Interest in democracy, economic development, and the rule of law is clearly on the rise. Just as global attention in 2005 remained riveted on establishing and protecting the fundamentals of democracy in transitioning societies—the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, the constitutional vote in Iraq, the threat to civil liberties in Russia—these issues took on increasing prominence on the Stanford campus, for policymakers and students alike.

STANFORD SUMMER FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Freeman Spogli Institute’s newest research center, hosted its first annual Summer Fellows Program on campus in August. This innovative program is designed to help emerging and established leaders of transitioning countries in their efforts to create the fundamental institutions of democracy, fight the pernicious problem of corruption, improve governance at all levels of society, and strengthen prospects for sustainable economic development. In contrast to other programs of democracy promotion, which seek to transfer ready-made models to countries in transition, the Stanford program provides a comparative perspective on the evolution of established democratic practices, as well as theoretical and practical background on issues of democracy and good governance, to assist with needed economic, political, and judicial reform.

The three-week 2005 leadership seminar attracted 32 participants from 28 countries for specialized teaching, training, and outreach, including leaders from the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and parts of the former Soviet Union, whose stability is so vital to the international system. The curriculum draws on the combined expertise of Stanford scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, economics, law, sociology, and business and emphasizes the dynamic linkages among democratization, economic development, and the rule of law in transitioning countries.

DEMOCRACY, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE RULE OF LAW

In the fall quarter of 2005, a new undergraduate course, titled %course1% (PS/IR 114D), examining the dynamic and interactive linkages among democratic institutions, economic development, and the framework of law proved to be an all-star attraction for Stanford students. Conceived by the research faculty and staff at CDDRL as an important introduction to fundamental concepts and team-taught by a number of prominent Stanford scholars—including University President Emeritus Gerhard Casper (Stanford Law School), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution), CDDRL Director Michael A. McFaul (Hoover Institution and Department of Political Science), and Peter B. Henry (Graduate School of Business), the course attracted a record number of students this fall. Encina Columns recently interviewed Kathryn Stoner, associate director of research and senior research scholar at CDDRL, the course convener, to glean a few highlights.

Q. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO OFFER THE COURSE AT THIS TIME?

A. CDDRL research staff and faculty decided to offer the course in the fall of 2005 as a launch for what we hope will become an honors program. We wanted to use PS/IR 114D as a gateway course into other courses taught by our faculty, as well. For example, Larry Diamond teaches a very popular course on democracy, and we thought our course would be a good way to introduce undergraduates to some of the basic themes of that course, while also introducing them to connections between democracy and economic development and the interplay of these with the rule of law.

Q. DID YOU ENVISION A QUARTER-LONG OR YEAR-LONG COURSE? WHY?

A. The course was always envisioned as just a quarter-long course. This is to provide a launch into the menu of other courses that are offered by our faculty.

Q. WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE STUDENT RESPONSE?

A. We were very surprised to have 130 students in the course this fall. We ran the course as a “beta test” in the spring of 2005 with just 25 students, but apparently the buzz among undergraduates was good and our enrollment numbers jumped in September when we offered the course again. The political science department was caught a little off guard and we had to hustle to find enough teaching assistants to staff the course.

Q. WHO WERE YOUR MAIN LECTURERS AND WHAT WERE THEIR TOPICS?

A. We had 13 lecturers in all including Gerhard Casper, on what rule of law means and why people choose to follow law or not; Larry Diamond, on meanings of democracy and Iraq; Avner Greif, on how economic institutions are established historically; and Jeremy M. Weinstein, on international aid and development in Africa, to name but a few.

Q. WHAT TOPICAL THEMES HAVE YOU EXPLORED WITH YOUR STUDENTS?

A. The Iraq lecture by Larry Diamond was particularly topical and the students clearly learned a lot from him. They also enjoyed Jeremy Weinstein’s lecture on debates on aid policy in Africa. He set it up in an engaging way so that students had to decide whether “conditionality” was a good idea in providing aid to Africa or not.

