Ukrainian leaders told a Stanford audience on February 23 that the Russian war against their country is not only about Ukrainian sovereignty but about the future of Europe and freedom and democracy in the world as autocratic regimes increasingly align against Western allies.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law hosted the two-hour panel discussion, “Two Years of War: Updates from Ukraine,” which featured CDDRL alums currently based in Ukraine. 

They included Oleksiy Honcharuk, a former prime minister of Ukraine and 2021 Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI); Serhiy Leshchenko, advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Chief of Staff and an alumnus of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program (now the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program); Oleksandra Matviichuk, founder of the Center for Civil Liberties (co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize) and an alumna of the 2017-18 Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program; and Oleksandra Ustinova, People’s Deputy of Ukraine and an alumna of the 2018-19 Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program.

Reforms in Ukraine

Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, and Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, served as moderators for the discussion. One year ago, with the same guests, CDDRL and FSI co-hosted a similar roundtable, the conversation of which had a different tone with more optimism.

In his opening remarks, McFaul asked the panelists for their responses to critics of U.S. military aid to Ukraine who claim Ukraine is corrupt, the money would be wasted, and that continued aid would only prolong an unwinnable war.

Matviichuk said that Ukraine has made many reforms over the last decade since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. “Government is accountable. The judiciary is independent, and police do not kill students who are peacefully demonstrating. We have paid the highest price for this chance,” despite it being very difficult to implement far-reaching reforms during wartime.

Born in the aftermath of World War II, the State of Israel has undergone remarkable development as a nation over the past 75 years, oscillating between periods of war and strained peace while building a vibrant multiethnic society, economy, and technology sector. Taught by Larry Diamond (Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor, by courtesy, of sociology and of political science) and Amichai Magen (visiting professor and fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies), this 10-week online course will offer an informed analysis of modern Israel. Each week, the professors will be joined by Stanford experts and other guest speakers who will analyze important dimensions of Israeli life.

This course will inevitably dedicate time to the ongoing Middle East conflict, which again exploded into violence last October, and to the continuing efforts to find a formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In this context, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will discuss the emerging dynamics of geopolitics in the Middle East, and former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari and Ambassador Dennis Ross will explore options for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. In addition, Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi will revisit his New York Times bestselling book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, in light of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack and the subsequent Gaza war. But the course will also look beyond the conflict, venturing into other lesser-known areas of Israeli life and history, including lectures on the politics of historical memory in divided societies with Stanford professor of history James T. Campbell, and Zionism and anti-Zionism with Stanford professor of the humanities Russell Berman. UC Berkeley School of Law professor Masua Sagiv will discuss the constitutional questions central to Israel’s effort to have a Jewish and democratic state. As we proceed, Sophia Khalifa Shramko will share the experience of growing up as an Arab woman in Israel. Finally, Stanford professor of economics Ran Abramitzky and Stanford visiting professor Alon Tal will explore Israel’s modern economy and efforts to use innovation to achieve sustainability in an environmentally challenging region. 

Please note: There are no formal prerequisites for this course, though prior interest and engagement with topics related to Israel and the Middle East are an advantage. This course is co-sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and it is an adaptation of a class offered to Stanford undergraduates.

In early October, Arab Barometer, a central resource for quantitative research on Arab countries, completed its most recent survey in Palestine, offering unique insight into the views of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The next day, Oct. 7, Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel.

On Wednesday, Nov. 29, Stanford’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy presented the online event, “Public Opinion in Palestine Before the Conflict,” to discuss the survey findings in the context of the attacks. Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins, two principal investigators at Arab Barometer, discussed how Palestinians view their government, their living conditions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and international actors. The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy is housed at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Read the full article in the Stanford Report.

We studied millennia of Ukrainian history. We debated the legality of seizing frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. And we drank a cherry liqueur that was once a staple in every household of Old Lviv.

As Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine dragged into its twentieth month this September, we took off with a group of Stanford Law peers from campus to Warsaw, Poland, as part of the school’s inaugural S-Term program (S stands for September). Led by Erik Jensen, director of Stanford’s Rule of Law Program, and Michael Strauss, JD ’01, general counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, our S-Term class, titled Ukraine: The Promise and Perils of Legal Reform and Governance, in Wartime and Reconstruction, was the first ever course at the law school to focus on Ukraine. Inspired by S-Term’s vision of providing unique, immersive learning experiences with faculty leaders and renowned practitioners, Professors Jensen and Strauss gave students an opportunity not only to learn about but also to help address the many challenges facing Ukrainians as they seek a secure, prosperous, and democratic future.

Read the full story in Stanford Lawyer.

How and why do armed actors intervene in democratic politics? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, postdoctoral fellow Andres Uribe presented a multifaceted theory explaining the strategies violent groups adopt to influence democratic processes. The talk drew on Uribe’s research on Colombia and Peru.

Uribe shows that armed groups face a choice between co-opting or undermining democracy. More specifically, groups pursuing co-optation try to influence the existing political process through either “corruption” or “capture.” Corruption entails the use of positive inducement to shape the behavior of elected officials or voters, whereas capture entails the use of the threat of force to achieve similar goals.

Those groups seeking to attack democracy do so through two different strategies. The first is “delegitimization,” which could involve attacks on elections and voting sites. The second is “displacement” or the violent removal of the democratic system and its replacement with an entirely different political order.

What determines a given armed group’s choice of strategies (i.e., corruption, capture, delegitimization, or displacement)? The answer, according to Uribe, is determined by the group’s ideological compatibility with democracy and its coercive capacity. Among groups professing ideologies compatible with democracy, they are likely to engage in corruption under low levels of coercive capacity, and capture under higher levels. As for groups whose aims are incompatible with the democratic process, they tend to pursue delegitimization when their coercive capacity is low, and displacement at higher levels of coercive capacity.

Uribe tested his theory based on a paired comparison of Peru’s Sendero Luminioso (SL) and Colombia’s FARC. To characterize each group’s relative ideological compatibility with democratic politics, he drew on a corpus of 7500 documents spanning 21 Latin American countries. He found FARC to be more compatible with democracy than the average armed actor, while SL was less compatible.

To measure coercive capacity, Uribe used data on coca production and cocaine retail pricing in the US as reflective of SL’s and FARC’s military finances. Using casualties in attacks against democracy as an indicator, he found that when FARC possessed a high coercive capacity, there was a slight increase in the number of victims, whereas a similar increase in Sendero’s capacity yielded a 15-fold increase in the number of deaths.

Uribe’s analysis shows that during electoral contests, FARC attempted to reduce the conservative vote share, whereas SL attempted to reduce overall turnout. These outcomes are consistent with Uribe’s theory — FARC’s compatibility with democracy pushes them to work within the system, focusing their attacks on the other party. Sendero, conversely, attempts to prevent all participation in the democratic process.

Uribe’s findings suggest the importance of ideology in understanding how armed actors behave and emphasizes that they do not all share the same motivations. His work also highlights the way some groups play the democratic game using violence, a choice previously seen as mutually exclusive.