Despite its frequent military coups, Thai democracy was practically a textbook case of successful transition during the 1980s and 1990s. A so-called "semi-democracy" during 1980-88 gave way to a fully elected civilian leadership whose corrupt government laid the conditions for a putsch in February 1991. As the coup makers institutionalized their power through the political party and electoral systems, a popular uprising put the military back in the barracks in May 1992. Following an organic five-year constitution-drafting process, the promulgation of the reform-driven 1997 Constitution appeared to cross the threshold between transition and consolidation. But the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai party changed all that. The Thaksin regime was paradoxically corrupt and abusive of power on the one hand but delivered the goods from its populist platform through policy innovation on the other. Thaksin triumphed at the polls in 2001 and again, by a landslide, in 2005. In the same year, a Bangkok-based "yellow-shirt" movement campaigned against his graft and abuse, laying the groundwork for Thailand's latest putsch in September 2006. Thai politics has been murky and topsy-turvy since. Thaksin's opponents from the military, palace, Bangkok's middle class, royalist political parties, swathes of civil society, and the yellow-shirted People's Alliance for Democracy are now in charge, fronted by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his Democrat Party-led coalition government. Yet this anti-Thaksin coalition is unable to put the lid on the pro-Thaksin "red shirts" as the remarkable reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej enters its twilight. Thai democracy and monarchy are increasingly enmeshed. Its road ahead towards a workable constitutional monarchy that is consistent with democratic development will have much to say about the democratization in developing countries. It is a crucial case that could build or sap the momentum of democratization and democracy promotion elsewhere.

Dr. Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) and Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. He has authored a host of articles, books and book chapters on Thailand's politics, political economy, foreign policy, media and ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation. He is frequently quoted and his op-eds have regularly appeared in international and local media. Dr. Thitinan has worked for The BBC World Service, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Independent Economic Analysis (IDEA) and consulting and research projects related to Thailand's macro-economy and politics. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics where he won the United Kingdom's Lord Bryce Prize for Best Dissertation in Comparative and International Politics. Dr. Thitinan has lectured at a host of universities in Thailand and abroad, and is currently a visiting scholar with the FSI-Humanities Center and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

This talk provides an overview of deliberative democracy projects conducted by the Center for Deliberative Democracy and its partners in China, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and other countries as well as on a European-wide basis. The projects all involve scientific random samples deliberating about policy choices and providing the before and after results as an input to policy making. The talk will focus particularly on the challenges of conducting such projects when they are intended as a precursor to further democratization or when there is ethnic conflict.

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science. He is also Director of Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy and Chair of the Dept of Communication.

He is the author of a number of books including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (1991), The Dialogue of Justice (1992 ), The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (1995). With Bruce Ackerman he is co-author of Deliberation Day (Yale Press, 2004). His new book When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation will be published by Oxford University Press in fall 2009.

He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® - a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece and other countries.

Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.

Mobile phones are transforming lives in low-income countries faster than ever imagined.  The effect is particularly dramatic in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile phones have often represented the first modern infrastructure of any kind.  The iconic image of cell phones in Africa is the market woman, surrounding by her goods while making calls to potential clients in the capital city.  Equally common are the slogans of mobile phone companies promising a better life for those who use it. 

Yet do these images and slogans reflect the reality of what cell phones can do?  Cell phones are being adopted by the rural and urban poor at a surprising rate, far exceeding cell phone companies' projections. An emerging body of research suggests that mobile phones are improving households' access to information and reducing costs, thereby making markets more efficient and increasing incomes.  These impacts have occurred without NGOs or donor investments - but as a positive externality from the IT sector.

Governments, donors and NGOs have noticed the potential of information technology in achieving development goals in a variety of sectors, including agriculture, education, health, financial services and governance.  Mobile phones can greatly facilitate the effectiveness of development programs, but are needed in partnership with the private sector. And while cell phone coverage reaches over 60% of the population in most African countries, other constraints to cell phone adoption - namely pricing and handset cost - should be addressed.

Jenny Aker has worked extensively in Central, North and West Africa for the past ten years for NGOs, international organizations and universities. Her research uses field work and field experiments to better understand field-driven development problems, primarily by teaming up with NGOs and program implementers in an effort to link research with policy and implementation.

Jenny is currently involved in three main areas of research. The first assesses the impact of information technology (mobile phones) on development outcomes, namely farmers’ and traders’ welfare, market performance, labor outcomes, literacy rates and early warning systems. Based upon her previous work in Niger, she is collaborating with Catholic Relief Services in Niger on Project ABC (Alphabétisation de Base par Cellulaire), which uses cell phones as a learning tool to allow literacy participants to read and write in their local languages via SMS. The project takes a rigorous impact evaluation approach, assessing the impact of cell phones on literacy rates and farmers’ marketing behavior. Her second area of research involves assessing the impact of climate change on farmer-herder conflicts in the Sahel, with a particular focus on Mali. Her third area of research evaluates the impact of specific development interventions -- including food aid distributions, local purchases, and cash vouchers – on producers’ welfare and market performance in the Sahel.

In September 2009, Jenny joined Tufts University as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Aart Kraay is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto. His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. He has also worked for the China department of the World Bank and was a team member of the 2001 World Development Report 'Building Institutions for Markets'. He has taught courses in macroeconomics, international economics, and growth at Georgetown University, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

» Kraay, Aart, "Corruption and confidence in public institutions: evidence from a global survey".

Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

• Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
• Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
• Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
• Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

• Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
• Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
• Price it at a level people can afford
• Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
• Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
• Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
• Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
• Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
• Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.