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.

What explains the turn towards more politically relevant Sunni and Shii identities in the modern period? How do we account for a shift from Sunni-Shii cooperation against colonialism, for example, or in defense of the Ottoman Caliphate, towards polarisation? This lecture will look especially at the role of the modern state in regulating religion more broadly, coopting certain cultural groups and alienating others, and fostering sharpened sectarian identities. It will also look at the impact of the 1979 revolution in Iran, and reactions towards it, and of foreign intervention, especially the Iraq war of 2003 in sectarianizing the Middle Eastern regional system.

This event is sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies in partnership with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at CDDRL.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Toby Matthiesen is a scholar of Comparative Politics and International Relations with a focus on the Middle East. He is currently a Marie Curie Global Fellow at Stanford University and Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, leading a project on Sunni-Shii Relations in the Middle East.

Toby's aim in research and teaching is to study the Middle East in a global context. His research is characterized by the use of primary sources, archives, fieldwork, and engagement with social science and historiographical debates. He is the author of Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford University Press, 2013), a book on the impact of the Arab Spring on the Gulf States. His second book, The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2015) dealt with the relationship between the Shii community in the Eastern Province and the Saudi state, and with transnational movements and Iran. It is based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, and hitherto unused Arabic archives.

His forthcoming book, The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism, is a global history of Sunni-Shii relations and is published by Oxford University Press. Toby's work has also been translated into Arabic and Persian and apart from English, he publishes in German. His other research interests relate to the history of Leftist movements and the use of Islam as anti-Communism during the Cold War.

Erin A. Snider joins ARD to discuss her recently released book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

For nearly two decades, the United States devoted more than $2 billion towards democracy promotion in the Middle East with seemingly little impact. To understand the limited impact of this aid and the decision of authoritarian regimes to allow democracy programs whose ultimate aim is to challenge the power of such regimes, Marketing Democracy examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco, two of the highest recipients of US democracy aid in the region.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, novel new data on the professional histories of democracy promoters, archival research and recently declassified government documents, Erin A. Snider focuses on the voices and practices of those engaged in democracy work over the last three decades to offer a new framework for understanding the political economy of democracy aid. Her research shows how democracy aid can work to strengthen rather than challenge authoritarian regimes. Marketing Democracy fundamentally challenges scholars to rethink how we study democracy aid and how the ideas of democracy that underlie democracy programs come to reflect the views of donors and recipient regimes rather than indigenous demand. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 

Erin A. Snider is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her research and teaching focus on the political economy of aid, democracy, and development in the Middle East. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, a Fulbright scholar in Egypt, a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a Carnegie Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her first book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East was published with Cambridge University Press. Other research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Middle East Policy, among other outlets. She holds a PhD in politics from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

When backsliding occurs at the hands of populist presidents who were elected in landslide elections, producing dominant executives with few institutional checks and weak opposition parties, should we blame the decline in democracy on their populist ideology, their presidential powers, or their parties’ dominance in the legislature? The literature on democratic backsliding has mostly arrived at a consensus on what backsliding entails and collectively has revealed its growing prevalence around the globe. Yet, scholars have not settled on causal explanations for this phenomenon. We assess the evidence for recent ideology-centered arguments for democratic backsliding relative to previous institutional arguments among all democratically elected executives serving in all regions of the world since 1970. We use newly available datasets on populist leaders and parties to evaluate the danger of populists in government, and we employ matching methods to distinguish the effects of populist executives, popularly-elected presidents, and dominant executives on the extent of decline in liberal democracy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Marisa Kellam is associate professor of political science at Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan). Her research focuses on the quality of democracy in Latin America. In her work, she links institutional analysis to governance outcomes within three lines of inquiry: (1) political parties and coalitional politics, (2) media freedom and democratic accountability, and (3) populism and democratic backsliding. She has published her research in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Party Politics, Electoral Studies, and Political Communication. After earning a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA, she spent several years as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. Since 2013, Marisa Kellam has been teaching international and Japanese students in the English-based degree programs of Waseda University’s School of Political Science & Economics.