Q. DID YOU FIND THAT PARTICULAR ISSUES HAD SPECIAL "RESONANCE" FOR STANFORD STUDENTS?

A. I think that there is growing interest among Stanford undergraduates in how democracy can be promoted and to what extent the United States should be involved in this project. Many students in our course are interested in doing some sort of work in the development field, so they wanted to explore cases of when democracies have become consolidated versus situations where they slid back into dictatorship. They are also particularly interested in when or whether force is appropriate in promoting or establishing democracy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, for example.

Q. WHAT PROVED MOST GRATIFYING TO YOU? DID YOU GAIN NEW INSIGHT?

A. I always gain new insights when I interact with smart students who are deeply interested and engaged in these issues. I also find it a real privilege to actually sit down and listen to my colleagues deliver lectures on areas of their expertise. That is truly a treat.

Q. WHAT'S NEXT? WILL YOU OFFER THIS COURSE AGAIN?

A. Yes, we intend to offer the course every fall quarter. We are also currently planning to launch an honors program, perhaps this spring. As part of that we will offer a seminar for juniors interested in writing theses on the general themes of democracy, development, and the rule of law in the developing world.

In a 1999 article profiling six of “China’s bright young stars,” the New York Times described Junning Liu as “one of China’s most influential liberal political thinkers.” Today, sitting in a delegate-style conference room, Liu wants to add a point to Thomas C. Heller’s discussion of risk assessment and the role of law in doing business. If assets are not protected by legal institutions, Heller argues, foreign direct investment becomes a riskier prospect and economic growth suffers as a result. Except, he points out, in China. The legal system doesn’t manage risk but China is growing extremely fast.

“There are more businesspeople in Chinese prisons than dissidents,” Liu says evenly, with a suggestion of a smile. “So you see … Chinese people mind the situation more than you [the foreign investors] do.”

Liu is one of 26 change-makers from developing democracies who were selected from more than 800 applicants to take part in this year’s Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program, which is offered by FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). His colleagues in the program are presidential advisors and attorneys general, journalists and civic activists, academics and members of the international development community. They traveled to Stanford from 21 countries in transition, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt, and Nigeria. And like their academic curriculum during the three-week program, which examines linkages among democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, their professional experiences and fields of study center on these three areas, assuring that each fellow brings a seasoned perspective to the program’s discussions.

“For most of the fellows … democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law.”The curriculum for the first week focused on democracy, with leading comparative democracy scholars Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond, and Kathryn Stoner team-teaching the morning seminars. Using selected articles and book chapters as starting points for discussion, McFaul, Diamond, and Stoner-Weiss began the weeklong democracy module with an examination of what democracy is and what definition or definitions might apply to distinguish electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and competitive authoritarianism. Another question discussed was whether there was such a thing as Islamic democracy, Asian democracy, Russian democracy, or American democracy.

As the week progressed, fellows and faculty discussed institutions of democracy, electoral systems, horizontal accountability, development of civil society, democratic transitions, and global trends in democracy promotion. Fellows led sessions themselves in the afternoons, comparing experiences and sharing insights into how well political parties and parliaments constrained executive power and how civil society organizations contributed to democratic consolidation and/or democratic transitions.

In addition to discussing their personal experiences with democracy promotion, fellows met with a broad range of practitioners, including USAID deputy director Maria Rendon, IREX president Mark Pomar, MoveOn.org founder Joan Blades, Freedom House chairman and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict president Jack DuVall, Otpor cofounder Ivan Marovic, A Force More Powerful documentary filmmaker Steve York, and Advocacy Institute cofounder David Cohen. Guest speakers talked about their fieldwork, offered practical advice, and answered fellows’ questions. This component grounded the classroom discussions in a practical context. “It was important for our visiting fellows to interact with American practitioners, both to learn about innovative techniques for improving democracy practices but also to hear about frustrations and failures that Americans also face in working to make democracy and democracy promotion work more effectively,” explains McFaul. “We Americans do not have all the answers and have much to learn from interaction with those in the trenches working to improve governance in their countries.”

The following two weeks would focus in turn on development and the rule of law, but democracy continued to serve as the intellectual lynchpin of the program, with economies and legal institutions analyzed vis-à-vis their relationship to the development of democratic systems.

