Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
How is the current cooperative international order positioned to face the political forces of rising nationalism in the world?
A Conversation Series by United Nations University with CDDRL Deputy Director Stephen Stedman, watch here.
Lisa Blaydes and Christopher Paik explore the impact the Holy Land Crusaders in Cambridge International Organization, as the most significant forms of military mobilization during the medieval period, had important implications for European state formation. Their findings contribute to a scholarly debate regarding when the essential elements of the modern state first began to appear. Read more here.
CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama participated the screening of the Children of Men, the 2006 film adaptation of PD James’ dystopian novel, at the event organized by the Future Tense - “My Favorite Movie” series, in which thought leaders host screenings and discussions on their favorite movies with science and technology themes. Children of Men is set in the year 2027, 18 years after the last child was born, due to worldwide infertility. In the video at the top of this post, filmed Sept. 21, Fukuyama expanded on the thoughts he shared at the screening. Watch here.
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.
In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.
Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.
Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.
Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.
Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.
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As the Trump administration prepares to take office, it joins with the previous incoming Bush and Obama administrations in promising to improve U.S.-Russian relations. However, both President Bush and Obama left office with relations far worse than when they took office. Andrey Kozyrev, the first Foreign Minister of the newly independent Russian Federation, will discuss his views on the future prospects of the relationship, and examine some of the deep-rooted issues that contribute to current political tensions between our countries.
Andrei Kozyrev is the former Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation. In 1974 he graduated from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations and subsequently earned a degree in Historical Sciences. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974 and served as head of the Department of International Organizations from 1989-1990. He became the Foreign Minister of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in October 1990 and retained his position when the Russian Federation gained independence in 1991.Kozyrev was an early proponent for increased cooperation between the United States and Russia and advocated for the end of the Cold War. He was a participant in the historic decision taken in December 1991 between the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to peacefully dissolve the Soviet Union. As Russia’s first Foreign Minister, Kozyrev promoted a policy of equal cooperation with the newly formed independent states of the former Soviet Union, as well as improved relations with Russia’s immediate neighbors and the West.Kozyrev left the post of Foreign Minister in January 1996, but continued in politics by representing the northern city of Murmansk in the Russian Duma for four years. Since 2000, Kozyrev has lectured on international affairs and served on the boards of a number of Russian and international companies. He is also a distinguished fellow with the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.
This event has reached full capacity, please email Magdalena Fitipaldi at magdafb@stanford.edu to get on the waiting list.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.
Note location change:
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor
616 Serra St
Stanford, CA 94305
On the eve of primaries on the Right in November and for the Socialist Party in January, the French presidential campaign for the April/May 2017 elections is now in full swing. The political landscape is bleak indeed: both major political parties are profoundly divided and fragmented; the incumbent party has suffered a string of defeats since 2012 in municipal, European and regional elections and whoever its candidate(s) may be, he/she will most probably not qualify for the run-off in May, guaranteeing the election of Alain Juppé or Nicolas Sarkozy in the spring. The terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice have accelerated the drift towards identity politics as the extreme right finds validation of its favorites themes on immigration and the supposed radical incompatibility between Islam and the French republican compact; the attacks also stand as a major cause for the implosion of the Socialist Party. Beyond the context (high unemployment levels and a slow, sputtering economic recovery, Brexit, the terrorist threat...), this form of political chaos has institutional roots as the republican model designed by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 is no longer adapted to the challenges France is facing today. This lecture will attempt to unpack the topical from the structural in the long descent of France towards political dysfunction and assess the possible scenarios for political reform.
