Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Rule of Law in Post-Soviet Russia
Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation
Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.
While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable. Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.
Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal. FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:
There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.
Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:
Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.
Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160
Philosophy, Politics, Democracy: Selected Essays, released Oct 2009 (by Joshua Cohen): Over the past twenty years, Joshua Cohen has explored the most controversial issues facing the American public: campaign finance and political equality, privacy rights and robust public debate, hate speech and pornography, and the capacity of democracies to address important practical problems. In this highly anticipated volume, Cohen draws on his work in these diverse topics to develop an argument about what he calls, following John Rawls, "democracy's public reason." He rejects the conventional idea that democratic politics is simply a contest for power, and that philosophical argument is disconnected from life. Political philosophy, he insists, is part of politics, and its job is to contribute to the public reasoning about what we ought to do.
When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation: All over the world, democratic reforms have brought power to the people, but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. In this book, James S. Fishkin combines a new theory of democracy with actual practice and shows how an idea that harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive our modern democracies. The book outlines deliberative democracy projects conducted by the author with various collaborators in the United States, China, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and in the entire European Union. These projects have resulted in the massive expansion of wind power in Texas, the building of sewage treatment plants in China, and greater mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The book is accompanied by a DVD of "Europe in One Room" by Emmy Award-winning documentary makers Paladin Invision. The film recounts one of the most challenging deliberative democracy efforts with a scientific sample from 27 countries speaking 21 languages.
Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action, released Aug 2009 (edited by James Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner, Jeremy M. Weinstein): Ethnically homogenous communities often do a better job than diverse communities of producing public goods such as satisfactory schools and health care, adequate sanitation, and low levels of crime. Coethnicity reports the results of a landmark study that aimed to find out why diversity has this cooperation-undermining effect. The study, conducted in a neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda, notable for both its high levels of diversity and low levels of public goods provision, hones in on the mechanisms that might account for the difficulties diverse societies often face in trying to act collectively. Research on ethnic diversity typically draws on either experimental research or field work. Coethnicity does both. By taking the crucial step from observation to experimentation, this study marks a major breakthrough in the study of ethnic diversity.
Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf: The countries of the Persian (or Arab) Gulf produce about thirty percent of the planet's oil and keep around fifty-five percent of its reserves underground. The stability of the region's autocratic regimes, therefore, is crucial for those who wish to anchor the world's economic and political future. Yet despite its reputation as a region trapped by tradition, the Persian Gulf has taken slow steps toward political liberalization. The question now is whether this trend is part of an inexorable drive toward democratization or simply a means for autocratic regimes to consolidate and legitimize their rule. In this volume, Joshua Teitelbaum addresses the push toward political liberalization in the Persian Gulf and its implications for the future, tracking eight states as they respond to the challenges of increased wealth and education, a developing middle class, external pressures from international actors, and competing social and political groups.
Promoting Democracy and the Rule of Law: American and European Strategies, released Aug 2009 (edited by Amichai Magen, Thomas Risse, and Michael A. McFaul): European and American experts systematically compare US and EU strategies to promote democracy around the world -- from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to Latin America, the former Soviet bloc, and Southeast Asia. In doing so, the authors debunk the pernicious myth that there exists a transatlantic divide over democracy promotion.
Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World, ships Dec 2009 (edited by Valerie Bunce, Michael A. McFaul, Kathryn Stoner): This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to examine in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations. The essays draw important conclusions about the rise, development, and breakdown of both democracy and dictatorship in each country and together provide a rich comparative perspective on the post-Communist world.
Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can, ships Nov 2009 (by Michael A. McFaul): This book offers examples of the tangible benefits of democracy – more accountable government, greater economic prosperity, and better security – and explains how Americans can reap economic and security gains from democratic advance around the world. In the final chapters of this new work, McFaul provides past examples of successful democracy promotion strategies and offers constructive new proposals for supporting democratic development more effectively in the future.
The multidisciplinary environment at CDDRL is an ideal venue to explore the ways in which regime (authoritarian or democratic) matters in encouraging or suppressing economic development. This question sits at the very nexus of political science, economics and law.
485 Lasuen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-3096
Martin Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and is Co-Director of the GSE’s Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazilian Education. Prior to coming to Stanford, he was a Research Associate in Economics, Foreign Policy Division, at the Brookings Institution. He has also been a consultant to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, IEA, OECD, UNICEF, International Labour Office.
Dr. Carnoy is a labor economist with a special interest in the relation between the economy and the educational system. To this end, he studies this relationship in the US and many other countries. He is particularly interested in how labor markets treat race, ethnicity, and gender (Faded Dreams; Whitewashing Race). Further, he studies educational systems worldwide using comparative analysis to understand how education influences productivity and economic growth, and, in turn, how and why educational systems change over time, and why some countries’ educational systems are marked by better student performance than others'. He has researched extensively the impact of vouchers and charter schools on student outcomes, as well as larger issues of the impact of economic inequality on educational systems.
In recent years, Dr. Carnoy has carried out major projects comparing educational quality in Latin America (Cuba’s Academic Advantage), Southern and Eastern Africa (The Low Achievement Trap), and among U.S. states (Bringing It Back Home), in the Russian Federation ((Не)обычные Школы), and higher education in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China (University Expansion in a Changing Global Economy). Currently, he is conducting impact evaluations of various educational reforms in Brazil and using big data to research educational inequality among Brazilian municipalities and schools.
Dr. Carnoy received his BA in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.
In the context of authoritarian states the internet has always been viewed as an unambiguous force for good, allowing citizens of such states to mobilise around particular political and social issues, and gain access to previously banned materials. However, many authoritarian governments are now actively exploiting cyberspace for their own purposes; some of them appear to be succeeding in subverting the internet's democratising potential. Have we overestimated the internet's ability to bring democratic change and underestimated? Drawing on numerous recent examples from Russia, China, and Iran, the talk will illustrate the darker side the use of social media in these countries.
Evgeny Morozov is a leading thinker and commentator on the political implications of the Internet. He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine's influential and widely-quoted "Net Effect" blog about the Internet's impact on global politics (neteffect.foreignpolicy.com). Morozov is currently a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's E.A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Prior to his appointment to Georgetown, he was a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program (one of the leading and most experimental funders for technology projects that have an impact on open society and human rights). Before moving to the US, Morozov was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online.
Morozov, Evgeny. "The Internet: A Room of Our Own?" (via Dissent magazine)
Wallenberg Theater
Program on Liberation Technology
616 Serra Street E108
Stanford, California 94305
Evgeny Morozov is a visiting scholar in the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford University and a Scwhartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He is also a blogger and contributing editor to Foreign Policy Magazine. He is a former Yahoo fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a former fellow at the Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. His book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom was published by PublicAffairs in January 2011.
Jakob Tolstrup is a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009 and will be doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.
Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).
Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
CDDRL
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Jakob Tolstrup was a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009, doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.
Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).
Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.
