Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.
Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)
Terrace Room (Room 429)
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.
CISAC Conference Room
520 Galvez Mall
Graduate School Of Education Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305-3001
Christine Min Wotipka is Associate Professor (Teaching) of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology and Director of the Master’s Programs in International Comparative Education (ICE) and International Education Policy Analysis (IEPA) at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She is Co-Resident Fellow and Co-Founder of EAST House — the Equity, Access, & Society Theme House.
Dr. Wotipka’s research contributes to the comparative scholarship in gender, diversity, leadership, and higher education and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Gender & Society, Sociological Forum, and Comparative Education Review.
Before joining the faculty at Stanford in 2006, Dr. Wotipka was a visiting assistant professor/global fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, she proudly served as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in rural northeast Thailand and worked in the Republic of Korea at an economic research firm. Among Dr. Wotipka’s professional activities, she has consulted on girls' education policies for the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan.
Dr. Wotipka earned her BA (summa cum laude) in International Relations and French at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and MA in Sociology and Ph.D. in International Comparative Education at Stanford University.
Carolyn A. Mercado is a senior program officer with The Asia Foundation in the Philippines. In this position she manages the Law and Human Rights program. She assists in the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of other selected activities within the Foundation's Law and Governance program and handles mediation and conflict management, and other forms of dispute resolution processes. She has also served as a temporary consultant to the Asian Development Bank on the Strengthening the Independence and Accountability of the Philippine Judiciary project and the Legal Literacy for Supporting Governance project.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Ms. Mercado was an intern with the Center of International Environmental Law in Washington. Previously, she served consultancies in Manila for the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Maritime Organization, NOVIB, and the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources. She has served as lecturer on environmental law at Ateneo de Manila University, San Sebastian College of Law, and the Development Academy of the Philippines. She also previously served as executive director of the Developmental Legal Assistance Center, corporate secretary of the Alternative Law Groups, and as a legal aide to a member of the Philippine Senate.
Education: B.A. in political science from the University of the Philippines; LL.B. from the University of the Philippines College of Law. She was also a Hubert Humphrey Fellow in international environmental law, University of Washington and a European Union Scholar in environmental resource management, Maastricht School of Business in the Netherlands.
CO-SPONSORED BY SEAF
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally, yet deeply rooted in local culture. The newly published book Prescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policy in the Asia-Pacific, edited by Karen Eggleston, examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific.
In this colloquium, contributors to Prescribing Cultures discuss how the book analyzes pharmaceutical policy in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India, focusing on two cross-cutting themes: differences in “prescribing cultures” and physician dispensing; and the challenge of balancing access to drugs with incentives for innovation.
As Michael Reich of Harvard University says in his Forward to Prescribing Cultures,
“The pharmaceutical sector…promises great benefits and also poses enormous risks.… Conflicts abound over public policies, industry strategies, payment mechanisms, professional associations, and dispensing practices—to name just a few of the regional controversies covered in this excellent book.
The tension between emphasizing innovation versus access -- a topic of hot debate on today’s global health policy agenda -- is examined in several chapters…
This book makes a special contribution to our understanding of the pharmaceutical sector in China… Globalization is galloping forward, with Chinese producers pushing the pace at breakneck speed. More and more, our safety depends on China’s ability to get its regulatory act together…”
The colloquium features presentations by Naoko Tomita (Keio University), Anita Wagner (Harvard University), and Karen Eggleston (Stanford FSI Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center). They will give specific examples of how pharmaceutical policy serves as a window into the economic tradeoffs, political compromises, and historical trajectories that shape health systems, as well as how cultural legacies shape and are shaped by the forces of globalization.
Oksenberg Conference Room
Landau Economics Bldg.
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6015
Nicholas Hope is the Director of the Stanford Center for International Development (SCID). He also directs SCID's China research program. His current research is private enterprise development in China and progress of reforms in China, especially in the financial sector. His interests are in East Asian economies, especially China and Indonesia, and his teaching interests are in development of Asian economies, role and effectiveness of international financial institutions, and thesis supervision of students working in those areas.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Dr. Hope worked at the World Bank as Country Director for China and Mongolia, and Director of the Resident Staff in Indonesia. He is the co-editor, with Dennis Tao Yang and Mu Yang Li, of How Far Across the River?: Chinese Policy Reform at the Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2003). He also co-edited, with Belton M. Fleisher, Anita Alves Pena, and Dennis Tao Yang, Policy Reform and Chinese Markets (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008).
Dr. Hope received his Ph. D. from Princeton University, and his undergraduate degrees from Oxford University and the University of Tasmania. He was awarded the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship and a research fellowship from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
This talk will describe the role of data analysis in political transitions to democracy. Transitions require accountability of some form, and in the aggregate, accountability is statistical. In this talk, I will present examples of using several different kinds of data to establish political responsibility for large-scale human rights violations.
Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is the Director of the Human Rights Program at the Benetech Initiative which includes the Martus project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Since 1991, Dr. Ball has designed information management systems and conducted statistical analysis for large-scale human rights data projects used by truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Perú, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, and Chad.
Wallenberg Theater
