Stanford University

Empowering progress: Reformism and State-Building in the Philippines

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Co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Southeast Asia Program
 
The Philippines is typically characterized as a weak, even patrimonial, state in which powerful oligarchs and political families dominate politics and policymaking.  By implication, the elite should be able to easily suppress reform and the state should be unwilling or incapable of carrying out reforms.   Yet some efforts to achieve socioeconomic and governance reform have succeeded.  How and why is this the case?  And what does this suggest about the changing nature of the Philippine state?

This presentation will examine the dynamics and outcomes of three extended efforts at social, economic and governance reform in the Philippines:  1) agrarian reform; 2) liberalization of the telecommunications sector and 3) fiscal and budget reforms.

Theory and practice will be bridged in an examination of interlinked factors including the autonomy and capacity of the state, the limits on reform imposed by elite-dominated democracy, and the conditions and strategies that have enabled some reforms to succeed.
Particular questions to be addressed will include:
·       What are the political and institutional barriers to reform in the Philippines?  How have these changed over time?
·       How have these barriers been overcome in the cases of “successful” reform?  What does “successful” mean?  
·       How have attempts at reform strengthened or weakened the state?
·       Looking forward, will the typically partial or incremental character of reform result in transformational change, or deflect it?

David Timberman is a political analyst and development practitioner with 30 years of experience analyzing and addressing political, governance and conflict-related challenges, principally in Southeast and South Asia.  As a Visiting Scholar at Stanford/APARC he is working on a book on the contemporary Philippine political economy.  During 2015-2016 he was a Visiting Professor of Political Science at De La Salle University in Manila. He has lived and worked in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore, including experiencing first-hand the democratic transitions in the Philippines (1986-1988) and Indonesia (1998-2001). He has written extensively on political and governance issues in the Philippines and has edited or co-edited multi-author volumes on the Philippines, Cambodia, and economic policy reform in Southeast Asia.

David G. Timberman 2016-2017 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia
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States in the Developing World

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"What should states in the developing world do and how should they do it? How have states in the developing world addressed the challenges of promoting development, order, and inclusion? States in the developing world are supposed to build economies, control violence, and include the population. How they do so depends on historical origins and context as well as policy decisions. This volume presents a comprehensive theory of state capacity, what it consists of, and how it may be measured. With historical empirical illustrations it suggests that historical origins and political decisions help drive the capacity of states to meet their goals."

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Can Cash Boost Governance in Poor Countries?

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Abstract:

One policy option for countries reliant on natural resources is to share part of the revenues directly with citizens, an idea known as oil to cash. Technological innovation, such as biometric identification and mobile money, now allow direct payments to people on a massive scale. Additional changes in the global marketplace, experiments in India and Kenya, and shifting political views of cash transfers have all affected the potential of cash to boost governance.

 

Speaker Bio:

todd moss
Todd Moss is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC and nonresident scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute. A former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Moss is the author of Oil to Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse with Cash Transfers and The Golden Hour, a diplomatic thriller set in West Africa.

Todd Moss Senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC
Seminars

Planning for the Occupation of Japan (Event cancelled)

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Abstract:

The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the "good occupation." An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan. But where did occupation policy come from? This talk considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress as part of an informal policy network created to manage the postwar world during World War II.

 

Speaker Bio:

dbarnes1
Dr. Dayna Barnes is a specialist in 20th century international history, American foreign policy, and East Asia. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and is an incoming assistant professor of history at City, University of London. Her book, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan, was published in Cornell University Press in March 2017.

Dana Barnes Visiting scholar at CDDRL
Seminars

Money and Muscle in Indian Politics

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Abstract:

In India, the world’s largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic elections exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties actively recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why do voters elect (and even reelect) them, to the point that a third of state and national legislators assume office with pending criminal charges? In a new book, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics, Milan Vaishnav takes readers deep into the marketplace for criminal politicians by drawing on fieldwork on the campaign trail, large surveys, and an original database on politicians’ backgrounds. The result is the first systematic study of an issue that has profound implications for democracy both with and beyond India’s borders.

