Though Chile is one of Latin America’s poster children — lauded for its economic success and the strength of its democratic institutions — in 2019, the world watched with bated breath as protests erupted nationwide. Over a million people took to the streets in the capital alone, fueled by a broad range of demands from improved healthcare and pension systems to greater recognition of Indigenous peoples and women’s rights. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I sought to understand how low-income citizens — a group standing to gain significantly from the protestors’ demands — saw the state and understood their role as citizens of a democratic polity. Because democracy derives its legitimacy from the participation of its members,¹ how people self-conceptualize their citizenship and choose to exercise their rights and responsibilities matters greatly in determining the vitality and longevity of this political system.

I was born and raised in Costa Rica, one of three liberal democracies in Latin America, and consistently ranked among the best democracies in the Western Hemisphere — even above the United States according to V-Dem’s liberal democracy index and Freedom House’s freedom score. Growing up, however, I was perplexed and disillusioned by the reality I witnessed at home.

In 2018, my country confronted one of the most contentious presidential elections in its recent history: the candidates that faced off in the runoff were both from nascent parties promising to diverge from the status quo, bogged down by corruption scandals and legitimacy crises.² Across Costa Rica, young people worried about our democracy formed Coalición Costa Rica, a nonpartisan national civil society coalition dedicated to safeguarding our democratic system by working towards a more informed and participatory country. As a founding member of this organization’s local branch in my hometown, Monteverde, I went door-to-door informing voters on the critical issues at stake that election cycle, organized transportation systems to bring citizens to the polls, and spearheaded events to increase my community’s engagement with these elections.

That April, as I worked the polls at the Escuela de Santa Elena — a local school serving as a polling station—I found I, too, was losing faith in democracy. Our efforts felt insufficient. I was disheartened by the rationale folks gave for selecting their chosen candidate; I was frustrated by the imperfect nature of our system. How many people had not voted that day? How many had not voted simply because they could not get to the polls? How many did not know who to vote for or how to choose, and how many more thought that regardless of who won, their government would continue to fail them? If I saw so many shortcomings in my home country — allegedly one of the best democracies — what was it like elsewhere?

Community and collaboration are vital ingredients to solving the pressing issues facing our societies.

This was one experience among many that motivated me to come to Stanford, determined to learn how democracies across Latin America could be strengthened from the ground up, creating systems of governance that fulfill their promise of working in service of all their members.

Through my honors thesis, I sought to explore this question using rigorous empirical research. I saw the case of Chile as one that could shed light on the challenges democracies in my region face. In particular, I observed striking parallels between the growing discontent with and diminishing trust in democracy in Chile and Costa Rica. From developing a research design, writing the interview protocol, and securing IRB approval, to conducting fieldwork in Santiago, creating local partnerships, recruiting participants, and conducting interviews, writing my honors thesis pushed me to use the tools I had acquired throughout my undergraduate career in service of contributing to our understanding of the state of our democracies.

The concluding chapter of my thesis features an epigraph with a statement from former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica, cautioning that “if we renounce politics and each one takes refuge in the individual,” our civilization will break down.³ These words speak to how democracies suffer when people withdraw from the political community — from decision-making processes, public spaces, and their democratic citizenship. Citizen participation is democracy’s oxygen; this form of government hinges on our ability to act collectively and integrate members’ voices into its functioning. The Chilean experience illustrates the perils of a disjointed society divided into isolated units.

A similar sentiment holds for addressing the challenges of our time. Ideas require feedback and discussion to flourish, for it is only once they are subjected to scrutiny through a variety of paradigms that they are able to withstand the chaotic pressures of real-world implementation. This process is not about relentless criticism or antagonism: it is about cooperation and collaboration, operating under the premise that those around you care as deeply as you do about solving the pressing issues facing our societies.
 

My time at CDDRL was transformative, not only in my growth as a young scholar but also in my development as a citizen of the world.

My time at CDDRL was transformative, not only in my growth as a young scholar but also in my development as a citizen of the world. This is precisely because, beyond an intellectual home, I found community here. From daily greetings, smiles, exchanges of heartfelt conversation, and comradery — within the honors cohort, between students, staff, and faculty—emerges a culture of care that nurtures the whole person. Such quotidian interactions brim with positivity, converting weekly research seminars, workshops, or even casual encounters in Encina Hall into powerful energy sources. It is this spirit that informs the relationships that are born here, turning a group of remarkable individual scholars into a community.

On days when it seemed my thesis did not want to get written — when the headlines on the constitutional process in Chile, presidential elections in Brazil, or violence in El Salvador flooded my inbox, dampening my ability to continue reading journal articles and coding interviews — coming to CDDRL became an antidote. I could find solace in conversations with advisors and mentors, work sessions with other students, or moments of shared humanity with the wonderful staff and faculty at the Center.

