FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.
The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.
Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.
We study the dynamics and logic of extortion in Mexico’s drug war. Mexican drug trafficking organizations have diversified into a host of other illicit activities, protection rackets, oil and fuel theft, kidnapping, human smuggling, prostitution, money laundering, weapons trafficking, auto theft and domestic drug sales. The project seeks to measure, through the use of list-experiments, patterns of extortion by both criminal organization and the police, and the extent to which drug cartels coopt civil society and become embedded in the social fabric.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran will discuss his new book, LITTLE AMERICA: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, which focuses on President Barack Obama's decision to surge troops and aid to Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places; and headstrong military leaders who sought a far more expansive campaign than the White House wanted. Through their bungling and quarreling, they wound up squandering the first year of the surge.
About the speaker:
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor of The Washington Post. From 2009 to 2011, he reported on the war in Afghanistan for The Post, traveling extensively through the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar to reveal the impact of President Obama's decision to double U.S. force levels. He has served as The Post's national editor and as an assistant managing editor. In 2003 and 2004, he was The Post's bureau chief in Baghdad, where he was responsible for covering the reconstruction of Iraq and supervising a team of Post correspondents. He also wrote Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a best-selling account of the troubled American effort to reconstruct Iraq. He has served two terms as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds a degree in political science from Stanford University, where he was editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. He lives in Washington, D.C.
CISAC Conference Room
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor
Speaker
The Washington Post
Lucan Way’s research focuses on global patterns of democracy and dictatorship. His most recent book (with Steven Levitsky), Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (forthcoming Princeton University Press), provides a comparative historical explanation for the extraordinary durability of autocracies (China, Cuba, USSR) born of violent social revolution. Way’s solo-authored book, Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015), examines the sources of political competition in the former Soviet Union. Way argues that pluralism in the developing world often emerges out of authoritarian weakness: governments are too fragmented and states too weak to monopolize political control. His first book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. Way’s work on competitive authoritarianism has been cited thousands of times and helped stimulate new and wide-ranging research into the dynamics of hybrid democratic-authoritarian rule.
Lucan Way will present the initial findings of his new book project (co-authored with Steven Levitsky, Harvard University), "Revolutionary Struggle and Authoritarian Durability after the Cold War." The project examines why some authoritarian leaders are capable of surviving severe economic crises, large-scale protest, or serious electoral challenges while others are not. We focus on how legacies of violent revolutionary struggle have shaped the capacity of regimes across the globe to deal with crises at the end of the Cold War, when autocrats faced their most serious challenges. Most interpretations of durability focus on the flow of benefits or patronage to top regime officials. By contrast, we will argue that patronage alone is not a very effective source of elite cohesion. Institutionalized patronage may ensure elite cooperation during normal times, but it often fails to do so during crises. The most cohesive regimes, we contend, complement patronage with nonmaterial ties. In particular, we argue that the identities, and social and organizational ties forged during periods of sustained, violent, and ideologically-driven conflict serve as a critical source of cohesion---and durability---in authoritarian regimes
About the speaker:
Lucan Way is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on democratic transitions and the evolution of non-democratic rule in cross-regional perspective. He is best known for his work on hybrid or competitive authoritarian rule. His book, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War" (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. He has also published in articles in Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative and International Development, World Politics, as well as a number of area studies journals and book chapters. Most recent articles include "Deer in Headlights: Incompetence and Weak Authoritarianism" in Slavic Review and "Beyond Patronage: Violent Struggle, Ruling Party Cohesion and Authoritarian Durability" (with Steven Levitsky) in Perspectives on Politics. He is completing a book: Pluralism by Default and the Sources of Political Competition in the Former Soviet Union and is beginning a new project exploring the impact of violent revolutionary origins on authoritarian durability after the Cold War. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and is in residence at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law for the fall of 2012.
CISAC Conference Room
Lucan A. Way
Associate Professor, Political Science
Speaker
University of Toronto
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C139
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
adi.greif@yale.edu
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Adi Greif is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Yale University and a pre-doc at CDDRL from 2013-2015. Her dissertation, "The Long-Term Impact of Colonization on Gender", investigates why gender equality varies by former colonizer (French or British) in the Middle East and globally. It uses cross-national statistics, a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border in Cameroon, and interviews from Egypt and Jordan. Her research abroad was supported by a Macmillan Dissertation Fellowship.
Adi's research interests are colonialism, international alliances, state formation and comparative gender policies with focus on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. She has lived in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, and visited Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Adi holds an M.A. in Political Science from (Yale University) and a B.A with honors in Political Science and a minor in Math (Stanford University). Before coming to Yale, she worked at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. through the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy.
Ramesh Srinivasan, Associate Professor at UCLA in Design and Media/Information Studies, studies and participates in projects focused on how new media technologies impact political revolutions, economic development and poverty reduction, and the future of cultural heritage. He has worked with bloggers, pragmatically studying their strengths and limitations, who were involved in recent revolutions in Egypt and Kyrgyzstan, as discussed in a recent NPR interview. He has also collaborated with non-literate tribal populations in India to study how literacy emerges through uses of technology, and traditional Native American communities to study how non-Western understandings of the world can introduce new ways of looking at the future of the internet. His work has impacted contemporary understandings of media studies, anthropology and sociology, design, and economic and political development studies.