 

Speaker Bio:

milan vaishnav
Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur) of Rethinking Public Institutions in India (Oxford University Press, 2017). He was previously a fellow at the Center for Global Development and has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington Universities. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Milan Vaishnav Senior Fellow, South Asia Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Seminars

The Future of Globalization

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The populist backlash against globalization is being felt acutely across Europe as well as here in the US. And yet whether you look at it from an economic, political or military perspective, transnational cooperation has become an integral part of our global landscape. Hear CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama on the future of globalization for World Affairs. 

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1984 or the Brave New World? Evidence from China

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Abstract:

Media censorship is considered as the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. Why don’t citizens acquire uncensored info despite the low cost availability? What does it take to expose citizens to uncensored information, and how does exposure affect their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? We conduct a field experiment directly varying the supply of uncensored information (by providing free access to uncensored internet to university students in China), and students’ demand for information (by providing informational and monetary incentives) over the course of 18 months. We measure and trace students’ media consumption, beliefs and attitudes regarding media, as well as a broad range of economic and political attitudes and behaviors. We find that censorship successfully prevents information consumption due to the combination of restricted supply of and low demand for uncensored information. The low demand is primarily driven by students’ skeptical beliefs regarding uncensored media outlets, and such beliefs can be persistently changed after a period of exposure. Having exposed to uncensored information makes students more knowledgeable, more pessimistic of the Chinese economy, more critical of the government, and more likely to plan on leaving China in the near future.

 

Speaker Bio:

david yang
David Y. Yang is a PhD candidate in Economics at Stanford University. He received B.A. in statistics and B.S. in business administration from University of California, Berkeley. His research interests center on political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, and economic history. In particular, he is interested in the causes and consequences of political beliefs, attitudes, and preferences.

David Y. Yang PhD candidate in Economics at Stanford University
Seminars

Dictatorship and Information

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Abstract:

How do autocracies collect information on popular discontent? The existing literature has not provided a systematic answer to this question despite its fundamental importance for understanding the logic of authoritarian rule. This talk offers a theory of information gathering in single-party communist autocracies, which are the most durable subtype of authoritarian regime to emerge since World War I. It argues that the unusual longevity of communist regimes allows us to develop and test a theory of the emergence, evolution, and eventual demise of non-electoral institutions for information gathering in autocracies. The talk uses the East European communist regimes that existed prior to 1989 to generate a theory of information and the case of post-1949 China (where institutional evolution is still ongoing) as a provisional test of the theory. The talk is based on archival sources and regime-generated materials collected in China and several East European countries.

 

Speaker Bio:

martin dimitrov
Martin K. Dimitrov is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University. His books include Piracy and the State: The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and The Politics of Socialist Consumption (Sofia: Ciela Publishers, 2017). He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Dictatorship and Information: Autocratic Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China and two edited volumes: China-Cuba: Trajectories of Post-Revolutionary Governance and Popular Authoritarianism: The Quest for Regime Durability. After receiving his Ph.D. from Stanford in 2004, he taught at Dartmouth and held residential fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, Notre Dame, the University of Helsinki, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has conducted fieldwork in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Cuba.

Martin K. Dimitrov Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University
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The Whore, the Hostess, and the Honey: Policing, Health, Business and the Regulation of Prostitution in China

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Speaker Bio:

boittin margaret
Margaret Boittin is Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada. She studies Chinese law and politics.

She was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at CDDRL (2012-2015).

Margaret Boittin

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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The Governance Project Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-15
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Margaret Boittin has a JD from Stanford, and is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation is on the regulation of prostitution in China. She is also conducting research on criminal law policy and local enforcement in the United States, and human trafficking in Nepal.

The Governance Project Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-15
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Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada
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