The November 5, 2025, Israel Insights webinar, hosted by the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program (JKISP) at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), featured a conversation between Amichai Magen, director of JKISP, and Ambassador Vivian Bercovici, former Canadian ambassador to Israel and a leading commentator on Israeli politics and society. Bercovici reflected on her tenure as a political appointee under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, describing tensions between Canada’s elected leadership and its foreign service bureaucracy, particularly on Israel policy. She emphasized that her mandate was to implement government policy rather than shape it, and discussed efforts to strengthen Canada–Israel commercial and technological ties amid institutional resistance and limited subject-matter expertise within the bureaucracy.
The discussion then turned to Israel’s current political and social trajectory following the judicial reform crisis and the October 7 Hamas attack. Bercovici argued that Israel’s next election could be the most consequential in the country’s history, with the future of liberal democracy and civic responsibility at stake. She highlighted a growing societal divide over the state’s founding ethos of shared obligation — particularly debates surrounding the return of hostages, unequal military and national service, and declining commitment among some groups to democratic norms. The webinar concluded with a discussion of how these tensions may reshape Israel’s political culture and determine the character of the state in the years ahead.
A full recording of the webinar can be viewed below:
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In an Israel Insights webinar, Professor Azar Gat examined how unresolved questions of historical legitimacy have shaped decades of failed negotiations.
Dr. Yoav Heller on Rebuilding Centrist Politics and Uniting Israelis
Dr. Heller, founder of the Fourth Quarter, discussed how grassroots centrist movements can overcome identity-driven polarization in Israel by fostering unity, especially in the wake of national tragedy, and emphasized the need for long-term internal peace-building and reimagining Israeli society’s future.
Eugene Kandel on Tackling Israel’s Internal Existential Risks
Kandel's talk with Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies Amichai Magen focused on his work at the Israel Strategic Futures Institute (ISFI) in diagnosing what he and his colleagues identify as internal existential risks for Israel and the policy ideas generated by ISFI in response to those risks.
Virtual participation available via Zoom using the link above. Zoom Meeting ID: 997 4878 4037, Passcode: 998456
We invite our virtual participants to join in celebrating Marcel Fafchamps' distinguished career. Following the keynote address, at 10:00 AM PST, there will be an opportunity for online attendees to offer brief remarks or words of appreciation to honor Professor Fafchamps and his many contributions to scholarship, mentorship, and our academic community. Your reflections are a valued part of this special occasion.
Join us for a full-day academic symposium celebrating the career and contributions of economist Marcel Fafchamps, Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, on the occasion of his retirement. Featuring a keynote by Marcel himself, this tribute brings together colleagues, collaborators, and students to engage with the themes and ideas that have shaped his influential work in development economics, labor markets, and social networks.
The day will feature in-depth paper presentations, rapid-fire research talks, and engaging discussions with scholars, including Stefano Caria (University of Warwick), Pascaline Dupas (Princeton University), and Simon Quinn (Imperial College London), with more speakers to be announced soon. Topics span management practices, persuasion and diffusion, strategic reasoning, and mutual aid—from field experiments to economic theory.
Come celebrate the distinguished research career of Marcel Fafchamps with us.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
The symposium will be held in person, by invitation only. Professor Fafchamps' keynote will be livestreamed via Zoom.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the King Center on Global Development.
8:30 AM — Continental Breakfast available in 2nd Floor Lobby, Encina Hall Central
8:45 AM — General Welcome, Kathryn Stoner
9:00 AM — Keynote Address, Marcel Fafchamps: Behavioral Markets
10:00 AM— Virtual Attendees may join to share brief remarks and words of appreciation
10:15 AM — Morning Break
10:45 AM — Session Speaker: Stefano Caria,Competition and Management
11:45 AM — Rapid Fire Speaker: Tom Schwantje, Management Style Under the Spotlight: Evidence from Studio Recordings
12:15 PM — Lunch Break
1:15 PM — Session Speaker Pascaline Dupas: Keeping Up Appearances: Socioeconomic Status Signaling to Avoid Discrimination
2:15 PM — Rapid Fire Speaker: Deivy Houeix,Eliciting Poverty Rankings from Urban or Rural Neighbors
2:45 PM — Afternoon Break
3:00 PM — Session Speaker: Simon Quinn,Matching, Management and Employment Outcomes: A Field Experiment with Firm Internships
Marcel Fafchamps is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a professor of economics. His research focuses on development economics, particularly how institutions, social networks, and market failures impact economic outcomes in low-income countries. He has published extensively on topics like agriculture, labor markets, and entrepreneurship, and has held academic positions at Oxford and Stanford. Fafchamps is known for combining rigorous empirical analysis with an understanding of real-world development challenges.