Confronting the troubles of our time with the intention of finding solutions — facing a myriad of setbacks along the way — requires a kind of dynamic resilience that takes a great deal of courage and resolve. Yet engaging in this endeavor embedded in a collaborative, vibrant, and compassionate community, like the one found at CDDRL, makes even the hardest days a little bit easier. Such communities are the key to having the stamina and faith to continue developing new, innovative, and daring solutions in an environment where they will be pushed to become their best versions.

Becoming intimately familiar with the case of Chile has proven a sobering endeavor on the practicalities of democratic reform. As I finalized my thesis, Chile was embarking on its second attempt at re-writing its constitution after the draft resulting from the first was vehemently rejected by a majority of the population.

Perhaps above all, both my research itself and my time at CDDRL more broadly have impressed upon me the need to care for our political communities as one would a delicate flower in a tropical garden.

<sub>1. O’Donnell, Guillermo. “The Quality of Democracy: Why the Rule of Law Matters.” Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (2004): 32-46.
2. Colburn, Forrest D., and Arturo Cruz S. “Latin America’s Shifting Politics: The Fading of Costa Rica’s Old Parties.” Journal of Democracy 29, no. 4 (2018): 43-53.
3. Klein, Darío. Vota y Verás: Reflexiones de Pepe Mujica. Syncretic Press, 2018.</sub>

Fourteen Stanford researchers addressing global poverty through a range of academic disciplines are receiving a total of $4.6 million in awards from the university-wide Global Development and Poverty (GDP) initiative.

Their projects, which are the first to be funded by the GDP, deal with challenges of health, violence, economics, governance and education in the developing world.

“GDP seeks to transform scholarly activity and dialogue at Stanford around the topic of global poverty, so that the university may have a greater impact on poverty alleviation in developing economies,” said GDP faculty co-chair Jesper B. Sørensen. “By focusing on placing a small number of big bets, GDP encourages researchers to think big, and to move beyond the conventional way of doing things. We are thrilled by the inaugural set of awardees, as they demonstrate the creative, inter-disciplinary approaches that will make Stanford a leader in this area.”

The GDP initiative is part of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and is administered in partnership with Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). The GDP is co-chaired by Sørensen, the faculty director for SEED and the Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business; and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, senior fellow and director of FSI and the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford Law School.

SEED, which seeks to alleviate poverty by stimulating the creation of economic opportunities through innovation, entrepreneurship and the growth of businesses, was established in 2011 through a generous gift from Robert King, MBA '60, and his wife, Dorothy.

Through complementary areas of focus, GDP funding and other SEED research initiatives will stimulate research, novel interdisciplinary collaborations and solutions to problems of global poverty and development. GDP research aims to pursue answers to crucial questions that are essential to an understanding of how to reduce global poverty and promote economic development. That includes governance and the rule of law, education, health, and food security – all of which are essential for entrepreneurship to thrive. By contrast, other SEED research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the growth of businesses in developing economies.

Since 2012, SEED’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Developing Economies Award program also has doled out 22 awards and seven PhD fellowships to help support and scale businesses in developing economies. Among the $1 million in funded projects were studies of how to improve the livelihoods of small-holder cacao farmers throughout the tropics; how to identify startups with high job- and wealth-creating potential in Chile; how political accountability affects the ability to attract investment in Sierra Leone; and how managerial practices affect trade entrepreneurship in China.

First GDP Awards

The first 14 GDP award recipients are professors of economics, political science, law, medicine, pediatrics, education and biology, and senior fellows from FSI, the Woods Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

“Each of these projects cuts across disciplines, reflects innovative thinking, and has the potential to generate crucial knowledge about how to improve the lives of the poor around the world,” Cuéllar said. “These projects, along with a variety of workshops engaging the university and external stakeholders, will help us strengthen Stanford’s long-term capacity to address issues of global poverty through research, education and outreach.”

Among the award recipients is Pascaline Dupas, an associate professor of economics and senior fellow at SIEPR. Dupas, along with faculty from the Center for Health Policy and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, will launch the Stanford Economic Development Research Initiative using GDP funds.  This initiative will focus on collecting high-quality institutional and individual-level data on economic activity in a number of developing countries over the long term, and making these data available to scholars around the world.

Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at FSI, is receiving an award to lead a team focused on criminal violence and its effects on the poor in developing economies, and the practical solutions for increasing security in those regions.

Douglas K. Owens, a professor of medicine and FSI senior fellow, was awarded an award to help him lead a team that will develop models to estimate how alternative resource allocations for health interventions among the poor will influence health and economic outcomes.

Stephen Haber, a professor of political science and history and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, received an award to bring together Stanford researchers interested in examining the long-term institutional constraints on economic development. Their goal will be to provide policymakers with a framework for determining the conditions under which particular innovations are likely to have positive payoffs, and the conditions under which resources will likely be wasted.