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

2022 S.T. LEE LECTURE

In the 1990s and early 2000s, most West African nations embarked on transitions to democratic governance. In the ensuing decade, the sub-region enjoyed relative peace and material progress. Unfortunately, these gains in democratization are being eroded. The lecture contends that democratic reforms at the turn of the 21st century were key drivers of the subsequent sanguine political, social, and economic conditions in the ECOWAS group; that popular attitudes in today’s West African societies are largely anti-autocratic; and that therefore the unfolding retreat from democratic governance in nations across the sub-region portends ill for their overall stability and material prosperity in the 2020s and beyond. The lecture proposes measures to arrest the democratic recession in West African nations to prevent economic decline, social unrest, and political implosion.

The S.T. Lee Lectureship is named for Seng Tee Lee, a business executive and noted philanthropist. Dr. Lee is the director of the Lee group of companies in Singapore and of the Lee Foundation.

Dr. Lee endowed the annual lectureship at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation. The S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader in international political, economic, social, and health issues and strategic policy-making concerns.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

E. Gyimah-Boadi is co-founder and board chair of Afrobarometer, the pan-African survey research network and global reference point for high-quality data on African democracy, governance, and quality of life. He is also co-founder and former executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, a leading independent democracy and good-governance think tank. A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, he has also held faculty positions at several universities in the United States, including the American University’s School of International Service, as well as fellowships at Queen Mary University; the Center for Democracy, Rule of Law and Development at Stanford University; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.

A graduate of the University of California (Davis) and University of Ghana (Legon), Gyimah-Boadi is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his contributions to research and policy advocacy on democracy, accountable governance, and human rights, he has won a myriad of awards, including the Distinguished Africanist of the Year Award of the African Studies Association (2018); the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice (2017); and one of the Republic of Ghana’s highest honors, the Order of Volta (2008). He was named one of New African Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Africans of 2021.”

Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is “the great experiment” of our time.

Why is it so hard to build diverse democracies? Would principles and policies do we need to adopt to maximize the chances of making them work? And how good are the chances of success? The project of building thriving diverse democracies may well fail. But the chances of success, this talk argues, are better than the pessimism which is now dominant suggests.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yascha Mounk is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Persuasion. The host of The Good Fight podcast, his latest book is The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.

 

 

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

Khalid Mustafa Medani joins ARD to discuss his recently released book, Black Markets and Militants Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Understanding the political and socio-economic factors which give rise to youth recruitment into militant organizations is at the heart of grasping some of the most important issues that affect the contemporary Middle East and Africa. In this book, Medani explains why youth are attracted to militant organizations, examining the specific role economic globalization, in the form of outmigration and expatriate remittance inflows, plays in determining how and why militant activists emerge. The study challenges existing accounts that rely primarily on ideology to explain militant recruitment.

Based on extensive fieldwork, Medani offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of globalization, neoliberal reforms, and informal economic networks as a conduit for the rise and evolution of moderate and militant Islamist movements and as an avenue central to the often violent enterprise of state-building and state formation. In an original contribution to the study of Islamist and ethnic politics more broadly, he thereby shows the importance of understanding when and under what conditions religious rather than other forms of identity become politically salient in the context of changes in local conditions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 

Dr. Khalid Mustafa Medani is currently associate professor of political science and Islamic Studies at McGill University, and he has also taught at Oberlin College and Stanford University. Dr. Medani received a B.A. in Development Studies from Brown University, an M.A. in Development Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the political economy of Islamic and Ethnic Politics in Africa and the Middle East.

Dr. Medani is the author of Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and he is presently completing another book manuscript on the causes and consequences of Sudan’s 2018 popular uprising and the prospects and obstacles for Democracy in that country. In addition, he has published extensively on civil conflict with a special focus on the armed conflicts in Sudan and Somalia. His work has appeared in Political Science and Politics (PS), the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of North African Studies, Current History, Middle East Report, Review of African Political Economy, Arab Studies Quarterly, and the UCLA Journal of Islamic Law.

Dr. Medani is a previous recipient of a Carnegie Scholar on Islam award from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2007-2009) and in 2020-2021 he received a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to conduct research on his current book manuscript on the democratic transition in Sudan.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.

