Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recently named Professor Michael McFaul as the new director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). McFaul, a reknowned specialist on the former Soviet Union, is currently associate professor of political science at Stanford as well as the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an alumnus of Stanford University.

In appointing McFaul to lead CDDRL, Blacker expressed his confidence that the center will continue to establish itself as one of the leading research units in the United States devoted to exploring the interactions between the establishment of democracies, promoting development, and the rule of law. The center's previous director was Stephen D. Krasner, who took Ppublic service leave from Stanford in the winter of 2004 to serve as the director for policy planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1995, McFaul worked for two years as a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in residence at the Moscow Carnegie Center. McFaul is also a research associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) and a senior adviser to the National Democratic Institute. He serves on the board of directors of the Eurasia Foundation, Firebird Fund, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute of Social and Political Studies, Center for Civil Society International, and Institute for Corporate Governance and Law; the steering committee for the Europe and Eurasia division of Human Rights Watch; and the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

McFaul's current research interests include democratization in the post-communist world and Iran, U.S.-Russian relations, and American efforts at promoting democracy abroad. With Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond, he codirects the Hoover project on Iran.

McFaul is the author and editor of several monographs including one with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 2004). With Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001); Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics, (Hoover Institution Press, 1997); with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (Westview Press, 1995); Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (CSIS, 1993); and, with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Political Parties, Programs and Profiles (Hoover Institution Press, 1993). His articles have appeared in Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and World Politics.

McFaul also comments on current Russian and U.S.-Russian affairs, including articles in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Moscow Times, New Republic, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the Weekly Standard, as well as television appearances on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and PBS. During the 1995 parliamentary elections in Russia, he worked as senior consultant and commentator for CBS News. During the 1996 presidential election, 1999 parliamentary election, and 2000 presidential election in Russia, he served as a commentator and adviser for CNN. While in Moscow in 1994-95, he also coproduced and appeared in his own television program on democracy for the Russian Television Network (RTR).

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his BA in international relations and Slavic languages and his MA in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he completed his PhD in international relations in 1991.

On May 18 a roundtable organized jointly by CDDRL and CREEES and chaired by SIIS Senior Fellow Gail W. Lapidus brought together visiting scholars Temuri Yakobashvili from Georgia, Volodymyr Kulyk from Ukraine, Uladzimir Rouda from Belarus, and Wall Street Journal reporter Steve LeVine to examine the dramatic wave of democratic revolutions and protest movements which have transformed the geopolitics of the post-Soviet region over the past 2 years.

The participants argued that although the "Rose Revolution"in Georgia in October 2003, the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" of November-December 2004, and the more recent regime change in Kyrgyzstan were all precipitated by popular protest against fraudulent elections, they expressed a deeper dissatisfaction with the widespread corruption and failures of the three governments, combined with the emergence of an increasingly mature and organized political opposition. While international organizations and actors played a supportive role in delegitimizing electoral fraud and nurturing civil society, domestic factors were the decisive ones in bringing about peaceful regime change.

The panelists also concurred that the "easy"revolts were now over. They predicted that future upheavals in the region were inevitable, but were far less likely to go smoothly. In Belarus, although popular hostility to a tyrannical political regime is growing, inspired by the successful example of neighboring Ukraine and the attraction of Europe, the absence of a united and organized opposition remains a major barrier. In Uzbekistan, the repressive regime of President Karimov has demonstrated its willingness to resort to violence to put down opposition, and to forestall international criticism by stigmatizing opponents as Islamist terrorists.