“For most of the fellows, who come from national circumstances which once suffered (or still do suffer) prolonged authoritarian rule, democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law,” says Diamond. “Unless people have the ability to turn bad rulers out of office, and to hold rulers accountable in between elections through a free press and civil society, countries stand a poor prospect of controlling corruption, protecting human rights, correcting policy mistakes, and ensuring that government is responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people.”

Among the fellows, this idea of democracy as a “necessity,” a fundamental platform from which to pursue economic and legal reforms, was widely recognized. “It appears that like-minded people were selected to participate,” notes Sani Aliyu, a broadcast journalist and interfaith mediator from Nigeria. “Each of us is interested in the development of humanity, and it appears that we have accepted that democracy seems to be the vehicle through which human development can be accessed reasonably. We share this."

As the program’s curriculum shifted to development issues for week two, the all-volunteer assemblage of Stanford faculty expanded to include professors and professional research staff from Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Department of Economics. Avner Greif established the context for the development module with an overview of institutional foundations of politics and markets, followed by discussions of growth restructuring in transitional economies with GSB professor Peter B. Henry and Stanford Center for International Development deputy director Nicholas Hope. Terry L. Karl analyzed corruption in developing economies and the “resource curse,” and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, joined Diamond, McFaul, and Karl in discussing how the spectrum of democratic to autocratic systems of government affected a country’s development.

Another salient component of the development module centered on the role of media in promoting democracy and development. The field trip to San Francisco, which included a session with KQED Forum host Michael Krasny, a briefing on international reporting at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a discussion of media strategies at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, provided particularly rich practical content, as did the fellows’ roundtable on maintaining media independence in semi-autocracies.

At KQED Radio, Cuban-born Raul Ramirez, the executive producer of Forum, talked with fellows about the concept of “civic journalism” and KQED’s goal of creating space for civic discussion. Forum host Michael Krasny and Ramirez, who runs workshops on civic journalism at the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht, then fielded a barrage of questions from fellows: How does KQED maintain independence from government and commercial funding? If Rush Limbaugh attacked you, would you respond in your program? Is it possible to have neutral, nonpartisan public radio? How do you manage to deal with political issues, particularly when you start to affect the power structures with your programming? Are there any words, like “terrorist,” that you are banned from using on the air?

“Discussion of this kind is of great importance to both media professionals and the audience,” notes Anna Sevortian, a journalist and research coordinator at the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights in Moscow. “It helps you to clarify how a particular newspaper, TV, or radio station is dealing with matters of public policy or of political controversy.”

The third week’s curriculum layered rule-of-law issues onto the conceptual modules of democracy promotion and economic development, drawing on the teaching caliber of constitutional scholar and Stanford president emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Helen Stacy, Allen S. Weiner, Tom Heller, and Richard Burt. After establishing a theoretical framework through discussions of the role of law, constitutionalism, human rights, transitional justice, the role of law in business and economic development, and strategies for promoting the rule of law, fellows compared experiences defending human rights, met with American immigration and civil liberties lawyers, and had a session with Circuit Court Judge Pamela Rymer on judging in federal courts. Field trips to Silicon Valley-based Google and eBay again put into practical context the free market, rule-of-law components discussed theoretically in the classroom.

Despite the intellectual rigor of the coursework and discussion, and the exploration of practical applicability with guest speakers and field trips, the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program was designed as much to stimulate connections among field practitioners and to provide a forum in which to exchange ideas. Weekend dinners, stretching late into the evening at the homes of Diamond and Stoner-Weiss, helped to gel the collegiality developing in the classroom. Led by Violet Gonda, a Zimbabwean journalist living in exile in London, and Talan Aouny, director of a major Iraqi civil society development program, the fellows organized a multicultural party, a potluck-style affair in which guests made a dish from their home country to share with their colleagues and friends of the program.

Program directors McFaul and Stoner-Weiss hope this social network will endure well into the weeks and months after the program. “We envision the creation of an international network of emerging political and civic leaders in countries in transition who can share experiences and solutions to the very similar problems they and their countries face,” says Stoner-Weiss. To ensure they fulfill their goal of building a small but robust global network of civic activist and policymakers in developing countries, CDDRL recently launched its Summer Fellows Program Alumni Newsletter. The newsletter is based on an interactive website that will allow the center to strengthen its network of leaders and civic activists and facilitate more groundbreaking policy analysis across academic fields and geographic regions, the results of which will be promptly fed back to its activist alumni in a virtual loop of scholarship and policymaking.

