Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Nelia received her B.A. in Business with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Menlo College. She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of DDL, including: research and grant administration, financial administration, and providing assistance with program management.
Encina Hall, E103
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.
Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world, at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.
Distrust in parties is at historic highs, and many reform efforts attempt to weaken party influence in politics. The erosion of intermediary institutions lies at the heart of the broader crisis of liberal democracy. While there is ample evidence that party success or failure impacts democratic outcomes in emerging democracies, we know less about how parties (and their strength or weakness) contribute to problems in established democracies. This talk lays out a concept of party intermediary capacity, which helps to assess how parties mobilize and represent voters. It then traces how party intermediary capacity has changed over time, with particular attention to the political economy of representation in the neoliberal era.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) 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. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
Major: International Relations
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Thesis Advisor: Stephen Stedman
Tentative Thesis Title: The UN and State-building Missions: Democratic Institutions and Legitimacy
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I will be applying to both law school and PhD programs — I hope writing my thesis will help me choose between the two. Post-graduate school, I want to get involved in developmental policymaking.
A fun fact about yourself: I am trained in classical ballet, and I perform with Stanford's own Cardinal Ballet Company!
Major: International Relations
Minor: Human Rights
Hometown: Arcadia, CA
Thesis Advisor: Rob Reich
Tentative Thesis Title: Understanding Facebook's disparities in democratic investment around the world
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I'm not entirely sure yet, but I know that my work will relate to human rights in some way, whether that looks like immigrant and refugee justice or the intersection of human rights and technology. I am interested in going to law school one day, and I would love to work a few years in policy and advocacy first.
A fun fact about yourself: My current favorite artist and writer is the same person: Japanese Breakfast, aka Michelle Zauner. If you haven't listened to her band’s music or read "Crying in H-Mart," you must!
Major: International Relations
Minor: Human Rights
Hometown: Montgomery County, MD
Thesis Advisor: Joel Cabrita
Tentative Thesis Title: An Examination of Accountability Mechanisms in Development Aid in Latin America and Africa
Future aspirations post-Stanford: After hopefully coterming in Sustainability here at Stanford, I want to work on development aid policy before going to law school and starting a career that combines these areas of law and policy.
A fun fact about yourself: I have around a two-month streak on Wordle!
CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. For our final Spring 2022 seminar, please join us to hear our Honors Program award winners present their research.
Thesis Title: Challenging the State: Western European Regionalism in the Era of Financial Crisis
Abstract: The Global Financial Crisis and its aftershocks have substantially altered the Western European political landscape. But while the literature has extensively focused on the impacts of the economic hardship on traditional party competition, it has often failed to consider the center-periphery dimension. My thesis addresses both the demand for and supply of regionalist ideologies during the crisis. Using an original dataset containing 8 countries, 35 regions, and 128 regionalist parties, it finds that voters did not increase their support for regionalist parties during the crisis and may have even turned their backs on these political actors. In addition, I consider the reactions of regionalist parties in three Spanish autonomous communities - Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia - to the crisis. I find evidence of regionalist mobilization on the issue and even some indications of radicalization of regionalist demands. Taken together, these findings raise interesting implications for the impacts of the financial crisis and the interaction between economic indicators, party competition, and voting patterns.
Thesis Title: Babies, Money, and Power: Estimating Causal Effects of the “Family 500+” Child Benefit Program in Poland using the Synthetic Control Method
Abstract: The ‘Family 500+” child benefit program introduced in April 2016 by the government of Poland has become the single most expensive component of Polish social policy expenditure, yet past studies have rarely estimated the effects of the program through causal methods. In a novel application within this context, I propose using the synthetic control method as a causal identification strategy to empirically estimate country-level treatment effects of the program on fertility, poverty, and inequality. Treating 500+ as a natural experiment, I compare observational data from actual Poland with a synthetic counterfactual of Poland constructed from a weighted donor pool of other European countries through a data-driven selection procedure. My findings on fertility metrics are consistent with prior studies, being ambiguous and insignificant, indicating that the main short-term objective of the program has not been achieved. Meanwhile, I find that the program causally reduced the rate of people at risk of poverty in Poland by over 16%, including by more than 23% among children. I also find that the child benefit has led to a significant reduction in income inequality, being causally responsible for a decline of 5.9% in the Gini index and of 8.0% in the income quintile share ratio. While significant, the results on poverty and inequality are weaker than initially anticipated. My results are robust under in-space treatment reassignment placebo studies. The findings contribute to a growing literature on the causal effects of child benefit policy interventions applied on an aggregate unit level.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Major: International Relations / Coterm Public Policy
Minor: Economics
Hometown: Augst, Switzerland
Thesis Advisor: Christophe Crombez
Tentative Thesis Title: Separatism in Western Europe: Ideologies and the European Union
Future aspirations post-Stanford: Continue with studies either in law or political science/economics.
A fun fact about yourself: I spent the coronavirus lockdown in Belgium.
Major: Economics and Political Science
Hometown: Warsaw, Poland
Thesis Advisor: Larry Diamond
Tentative Thesis Title: Babies, Money, and Power: Estimating Causal Effects of the “Family 500+” Child Benefit Program in Poland using the Synthetic Control Method
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I hope to ultimately pursue a career at the intersection of private and public sectors with a strong international focus as well as to continue my interdisciplinary education in graduate school.
A fun fact about yourself: I once got lost on a volcano in Guatemala.
Major: Political Science
Minor: Computer Science; Ethics and Technology
Hometown: Fort Worth, TX
Thesis Advisor: Francis Fukuyama
Tentative Thesis Title: Examining Why Countries With Little Histories of Privacy Enact Data Privacy Laws
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I'm not sure precisely what I want to do after college, but I hope to work at the intersection of technology and law/policy.
A fun fact about yourself: I'm a vegetarian from Texas (and my hometown is actually referred to as Cowtown).
Major: Economics and Political Science
Hometown: Warsaw, Poland
Thesis Advisor: Larry Diamond
Tentative Thesis Title: Babies, Money, and Power: Estimating Causal Effects of the “Family 500+” Child Benefit Program in Poland using the Synthetic Control Method
Future aspirations post-Stanford: I hope to ultimately pursue a career at the intersection of private and public sectors with a strong international focus as well as to continue my interdisciplinary education in graduate school.
A fun fact about yourself: I once got lost on a volcano in Guatemala.
Major: Political Science
Minor: Human Rights
Hometown: Westchester, IL
Thesis Advisor: David Cohen
Tentative Thesis Title: Controversy in the Classroom: An Analysis of Spanish Secondary School Education on the Civil War, Franco Dictatorship, and the Democratic Transition
Future aspirations post-Stanford: After Stanford, I hope to attend law school and focus on international human rights law.
A fun fact about yourself: When I was in high school I wrote a letter to the creator of Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda, and he wrote me back.