Stanford University

Rule of Law

A Dynamic Model of the Demand for the Rule of Law in Post-Communist Economies

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We investigate the demand for the rule of law in post-Communist economies after privatization under the assumption that theft is possible, that those who have "stolen" assets cannot be fully protected under a change in the legal regime towards "rule of law," and that the number of agents with control rights over assets is large. A demand for broadly beneficial legal reform may not emerge because the expectation of a legal vacuum increases the expected relative return to asset-stripping, and strippers may gain from a weak, corrupt state. The outcome can be inefficient even from the narrow perspective of the asset-strippers.

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Karla Hoff Speaker The World Bank
Seminars

Gideon Maltz

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Pre-doctoral Fellow 2005 - 2006

Gideon Maltz is studying the role of presidential term limits in advancing democracy, strategies for more effectively enforcing term limits, and the question of term limits in the context of parliamentary systems. Gideon has worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy & Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. He has also spent time working on comparative constitutionalism as a part-time consultant at the National Endowment for Democracy, on Sudan and Zimbabwe at the International Crisis Group, and on international trade at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Gideon graduated with a B.A. in Ethics, Politics & Economics from Yale and is currently a third-year student at Stanford Law School. He is also a graduate fellow at the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN).

Beyond Incrementalism: A New U.S. Strategy for Dealing with Iran

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In the coming years, few if any countries will more preoccupy the foreign policy attention of the United States than Iran. The United States has long lacked a viable and coherent policy toward Iran. Perhaps for the first time since the fall of the Shah's regime in 1979, the United States seems determined to try to forge one. The United States must move swiftly to chart a bold, new course that addresses all three of America's principal national interests with Iran. Our policy should seek to halt the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb, to end the regime's support of terrorist groups, and to help the democratic movement in Iran. Each of these goals is vital, but they are also intertwined. Compared to autocracies, democracies are more transparent about their foreign policy intentions and their military capabilities. Only when we have a government in Iran that is truly accountable to its people and to the rule of law will we be able to achieve a permanent and verifiable halt to that country's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its support of international terrorism.

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Hoover Institution Press
Authors
Michael A. McFaul
Larry Diamond
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Conference on Health, Demographics and Economic Development

The Conference on the Health, Demographics and Economic Development will take place on May 20-21, 2005 at the Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Stanford Institute for International Studies. This conference is organized by Peter Lorentzen and Romain Wacziarg.

The conference is organized around three themes:

1. The Demographic Transition and the Industrial Revolution

2. Health, Fertility, and Human Capital

3. The Effects of Health on Income and Growth: Micro and Macro Evidence.

Participants include: Manuel Amador (Stanford University), Javier Birchenall (UC Santa Barbara), Hoyt Bleakley (UC San Diego), David Bloom (Harvard University), Michele Boldrin (University of Minnesota), David Canning (Harvard University), Shankha Chakraborty (University of Oregon), Matthias Doepke (UCLA), Miriam Golden (UCLA), Larry Jones (University of Minnesota), Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan (University of Houston), Pete Klenow (Stanford University), Peter Lorentzen (Stanford University), Aprajit Mahajan (Stanford University), John McMillan (Stanford University), Rodrigo Soares (University of Maryland), Uwe Sunde (IZA Bonn), Michele Tertilt (Stanford University), Romain Wacziarg (Stanford University), and David Weil (Brown University).

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Romain Wacziarg Speaker
Peter Lorentzen Speaker
Conferences
CDDRL Conferences

Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law

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An intensive global search is on for the "rule of law," the holy grail of good governance, which has led to a dramatic increase in judicial reform activities in developing countries. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the widening gap between theory and practice, or to the ongoing disconnect between stated project goals and actual funded activities. Beyond Common Knowledge examines the standard methods of legal and judicial reform. Taking stock of international experience in legal and judicial reform in Latin America, Europe, India, and China, this volume answers key questions in the judicial reform debate: What are the common assumptions about the role of the courts in improving economic growth and democratic politics? Do we expect too much from the formal legal system? Is investing in judicial reform projects a good strategy for getting at the problems of governance that beset many developing countries? If not, what are we missing?

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Stanford University Press
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Erik Jensen
Thomas C. Heller

Political Reform in the Middle East: How Far Is It Going?

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Marina S. Ottaway specializes in democracy and post-conflict reconstruction issues. She is a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project, a research endeavor that analyzes the state of democracy around the world and the efforts by the United States and other countries to promote democracy. Her new book, Democracy Challenged, a comparative study of semiauthoritarian regimes in Africa, the Caucasus, Latin America, and the Middle East, was published in January 2003. Her current works focus on political transformation in the Middle East and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She is also a lecturer in African Studies at the Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

She received her undergraduate educatin at University of Pavia, Italy and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Ottaway's selected Publications include, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Carnegie, 2003); Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, edited with Thomas Carothers (Carnegie, 2000); Africa's New Leaders: Democracy or State Reconstruction? (Carnegie, 1999)

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Marina Ottaway Senior Associate Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Seminars

Global Jurisprudence Colloquium

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Stanford Law School, the Stanford Rule of Law Program, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law, and the Santa Clara Institute of International and Comparative Law will host a Global Jurisprudence Colloquium at Stanford University on March 17-18, 2005, on the theme of Decisions of International Legal Institutions: Compliance and Enforcement. The Colloquium will provide leading judges from a number of key international courts and tribunals with an opportunity to interact and share with the Stanford community and the public their insights into issues presented by the growing use of international courts to promote the rule of law.

Distinguished international jurists scheduled to participate in the Colloquium include Judges Higgins and Owada of the International Court of Justice, Judges Pillay and Song of the International Criminal Court, President Meron and Judge Robinson of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Judge Mumba of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Judge Ameli of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, Judge Kokott of the European Court of Justice, Judge Greve of the European Court of Human Rights, and President Robertson of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

On March 18, the Colloquium participants, joined by distinguished international law and international relations faculty, will hold three panel discussions, each on a particular theme related to the historic challenge to improve enforcement of international law and efforts to enhance the rule of law. These panel discussions will be held at Stanford Law School and are open to the University community and the public.

Room 290, Stanford Law School

Symposiums

Jason M. Brownlee

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Post-doctoral Fellow 2004 -2005

Jason Brownlee is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law for 2004 - 2005. His areas of interest are in regime change and regime durability; political institutions; domestic democratization movements and international democracy promotion.

His publications include:

  • "And Yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transition in Neopatrimonial Regimes," Studies in Comparative International Development, (November 2002)
  • "The Decline of Pluralism in Mubarak's Egypt," Journal of Democracy, (October 2002)
    Reprinted in Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg (eds.), Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 2003)
  • "Low Tide After the Third Wave: Exploring Politics under Authoritarianism," Comparative Politics, (July 2002)

Escaping the Resource Curse? A Look at Nigeria

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Professor Tom Heller of Stanford University Law School and CDDRL's Program on Rule of Law will speak on his current research.

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Thomas C. Heller

Crown Quad rm 329
Stanford, California 94305-8610

(650) 723-7650 (650) 725-0253
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Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus
THeller.jpg LLB

An expert in international law and legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. He has created innovative courses on the role of law in transitional and developing economies, as well as the comparative study of law in developed economies. He co-directs the law school’s Rule of Law Program, as well as the Stanford Program in International Law. Professor Heller has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, and Hong Kong University, and has served as the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is now a senior fellow.

Professor Heller is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an attorney-advisor to the governments of Chile and Colombia.

FSI Senior Fellow and Woods Institute Senior Fellow by courtesy
Thomas C. Heller Professor Stanford Law School and CDDRL
Seminars

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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