Stefano Caria is a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, affiliated with J‑PAL, CEPR, CAGE, and the IGC, serving as lead academic for Ethiopia. He earned his DPhil (and MPhil) in Economics from the University of Oxford and previously held positions at Oxford’s Department of International Development and the University of Bristol. He combines experimental and structural methods to study labor market frictions, refugee employment, childcare support, and firm-worker matching in low-income settings across Africa and the Middle East.
Tom Schwantje is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bocconi University, where he is affiliated with IGIER and FINAFRICA. In his research, he focuses on the organizational economics and management of firms and banks in low-income countries. He is particularly interested in how managers operate in these settings, and how this is shaped by their environment. Most recently, he has started working on an exciting new research agenda on the organizational economics of banking in Ethiopia. Tom received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford University.
Deivy Houeix is a Prize Fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University. His primary field is Development Economics, with secondary interests in Organizational Economics. His research focuses on technology's role in lower-income countries, particularly in West Africa. Houeix explores how digital technologies reshape economic relationships and contract structures within and between firms, uncovering some key drivers and barriers to their adoption. Houeix is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has conducted research projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Togo. In 2027, Houeix will join Columbia Business School as an Assistant Professor of Economics.
Pascaline Dupas is Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She joined the Princeton faculty in July 2023. She was previously the Kleinheinz Family Professor of International Studies at Stanford University, where she spent 12 years on the faculty. She has also held faculty positions at Dartmouth College and UCLA. Dupas is a development economist studying the challenges facing poor households in lower-income countries and their root causes. Her goal is to identify interventions and policies that can help overcome these challenges and reduce global poverty. She conducts extensive fieldwork. Her ongoing research includes studies of education policy in Ghana, family planning policy in Burkina Faso, and government-subsidized health insurance in India, among others.
Simon Quinnis an Associate Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School and Academic Director of its MSc in Economics & Strategy for Business. His research lies at the intersection of development and labor economics, with a focus on firms, markets, and institutions in low-income countries, especially in Africa. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned his MPhil and DPhil in Economics from Oxford, where he was also an Examination Fellow at All Souls College. Simon’s work includes field experiments on credit, management, and labor markets.
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Katherine Casey is a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Faculty Director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in developing countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability and the influence of foreign aid on economic development. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. She teaches a course in the MBA program focused on firm strategy vis a vis government in emerging markets.
Melanie Morton, Faculty Affiliate, King Center on Global Development, is a development economist and associate professor in the department of economics at Stanford University. She is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the National Bureau for Economic Research. Dr. Morten is interested in how households respond to risk in developing countries, including using short term and temporary migration. Her work has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Police Economy and the World Bank Economic Review. She received her PhD from Yale and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
The symposium will be held in the William J. Perry Conference Room, 2nd Floor, Encina Hall.
Event Location:
William J. Perry Conference Room Encina Hall, 2nd Floor, C-231 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Visitor Parking
There is no free parking on campus. Visitor and hourly parking permits are required through the ParkMobile app. Please download the app ahead of your visit and follow directions. Pay-by-space parking is available throughout campus; availability is limited. Please note that parking is monitored Monday - Friday, 8 am - 4 pm.
The parking areas closest to Encina Hall are located on surrounding streets and in the following parking garages:
Knight Management Center Parking Garage
Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Manzanita Field Garage
742 Campus Drive, Stanford, CA 94305
For parking information, contact the Parking and Transportation Department's Visitor Parking page.
Rideshare Drop-off / Pick-up Address
The closest drop-off location is: Gunn Building, 366 Galvez St., Stanford, CA 94305
From Galvez, walk South towards the Hoover Tower, and turn left at the intersection, onto Jane Stanford Way. Encina Hall is the large four-story building on your right. Enter through the main door, at the top of the stairs, and head up to the 2nd floor. An accessible entrance and ramp are located on the right side of Encina Hall, at the West Entrance.
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
fafchamp@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Economics
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Marcel Fafchamps is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Previously, he was the Satre Family Senior Fellow at FSI. Fafchamps is a professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research interests include economic development, market institutions, social networks, and behavioral economics — with a special focus on Africa and South Asia.
Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as professor of development economics in the Department of Economics at Oxford University. He also served as deputy director and then co-director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. From 1989 to 1996, Fafchamps was an assistant professor with the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Following the closure of the Institute, he taught for two years at the Department of Economics. For the 1998-1999 academic year, Fafchamps was on sabbatical leave at the research department of the World Bank. Before pursuing his PhD in 1986, Fafchamps was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for 5 years during his employment with the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees employment, income distribution, and vocational training in Africa.
He has authored two books: Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (MIT Press, 2004) and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development (Elgar Press, 2003), and has published numerous articles in academic journals.
Fafchamps served as the editor-in-chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change until 2020. Previously, he had served as chief editor of the Journal of African Economies from 2000 to 2013, and as associate editor of the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the Revue d'Economie du Développement.
He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliated professor with J-PAL, a senior fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a research fellow with IZA, Germany, and with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, UK, and an affiliate with the University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action.
Fafchamps has degrees in Law and in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, Economics
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Director, Stanford King Center on Global Development
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Ph.D.
Pascaline Dupas is a development economist seeking to better understand challenges facing poor households in lower income countries. Her aim is to identify tools and policies that can help overcome these challenges and reduce global poverty. Her research aims to understand the barriers that households and governments face in accumulating or fostering accumulation of health and education, and how these barriers can be overcome. She conducts extensive fieldwork — field experiments embedded in longitudinal data collection efforts, which are used to perform empirical tests of microeconomic theory and to quantify the effects of potential policies. Health is the primary focus of Dupas’ research to date. Her work covers the role of information and education in health behavior, and the role of subsidies in increasing adoption of health technologies.
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Pascaline Dupas
Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
Princeton University
Deivy Houeix
Prize Fellow, Center for History and Economics
Panelist
Harvard University
Simon Quinn
Associate Professor, Department of Economics & Public Policy
Speaker
Imperial College Business School
Tom Schwantje
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Panelist
Bocconi University
We are living through challenging times — but not for the first time. History reminds us that in our struggle, we are not alone. Across generations, people have risen to meet hardship with courage, community, and conviction — organizing for justice, teaching with purpose, advocating for change, and imagining a better future.
Join us for a powerful, moderated conversation with today’s changemakers — leaders, educators, and activists who are carrying forward this legacy of resilience and hope. Together, we’ll explore how they stay grounded, what inspires their work, and how each of us can play a part in building a more just and compassionate world.
Event organized by Hakeem Jefferson and Gillian Slee.
MODERATORS: Hakeem Jefferson, Karina Kloos
SPEAKERS:
Alison Kamhi
Antonio López
DeCarol Davis
Pam Karlan
About the Speakers
Hakeem Jefferson
Assistant Professor of Political Science & Director, Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice, Stanford University
Hakeem Jefferson is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and faculty director of the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His research centers on questions of race, identity, and political behavior in the United States. He is currently completing a book based on his award-winning dissertation that explores why members of stigmatized groups sometimes engage in policing and punishing their own. His academic work has been published in The American Political Science Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Electoral Studies. In addition to his scholarly work, Jefferson is a frequent contributor to public conversations about race and American politics, with writing appearing in outlets such asThe New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle. He is a proud graduate of the University of Michigan and South Carolina public schools.
Karina Kloos is the Executive Director for the Democracy Hub and the newly launched ePluribus Stanford initiative.
Karina has also co-led the design and implementation of other emergent programs at Stanford, including the signature faculty fellowship, postdoctoral fellowship, PhD fellowship and Scholars in Service programs with Stanford Impact Labs, and the RAISE (Research, Action and Impact through Strategic Engagement) Doctoral Fellowship with the Vice Provost of Graduate Education.
She has professional experience in the domestic nonprofit, international development, and philanthropy sectors, and has published in both academic and media outlets on land rights; women’s rights; indigenous rights; sustainability; nonprofit evaluation; social movements; and democracy, including co-authorship with Doug McAdam of the 2014 book Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America.
Having spent more than a decade at Stanford – the place where she met her husband and has brought two wee ones into the world – Karina is invested in the vibrancy and health of our community, as well as leveraging the immense talent and resources we have to engage and contribute positively beyond the university. She received her PhD in Sociology from Stanford in 2014.
