Stanford University

Rule of Law

Property Rights and Property Wrongs: Survey Evidence on the Legitimacy of Privatization in Russia

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About the talk:

Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin or can rightholders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? Using an experiment embedded in a survey of 1600 residents of conducted in Russia in October 2006, I find that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge, but that businesspeople can improve the legitimacy of property rights by doing good works, such as providing public goods.

About the speaker:

Timothy Frye is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research and teaching interests are in comparative politics and political economy with a focus on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Markets in Russia, (Michigan Press 2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He has published articles on property rights, the rule of law, protection rackets, economic reform, presidential power, and trade liberalization. Current projects include a book manuscript on the politics of economic reform in 25 postcommunist countries from 1990-2002 and articles on property rights and the rule of law drawing on surveys of business elites and the mass public in Russia.

Timothy Frye received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1997. He has an MIA degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a BA in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), under Title VI of the Department of Education.

CISAC Conference Room

Timothy Frye Professor of Political Science Speaker Columbia University
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The Khodorkovsky Case: Human Rights and Rule of Law in Putin's Russia

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Robert R. Amsterdam, founding partner of the international law firm Amsterdam & Peroff, is counsel to the former Yukos head and political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. For more than 25 years, Mr. Amsterdam has represented corporations and investors in a variety of emerging markets lacking in rule of law, such as Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala, overseeing complex commercial litigation and advising on political risk. He has delivered speeches before the Carnegie Endowment, the Cato Institute, Georgetown University, University College London, and Chatham House. He has published numerous opinion articles on energy politics and law in the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, the National Law Journal, the Guardian, and the Independent, among other media. Mr. Amsterdam maintains a blog at www.robertamsterdam.com and is working on a forthcoming book.

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Robert Amsterdam Speaker
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Randomization and Foreign Assistance

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Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, director of the Poverty Action Lab, and past president of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis and Development (BREAD).

Banerjee received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1988, and has taught at Princeton and Harvard before joining the MIT faculty in 1996. In 2001, he was the recipient of the Malcolm Adeshesiah Award, and was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal in 2000. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. He is coeditor with Roland Benabou and Dilip Mookherjee of Understanding Poverty and, with Philippe Aghion, coauthor of Volatility and Growth. His areas of research are development economics, the economics of financial markets, and the macroeconomics of developing countries.

Sponsored by the Program on Global Justice, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Abhijit Banerjee Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the Poverty Action Lab Speaker
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Evaluating EU Democratic Rule of Law Promotion

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The modern Romanian judiciary originates in the middle of the nineteenth century. The structure of the judiciary follows both the French model (the civil matters), and the Italian one (the commercial regulations). The Ministry of Justice plays a significant role in the administration of the judiciary. Romanian is a Roman language, and Romania has had long-standing cultural ties to France that were carried over to the legal sphere.

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EU Democratic Rule of Law Promotion: The Case of Serbia

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In the former (second) Yugoslavia (1945-1991) which was a federal state, according to the constitutional provision on the federal character of the state, judicial system was organized on the level of federal units (republic and provinces) and on the federal level only consistency of the case law was provided by the revision function of the Federal Court (cassation). Furthermore the Federal Attorney prosecutes the most severe crimes against the state and political order, taking into account the ideological charters of that order.

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EU Conditionality and Democratic Rule of Law in Turkey

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In this report we examine the role of internal and external factors in advancing or preventing "democratic rule of law" reforms in Turkey over the last decade. We focus particularly on the role of the EU in trying to influence domestic reforms. We underline the interaction between domestic actors and this external actor. We primarily aim to figure out why, when, where and how has the EU managed to influence rule of law reforms and where it has failed to make a real impact. In conceptualizing this influence we distinguish between direct (through government-to-government pressure etc.) and indirect (through empowering domestic reformists strengthening pro-reform civil society, or coordinating with other international organizations to maximize external pressures) impacts.

Prepared for the workshop organized by Sabanci University, Stanford University and Centre of European Excellence - University of Florence on "Europeanisation and Democratisation: The Southern European Experience and the Perspective for New Member States of the Enlarged Europe", Istanbul 10-11th December 2005.

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Democratization in Greater China: What Can We Learn from Taiwan's Past for China's Future

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The conference, organized by the Taiwan Democracy Program of the Center on The conference, organized by the Taiwan Democracy Program of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), will consider what Taiwan's democratic development may teach us about possible future democratic development in mainland China.

DAY I: SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL CHANGE: COMPARING THE ROC AND THE PRC

Morning Session (8:30 am - 12:30 am):

  • Introduction
  • Panel 1: The Impact of Economic Development on Political Culture and Social Structure
  • Panel 2: Civil Society and Civic Resistance

Afternoon Session (1:30 pm - 4:10 pm):

  • Panel 3: Political Institutional Change
  • Panel 4: The International Context

Keynote Speach (7:30 pm - 8:30 pm):

  • The Honorable James C. F. Huang, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Republic of China (Taiwan)

DAY II: WILL CHINA FOLLOW TAIWAN'S PATH TO DEMOCRACY? HOW WILL CHINA CHANGE POLITICALLY IN THE NEXT TWO DECADES

Morning Session (8:45 am - 12:00 pm):

  • Panel 5: Future Political Change in the PRC: Adaptation or Decay
  • Panel 6: China's Economic Development and Its Consequences

Afternoon Session (1:00 pm - 5:00 pm):

  • Panel 7: Scenarios for Change
  • Panel 8: External Factor
  • Round Table Conclusion: What Lessons Does Taiwan's Past Hold for China's Future?

 

Oksenberg Conference Room

Conferences
CDDRL Conferences
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Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel: What Really Happened and What Does It Mean?

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Rami Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. He is an internationally syndicated journalist, author, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is currently a visiting fellow with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Mr. Khouri will speak about the war in Lebanon this summer. He will provide an analysis of the Israeli-Hezbollah war and discuss its fallout for Lebanese society and government, and its impact on the region's power dynamics. He will also comment on escalating violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and heightening tensions between the U.S. and political movements in the region, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Building 420, Room 40

Rami G. Khouri Director Speaker Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut
Lectures

The Bridge Over the River Jordan: Islam, Ethnicity and Electoral Rule Manipulation

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David Patel is a PhD candidate in Stanford's Dept of Political Science and,

beginning in Fall 2007, an Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell

University. He is currently a pre-doctoral fellow with the Center on

Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Mr. Patel will speak about changes in the communal support base of the

Jordanian Islamic Movement. He asks, why did a flourising Islamist movement,

capable of transcending Jordan's communal boundaries and shifting the broad

axes of social division, instead transform into an ethnic party in the

1990s? He argues the Transjordanian-dominated government, threatened by

Islamists' cross-communal appeal, purposely exploits communal divisions

within the Islamic Movement by engineering electoral rules, gerrymandering

districts, and provoking communally-divisive crises with the Movement. These

changes lead the Islamic Movement to increasingly cater to

Palestinian-Jordanian voters, which preserves national origin as the most

salient cleavage in Jordanian society.

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David Patel Pre-Doctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL
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