Earlier this year, CDDRL also moved to professionalize the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program by hiring a program manager, Laura Cosovanu, an attorney with experience in foundations and other nonprofit organizations, to oversee its advancement. The logistical acrobatics Cosovanu performed throughout the three weeks quickly became the object of good-natured teasing for some of the fellows, all of whom seemed to realize and appreciate the work required to get fellows and faculty into the same room.

As Kenza Aqertit, a National Democratic Institute for International Affairs field representative from Morocco, told program faculty at the graduation dinner, “You’ve done a great job and you should be proud of all your efforts. Plus you’ve won so many friends in so many autocracies and semi-autocracies.

Larry Diamond—Hoover Institution senior fellow, CDDRL democracy program coordinator, and former senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq—has just discussed causes and consequences of corruption and international efforts to control it with a room full of visiting fellows. This is not just a group of learned political scientists, however, and Diamond does not hesitate to follow a sophisticated piece of analysis with a hard-nosed, view-from-the-ground assessment. He has, for instance, just told the fellows what he thinks of a major development institution. (“I think the World Bank needs to be ripped apart and fundamentally restructured.”) He has extended the concept of a “resource curse” to include not just oil but also international assistance. (“In many countries, aid is like oil; it’s used for outside rents.”) He has recommended that institutions learn the “dance of conditionality” and exercise selectivity, choosing countries to invest in based on demonstrated performance. But the 27 fellows around the table know a thing or two about corruption. Most of them face it in their home countries; many of them have made fighting it part of their work. And almost all of their hands go up to tell Diamond that there is something he missed, or something he got right.

This year’s 27 Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development—outstanding civic, political, and economic leaders from developing democracies—were selected from more than 500 applicants to take part in the program, which FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted July 30–August 17, 2007. They traveled to Stanford from 22 countries in transition, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And like their academic curriculum during the three-week program, which examines linkages among democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, their professional experiences and fields of study center on these three areas, assuring that each fellow brings a seasoned perspective to the program’s discussions.

“Should the United States promote democracy? Can the United States promote democracy?” The curriculum for the first week focused on defining the concepts of “democracy,” “development,” and the “rule of law” and identifying institutions that support democratic and market development. Using selected articles and book chapters as starting points for discussion, CDDRL Director Michael A. McFaul and Marc Plattner, National Endowment for Democracy vice-president for research and studies, began the weeklong module with an examination of what democracy is and what definition or definitions might apply to distinguish electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and competitive authoritarianism. Another question discussed was whether there was such a thing as Islamic democracy, Asian democracy, Russian democracy, or American democracy.

Faculty including Diamond, CDDRL associate director for research Kathryn Stoner, Stanford president emeritus and constitutional law scholar Gerhard Casper, Stanford Law School lecturer Erik Jensen, and economists Avner Greif and Seema Jayachandran “team-taught” individual sessions as the week progressed. Fellows and faculty discussed how to define and measure development, the role and rule of law in societies, how legal systems affect democratic development, constitutionalism, electoral systems, parliamentary versus presidential systems, horizontal accountability, and market development. Fellows worked in groups to discuss and present their conclusions about an issue to their colleagues, comparing experiences and sharing insights into how well political parties and parliaments constrained executive power and how civil society organizations contributed to democratic consolidation.

In addition to discussing their personal experiences with democracy promotion, economic development, and legal reform, fellows met with a broad range of practitioners, including USAID deputy director Maria Rendon Labadan, National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit Judge Pamela Rymer, IREX president Mark Pomar, Freedom House chairman and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict president Jack DuVall, The Orange Revolution documentary filmmaker Steve York, and government affairs attorney Patrick Shannon. Guest speakers talked about their fieldwork, offered practical advice, and answered fellows’ questions.

