Stanford University

The Putin Paradox

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
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Michael A. McFaul - Since becoming Russia's President in 2000, Vladimir Putin has simultaneously pushed forward a positive agenda of economic reform and a negative agenda of political repression. It's a sad story of one step forward, two steps back, and if it continues it will threaten the existence of a free Russian society.
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Meddling in Ukraine: Democracy Is Not an American Plot

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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Commentary
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Did the U.S. government fund the Yushchenko campaign directly? Not to the knowledge of Michael A. McFaul. Both the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute conducted training programs for Ukrainian political parties, some of which later joined the Yushchenko coalition. But in the years leading up to the 2004 votes, American ambassadors in Ukraine insisted that no U.S. government money could be provided to any candidate. Private sources of external funding and expertise aided the Yushchenko campaign. Likewise, U.S. and Russian public relations consultants worked with the Yushchenko campaign, just as U.S. and Russian public relations people were brought in to help his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych. In future elections Ukrainian officials might enforce more controls on foreign resources. But this kind of private, for-profit campaign advice occurs everywhere now, and Americans no longer control the market.
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The False Promise of Autocratic Stability

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
Date
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In my travels to more than 50 countries, I have been thrown out of only one - Uzbekistan - just a few months after its emergence as an independent state in 1992 under its first and only president, Islam Karimov. My crime? Working for an American democracy promotion organization and meeting with human rights activists.

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What's a Corrupt Election Among Friends?

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
Date
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Public opinion polls suggest that Aliyev's party would probably win a majority of seats in a free and fair election, but the young leader lacks the confidence to allow fair balloting. Officials who rigged the last election have not been replaced, and the government has refused to follow the Iraqi example of marking voters' fingers with ink to prevent multiple trips to the polls. Aliyev's party changed the electoral law to make it more difficult to uncover false balloting through the usual means of parallel-vote tabulation or exit polls. To date, Aliyev has not allowed the National Democratic Institute -- an American nongovernmental organization recognized around the world as a premier election-monitoring organization -- to observe the vote count.
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Iran's weakened hard-liners crave a US attack

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News
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Bombing Iran will exacerbate, not resolve problems, Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani demonstrate in a new landmark article. "Rather than throw the reactionaries in Tehran a political lifeline in the form of war, the United States should pursue a more subtle approach: contain Iranian agents in the region, but offer to negotiate unconditionally with Iran on all the outstanding issues. Comprehensive negotiations could offer powerful inducements, such as a lifting of the economic embargo and a significant influx of foreign investment and thus create the jobs necessary to persuade Iran to halt nuclear enrichment. If the hard-liners reject the offer, then they would have to contend with an angry Iranian public. Such internal strife would be far preferable to an Islamic Republic united against the attacking forces of the 'Great Satan.'"
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Liberal Is as Liberal Does

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This article responds to the "Russian Enigma," a series of essays that ran in the November/December 2006 issue of The American Interest. The authors of those essays agree that liberalism in Russia is on its last legs. As to why liberalism in Russia has faltered, however, they differ. Their fears about the consequences of liberalism's failure also range considerably. Who's right?

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The American Interest
Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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The Political Economy of 'Lawfare'

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This talk will analyze the evolution of lawfare, what Jeremy Bentham called "an irregular system of warfare." Meierhenrich introduces lawfare as a conceptually and analytically distinct type of warfare, and a political strategy not previously theorized in any systematic fashion. In his conceptualization, lawfare is a revolutionary strategy for broadcasting power, by which he means a strategy aimed at the systematic and comprehensive overhaul of the foundations of politics and society. This strategy comprises, inter alia, constitutional enactments, ordinary legislation, presidential decrees, and other regulatory instruments. Based on evidence from cases, Meierhenrich illustrates the economy with which the strategy of lawfare may be used and the ingenuity that it requires. Restating an influential aphorism, he shows how law made the state, and the state made law. By so doing, he explains why this irregular system of warfare stands in much higher favor with men in general than that which is carried on by open force -- illustrating the dark side of democracy and the rule of law.

About the speaker:

Jens Meierhenrich is Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies at Harvard University, where he is also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He recently served as the Carlo Schmid Fellow in Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and has previously worked with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Professor Meierhenrich is the author of a genocide trilogy, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, comprising "The Rationality of Genocide," "The Structure of Genocide," and "The Culture of Genocide." His book "The Legacies of Law" on the function of legal norms and institutions in the transition to - and from - apartheid, is currently under review. Meierhenrich's publications also include a series of articles on comparative and international law and politics. Work in progress includes a book on judicial responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a comparative analysis of international courts and tribunals, and a long-term project on state formation and state collapse. He has conducted extensive field research in several international organizations as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Jens Meierhenrich was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a D.Phil. in politics and international relations.

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Jens Meierhenrich Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies Speaker Harvard University
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Property Rights and Property Wrongs: Survey Evidence on the Legitimacy of Privatization in Russia

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About the talk:

Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin or can rightholders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? Using an experiment embedded in a survey of 1600 residents of conducted in Russia in October 2006, I find that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge, but that businesspeople can improve the legitimacy of property rights by doing good works, such as providing public goods.

About the speaker:

Timothy Frye is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research and teaching interests are in comparative politics and political economy with a focus on the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Markets in Russia, (Michigan Press 2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He has published articles on property rights, the rule of law, protection rackets, economic reform, presidential power, and trade liberalization. Current projects include a book manuscript on the politics of economic reform in 25 postcommunist countries from 1990-2002 and articles on property rights and the rule of law drawing on surveys of business elites and the mass public in Russia.

Timothy Frye received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1997. He has an MIA degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a BA in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), under Title VI of the Department of Education.

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Timothy Frye Professor of Political Science Speaker Columbia University
Seminars

The Khodorkovsky Case: Human Rights and Rule of Law in Putin's Russia

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Robert R. Amsterdam, founding partner of the international law firm Amsterdam & Peroff, is counsel to the former Yukos head and political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. For more than 25 years, Mr. Amsterdam has represented corporations and investors in a variety of emerging markets lacking in rule of law, such as Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala, overseeing complex commercial litigation and advising on political risk. He has delivered speeches before the Carnegie Endowment, the Cato Institute, Georgetown University, University College London, and Chatham House. He has published numerous opinion articles on energy politics and law in the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, the National Law Journal, the Guardian, and the Independent, among other media. Mr. Amsterdam maintains a blog at www.robertamsterdam.com and is working on a forthcoming book.

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Robert Amsterdam Speaker
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