CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. For our final Spring 2022 seminar, please join us to hear our Honors Program award winners present their research.

Adrian Scheibler, Firestone Medal winner
 

Major: International Relations
Thesis Advisor: Christophe Crombez

Thesis Title: Challenging the State: Western European Regionalism in the Era of Financial Crisis

Abstract: The Global Financial Crisis and its aftershocks have substantially altered the Western European political landscape. But while the literature has extensively focused on the impacts of the economic hardship on traditional party competition, it has often failed to consider the center-periphery dimension. My thesis addresses both the demand for and supply of regionalist ideologies during the crisis. Using an original dataset containing 8 countries, 35 regions, and 128 regionalist parties, it finds that voters did not increase their support for regionalist parties during the crisis and may have even turned their backs on these political actors. In addition, I consider the reactions of regionalist parties in three Spanish autonomous communities - Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia - to the crisis. I find evidence of regionalist mobilization on the issue and even some indications of radicalization of regionalist demands. Taken together, these findings raise interesting implications for the impacts of the financial crisis and the interaction between economic indicators, party competition, and voting patterns.

 

Michal Skreta, CDDRL Outstanding Thesis winner
 

 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

The central banks are at the center of any financial system.

This talk discusses the changing features of public policy and administration in Turkey, comparing central banking under the presidential and parliamentary systems. It argues that the deinstitutionalization of conventional central banking norms and practices is the mirror image of new presidential public policymaking and administration. Not only did this process erode the policy capacity of the Central Bank but also that of the Turkish state. Therefore, one should not be surprised by current policy design and implementation failures, poor policy outcomes, and increased socioeconomic costs as these tendencies are not reversed.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Caner Bakır is a Visiting Fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a professor of Political Science at Koc University, and the Director of the Research Centre for Globalisation, Peace and Democratic Governance (GLODEM). His research in political economy and public policy focuses on comparative institutional analysis and policy change and has appeared in leading journals such as Policy Sciences, Governance, Public Administration, and Policy and Society. He is the Associate Editor of Policy Sciences and the Journal Comparative Policy Analysis, editorial board member of the Journal of Economic Policy Research, and the International Journal of Emerging Markets. In addition, he has authored and co-edited nine books. He is the recipient of The Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Turkey (TUBITAK) 2010 Incentive Award and 2008 Early Career Researcher Award.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Globalization, Peace, and Democratic Governance at Koc University.

Once upon a time, there was a seductive story about twin revolutions, a political one in France and an industrial one in Britain, that supposedly ushered in our modern world. This narrative never sat well with empirical realities, yet it lives on in textbooks. What might be a more persuasive framework for a global history of the modern era? What are the implications for research and the teaching of history?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor of History and International Affairs in what used to be called the Woodrow Wilson School and in the History Department of Princeton University, as well as a Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He directs the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and co-directs its program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy, which he founded. He also founded Princeton’s Global History Initiative. His scholarship encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present.

Kotkin has published two volumes of a three-volume history of the world as seen from Stalin’s desk: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (Penguin, November 2014) and Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Penguin, October 2017). The final installment, Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990s, is underway. He writes reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Wall Street Journal, and served as the business book reviewer for The New York Times Sunday Business Section. He is an occasional consultant for governments and some private companies. PhD UC Berkeley (1988).

 

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world.

In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.

Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.

Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Daniel Treisman is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2021-2). His research focuses on Russian politics and economics as well as comparative political economy, including the analysis of democratization, the politics of authoritarian states, political decentralization, and corruption. A former lead editor of The American Political Science Review, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford) and the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), as well as receiving fellowships from the German Marshall Fund of the US and the Smith Richardson Foundation. His book, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (The Free Press 2011) was one of the Financial Times’ “Best Political Books of 2011”. He is the editor of The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia (Brookings Institution Press 2018), and co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press 2022).

 

At this time, in-person attendance is limited to Stanford affiliates only. We continue to welcome our greater community to join virtually via Zoom.