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DAY 1: Friday, April 27

8:30-9:00 a.m.    Breakfast

9:00-9:15 a.m.    Introductory Remarks

9:15-11:00 a.m.  Panel 1: Youth, Culture, and Expressions of Resistance

Ayca Alemdaroglu, Stanford University

“Affective Pedagogies: Governing Youth in the Times of Dissent in Turkey”

Adel Iskandar, Simon Fraser University

“Uprisings Upended: Arab Youth Between Dissociation, Disenchantment, and Desecration”

Yasemin Ipek, Stanford University

“Imagining Social Change after the Syrian Civil War: Entrepreneurial Activism and Cross-Sectarian Political Mobilization in Lebanon”

Chair: Hicham Alaoui, Harvard University

11:00-11:15 a.m. Coffee Break

11:15-1:00 p.m.  Panel 2: Situating Gender in the Law and the Economy

Hanan Hammad, Texas Christian University 

“Democracy from the Gender Edge”

Alessandra Gonzalez, Stanford University

“Do Source or Host Country Practices Dominate in Female Executive Hiring? Evidence from Firms in the GCC Countries”

Ibtesam Al Atiyat, St. Olaf College

“Repealing Rape Article 308: The Missed Opportunity to Women’s Emancipation in Jordan”

Chair: Joel Beinin, Stanford University

1:00-2:00 p.m.    Lunch

2:00-3:45 p.m.    Panel 3: Social Movements and Visions for Change

Dina El-Sharnouby, Freie Universität Berlin 

“The 2011 Revolutionary Movement in Egypt and Youth’s Socio-Political Imaginaries of Transformation and Change”

Mohamed Daadaoui, Oklahoma City University 

“It’s Good to Be the King, or Is It? Protest Movements, the “refo-lutionary” promise of PJD Islamists and the King’s Dilemma in Morocco”

Nora Doaiji, Yale University

“After Saudi Women’s Driving: What Happens When A Marginal Movement Is Centered by the State”

Chair: Amr Hamzawy, Stanford University

DAY 2: Saturday April 28

8:30-9:00 a.m.    Breakfast

9:00-10:45 a.m.  Panel 4: The Economy, the State and New Social Actors

Mona Atia, The George Washington University 

“Territorial Restructuring and the Politics of Governing Poverty in Morocco”

Amr Adly, European University Institute

“Egypt's Shattered Oligarchy and Big Business Autonomy”

Mahmoud El-Gamal, Rice University 

“Egyptian Economic and De-Democratization Trends”

Chair: Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University

10:45-11:00 a.m. Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 p.m. Panel 5: Social Change and International and Regional Dynamics

Hicham Alaoui, Harvard University

"Geopolitical Myths and Realities under Neo-Authoritarianism"

Daniel Brumberg, Georgetown University 

“The Roots and Impact of Democracy Resistance and Autocracy Promotion in the Arab World”

Nancy Okail, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

"Political Reform, Security, and U.S. Middle East Policy"

Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University

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Abstract:

Students of liberal democracy have long highlighted its many paradoxes. Most notably, individual rights, although a necessary (albeit insufficient) condition for the existence of liberal democracy, often stands in tension with the dictates of electoral majorities. Nowhere is the tension between individual rights and democratic principle of popular sovereignty more apparent than in the contemporary Turkish context. Exemplifying that trend, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in 2002 after winning 34% of the vote, and maintained its rule through successive electoral victories in 2007 (with 47%) and 2011 (with almost 50%). Despite professing a commitment to democratic governance and contributing to democratization process early on, the JDP has taken an illiberal turn since 2007. As its popular support increased progressively, the ruling party began steering away from democratic practices, placing restrictions on the freedom of the press, and undermining judicial independence. It is within that context that Turkey offers broader lessons on how executive institutions can employ popular support and the legitimacy it affords them to undermine the effective workings of democracy.