This component grounded the classroom discussions in a practical context. “It was important for our visiting fellows to interact with American practitioners, both to learn about innovative techniques for improving democracy practices but also to hear about frustrations and failures that Americans also face in working to make democracy and democracy promotion work more effectively,” explained McFaul. “We Americans do not have all the answers and have much to learn from interaction with those in the trenches working to improve governance in their countries.”

As the program’s curriculum shifted to democratic and economic transitions for week two, McFaul and Stoner-Weiss balanced the structure of the classroom with guest lecturers, a documentary film premiere, and field trips to Google headquarters and San Francisco media organizations to put into practical context the components discussed theoretically in the classroom. The field trip to San Francisco included a session with KQED Forum executive producer Raul Ramirez, a briefing with the editorial board at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a discussion of links between violence against women and children and poverty, health, and security at the Family Violence Prevention Fund.

“We are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development.” The third week’s curriculum looked at international and domestic efforts to promote democracy, development, and the rule of law. This integrative module drew on the teaching caliber of Stephen D. Krasner (FSI senior fellow), Peter B. Henry (Graduate School of Business), Allen S. Weiner and Helen Stacy (Stanford Law School), and Nicholas Hope (Stanford Center for International Development) as well as Casper, Jensen, McFaul, and Stoner-Weiss. Through case studies and, in particular, comparison of successes and failures in the fellows’ own experiences, faculty and fellows explored and assessed international strategies for promoting rule of law, reconciliation of past human rights abuses, democracy, and good governance. The discussions, occasionally contentious, circled in on a set of central questions: Should the United States promote democracy? Can the United States promote democracy? What are the links between democracy and increasing the rule of law, controlling corruption, rebuilding societies shattered by massive human rights violations, and promoting good governance?

Despite the intellectual rigor of the coursework and discussion, and the exploration of practical applicability with guest speakers and field trips, the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program was designed as much to stimulate connections among field practitioners and to provide a forum in which to exchange ideas. “Through the summer fellows program, we are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development, and who are keeping in touch with us and with one another,” said Diamond. “When I meet our ‘alumni’ fellows in subsequent years, they speak movingly of the bonds they formed and the insights they gained in these three fast-paced weeks.”

To ensure they fulfill their goal of building a small but robust global network of civic activist and policymakers in developing countries, CDDRL launched a Summer Fellows Program Alumni Newsletter. The newsletter is based on an interactive website that will allow the center to strengthen its network of leaders and civic activists and facilitate more groundbreaking policy analysis across academic fields and geographic regions, the results of which will be promptly fed back to its activist alumni in a virtual loop of scholarship and policymaking. “We envision the creation of an international network of emerging political and civic leaders in countries in transition,” said Stoner-Weiss, “who can share experiences and solutions to the very similar problems they and their countries face.”

 

SSFDD ALUMNI FOCUS: VIOLET GONDA
A producer and pre s ent er for SW Radio Africa (London), Violet Gonda was a Stanford Summer Fellow on Democracy and Development in 2006, the same year her station was named the International Station of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters. "CDDRL brings together a cross-section of people from different backgrounds, different careers," Gonda said. "Politicians, lawyers, activists ... all in the same room. It is an amazing group of people."

Banned from returning to her home country because of her journalism work at the radio station-"we are welcome in Zimbabwe but only in the prisons"-Gonda "literally eat[s], breathe[s], and dream[s] Zimbabwe." The summer fellows program, she said, gave her a broad perspective on what's going on in other countries; "it is so intensive ... you can really compare and contrast democracy on every continent." One thing Gonda found is that "when you look at these leaders, you'd think they all were born of the same mother ... and the ways people respond to these crises are the same."

Gonda had such a positive experience at Stanford that she decided to apply for, and was accepted to, the prestigious John S. Knight Fellowships for journalists for the academic year 2007-08. "It's always been Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe," she said. "Now I finally have time to sit down and read a book, write an article, go to seminars, sharpen my skills." She is not exactly sitting still however. In December she gave a presentation on Zimbabwe's political situation for the Center on African Studies, and will also be discussing Zimbabwe at the Palo Alto Rotary Club and the Bechtel International Center. "Media in America does not have a lot of international news, particularly on Africa," Gonda said. "So it's a good opportunity to talk about Zimbabwe, and I will take advantage of it."