Alison Kamhi
Legal Program Director, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Alison Kamhi is the Legal Program Director based in San Francisco. Alison leads the ILRC's Immigrant Survivors Team and conducts frequent in-person and webinar trainings on naturalization and citizenship, family-based immigration, U visas, and FOIA requests. She also provides technical assistance through the ILRC's Attorney of the Day program on a wide range of immigration issues, including immigration options for youth, consequences of criminal convictions for immigration purposes, removal defense strategy, and eligibility for immigration relief, including family-based immigration, U visas, VAWA, DACA, cancellation of removal, asylum, and naturalization and has co-authored a number of publications on the same topics. Alison facilitates the nine member Collaborative Resources for Immigrant Services on the Peninsula (CRISP) collaborative in San Mateo County to provide immigration services to low-income immigrants in Silicon Valley. Prior to the ILRC, Alison worked as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic. Before Stanford, she represented abandoned and abused immigrant youth as a Skadden Fellow at Bay Area Legal Aid and at Catholic Charities Community Services in New York. She clerked for the Honorable Julia Gibbons in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Alison received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from Stanford University.
Antonio López
Poet Laureate, San Mateo County & Stanford Doctoral Candidate Modern Thought & Literature Program
Antonio López is a poetician working at the intersections of art, politics, and social change. Raised in East Palo Alto by Mexican immigrants from Michoacán, he is a first-generation college graduate with degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford, where he was a 2018 Marshall Scholar. His poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry Foundation, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. His debut poetry collection, Gentefication, won the 2019 Levis Prize from Four Way Books. In 2024, he received a Pushcart Prize. From 2020 to 2024, López served on the East Palo Alto City Council and also as its mayor, grounding his scholarship in community leadership and public service. He is completing his PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. His dissertation, Hood Playin’ Tricks on Me: Gentrification, Grief, and the Ghosts of East Palo Alto, won the Stanford Humanities Center Dissertation Book Prize. Structured as a Netflix-style miniseries, the project blends memoir, theory, oral history, and archival work to explore how gentrification haunts communities of color. López is the 5th Poet Laureate of San Mateo County (2025–2027). In fall 2025, he will be a Residential Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. He also serves as Associate Director of Research and Advocacy at ALAS, a nationally recognized Latinx cultural arts and justice organization working along the coastside of San Mateo County.
DeCarol Davis
Director, Community Legal Services Program, Legal Aid at Work
DeCarol Davis is the Director of the Community Legal Services program, which provides free legal services to low-wage workers at Workers’ Rights Clinics throughout California. Prior to joining Legal Aid at Work in 2020, Davis, in addition to bartending and managing house at Shotgun Players, Ashby Stage, conducted international legal research with the University of Sydney, Australia on the exploitation of migrant workers. Prior to her research, Davis litigated as a plaintiff-side employment attorney at Bryan Schwartz Law.
As a Truman Scholar, Davis received her J.D. from Berkeley Law in 2017, where she served as a student director of the Workers’ Rights Clinic, was a two-time mock trial national champion, including regional and national titles in the ABA Labor and Employment Law Competition, and earned the Francine Marie Diaz Memorial Award for distinguished public service.
Before becoming an attorney, Davis was an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. Davis, who graduated top of her class at the Coast Guard Academy in 2008 with a degree in Electrical Engineering, served as a marine inspector, the author of Coast Guard field regulations, and a law enforcement officer. During her service, she was awarded the Judge Advocate General Field Regulations Award, Meritorious Team Commendation, and the Department of Defense STEM Role Model Award. In 2022, she received the Berkeley Law Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship.
Pamela Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School
Pamela Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. She has argued ten cases before the Court and worked on over one hundred.
Pam’s primary scholarship involves constitutional litigation. She has published dozens of articles and is the co-author of three leading casebooks as well as a monograph on constitutional interpretation—Keeping Faith with the Constitution. She has received numerous teaching awards.
Pam’s public service including clerking for Justice Harry Blackmun, a term on California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, and two appointments as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. She was also an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Pam is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, where she serves on the ALI Council. In 2016, she was named one of the Politico 50 — a group of “thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics”; earlier in her career, the American Lawyer named her to its Public Sector 45 — a group of lawyers “actively using their law degrees to change lives.”
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
mbennon@stanford.edu
Research Scholar
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Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at CDDRL for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan and Thailand.
Program Manager, Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative
The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set to continue this fall with a remarkable set of speakers. The series debuts on Thursday, September 26, 2013 and will continue until December 5, 2013. The last season focused on domestic issues given the debates around SOPA and the use of technology in the U.S. Presidential elections. This emphasis this fall will be tilted towards international initiatives.
