In October, the Justice Department sued Google for violating antitrust laws.These antitrust concerns are motivated by the potential economic harms caused by the tech giants’ monopoly positions, but there might be greater reason to worry about the political harms that the platforms pose to American democracy because of their control over the modern information ecosystem. If the antitrust laws are designed to address economic harms, how should policymakers confront the political harms from dominant digital platforms?

Join us on November 18th at 10 a.m. PST to discuss recommendations from the new White Paper of the Stanford Working Group on Platform Scale, where we will assess how today’s digital platforms pose threats to American democracy and a proposal for how creative technological interventions might mitigate the platform’s growing power. Panelists include Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and a leader at the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet, Ashish Goel, Professor of Management Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science at Stanford University, Barak D. Richman, Professor of Law and Business Administration at Duke University, Luigi Zingales, Professor of Economics at the Chicago Booth School of Business and Co-host of the podcast Capitalisn't, and Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter, founder and CEO of multiple startups, and now a Managing Partner at 01 Advisors, in conversation with Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center as they discuss new ideas in antitrust.

This event is open to Stanford undergraduate students only. 

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors on who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL) from any university department.  The application period opens on January 11, 2021 and runs through February 12, 2021.   CDDRL faculty and current honors students will be present to discuss the program and answer any questions.

For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About this Event:  This book offers a novel theory of the nuances in relationships between business and political elites in three authoritarian regimes in developing Asia: Indonesia under Suharto’s New Order, Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional (BN), and China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). How did business-state relations in all three regimes come to be seen as “crony,” and why do some crony arrangements generate growth and political stability and others stagnation or crisis? The book develops conceptual models of state-business relations (mutual alignment and mutual endangerment) and explains their genesis. I argue that the main factors explaining why one pattern dominates over the other are the political status of capitalists, determined during regime formation, and the political management of the financial system. The research draws on extensive archival and interview sources as well as novel datasets on corporate filings in each country.

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:   As we enter the stretch run of the 2020 US election campaign, join us for an inside look at how public policy is formulated on political campaigns, and the key policy debates animating the election.

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A veteran of several high-profile political campaigns, Chen has worked in government, the private sector, and academia. 

Chen has advised numerous major campaigns, including four presidential efforts.  In 2012, he was policy director of the Romney-Ryan campaign, serving as Governor Mitt Romney’s chief policy adviser and a senior strategist on the campaign.  Chen also advised Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 bid; Romney’s 2008 effort; and the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004.  In the 2014 and 2018 campaign cycles, he was the Senior Adviser on Policy to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). 

He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science, A.M. in Political Science, J.D. cum laude, and A.B. magna cum laude in Government, all from Harvard University.   

This event is being live-streamed on Zoom. Registration is required: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PTnI4nwGRLCERCHdP-cogw

On August 9, 2020, Belarus held a presidential election, which Alexander Lukashenko — Belarus' president of 26 years — claimed to have won with 80 percent of the vote. Exit polling, however, demonstrated that the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, actually garnered wide popular support. Since the election, Belarusians have taken to the streets to demand a new election and/or that Lukashenko step down. But the regime appears intent on remaining in power and has used force against peaceful protesters. Workers in key factories have since gone on strike, and widespread protests continue. 

Join us for a special zoom seminar on Wednesday, August 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. PDT with Michael A. McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and former US Ambassador to Russia; Anna Grzymala-Busse, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center; and Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program at FSI in a session on the events in Belarus that will be moderated by Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

On November 3, in the midst of a pandemic, America elects its next President. CDDRL scholars will discuss the election results (or election challenges), Trump and Biden, key Congressional races, and what to expect between November and Inauguration Day. Join Bruce Cain, Nate Persily, Hakeem Jefferson, and Didi Kuo.

About the Speakers:

Bruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He received a BA from Bowdoin College (1970), a B Phil. from Oxford University (1972) as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph D from Harvard University (1976). He taught at Caltech (1976-89) and UC Berkeley (1989-2012) before coming to Stanford. Professor Cain was Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and Executive Director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. His areas of expertise include political regulation, applied democratic theory, representation and state politics.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York, and as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In addition to dozens of articles (many of which have been cited by the Supreme Court) on the legal regulation of political parties, issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, voting rights, and campaign finance reform.

Hakeem Jefferson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His research interests move at the intersection of American politics and social psychology. In particular, his current work examines the conditions under which members of stigmatized groups punish group members who transgress social norms. Moving beyond a study of identity that centers largely on the attitudes and predilections of dominant social groups, his work explores the psychological and instrumental considerations stigmatized individuals bring to bear in response to “bad” (negatively stereotyped) behavior from within their own group. Using African-Americans as the test case, this work builds on scholarship about the politics of respectability and in-group policing to inform conversations about Blacks’ attitudes toward punitive social policies.

Didi Kuo is the Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. Her recent work examines changes to party organization, and the impact these changes have on the ability of governments to address challenges posed by global capitalism. She is the author of Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which examines the role of business against clientelism and the development of modern political parties in the nineteenth-century.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

Please join CDDRL as we kick off our 2020-21 seminar series with a panel on American democracy and the 2020 elections. Julia Azari (Marquette University), Ted Johnson (Brennan Center), and David Brady (Hoover Institute) will discuss the critical issues heading in to the Presidential elections this November.

About the Speakers:

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:  American democracy has been more prone to crisis than we commonly recognize. Comparative studies of democracy suggest that four threats imperil democracy: political polarization, conflict over who belongs as a full member of society, high and rising economic inequality, and excessive executive power. We survey five periods of American history in which these threats have appeared in different configurations, posing recurring challenges to American democracy. When even one threat was present – as in the 1790s, the 1930s, or the 1970s – the nation risked backsliding. Twice – in the 1850s and again in the 1890s – three threats converged, leading to civil war and then precipitating the disenfranchisement of millions of African American men. Today, all four threats are present for the first time, presenting unprecedented danger to the American experiment.

About the Speaker:  Robert C. Lieberman is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of several award-winning books on American politics and previous served as provost of Johns Hopkins and dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

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Suzanne Mettler is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell. She is the author five previous books, including, most recently, The Government-Citizen Disconnect and Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. She was recently awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship and a Guggenheim Award, and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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