Stanford University

National identity crisis makes the US more like the Middle East

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"If there is a single lesson to be learned from the contemporary Middle East, it is that national identity is critical to the success of any political system. That identity needs to be liberal and inclusive, encompassing a country’s de facto diversity. But it also needs to be substantive," writes CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama. Read here.

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Political Identities in Colonial and Post-Independence Tunisia

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Abstract:

What explains variation in secular and Islamist political identity and behavior? I argue that local variation in colonial settlement encouraged the development of distinct Tunisian political identities across localities. Using data on political mobilization at the moment of independence, I find that differential colonial investments in local land and schools produced divergent secular and Islamist political identities. This relationship operates through two mechanisms; first, high local land expropriation by the French weakened the religious land tenure system (the waqf system) and traditional Islamic schools in those areas. Second, the increased presence of agricultural colonial settlers is also correlated with a greater presence of local French schools and higher enrollment of native Tunisians in French primary education. This variation in colonial experience also informs contemporary patterns of partisanship and social cleavages in Tunisia.

 

Speaker Bio:

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Alexandra Blackman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Pre-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Seminars

Domination and Resistance: The State and University in Post-Revolutionary Iran

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The Islamization of universities has been the cornerstone of the Iranian regime’s higher educational policy since its ascent to power in 1979. Since the victory of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has relentlessly attempted to control and suppress dissident students and professors in an effort to train a new generation of ideologically driven students. Although the Islamic Republic was successful in co-opting a group of university students by means of ideological and materialistic incentives, a majority of students became less ideological and more critical of both the regime and its staple ideologies. These continuous struggles between the state and universities have given rise to several important questions: Why and how has the Islamic Republic Islamized and controlled universities? To what extent have these strategies succeeded or failed? Why and how have students responded to state domination?

 

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Saeid Golkar is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and concurrently, a non-resident Senior Fellow on Middle East Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). His research focuses on international and comparative politics of authoritarian regimes with an emphasis on the Middle East. His book, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-revolutionary Iran (Columbia University Press, 2015), was awarded the Washington Institute silver medal prize.

Saeid Golkar Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Seminars

Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

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In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.
Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy.
 
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US publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Francis Fukuyama
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Digital Media: Combatting Threats in the Era of Fake News

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"What is different today is the speed and extraterritorial reach of disinformation. Over-restriction on content undermines our democratic values, but understanding the mechanisms of manipulation opens up the solutions." Our Eileen Donahoe, Executive Director of CDDRL's Global Digital Policy Incubator, said in the podcast "Digital Media: Combatting Threats in the Era of Fake News." Listen here.

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Laura Jakli

Encina Hall, C147 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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CDDRL Predoctoral Fellow, 2018-20
Fellow, Program on Democracy and the Internet, 2018-20
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​I am a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Starting in 2023, I will be an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School's Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) unit.

My research examines political extremism, destigmatization, and radicalization, focusing on the role of popularity cues in online media. My related research examines a broad range of threats to democratic governance, including authoritarian encroachment, ethnic prejudice in public goods allocation, and misinformation. 

​My dissertation won APSA's Ernst B. Haas Award for the best dissertation on European Politics. I am currently working on my book project, Engineering Extremism, with generous funding from the William F. Milton Fund at Harvard.

My published work has appeared in the American Political Science Review,  Governance,  International Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, and the Virginia Journal of International Law, along with an edited volume in Democratization (Oxford University Press). My research has been featured in KQED/NPR, The Washington Post, and VICE News.
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I received my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. I was a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet. I hold a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude; Phi Beta Kappa) from Cornell University and an M.A. (with Distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Why Trump’s plans for regime change in Iran will have the opposite effect

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"Containing Iran’s belligerent actions abroad should be a high priority for the Trump administration, as well as engaging in arms control to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program and supporting ideas of democracy and human rights," writes Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani in The Washington Post. Read the full article here.

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Class of 2018

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Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is proud to announce our 2018 Draper Hills Summer Fellows who were selected from among hundreds of applicants for their path-breaking work to defend democracy. These 27 leaders drawn from 23 countries around the world are pioneering new approaches and models to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. Learn more here. 

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The Imprudence of Unilateral US Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal

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In his article for the The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Abbas Milani writes that "the much-rumored and long-expected announcement by President Trump that he will order the United States to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA­—is arguably the worst policy option for addressing problems in what was the least-bad possible deal when it was signed." Read the full article here. 

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