She is also working on developing new content for SW Radio Africa and plans to interview FSI scholars she met through the summer fellows program so "We are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development." that Zimbabweans can understand what is going on in different countries. Close contact with program alumni means that she has friends and colleagues in other parts of that world who can be called on for their perspective on situations. While SW Radio Africa's mission is "to record and to expose" developments in Zimbabwe, Gonda explained, "it's good to compare, to show people we are not alone, that this is happening elsewhere."

Zvisinei Sandi is a Scholar Rescue Fellow at CDDRL. She lectures on the human rights situation in Southern Africa, especially in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and also collaborates with Stanford Law School's Human Rights Clinic on its ongoing project in Southern Africa. She has worked as a journalist and political activist in Zimbabwe, but her writing and activism have brought her hostile attention from the Zimbabwean government, resulting in threats and physical attacks. Here she shares some of her observations about Zimbabwe's March 19 elections and how the "seemingly impossible happened. Mugabe and his party lost control of the parliament and lost the presidential elections to Morgan Tsvangirai."

Zimbabwe's March 29 elections were held in an atmosphere that everybody saw as impossible for the opposition. There was virtually no media freedom, no campaign time for the opposition, and so much violence that being merely associated with the opposition MDC could very well mean death, and the Zimbabwe electoral commission, run by the fanatical Mugabe loyalist, Tobaiwa Mudede, was handpicked by the ZANU PF administration and is heavily in favor of ZANU and Mugabe. In addition, it can easily be argued that much of the election was rigged long before the election itself took place. Election observers found that the numbers on the voter's roll were far greater than the numbers of the voters on the ground. Many of the names were simply created to inflate the numbers in the constituencies that supported Mugabe, while another big number was comprised of the deceased. Plucky Zimbabwean humor suggested in the run up to the election that Mugabe had recruited the dead since the living had no more time for him.

To make matters even worse, in the period before the election, the military generals got together and announced that they would never serve under, or submit to being led by, a person without anti-colonial war credentials. In other words, they were saying that if Mugabe did lose to Tsvangirai they would just hold on to power through the use of force and ensure that Mugabe, the man they have served unquestioningly through several decades, stayed on. In real terms, this was a threatened coup: if Tsvangirai won, there would be a coup, Mugabe would stay on, and life would go on as usual.

In spite of all of these factors, the seemingly impossible happened. Mugabe and his party lost control of the parliament and lost the presidential elections to Morgan Tsvangirai. At this point, the question became whether the generals would carry out their threatened coup. Events, and reports from the inside, suggest that they have done it, and in such a smooth fashion that, of all the screams that have been heard from Zimbabwe recently, none of them has been "Coup!"

Reports in the independent newspapers suggested that Robert Mugabe had directed the ZEC to delay the announcement of the presidential election results in order to manage a political crisis triggered by his defeat and that of his ZANU PF party. It was reported that the service chiefs had approached Mugabe with results that showed his defeat and they advised him to buy time. The Zimbabwe Independent (April 4–10) reported that ZEC's delay was part of the government's crisis management plan following clear indications that Mugabe had lost the presidential election to Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Mugabe is reported to have ordered the withholding of results by ZEC to buy time to manage his defeat and allow the three weeks for the run-off to elapse, thereby creating circumstances for him to try to survive politically. It was reported in the same issue of the Zimbabwe Independent that part of the government's strategy was to force ZEC to delay announcing the result until Mugabe had found a way to deal with the problem.

Zimbabwe's electoral law provides for a run-off in the event that none of the presidential candidates wins 50% plus one vote in the election. The run-off was therefore supposed to be held on or before April 19. The Zimbabwe Independent revealed that Mugabe and his close advisors from the country's state security agencies wanted Mugabe to use his temporary presidential powers to amend the Electoral Act to have the run-off after ninety days, ruling by decree in the meantime. They advised Mugabe that this would give them time to regroup and strategize.