About the Seminar: In this time of great challenges, our democracies urgently need to produce citizens who can move from demanding change to making it. But the skills for doing so are not innate, they are learned. In this talk, Beth Simone Noveck will discuss how both citizens and governments can take advantage of digital technology, data, and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerful solutions to contemporary problems. Drawing on the latest methods from data and social sciences, including original survey data from around the world, she proposes a practical set of methods for public servants, community leaders, students, activists, and anyone who wants to be a catalyst for positive social change.

 

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About the Speaker: Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Family Center for Global Impact and its partner project, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. The author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix Our Government and Change Our World (Yale Press 2021) (named a Best Book of 2021 by Stanford Social Innovation Review), she is also Core Faculty at the Institute for Experiential AI (IEAI) at Northeastern. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy appointed her as the state’s first Chief Innovation Officer and Chancellor Angela Merkel named her to her Digital Council in 2018. Previously, Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative under President Obama. UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government.

In addition to Solving Public Problems, Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard Univ Press 2015) and Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009) and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005).

About the Seminar: For centuries, the world’s dominant power has been the state that wielded the world’s dominant navy. More recently, globalization has been remade, as a sea-based trade—85% of all global trade moves by sea. As does nearly 2/3rds of the world trade in oil and gas, while 93% of all data in the world moves along undersea cables that line the ocean floor. The oceans are vital, too, to our changing climate. All of which highlights the drama of China’s return to the high seas, and its rapid maritime and naval build-up. The net result: a new arms race, centered in the Western Pacific but reaching out into the Arctic and the Indian Oceans, and pulling in Russia, India, Japan and Europe.  Bruce Jones, author of To Rule the Waves, will explore how our security, our prosperity, and our environment are being reshaped by the dynamics of sea power.

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About the Speaker: 

Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and director of the project on international order and strategy at the Brookings Institution. The author or co-author of several books on international order, his most recent work is “To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Seminar: Saumitra Jha and Steven Wilkinson's book project, Wars and Freedoms, makes the case that, throughout human history, external wars are common catalysts for political change at home, and they do so in large part because of their impact on the organizational capacity of the disenfranchised. It draws widely from across the social sciences and humanities: literature; history; biography; psychology; sociology; economics; and political science. The book draws upon these diverse ways of knowing to provide evidence from across time and around the world of the relevance of a simple framework for understanding which types of external wars are conducive to the emergence of broad-based freedoms, the building of states, and the shrinking of wealth inequalities on one hand, and when instead, others have led to the building of military castes, or an increased propensity for political polarization,  ethnic conflict, attempted coups, revolution and genocide on the other. In so doing, Wars and Freedoms provides a re-interpretation of the history of revolutions and political change, in order to make clear which lessons and episodes from history may be more germane for the future of democracy and freedoms in the twenty-first century.

Wars and Freedoms describes how there were historically three paths that connected organizational skills developed in external wars to the spread of democracy and democratic values: in the shadow of a crisis that threatened broad class conflict, through a more gradual process of state-building in response to ongoing external existential threats, and through the organizational efforts of committed military leaders. Of these, however, only the last, the most fragile and contingent, is still likely to emerge organically. Understanding the decline of other paths, however, can still help us understand both how political freedoms and democracy emerged, how our democracies may die, and what we may still be able to do about it.

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About the Speaker:

Saumitra Jha is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. His work on the historical relationship between conflict and markets has been received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best article in political economy from the American Political Science Association, and has been published in the top journals in both Economics and Political Science, including The American Political Science Review, Econometrica, and The Quarterly Journal of Economics. His co-authored work on Heroes was awarded the Oliver Williamson Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics. Also an award-winning teacher, he has shown a particular interest in communicating the results of his research to broader audiences, in the press (such as the Indian Express and USA Today) and through online policy and social media outlets (VoxEU, VoxDev, Public Books, Broadstreet, Ideas for India, AOC), and to a range of student and practitioner audiences, including cadets at West Point, members of the US intelligence community, European Union diplomats, and entrepreneurs in Africa, India and the United States.  His work has been featured in the Economist, Financial Times and the Washington Post, among others, and he has provided commentary for television and radio news, including for the BBC, ABC and CBC.