The series will begin with Canada’s effort at direct diplomacy with people abroad using technology and move on to crowd-souring of a law by the Parliament of Finland. Talks will also cover the political impact of the internet in Malaysia, a review of the world’s most ambitious open government project by a state government in India, and an ambitious Stanford project to bring design thinking to accountability projects internationally. On the domestic front, we have timely presentation on mass surveillance in the United States and a discussion on Code for America’s initiatives to build civic engagement by coders. Finally, we are set to have a look at the history of information technology in social initiatives by our own Terry Winograd who retired from the Department of Computer Science last year.
Students can take this as a one credit course by attending at least seven out of the ten seminars. The course is listed as CS 546 / POLISCI 337S.
John Sloan was appointed Canada’s ambassador to the Russian Federation, Armenia and Uzbekistan in August 2010.
From September 2006 until August 2010 he was Director General for Economic Policy in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In this capacity he was responsible for the coordination and delivery of Canadian objectives in the G8, G20 and APEC Summits, the OECD, for development policy and institutions and for the Department’s economic capacity building. He was Canada’s Senior Official (SOM) to the APEC process and Canada’s representative to the OECD Executive Committee in Special Session (ECSS). He was also Chair of the G8 Accountability Working Group which produced the G8 Accountability Report for the 2010 Muskoka Summit.
From July 2000 until September 2006 John Sloan worked at the Financial Services Authority in London, UK, the UK financial services regulator, where he was Special Advisor/Manager, Global Team. He was particularly involved in the work of the Financial Stability Forum and the Joint Forum and chaired the Joint Forum working group which produced the High-level Principles for Business Continuity for regulators and market participants, which were formally published in September 2006.
He has served as Canada’s Finance Counsellor in Tokyo and London. Other foreign postings include Geneva, Beijing and a first assignment in Tokyo, including two years at the FSI Japanese language school. Ottawa assignments include Senior Departmental Assistant to the Minister of International Trade and a secondment to the Department of Finance where he coordinated Canada’s Paris Club strategy.
John Sloan has a BA from Stanford University in Chinese Studies, and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in International Relations and an MBA from Business School Lausanne. In 2000 he taught a course on contemporary Canada at Keio University, Tokyo.
John Sloan is the author of The Surprising Wines of Switzerland, published by Bergli Books, Basel. He also co-editedLa nouvelle Europe de l'Est, du plan au marché, published by Editions Bruylant, Brussels. An article he co-authored, The Structure of International Market Regulation, appeared in Financial Markets and Exchanges Law, published by Oxford University Press in March 2007.
CISAC Conference Room
His Excellency Mr. John Sloan
Canadian Ambassador to the Russian Federation
Speaker
Digital technologies have brought disruption to political systems throughout the world, it is disrupting the practice of diplomacy. State-to-state communication continues, but foreign ministries struggle to understand and engage with the new actors that self-organized citizen movements represent. Since Canada closed its embassy in Tehran in 2012, its foreign ministry has explored ways to use the internet to engage the people of Iran directly. Its "Direct Diplomacy" campaign has engaged half a million Iranians in a two-way dialogue, offering Canada the opportunity to better understand dynamics in this crucial country, and giving Iranians another opportunity to bypass their government and share their views with the international community. This presentation will outline the objectives, tools and lessons learned from this innovation in diplomacy and offer perspectives on the conduct of international relations in a digital age.
Ben Rowswell is Director for Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula at Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. From 2010 to 2011 he was Visiting Scholar in the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford, conducting research on the use of technology by democracy activists in the Egyptian revolution. His diplomatic career includes stints as the Representative of Canada in Kandahar, Afghanistan; as Deputy Head of Mission in Kabul; as Chargé d'Affaires in Baghdad, Iraq; and in the political section of Canada's embassy to Egypt. He is the founder of the Democracy Unit at DFATD, an alumnus of the National Democratic Institute and a former Visiting Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. In 2007 he edited the volume "Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict."
Wallenberg Theater
Ben Rowswell
Director for Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula
Speaker
Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development in Canada
Future Directions for Canadian Democracy Promotion
Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Stanford University
16 April 2013
Agenda
9:00-9:45 Introductions
Purpose of roundtable and introduction of participants: Larry Diamond and Chris MacLennanOverview presentation on Canada’s experience with democracy promotion since the 1990s: Chris MacLennan
9:45-11:00 Democratization – Latest thinking on democracy, democratization and governance
Key Questions: What is the most recent thinking on democratization – how and why do democratic transitions happen; why do democracies fail; and, why do authoritarian regimes survive and thrive? What is the relationship between good governance and democracy?Lead Discussant: (TBC) to introduce session and offer initial thoughts on current state of democratization scholarship (5-10 minutes).
