Due to overwhelming demand, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has closed registration for this event. If you are still interested in attending the talk, please sign up for the wait list.

We will contact you should additional seats become available. 

Abstract:

This seminar will reflect on my three decades of research seeking to identify the conditions for sustainable democracy.  What have we learned about the conditions that support and undermine democracy?  What is the relationship between democratic quality and democratic persistence?  Is "democratic consolidation" a useful concept?  Can consolidated democracies become "de-consolidated"--and if so, when and why?  Do the current travails of the advanced democracies represent merely ongoing challenges of governance, or are we entering a period of more fundamental challenge to democratic norms and institutions?  Finally, what does all of this imply for the policy agendas of democracy reform and promotion?

Bio:

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and he continues to lead its programs on Liberation Technology, Arab Reform and Democracy, and Democracy in Taiwan.  He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His sixth and most recent book, In Search of Democracy (Routledge, 2016), explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his work on democratic development, particularly in Africa and Asia.  He has also edited or co-edited more than 40 books on democratic development around the world.

---

[[{"fid":"220591","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"In Search of Democracy Flyer","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"In Search of Democracy Flyer","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","attributes":{"width":"870","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]

Abstract:

With the proliferation of online social media, political actors have a new means of reaching their constituents directly, circumventing the mainstream news media. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had a very significant presence on social media with almost 30 million “likes” on Facebook and 15 million followers on Twitter. Modi's rise on Twitter offers an important example on political brand management, in this talk we examine specific outreach strategies and how these have evolved over time. We examine the frequency, tenor, and popularity of messages, the evolution of thematic discussions, and the use of political metaphor in Modi's sharpening of a new populist discourse as leader of an aspirational, global India.

 

Speaker Bio:

Joyojeet Pal is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information where his work focuses on user experience and accessibility in low- and middle-income countries. His recent research looks at the use of social media in political communication in India, specifically on the role of political branding online in India. He is one of the technical collaborators on the Unfinished Sentences project examining oral histories of the El Salvador civil war, and leads the Colombia Digital Culture project at the University of Michigan. He researched and produced the award-winning documentary, "For the Love of a Man" based on the fan following of South Indian film star Rajnikanth.

Abstract:

Twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the democratic ascendency of the post-Soviet era is under severe challenge. While fragile democracies in Eastern Europe, Africa, and East Asia face renewed threats, the world has witnessed the failed democratic promises of the Arab Spring. What lessons can be drawn from these struggles? What conditions or institutions are needed to prevent the collapse of democracy? Embattled democracy is the subject matter of a new book, Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts. This book argues that the most distinctive antidote to authoritarianism in the post-1989 period is the presence of strong constitutional courts. A signature feature of the third wave of democratization, these courts serve as a bulwark against vulnerability to external threats as well as a catalyst for the internal consolidation of power. Particularly in societies still riven by deep divisions of race, religion, or national background, courts have become pivotal actors in allowing democracy to take root.

 

Speaker Bio:

Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. His research addresses the law of the political process and constitutional law, as well as issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation and class actions). He is a co-author of the seminal Law of Democracy casebook and recently served as the Reporter for the Project on Aggregate Litigation of the American Law Institute. Professor Issacharoff is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Abstract

New President of the United States Institute of Peace, Nancy Lindborg, will discuss the global challenge of fragility and conflict, including a vision of the way forward. Ms. Lindborg’s remarks reflect a lifetime of working in the world’s most fragile regions and a time when the global humanitarian system is at a breaking point, with record numbers of people forcibly displaced globally.   

 

Speaker Bio

Nancy Lindborg has served since February, 2015, as President of the United States Institute of Peace, an independent institution founded by Congress to provide practical solutions for preventing and resolving violent conflict around the world.   

Ms. Lindborg has spent most of her career working in fragile and conflict affected regions around the world.   Prior to joining USIP, she served as the Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) at USAID.  From 2010 through early 2015, Ms. Lindborg led USAID teams focused on building resilience and democracy, managing and mitigating conflict and providing urgent humanitarian assistance.   Ms. Lindborg led DCHA teams in response to the ongoing Syria Crisis, the droughts in Sahel and Horn of Africa, the Arab Spring, the Ebola response and numerous other global crises.

Prior to joining USAID, Ms. Lindborg was president of Mercy Corps, where she spent 14 years helping to grow the organization into a globally respected organization known for innovative programs in the most challenging environments.   She started her international career working overseas in Kazakhstan and Nepal. 

Ms. Lindborg has held a number of leadership and board positions including serving as co-president of the Board of Directors for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition; co-founder and board member of the National Committee on North Korea; and chair of the Sphere Management Committee. She is a member of Council on Foreign Relations.

She holds a B.A and M.A. in English Literature from Stanford University and an M.A. in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

*Please note that the seminar date has changed and it will now take place on Tuesday Oct. 27, 2015*

Abstract

Over the past two years, liberal ideas in Egypt have been at a crossroads. Since July 3, 2013 countless “secular” political parties and movements have stood under their liberal banners in support of a military intervention into politics. Egyptian liberals have been engaged in propagating anti-democratic deceptions that have enabled the new military autocracy to tighten its grip over state institutions, society, and citizens. The idea of sequentialism, the notion of a unilaterally defined set of national necessities, and the subordination of society and citizens to the state are among the liberal made grand deceptions, which have made it possible for Egypt’s new savior and his ruling establishment to contain popular demands for a democratic order defined by the rule of law, rotation of power, civic peace, and safeguards human rights and freedoms.

 

Speaker Bio

Amr Hamzawy studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. After finishing his doctoral studies and after five years of teaching in Cairo and Berlin, Hamzawy joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC) between 2005 and 2009 as a senior associate for Middle East Politics. Between 2009 and 2010, he served as the research director of the Middle East Center of the Carnegie Endowment in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2011, he joined the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo, where he continues to serve today. Hamzawy also serves as an associate professor of political science at the Department of Political Science, Cairo University.

His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world.

Dr. Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the 25th of Jan 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a daily column and a weekly op-ed to the Egyptian independent newspaper Shorouk.