The Impact of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Americas
Diego García-Sayán was elected President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the 2010-11 and reelected for the term 2012-2013. He was the first Peruvian to be elected President of the Court. He has served as a judge on the court since 2004. During his distinguished career, Judge García-Sayán has served as Minister of Justice of Perú, and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Perú and as a member of the Peruvian Congress. He founded the Andean Commission of Jurists and was the Chairperson of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Judge García-Sayán is a university professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and author of many publications on international law and human rights.
CISAC Conference Room
Public Goods Provision and the Efficacy of Governance
On May 18-19, the Program on Poverty and Governance will host a two-day conference on the provision of public goods and good governance throughout the world. This conference, co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, will bring together an interdisciplinary group of economists, political scientists, policymakers, and public health researchers examining these questions. Public goods—goods and services such as education, healthcare, sanitation, potable water, and other benefits provided by the government—are intrinsically tied to issues of governance, which we broadly define as the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs. More specifically, factors such how political leaders get elected, the way in which government projects get funded, whether the community participates in decision-making, and the extent to which the distribution of government benefits is done through clientelistic networks, among others, play an important role in the quality and coverage of public goods that governments provide. Additionally, a critical question in large parts of the developing world relates to the role of international players and foreign aid in the provision of public goods –does external provision of public goods enable or hinder governmental capacity to deliver public services in poor communities? Through two days of presentations and panel discussions, the conference will explore how various facets of governance affect the provision of public goods and services throughout the world.
The conference will be held in Encina Hall at Stanford University May 18th and 19th, 2012. Guests are encouraged to RSVP by May 16th. Any questions may be addressed to the Program on Poverty and Governance program associate Elena Cryst.
CISAC Conference Room
Beatriz Magaloni
Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA
Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.
She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.
Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.
Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.
Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.
She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
Conceptualizing and Measuring the Rule of Law
Abstract:
We present a new framework for conceptualizing and assessing the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law in practice. This framework constitutes the backbone of the WJP Rule of Law Index® and is organized around nine basic concepts or factors: limited government powers; absence of corruption; order and security; fundamental rights; open government; effective regulatory enforcement; access to civil justice; effective criminal justice; and informal justice. These factors are further disaggregated into 52 sub-factors. We estimate numerical scores of these factors and sub-factors for a group of 66 countries and jurisdictions. These estimates are built from two novel data sources in each country: (1) a general population poll; and (2) qualified respondents’ questionnaires. All in all, the data contain more than 400 variables drawn from the assessments of over 66,000 people and 2,000 local experts. Our presentation will conclude with an overview of some highlights from Index data findings, as well as examples of ways in which the data have been applied in different contexts.
The World Justice Project (WJP) is an independent, non-profit organization that works to advance the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity worldwide. The WJP’s multinational and multidisciplinary efforts are aimed at: government reforms; development of practical programs on the ground in support of the rule of law; and increased awareness about the concept and impact of the rule of law. The Project has three complementary programs: Research and Scholarship, the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, and mainstreaming practical on-the-ground programs to strengthen the rule of law.
Speaker Bio:
Speaker Bio:
CISAC Conference Room
Institution-building in Hard Places: Challenges, Contexts, Pathways
Abstract:
This talk draws on case study evidence from Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies to reflect on some current theories about building accountable government. The focus is on settings where geography, insecurity, and limited resources render conventional management strategies unworkable.
Speaker Bio:
Jennifer Widner is professor of politics and international affairs and director of the Mamdouha S.Bobst Center for Peace & Justice at Princeton University. She runs a research program on institution building and institutional reform called Innovations for Successful Societies, a joint initiative of the Bobst Center and the Woodrow Wilson School. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2004-5, she taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan. Her current research focuses on the political economy of institutional reform, government accountability, and service delivery. She also remains interested in constitution writing, constitutional design, and fair dealing—topics of earlier research. She is author of Building the Rule of Law (W. W. Norton), a study of courts and law in Africa, and she has published articles on a variety of topics in Democratization, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Development Studies, The William & Mary Law Review, Daedalus, the American Journal of International Law, and other publications. She is completing work on a book about making government work in challenging settings, drawing on experiences in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Combating Cyber Insecurity Around the Globe
Christopher Painter has been on the vanguard of cyber issues for twenty years. Most recently, Mr. Painter served in the White House as Senior Director for Cybersecurity Policy in the National Security Staff. During his two years at the White House, Mr. Painter was a senior member of the team that conducted the President's Cyberspace Policy Review and subsequently served as Acting Cybersecurity Coordinator. He coordinated the development of a forthcoming international strategy for cyberspace and chaired high-level interagency groups devoted to international and other cyber issues.