Vincent Michelot is Professor of American Politics at Sciences Po Lyon. He is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Saint Cloud and holds a PhD from Université de Provence. Author of two essays on the American presidency (L'Empereur de la Maison Blanche, Armand Colin, 2004; Le président des Etats-Unis, un pouvoir impérial? Découvertes Gallimard, 2008), and a political biography of John F. Kennedy (Kennedy, Folio, 2013), he also co-directed with Olivier Richomme Le Bilan d'Obama (Presses de Sciences Po Paris, 2012), a collection of essays on Barak Obama's first term. His latest work, a casebook in French on women's rights in the Supreme Court will be published in 2017. He is currently at work with Ray La Raja and Alix Meyer on an essay in comparative politics on political parties in France and the United States. Professor Michelot is a member of the board of the Fulbright Committee in Paris and the vice-president of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Institut des Amériques. In the Spring of 2017 he will be a visiting professor at the University of Virginia.Image
The paper introduces the public sector as a major source of infrastructural state capacity that helps autocrats survive. Education or social services organizations are embedded in everyday life and trusted by the people, which makes them a unique tool in autocrats’ hands. These organizations significantly extend the ability of the state apparatus to implement political decisions on the ground. Using quantitative analysis of seventy-nine Russian regions and qualitative evidence from the media, I demonstrate that Vladimir Putin’s regime used schoolteachers, who were frequently members of local electoral commissions, to implement wide-scale electoral fraud during the 2012 presidential elections in Russia. The school system served as an organizational base for this maneuver, which allowed Putin’s regime to withstand the challenge of decreased popular support. The paper proposes a distinction between the redistributive and infrastructural roles of the public sector.
Natalia Forrat is a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She will receive her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2017. She studies authoritarianism, state-society relations, state capacity, civil society, and trust with a focus on contemporary Russia. Her work has been published in Post-Soviet Affairs and supported by the Fulbright Program and the Open Society Institute. Before her doctoral studies, she received a master's degree from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree from Tomsk State University (Russia). She taught at TSU for a few years, while also working at a Russian NGO.Image
FSI SENIOR FELLOWS FRANCIS FUKUYAMA & LARRY DIAMOND DISCUSS DEMOCRACY IN THE JULY/AUGUST ISSUE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama, senior fellows at the Freeman Spogli Institute, have both written essays in the July/August 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs. Follow the links below to read the full articles without a subscription block:
Diamond, who is also the former director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), takes stock of the global democratic recession and urges the next president to make democracy promotion a pillar of his or her foreign policy agenda in his article "Democracy in Decline."
In "American Political Decay or Renewal?" Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI and the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, analyzes the rising tide of populism as represented by the current candidates for the US Presidential elections.
Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law congratulates its undergraduate honors class for completing their original research and undergraduate theses. They graduated from Stanford University on June 12 with honors in their respective disciplines.
Graduates include Vehbi “Deger” Turan, who was awarded the Firestone Medal for his thesis entitled “Augmenting Citizen Participation in Governance through Natural Language Processing.” Turan’s project employed existing literature on democratic participation, case studies and an original algorithm in order to devise a means by which government agencies can evaluate public comments received via the Internet on political issues.
The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes Stanford's top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science and engineering among the graduating senior class.
Turan decided to explore this topic shortly after joining the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program.
According to the program’s Director Stephen Stedman, “After listening to a research seminar at our Center, Deger believed that he could develop an aggregation tool to help policy makers understand such immense data.”
Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL also noted, “Deger is perhaps the best example to date of why interschool honors programs are valuable. He is a computer science major who came to us expressing an interest in using his background in artificial intelligence to help solve critical public policy problems.” Fukuyama together with Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Grimmer advised Turan on his honor’s thesis.
Turan will be starting a new position at Atomic Labs’ Zenreach start-up after graduation.
The CDDRL Award for Outstanding Thesis was given to Rehan Adamjee whose thesis explored the different factors at play in choosing between healthcare providers in a rural area of Pakistan.
Adamjee and Turan are just two members of a the 2016 cohort of 11 honors students, many of whom traveled to foreign countries to collect original data, conduct interviews and research their thesis topics. Their topics range from timely case studies on the use of social media as a tool of empowerment to a glimpse at the effects of regional politics on healthcare reform in Post-Soviet Russia.
The 2016 class joins 76 graduates from CDDRL’s honors program since its launch in 2007.
The Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program trains Stanford students from diverse majors to write theses with global policy implications on a subject related to democracy, development and the rule of law. Students attend a class on research methods the spring quarter of their junior year. During their senior year, in tandem with the CDDRL research community and their faculty advisor, students conduct both local and international research in order to write their theses. Students travel to Washington, DC for the annual honors college to meet policymakers and members of the development community to enrich their thesis topics.