11:00:11:15 Break
11:15-12:30 Democracy Assistance – What donors can and should be doing to aid democratic transitions
Key Questions: What are the most effective ways to advance democracy through the use of international development assistance (types of programs / instruments, choice of countries, etc.)? Is a focus on governance capacity building enough or are the more political aspects of democracy building necessary?Lead Discussants: Richard Youngs (TBC) (European approaches) and David Yang (TBC) (US approaches) to introduce session and offer initial thoughts from their respective viewpoints (5-10 minutes each).
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:30 Canada – Future Directions for Canadian Democracy Promotion
Potential Roles (1:30-2:30)
Key Questions: Is there a particular approach that Canada should take to support democratic development internationally? Should Canada pursue a broad-based approach to democracy promotion (like the US and EU) as it has in the past or should it focus on a specific role or niche internationally? Should Canada adopt a geographic focus (Americas, commonwealth countries, Francophonie) or something targeted to specific democratic challenges (fragile democracies, fragile states, transitioning states)? Is a more political approach required or can Canada maintain a more developmental approach to advancing democracy?Lead Discussant: Robert Miller (TBC) to introduce question and offer initial thoughts (5-10 minutes).
Institutions (2:30-3:30)
Key Questions: What type of institutional arrangements should Canada adopt to undertake democracy promotion? Does Canada need an independent body to advance the more “political” aspects of democracy assistance (e.g., political parties, elections, support to NGOs)? Is a special program needed either focused on democracy assistance or tying development to democracy performance (MCC)?Lead Discussant: Les Campbell (TBC) to introduce question and offer initial thoughts (5-10 minutes).
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-6448
(650) 723-1928
0
ldiamond@stanford.edu
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
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MA, PhD
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests(2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy(2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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kstoner@stanford.edu
Satre Family Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
kathryn_stoner_1_2022_v2.jpg
MA, PhD
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013); "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010); "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).
She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
It has been said that constitutional court judges around the world increasingly participate in a "global judicial dialogue" that causes judges to make increased use of foreign law. This is a dialogue, however, from which the members of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court are largely excluded. Taiwan’s precarious diplomatic situation and intense lobbying by China have effectively prevented the members of Taiwan's Constitutional Court from participating in international judicial gatherings and official visits to foreign courts. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese Constitutional Court routinely engages in extensive consideration of foreign law, either expressly or implicitly, when deciding cases. This fact casts doubt on the notion that "global judicial dialogue" explains judicial use of foreign law. Comparison of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court and U.S. Supreme Court demonstrates that “global judicial dialogue” plays a much smaller role in shaping a court’s utilization of foreign law than institutional factors such as (a) the rules and practices governing the composition and staffing of the court and (b) the extent to which the structure of legal education and the legal profession incentivizes judges and academics to possess expertise in foreign law.
Speaker Bio:
David Law is Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He works in the areas of law and political science, public law, judicial behavior, comparative constitutional law, and comparative judicial politics. Born and raised in Canada, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford, a B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has previously taught at the University of San Diego School of Law and the University of California, San Diego political science department and has been a visiting professor at the National Taiwan University College of Law, Seoul National University School of Law, and Keio University Faculty of Law in Tokyo, and a visiting scholar at the NYU School of Law. His current research focuses on the identification, explanation, and prediction of global patterns in constitutional law, and his recent scholarship on constitutional globalization and the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution has been featured in a variety of domestic and international media.
CISAC Conference Room
David Law
Professor of Law and Political Science
Speaker
Washington University in St. Louis
By drawing on several cases around the world, this book illuminates the role of crowdsourcing in policy-making. From crowdsourced constitution reform in Iceland and participatory budgeting in Canada, to open innovation for services and crowdsourced federal strategy process in the United States, the book analyzes the impact of crowdsourcing on citizen agency in the public sphere. It also serves as a handbook with practical advice for successful crowdsourcing in a variety of public domains.
The book describes the evolution of crowdsourcing in its multitude of forms from innovation challenges to crowd funding. Crowdsourcing is situated in the toolkit to deploy Open Government practices. The book summarizes the best practices for crowdsourcing and outlines the benefits and challenges of open policy-making processes.