Mr. Painter began his federal career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles where he led some of the most high profile and significant cybercrime prosecutions in the country, including the prosecution of notorious computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. He subsequently helped lead the case and policy efforts of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the U.S. Department of Justice and served, for a short time, as Deputy Assistant Director of the F.B.I.'s Cyber Division. For over ten years, Mr. Painter has been a leader in international cyber issues. He has represented the United States in numerous international fora, including Chairing the cutting edge G8 High Tech Crime Subgroup since 2002. He has worked with dozens of foreign governments in bi-lateral meetings and has been a frequent spokesperson and presenter on cyber issues around the globe. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Cornell University.
Sloan Mathematics Center
Corruption in Food Delivery: When are Vulnerable Populations Most Affected?
Abstract:
In developing countries, the efficacy of subsidized food delivery systems is particularly challenged by corruption that can disproportionately affect less powerful areas or less powerful households, thereby steering aid away from the most vulnerable beneficiaries. In this paper, Sriniketh Nagavarapu and others examine how the identity of food delivery agents affects the take-up of vulnerable populations. Specifically, they investigate the take-up of subsidized goods in Uttar Pradesh, India, under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), a system undermined by widespread corruption. Using rich household survey data from the first year of the TPDS, they establish that households from the historically disadvantaged Scheduled Castes exhibit lower take-up when facing non-Scheduled Caste delivery agents. After showing that several potentially reasonable explanations (e.g. discrimination or elite capture) are not consistent with the data, they assess the quantitative impact of the most plausible remaining explanation, which involves monitoring and enforcement.
Speaker Bio:
Sriniketh Nagavarapu is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies at Brown University. His research is focused on environmental and labor economics in developing countries. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how local institutions manage natural resources and service delivery, and how management effectiveness is shaped by market incentives and the nature of the institutions. His recent work in this area examines the management of fisheries by cooperatives in Mexico and the delivery of food assistance by government-appointed authorities in India. In other work, he has examined how the labor market mediates the link between ethanol production expansion and deforestation in Brazil. Nagavarapu received his Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. from Stanford University. At Brown, he is a faculty associate of the Population Studies and Training Center, Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences, and the Environmental Change Initiative.
CISAC Conference Room
The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law
From Oxford University Press:
There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.
Features
- Forces us to fundamentally rethink the origins of human rights activism
- Filled with fascinating stories of captured slave ship crews brought to trial across the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century
- Shows how the prosecution of the international slave trade was crucial to the development of modern international law
Mexico’s Fight for Security
Since 2006, more than 40,000 people in Mexico have died in drug-related homicides, and recent figures indicate that the pace and severity of drug-related violence is increasing. Experiencing a significant breakdown of its rule of law, the population of Ciudad Juárez alone suffered more than 3,000 homicides in 2010, making it the most dangerous city anywhere in the world. Dr. Poiré Romero will address the characteristics of the security situation in Mexico, the historical events and situations that made it what it is now, and the current strategy that the Federal Government is implementing to achieve security. Dr. Poiré’s talk will be completely off-the-record, and is by invitation only.
Speaker biography:
On September 9, 2011, Dr. Alejandro Poiré Romero was appointed as Director of Mexico´s National Security Agency by President Felipe Calderón. Prior to that, Dr. Poiré served as Secretary of the National Security Council and Cabinet, and has held a variety of cabinet-level positions since 2007. He also worked as an adviser to the National Institute of Statistics on the creation of the first National Survey on Political Culture and Citizenship Practices. He has published several academic pieces analyzing public opinion, campaign dynamics and voting behavior in Mexico, in addition to two books on Mexico’s democratic process, Towards Mexico’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections, and Public Opinion and Mexico's Pivotal Democratic Election.
Dr. Poiré holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, and a Bachelor’s degree in the same field from Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), where he has been a professor and the Political Science Department Chair. He has also been a visiting researcher and lecturer at several institutions in the USA, including MIT, and Latin America.
CISAC Conference Room