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
gdistel@stanford.edu
Research Affiliate
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Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.
The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL, the Center for African Studies and its Africa Table Lecture Series and Student Anti-Genocide Coalition STAND are honored to host Abbé Benoît Kinalegu and Ida Sawyer for this special seminar.
Congolese activist Abbé Benoît Kinalegu works to document and expose abuses by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and rehabilitate its victims.
The LRA is a rebel armed group that has terrorized civilians for years, first in Uganda and now in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. It is known for extreme brutality, and stands accused of killings, rapes, cutting off people’s lips and limbs, and looting. But it’s perhaps most notorious for abductions of adults and children to serve as soldiers, laborers, or sex slaves. Since 2008, the LRA has killed more than 2,600 civilians and abducted more than 4,000 others.
As head of the Catholic Church’s Peace and Justice Commission in northern Congo’s Haut-Uele District, Kinalegu helped create an Early Warning Network in which local activists report LRA attacks and movements by high-frequency radio. These offer advance warning to UN workers, humanitarians, and local communities in the LRA’s path. Kinalegu is also setting up a rehabilitation center to help some of the most traumatized children who escaped from the LRA and who now need to find their families and try to restore a normal life.
Kinalegu was one of the main advocates for the adoption in 2010 of the Obama administration’s LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, and he has become a powerful voice urging the international community to bring LRA commanders to justice.
Human Rights Watch has worked with Kinalegu on numerous joint research and advocacy projects, and his organization is a steering committee member of the Congo Advocacy Coalition, which Human Rights Watch coordinates. In October 2011, Kinalegu’s organization and Human Rights Watch co-led a workshop in Dungu, northern Congo, with more than 30 civil society activists from across the LRA-affected regions of central Africa. Participants shared experiences and developed a common position on mobilizing regional and international pressure to end LRA depredations.
Human Rights Watch honors Abbé Benoît Kinalegu for his commitment to protecting civilians and ending the threat posed by the LRA.
Ida Sawyer is Congo researcher and advocate in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, where she has been based since October 2011. Hired as Goma-based Congo researcher in January 2008, Ida has conducted research across Congo and in areas of northern Congo and neighboring countries affected by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). She is one of the main researchers and authors of six Human Rights Watch reports and dozens of press releases and public letters. Ida also conducts outreach with local civil society groups. Ida came to Human Rights Watch from Cairo, where she worked as a freelance journalist. Her previous Great Lakes experience includes work for Care International and the Charity for Peace Foundation in Northern Uganda, as well as research in Congo on the cross-border dynamics of natural resource exploitation. She holds a master's in International Affairs, specializing in Human Rights, from Columbia University.
On May 16, 2012, President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated the Truth Commission (Comissão da Verdade) and announced the Access to Information Law (Lei de Acesso à Informação). Inspired by other Truth Commissions in other countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador, the Brazilian Truth Commission has its own distinctive characteristics that respond to specific national political culture and costumes. Understanding these characteristics is fundamental to recognize how these laws may represent and advance the process of accountability for human rights violations in Brazil and the challenges that still persist due to opposing positions between the Legislative and Executive powers that have recognized these violations and a conservative Judiciary supported by the military.
Bolivar House
Nadejda Marques
Manager
Speaker
Program on Human Rights
This two-day symposium will bring together lawyers who are litigating human rights cases in international tribunals, lawyers who deploying international human rights frameworks to advance legal reform goals in their respective countries and public policy advocates who are pressing for legal reforms that are more protective of individual rights
This year’s symposium will focus, as a case study, on achieving gender equality through strategic use of both international and domestic strategies.
Goals:
To learn about successes with respect to using international human rights mechanisms to mobilize domestic law reform
To evaluate the extent to which international human rights mechanisms have had an impact on justice on the ground
To strategize on how human rights litigators, domestic public interest attorneys and domestic public policy advocates can more effectively coordinate their work in order to impact justice on the ground through international human rights mechanisms
To examine in-depth how the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and monitoring mechanisms are shaped by local activists and how local activists use the international documents and mechanisms to press for change on the ground.
To examine the impact of local norms and practices on whether a global consensus is reached on international human rights standards and whether the standards are adopted in a domestic context
Content:
Panels will address :
What is the power of human rights ideas for transnational and local social movements and how have these ideas contributed to a rethinking of gender equality around the world?
Using gender equality and CEDAW as a case study, have human rights created a political space for reform in particular countries and what have been the key challenges?
What key successes have lawyers and advocates had in using international human rights mechanisms to ensure gender equality with respect to organizing, litigation and public policy?
What are the lessons learned from the global gender equality movement for other human rights struggles?
Looking forward, what are the key challenges and opportunities for more strategic collaboration between the movement for gender equality and other aspects of the human rights movement?
Keynotes will include Christopher Stone, the President of Open Society Foundation and The Honorable Judge Patricia Wald. Panelists are Executive Directors or Presidents of innovative human rights and international justice organizations and public interest attorneys from leading public interest legal organizations in Kenya, Nigeria, China, South Africa, Malaysia, Palestinian Territories, China and Chile.
The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL is proud to co-sponsor this event and hopes you take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.
FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of 