Soon after the election, it was reported that Mugabe had offered a transitional government that would run the country for six months. Mugabe proposed to head the transitional government. According to the proposal, tabled to the MDC, was one of the many options that Mugabe was considering to manage his departure from office. Weeks later, Tsvangirai confirmed that his party had held secret talks with Mugabe's ZANU PF about forming a government of national unity. Tsvangirai revealed in a BBC interview that ZANU PF had approached the MDC to talk of a transition. The situation reportedly changed after ZANU PF hardliners asserted themselves. Word in the streets was that the service chiefs, Constantine Chiwenga of the Zimbabwe National Army, Perence Shiri of the Air Force, Augustine Chihuri of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Happyton Bonyongwe of the Central Intelligence Organization, and Paul Zimondi of Zimbabwe Prison Service were demanding assurances that they would not face prosecution for crimes they had committed during their service. It was then that reports suggested that the military had taken over.

The South African Sunday Independent of April 20 reported that the military was waging a systematic war of terror on rural people while the vote was being "faultlessly" rigged, ahead a contrived presidential run-off. The paper reported that central to the plot were hundreds of "command centers" led by war veterans and youths in police uniform, which were established across Zimbabwe to wage a national terror campaign. According to the paper, Zimbabwe's top military authority, the Joint Command, made up of service chiefs, has established a chain of command to ensure that Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF remain in office even though they both lost in elections on March 29. The network will be concentrated in the rural areas where 70 percent of the Zimbabwean population lives.

A senior army officer and a police chief described the president's re-election plan to the Sunday Independent. They said each command center would consist of three policemen, a soldier, and a war veteran who would be in charge. They would dispatch militias, comprised of war veterans and members of the ZANU PF Youth militia, to assault and torture known opposition supporters. They would also control the local police to ensure that the militia was immune from arrest. The generals have called on the four security services—army, police, intelligence, and prisons—to ensure that people are terrorized into voting for Mugabe in the expected presidential run-off. Generals who report directly to the Joint Command have explained in a series of closed meetings how people will be terrorized and beaten into voting for Mugabe in the run-off. Human rights groups verified reports of the terror campaign, saying that ZANU PF was using a network of informal detention centers to beat, torture, and intimidate opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans. A statement by Human Rights Watch provided a chilling account of systematic intimidation and violence, including the abduction and savage beating of opposition supporters in several areas. Detention centers are said to have been set up in Mutoko North, Mutoko South, Mudzi in Mashonaland East province, and in Bikita West in Masvingo province. Opposition supporters are being tortured at these camps in what ZANU PF terms "Operation Makavhoterapapi?" ("Where did you put your vote?") The aim in all this is threefold: to assert his power over the cowed population, to punish the people for having voted for the MDC, and to intimidate them to vote for ZANU PF in the event of a presidential run-off.

Playing a pivotal role in the current drama is the country's intelligence unit, the CIO (Central Intelligence Organization). Headed by one the most brutal figures in Zimbabwe's recent history, Happyton Bonyongwe, the CIO is responsible for collecting data and information about opposition party activists and leading the attacks on the targeted activists. Hundreds of villagers have reportedly fled their homes in the countryside after ZANU PF militia, war veterans, the notorious "Green Bombers" and the army attacked them.

War veterans went on fresh farm invasions similar to the ones in February of 2000, threatening the few remaining white commercial farmers and their farm workers. In Masvingo, they invaded Crest Farm owned by Graham Goddard and they gave him a 10-hour notice to pack his belongings and vacate. The Masvingo Mirror, a provincial weekly, reported that soldiers were wreaking havoc in rural areas in the province. The Mirror said that members of the Zimbabwe National Army and ZANU PF militia were deployed in some rural areas in the province, where they were beating up civilians suspected to be members of the MDC. The Zimbabwean on Sunday (April 20, 2008) reported that the CIO has a file on "each MDC activist detailed to the level of the football club he or she supports together with family members' details etc." The paper reported of a complex web of deception, coercion, and violent intimidation to ensure that another electoral defeat for Robert Mugabe in the presidential run-off is not remotely possible. The same issue of the Zimbabwean on Sunday carried a photograph of a battered and stoned body of MDC Hurungwe East Organizing Secretary, Tapiwa Mbawanda. The Standard of April 13, 2008, told stories of war veterans and ZANU PF militia on the rampage in Mashonaland Central. War veterans and ZANU PF militia reportedly burnt down more than 30 farm workers' huts, accusing them of voting against Robert Mugabe. The defenseless farm workers fled and watched from a distance as the war veterans and militia helped themselves to property before setting the huts on fire. The workers lost all of their belongings. Eighteen families now shelter temporarily in tobacco barns, exposed to the cold and diseases.

