The Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is now accepting applications for our summer 2025 program. The deadline to apply is 5:00 pm PST on Thursday, January 16, 2025.

The program brings together an annual cohort of approximately 30 mid-career practitioners from countries in political transition who are working to advance democratic practices and enact economic and legal reform to promote human development. Launched by CDDRL in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. The new name reflects an endowment gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that secures the future of this important and impactful program.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, our program participants are selected from among hundreds of applicants every year for the significant contributions they have already made to their societies and their potential to make an even greater impact with some help from Stanford. We aim to give them the opportunity to join a global network of over 500 alumni from 97 countries who have all faced similar sets of challenges in bringing change to their countries.

The Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program provides an intensive 3-week on-campus forum for civil society leaders to exchange experiences and receive academic and policy training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Delivered by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and more, the program allows emerging and established global leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Prospective fellows from Ukraine are also invited to apply for our Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development (SU-DD) Program, which runs concurrently with the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program. The SU-DD program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career practitioners working on well-defined projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian democracy, enhancing human development, and promoting good governance. Applicants to the SU-DD program will use the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program application portal to apply and indicate their interest there. You will then be directed to a series of supplemental questions specific to the SU-DD program, including requiring a detailed description of your proposed project.

In 2024, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) celebrated the 19th year of its Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program. This summer, 26 democracy leaders from across the developing world convened at Stanford for an intensive three-week training focused on democracy, good governance, and rule of law reform. Chosen from a highly competitive applicant pool, the fellows represent a diverse range of professional backgrounds and geographical regions, spanning civil society, public service, social enterprise, media, and technology. Launched in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was renamed in 2023 in recognition of a gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that endowed the program and secured its future.

Fellows were instructed by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Kathryn Stoner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; Senior Fellow in Global Democracy Larry Diamond; and Erik Jensen, Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School on new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Esteemed guest lectures were also presented by individuals from the greater FSI and Stanford communities, as well as by Damon Wilson, President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA 17th District); and Donna Norton, Executive VP and Chief Advancement & Strategy Officer of MomsRising, a nonprofit taking on the most critical issues facing women, mothers, and families by mobilizing massive grassroots actions.

During the program, the fellows gave "TED"-style talks during our Fellow Spotlight Series, sharing personal stories about the struggles in their home countries, stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, and stories of optimism and endurance. You can watch their talks in the playlist below:

Data is necessary to study any particular place. But, in development economics, research inquiries have historically focused more on rural areas. Nearly a decade ago King Center faculty affiliate and economics professor Marcel Fafchamps and former King Center faculty director Pascaline Dupas (now at Princeton), set out to change that by launching the King Center’s African Urbanization and Development Research Initiative (AUDRI). The initiative conducts wide-ranging, multi-year panel surveys on the changing economic, social, and political conditions in two of Africa’s largest cities, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Read the full article from the King Center on Urban Development.

How does climate change shape citizens’ views of political leaders and institutions? At a CDDRL seminar series talk, Amanda Kennard, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, and Brandon de la Cuesta, a postdoctoral fellow at CDDRL and the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), explored the effects of climate shocks on political trust, employing innovative machine learning methods.

To illustrate the link between the environment and human social systems, Kennard began with an anecdote about street vendors in Liberia. She noted that research has found that the single largest factor influencing vendors’ decision to join the formal economy is precipitation. From crop cultivation to the uptake of government programs, climate sets the stage for all other systems.

The existing literature on the political effects of climate links extreme temperatures to civil conflict and flood events to anti-incumbent voting. However, it has yet to fully explore the effect of climate on state actors or state structures.

Kennard’s and de la Cuesta’s paper focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, characterized by a diverse set of political, economic, and demographic circumstances.

The authors studied public confidence in heads of state, local leaders, opposition parties, the police, the courts, and the bureaucracy. In the face of the changing climate, the authors are seeking to understand how people perceive state performance, corruption, and democracy.

At the start of this research project, the presenters explained, the available data lacked the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for credible subnational analysis. Accordingly, Kennard, de la Cuesta, and their team worked to create a machine learning algorithm that could harmonize survey questions across survey rounds and countries. These geolocated surveys were then paired with remote sensing data to create a complete picture of the association between climate change and public opinion in a given place and time.

Kennard and de la Cuesta used the data to study the effects of environmental shocks on relevant economic, social, and political outcomes. In terms of economic and social well-being, the team found that temperature shocks led to meaningful increases in dependence on informal networks for borrowing and remittances and to a decrease in interpersonal trust.

On the political side, they found that climate change is associated with statistically significant (albeit small) negative effects on public confidence in local bodies, the president, and the ruling party, along with some state institutions like the police and court system. While the effects of climate change on satisfaction with democracy were directionally consistent, they were, for the most part, not statistically significant.

Several countries in Africa have already seen devastating temperature changes of two degrees Celsius, with another two likely to come before 2050. This change is pushing many people out of the so-called human habitable zone, so the current effects on measures of economic, social, and political distress are only likely to increase going forward.

Kennard and de la Cuesta indicated that they hope to make the machine learning infrastructure they have developed scalable and open source, thereby allowing researchers to access specific geolocated survey responses.