Information and communication technology platforms have transformed many aspects of modern life for many individuals around the world. They have revolutionized the realms of commerce, sociability, and even production. The realm of politics and governance, however, is more resistant to ICT revolutions. In this paper, we argue that there are fundamental dis-analogies between politics and these other realms that make the pace of innovation, and to the incidence of transformative ICT platforms, much lower. Instead of looking for "the next big thing," those who wish to understand the positive contribution of ICT to political problems such as public accountability and public deliberation should focus on incremental rather than revolutionary dynamics. We examine these incremental dynamics at work in six important ICT-enabled political accountability efforts from low and middle-income countries (Kenya, Brazil, Chile, India, Slovakia).

Archon Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research examines the impacts of civic participation, public deliberation, and transparency upon governance. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). Current projects examine democratic reform initiatives in regulation, public accountability, urban planning, and public services. He has authored five books, three edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in journals including American Political Science Review, Public Administration Review, Political Theory, Journal of Political Philosophy, Politics and Society, Governance, Journal of Policy and Management, Environmental Management, American Behavioral Scientist, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Boston Review.

Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose will describe how the United States has failed in the aftermaths of every major 20th-century war-from WWI to Afghanistan-routinely ignoring the need to create a stable postwar environment. He will argue that Iraq and Afghanistan are only the most prominent examples of such bunging, not the exceptions to the rule. Rose will draw upon historic lessons of American military engagement and explain how to effectively end our wars.

Gideon Rose is  the editor of Foreign Affairs. He served as managing editor of the magazine from 2000 to 2010 . From 1995 to December 2000 he was Olin senior fellow and deputy director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), during which time he served as chairman of CFR's Roundtable on Terrorism and director of numerous CFR study groups. He has taught American foreign policy at Columbia and Princeton Universities. From 1994 to 1995 Rose served as associate director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. From 1986 to 1987, he was assistant editor at the foreign policy quarterly The National Interest, and from 1985 to 1986 held the same position at the domestic policy quarterly The Public Interest. Rose received his BA from Yale University and his PhD from Harvard University.

Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at University of Sydney, and is the Law Faculty's Associate-Dean (International). He is also an Academic Panel member of Doughty Street Chambers in London, the UK's leading human rights practice. He has previously held positions at Cambridge University, The Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, Washington College of Law, American University, and was the founding Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University (2000-2005). He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2004, based in Washington DC, and Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in 2008. He is author and editor of eight books and more than 80 articles, book chapters, reports and papers.

He has worked for 15 years as a consultant and adviser on international and domestic human rights law in Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Thailand, Iraq, Nepal, Laos, China, and Myanmar/Burma, and for such organizations as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, AusAID, and the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, and a number of transnational corporations, and NGOs.  He has also previously worked for three years with the Australian Law Reform Commission and two years with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

His latest publications include the critically acclaimed Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy (CUP, 2009), Corporations and Human Rights (Ashgate 2009), and The World Trade Organisation and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2009) Another edited collection entitled Principled Engagement: Promoting Human Rights in Pariah States will be published by UNU Publications in 2011.  He is currently working on another book investigating the interrelations between human rights and global finance.

David was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and brought up there during the 1960s and 70s.  He studied in England in the 1980s at Sheffield Hallam University and the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge, and after obtaining his doctorate from the latter in 1990 he moved to Australia.  He now lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

Patricia Isasa, a successful architect in Argentina, is a survivor of torture and imprisonment from the age of 16 to 18 during the Argentine dictatorship. She was imprisoned in 1976.  Twenty years later she almost single handedly investigated the identities of 8 perpetrators of the crimes against her and others.  Because of an impunity law in Argentina at the time, she took her case to Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain who requested extradition, which was denied. In 2009 her case was finally tried in Argentina.

Six perpetrators were found guilty of human rights violations.  Her trial is one of the first trials of the Argentine military and police. Patricia is now helping others with their cases and is working with President Cristina Kirchner to investigate the takeover of Papel Prensa in the 70s by the then and present media giant Clarin, which has resulted in extensive corporate control of the media in Argentina.

Sponsored by

Program on Human Rights, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,

Center for Latin American Studies,

and Arroyo House