In Bulawayo, some businesspeople reported that from April 16, 2008, their environment was growing more and more scary by the day as they had began receiving threats from some war veterans and supporters of ZANU PF in the city. The war veterans were said to be visiting business premises regularly, threatening to close them down as Mugabe's retribution campaign against opposition activists and supporters spreads to all sectors of society. One business owner complained that they had visited him three times the same day accusing him of sponsoring the MDC. They threatened to loot everything in his shop and close it down after Mugabe wins the run-off.

The Zimbabwe Independent (April 11–17, 2008) carried a story that said ZANU PF members were moving around Mutoko East constituency waving guns of different sizes and types, and telling people that the run-off was the last chance for them to vote for ZANU PF.

At the moment, no one knows what will happen. The opposition and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai, live in fear for their lives. Ordinary voters have been brutalized for simply having voted their choice. Simple election officers have been arrested, tortured, and imprisoned just because the constituents voted for the opposition. Hundreds of them are still in jail. And the world has watched. Independent observers and journalists have been arrested, beaten, and tortured, and no one has acted. The electoral commission, run by the fanatical and totally unscrupulous Tobaiwa Mudede, steadfastly refused to release the results of the presidential elections for five whole weeks, and when they were finally released, they differed from those of the independent and opposition observers, whose offices had, incidentally, been raided to remove all the materials pertaining to the presidential election.

The Mugabe government then announced the need for a run-off election, which under Zimbabwe law is necessary in the event that none of the winners got fifty percent of the vote. In the meantime the violence is escalating, and there are all indications that, in the event of the run-off taking place, more violence is going to occur. There is no chance of a free and fair run-off election taking place in the present circumstances, and to attempt it without first of all tackling Mugabe would be a sheer waste of time and of Zimbabwe lives. Mugabe would win, out of the sheer terror he has managed to instill in the minds and lives of the Zimbabwean people while the whole world watched.

Now it does seem that while everybody watched, Mugabe's generals have gone ahead and staged a very bloody coup. All the time that everybody has been begging, negotiating, and lobbying for the release of the March 29 election, Mugabe has moved a step ahead—he has gone ahead and asserted his power. The violence being witnessed is simply his way of telling the Zimbabwean people that nothing has changed and that he is the one in charge, no matter what everybody else wants. His coup is complete, and he is staying on because his supporters, the commanders of the Armed Forces, the ones with the guns, have said so. The coup is complete, and almost perfect, unless somebody from the outside decides to do something about it.

By the turn of this century, sub-Saharan Africa had experienced 25 years of economic and political disaster. While "economic miracles" in China and India raised hundreds of millions from extreme poverty, Africa seemed to have been overtaken by violent conflict and mass destitution, and ranked lowest in the world in just about every economic and social indicator. In the May/June 2008 issue of the Boston Review, economist Edward Miguel tracks comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround. Nine experts, including Rosamond L. Naylor and Jeremy M. Weinstein, gauge Miguel's optimism.

"The global food crisis exposes the fragility of sub-Saharan economic progress," writes Rosamond Naylor. "Although the overall economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa appears to have improved in recent years, any discussion about a sustained turnaround for the region must consider the rural sector and the role of agricultural development in improving the life of the poor."

"We might ask whether Africa's new democracies are democracies at all," says Jeremy Weinstein. "While the small (but unnoticeable) uptick in Africa's recent economic growth is not in dispute, its causes are not entirely clear."

Projects to enhance health security and child survival in Africa with improvements in water and sanitation, examine why poor business-management practices persist in India, study the relationship of legal courts to politics and human rights, and understand why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress were recent recipients of grants totaling just under $1 million from Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.