A list of our graduating students along with links to all their theses can be found below.
| NAME | MAJOR | THESIS |
|---|---|---|
Rehan Adamjee | Economics; Public Policy | Advisor: Jayanta Bhattacharya |
Anna Blue | International Relations | Advisor: Alberto Diaz Cayeros |
Sarah Johnson | Economics | Advisor: Lisa Blaydes |
Shang-Ch’uan Li | Materials, Science and Engineering | Advice and Consent: Increase in Malaysian Judges Appointed from the Practicing Bar after the Passage of the Judicial Appointments Commission Act 2009 Advisors: Erik Jensen, Justin Grimmer |
Hannah Meropol | Political Science | Advisor: Lisa Blaydes |
Jelani Munroe | Economics; Public Policy | Advisor: Pete Klenow |
Hannah Potter | International Relations | Advisor: Stephen Stedman |
Tebello Qhotsokoane | Public Policy | Advisor: Marcel Fafchamps |
Hadley Reid | Human Biology | Advisor: Grant Miller |
Paul Shields | International Relations; Slavic Language & Literature | Advisor: Kathryn Stoner |
Deger Turan | Computer Science | Advisors: Francis Fukuyama, Justin Grimmer |
"What do I do about the chickens?"
When assistant professor of medicine Eran Bendavid began a study on livestock in African households to determine impact on childhood health, he'd already anticipated common field problems like poorly captured or intentionally misreported data, difficulty getting to work sites, or problems with training local volunteers.
But he'd never gotten that particular question from a fieldworker before. It didn't occur to him that participating families, in reporting their livestock holdings, would completely omit the chickens running around at their feet, thereby skewing the data.
"They didn't consider chickens to be livestock," recalled Bendavid. Along with Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow at FSI, and associate professor of political science and FSI senior fellow Beatriz Magaloni, Bendavid spoke to a full house last week on lessons learned from fieldwork gone awry. The return engagement of FSI's popular seminar, "Everything that can go wrong in a field experiment” was introduced by Jesper Sørensen, executive director of Stanford Seed, and moderated by Katherine Casey, assistant professor of political economy at the GSB. The seminar is a product of FSI and Seed’s joint Global Development and Poverty (GDP) Initiative, which to date has awarded nearly $7 million in faculty research funding to promote research on poverty alleviation and economic development worldwide.
Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program, spoke of the obstacles to accurate data gathering, especially in rural areas where record-keeping is inaccurate and participants' trust is low. Arriving in a Chinese village to carry out child nutrition studies, said Rozelle, "we found Grandma running out the back door with the baby." The researchers had worked with the local family planning council to find the names of children to study, but the families thought the authorities were coming to penalize them for violation of the one-child policy.
Cultural differences make for entertaining and illuminating (if frustrating) lessons, but Beatriz Magaloni, director of FSI's Program on Poverty and Governance at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law had a different story to tell. Over the course of three years, her GDP-funded work to investigate and reduce police violence in Brazil - a phenomenon resulting in more than 22,000 deaths since 2005 - has encountered obstacle after obstacle. Her work to pilot body-worn cameras on police in Rio has faced a change in police leadership, setting back cooperation; a yearlong struggle to decouple a study of TASER International’s body worn cameras from its electrical weapons in the same population; a work site initially lacking electricity to charge the cameras or Internet to view the feeds; and noncompliance among the officers. "It's discouraging at times," admitted Magaloni, who has finally gotten the cameras onto the officers' uniforms and must now experiment with ways to incentivize their use. "We are learning a lot about how institutional behavior becomes so entrenched and why it's so hard to change."
Experimentation is a powerful tool to understand cause and effect, said Casey, but a tool only works if it's implemented properly. Learning from failure makes for an interesting panel discussion. The speakers' hope is that it also makes for better research in the future.
The Global Development and Poverty Initiative is a University-wide initiative of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (Seed) in partnership with the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). GDP was established in 2013 to stimulate transformative research ideas and new approaches to economic development and poverty alleviation worldwide. GDP supports groundbreaking research at the intersection of traditional academic disciplines and practical application. GDP uses a venture-funding model to pursue compelling interdisciplinary research on the causes and consequences of global poverty. Initial funding allows GDP awardees to conduct high-quality research in developing countries where there is a lack of data and infrastructure.
