opponents on the other. In Tunisia, Islamist and non-Islamist forces believed in the necessity of conciliation (or were forced to do so by political circumstances). They, therefore, reached across ideological lines and struck deals to hold democratic institutions.

 

Speaker Bio:

Shimaa Hatab is assistant professor of political science at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Essex University. She is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Abbasi Program, at Stanford. Her research interests include democratization, authoritarianism, political economy of development, with a focus on countries in the Middle East and Latin America.

 

This event is co-sponsored with The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

Abstract:

Severe polarization is a global threat that has detrimental effects on democracy and well-being. What can citizens and collective actors such as political parties do to reverse polarization and to sustain democracy in affected polities? The triggers of current polarizations across the world often are political and thus intentional: they exemplify various forms of “the politics of transforming through polarizing,” which are aimed at achieving wide-scale transformations in political-economic institutions and policies. Yet, as these polarizations take a life of their own, the causal mechanisms that render them pernicious gain a structural nature. They lock in both the incumbents and the oppositions in a downward spiral of polarization-cum-democratic erosion, generating many unintended consequences. With comparative examples from various polities, this talk will discuss a political and relational notion of polarization, the dilemmas faced by opposition actors who want to reverse polarization and democratic backsliding, and implications for theory and policy.

 

Speaker Bio:

Murat Somer is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Koç University and a Visiting Scholar at the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. His research on democratization and autocratization, polarization, ethnic conflicts, religious and secular politics, political Islam, and the Kurdish question have been published in books, book volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and Democratization. His book on the Turkish and Kurdish Question won a Sedat Simavi Social Sciences Prize in 2015 and he recently co-edited two special journal volumes on polarization, democracy and democratic erosion across the world. Among other visiting appointments, Somer was a Democracy and Development Fellow at Princeton University, a Senior Visiting Scholar at Stockholm University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has been a frequent contributor to Turkish and international media and he is working on a research and book project that explores the multiple paths through which polarizing politics lead to authoritarianism, and what pro-democracy citizens and political actors can and cannot do to sustain democracy.

Abstract:

Ever since the Millennium Message, Putin's first presidential speech on January 1, 2000, the Kremlin's political architects have cultivated a narrative of Russia as a unique nation on a righteous path toward restored greatness. The process of myth-making is intertwined with the policies involved in remaking Russia as a global power, as the regime builds legitimacy through careful messaging on Russian nationhood, history, morality, and geopolitical strength, using law and policy to embed those concepts as institutions and persuade citizens that Russia needs autocracy to survive. This talk traces the Kremlin's cooptation of culture and history to tell a certain story about Russia and its citizens, and examines public opinion polls to assess the degree to which the strategy is working, as well as street protests and radical performance art that attempts to claim spaces of agency for citizens who don't fit into the mythic mold.

 

 

Speaker Bio:

 

Alice E.M. Underwood is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is a Weiland Fellow at Stanford and a former Title VIII Fellow at the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and has published with Intersection, The Russia File, Russian Life, and Harvard International Review.

Abstract:

Existing scholarship attributes various political and economic advantages to democratic governance. These advantages may make more democratic countries prone to financial crises. Democracy is characterized by constraints on executive authority, accountability through free and fair elections, protections for civil liberties, and large winning coalitions. These characteristics bring important benefits, but they can also have unintended consequences that increase the likelihood of financial instability and crises. Using data covering the past two centuries, I demonstrate a strong relationship between democracy and financial crisis onset: on average, democracies are about twice as likely to experience a crisis as autocracies. This is an empirical regularity that is robust across a wide range of model specifications and time periods.

 

Speaker Bio:

Phillip Y. Lipscy (Stanford University) is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.  His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international organizations, and the politics of East Asia, particularly Japan.  Lipscy’s book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations.