Speaker Bio:

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Yeşim Arat is 2014-15 FSI-SHC International Visiting Scholar and 2014-15 Aron Rodrigue International Visitor at Stanford University, and Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. She is the author of The Patriarchal Paradox: Women Politicians in Turkey (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989), Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics (SUNY Press, 2005), Violence Against Women in Turkey (with Ayse Gul Altinay-Punto, 2009-Turkish version, 2008 Pen Duygu Asena Award) and numerous articles on women as well as Turkish politics. Arat was the Provost of her university between 2008-2012 and is a member of the Science Academy, Turkey. She is currently working on a book on post-1980 politics of Turkey. She will be in residence at Stanford from October 6, 2014 through November 6, 2014.

The event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Mediterranean Studies Forum and Stanford Humanities Center.

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Abstract:

Political polarization has paralyzed the functioning of democracy in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Taiwan, where students have recently occupied the parliament building.  Civil liberties and political opposition are under intensified assault by an abusive prime minister in Turkey.  Indian democracy is increasingly diminished by brazen corruption and rent-seeking. Several African democracies have failed, and others are slipping.  The Arab Spring has largely imploded, and Egypt is in the grip of military authoritarian rule more repressive than anything the country has seen in decades.  After invading and swallowing a piece of Ukraine, Russia now poses a gathering threat to its democratic postcommunist neighbors.  For the eighth consecutive year, Freedom House finds that the number of countries declining in freedom have greatly exceeded the number improving.  And most of the advanced industrial democracies, including the United States, seem unable to address their long-term fiscal and other policy challenges.  Is there an emerging global crisis of democracy?  And if so, why?

Speaker Bio:

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

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Abstract:

Gender equality is considered important for development and good governance, yet the causes of cross-national variation in gender equality are still not well understood. This paper claims that the distinct types of rule pursued by the French versus the British imperial powers selected for postcolonial institutions that are systematically correlated with gender equality. The paper evaluates this conjecture using three tests: a cross-country test of former British and French colonies, a historical comparison of Syria and Iraq, and a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border within modern-day Cameroon (see Lee and Schultz 2012). Results indicate that, despite our understanding of British colonialism as beneficial for a variety of economic institutions (Acemoglu and Johnson 2004, La Porta et al. 2008, Lipset 1994) French institutions often better promoted gender equality. This paper contributes to the discussion on the relative importance of colonial institutions versus natural resource endowments or religion (Nunn 2013, Sokoloff and Engerman 2000, Ross 2008, Fish 2002, Inglehart and Norris 2003).

Speaker Bio:

Adi Greif is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Yale University and a pre-doc at CDDRL for the academic year 2013-2014. Her dissertation, "The Long-Term Impact of Colonization on Gender", investigates why gender equality varies by former colonizer (French or British) in the Middle East and globally. It uses cross-national statistics, a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border in Cameroon, and interviews from Egypt and Jordan. Her research abroad was supported by a Macmillan Dissertation Fellowship.

Adi's research interests are colonialism, international alliances, state formation and comparative gender policies with focus on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. She has lived in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, and visited Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Adi holds an M.A. in Political Science from (Yale University) and a B.A with honors in Political Science and a minor in Math (Stanford University). Before coming to Yale, she worked at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. through the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy.

Stanford University

Program on Arab Reform and Democracy

Fifth Annual Conference, March 27-28, 2014, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

Political Change in the Arab World:

Internal Dynamics and Regional Actors

In collaboration with:

Koç University

Abstract:

The Tahrir and Gezi Park protests were, amongst many other things, moments of energetic artistic creativity, in the sound world as well as other domains. Though well documented, and clearly a vital component of the political energies and transformations of the moment, they have proved difficult to think about. This talk, a musicologist's perspective, will explore them in the light of some recent thinking about crowds and social movements. 

Bio:

Martin Stokes  is King Edward Professor of Music at King's College, London. He is an ethnomusicologist, working primarily on the questions of ethnicity, identity, emotions, globalization in the context of the Middle East. His most recent book,  The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 2010), has received the Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Among his other publications are Celtic Modern: Music on the Global Fringe (Scarecrow 2004), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place (Berg 1994), and The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford 1992).

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Department of Music, and Department of Anthropology