Abstract:

Russia has evolved into an autocracy under Putin's 18-year long rule. The political landscape resembles a desert with just a few oases of relatively strong civil initiatives and political movements. Under these circumstances, people who are eager to continue their activities inside Russia - be it cultural or philanthropic projects - face hard moral choices to either collaborate with the regime or refuse to do so and sacrifice many opportunities along the way. In light of these circumstances, is there any ground for optimism? What are the necessary pre-conditions for strong movements in Russia? What are the visions for post-Putin Russia? Zhanna Nemtsova, the founder of the Boris Nemstov Foundation for Freedom and a news show/anchor for the Deutsche Welle broadcaster shares her insights into the current state of affairs in Russia during this special lunchtime event hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

 

Speaker Bio:

Zhanna Nemtsova is a Russian journalist currently working at Deutsche Welle, a German international broadcaster. At Deutsche Welle, Nemtsova hosts the weekly Russian-language program "Nemtsova.Interview," which features discussions on current events. Nemtsova founded the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom to promote the ideas of freedom and education and to preserve her father's liberal political legacy after he was assassinated in 2015. The Foundation awards the Boris Nemtsov Prize to courageous Russians for their demonstrated dedication to fighting for democratic rights in Russia, hosts the annual Boris Nemtsov Forum in Berlin and supports Russian political prisoners and asylum seekers. On May 10 the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, in cooperation with Charles University in Prague, launched the Boris Nemtsov Center for Russian Studies. Nemtsova holds a bachelor’s of science degree in economics with a minor in foreign languages from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

 

 

 

 

Abstract:

Why do some dissident groups survive government repression while others get eliminated? This paper argues that a group's ideology conditions its organizational structure and underground organizing capacity, in turn affecting survival. Extreme groups tend to develop a compartmentalized structure and have militants skilled in underground organizing. Compartmentalization and underground organizing decrease the probability of capture, as well as mitigate the downstream effects of captures. Using a novel dataset of individuals on Pinochet's wanted lists and the victims of the dictatorship in Chile, this paper demonstrates that the rate of victimization of ultraleftists is significantly lower than that of more moderate but similarly targeted groups. Archival and interview data show that differences in survival are due to organizational structure and skills, and that these characteristics flow from ideology. In contrast to other research on repression, this study compares the intended-to-repress and repressed populations to better understand the heterogeneous effects of violence.

 

Speaker Bio:

Consuelo Amat is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) at Stanford University. Her research interests include state repression, armed and unarmed resistance, political violence, and the development of civil society in authoritarian regimes, with a focus on Latin America. Consuelo received her Ph.D. in Political Science with distinction from Yale University. She also holds an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University. During the 2017-2018 academic year Consuelo was a United States Institute of Peace Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar. Before starting graduate school she worked at the Brookings Institution, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Peace Action West, and Human Rights Watch.

Abstract:

Three years after the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted, it's already clear we will fall short on our current trajectory. Global challenges are getting more complex, and the fast pace of change is disrupting the status quo faster than we can adapt. Bridging this gap will require a fresh mindset. Rather than rigid programs, we need to embrace risk and accelerate learning in order to create more cost-effective and scaleable solutions. It's time to bring the best practices for innovation that have underpinned Silicon Valley's success to global development.

 

Speaker Bio:

Ann Mei Chang is a leading expert on social innovation the author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Wiley, Oct 2018). Previously, she served as the Chief Innovation Officer at both USAID and Mercy Corps. Prior to her pivot to social good, Ann Mei was a seasoned Silicon Valley executive, with more than 20 years experience at such leading companies as Google, Apple, and Intuit, as well as a number of startups.

Abstract:

Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data documents what donors actually want from government; and existing research largely neglects donors' views on individual issues. We argue there should be significant heterogeneity by party and policy domain in how donors' views diverge from citizens'. We support this argument with the largest survey of U.S. partisan donors to date, including an over sample of the largest donors. We show that Republican donors are much more conservative than Republican citizens on economic issues, whereas their views are similar on social issues. By contrast, Democratic donors are much more liberal than Democratic citizens on social issues, whereas their views are more similar on economic issues. Both parties' donors are more pro-globalism than their citizen counterparts. We replicate these patterns in an independent dataset. These patterns can help inform significant debates about representation, inequality, and populism in American politics.

Speaker Bio:

Neil Malhotra is the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Political Science. He serves as the Louise and Claude N. Rosenberg, Jr. Co-Director of the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford GSB.