Other projects will address the educational impacts of solar lighting systems in poor communities; identifying interventions to improve the profits and safety among poor, smallholder pig farmers in Bangladesh and China; the role of law and institutions in economic development and poverty reduction; and how to rethink worldwide refugee problems. Awards are also being provided to researchers focused on microfinance, online education and teacher training.

The project proposals were reviewed by an interdisciplinary faculty advisory council chaired by Cuéllar and Sørensen. 

“We were very encouraged by the impressive number of project proposals from a wide range of areas and are looking forward to introducing several new capacity and community-building activities in the fall,” Sørensen said.. “This wide range of research initiatives will form a vibrant nucleus for Stanford’s growing community of scholars of global development and poverty.”

Stanford's Program on Social Entrepreneurship is proud to introduce its fourth class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford (SEERS Fellows) who will be joining the academic community in January. Tackling complex social justice issues in the Bay Area and globally, this group is working to raise literacy rates in public schools, hold international institutions accountable for their abuses, and defend the rights of women and girls across the state of California.

The three SEERS fellows will co-teach a course (IR/CAS 142) that explores the role of social entrepreneurship in advancing democratic change. This service-learning course allows students to work first-hand with the SEERS fellows on projects to scale-up their work as social change leaders.

The 10-week residency program brings social entrepreneurs inside academia to document the impact of their work and build their institutional capacities. It also provides students the opportunity to learn about the emerging field of social entrepreneurship by working with practitioners inside the classroom.

The incoming group of SEERS fellows have been widely recognized for their innovative work pioneering new approaches to address outstanding social problems, receiving prestigious awards including; the MacArthur Genius Fellowship; the Echoing Green Fellowship; and the Social Innovation Fund award from the U.S. federal government, among others.

Leading innovative organizations, these SEERS fellows have been successful in introducing new programs but also influencing policy changes to transform educational and social outcomes for communities in the developed and developing world.

While studying abroad in Chile, Natalie Bridgeman Fields witnessed indigenous women being tear-gassed as their land was being forcibly seized for a World Bank-financed project. At that moment, Fields was inspired on her journey as a social entrepreneur, working to launch the Accountability Counsel in 2009 to defend the environmental and human rights of communities across the developing world. The Accountability Counsel has been successful in winning victories for marginalized communities and influencing international institutions to change their policy and practices.

Michael Lombardo is a successful product of the public education system in the U.S. When as an adult he saw that only 35 percent of fourth graders read at a proficient level he decided to commit himself to closing the early reading achievement gap. Reading Partners employs an innovative model of matching mentors with children in public schools to tutor them and improve reading outcomes. The model has worked and Lombardo has been successful in growing Reading Partners to serve over 40 school districts across eight states nationwide.

At the age of 19, Lateefah Simon was appointed the executive director of the Center for Young Women's Development, an organization working to support the needs of low-income young women in San Francisco. Since then, Simon has committed herself to a life of service to support juvenile and criminal justice reform and gender rights in the state of California through positions at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, and most recently at the Rosenberg Foundation.

The SEERS fellows will be on campus through March in residency with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. For more information on the program, please visit pse.stanford.edu.

The demise of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime gave Abdulhafid Sidoun a second chance at life.

Six days before Sidoun was to be executed for promoting democracy in Libya, rebels toppled the government and emptied the country’s jails of its political prisoners. After more than five months of beatings and abuse on death row, Sidoun was free. Weeks later, Gadhafi was dead, gunned down by the rebels.

Sidoun’s fight to bring democracy and accountability to Libya is far from over. Qadaffi’s 40-year stranglehold starved Libya of political debate and evolution, and Sidoun knew he needed a crash-course in building an open, stable society. He received one this summer at Stanford, joining 23 other pro-democracy advocates from 22 countries in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development.

“Gadhafi is gone, but we still have a corrupt system we need to clean up,” says Sidoun, a Tripoli-based lawyer who waged a social media campaign to unite Gadhafi opponents. “My country needs me now. I have to work with my friends and colleagues and other lawyers and tell them what I’ve learned.”

Abdulhafid Sidoun was sentenced to death for trying to topple Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. Photo credit: Rod Searcey

He has chronic back pain from the blows dealt by prison guards. And he winces when he talks about being torn from his family and isolated in a dark cell where he had no idea how – or even whether – the revolt against Gadhafi was unfolding until rebels broke him free.

For three weeks in late July and early August, Sidoun and the other fellows participated in faculty-led sessions on democracy, economic development, global health and hunger, human rights and the new technologies making it easier to organize and inspire reform. They took field trips to San Francisco and Monterey and met with officials at Google, Facebook and the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm that is contributing to the fellowship program.

And they spent time getting to know each other. Entrepreneurs, lawyers, journalists, politicians and civil society leaders sharing stories of overwhelming repression and the small successes they’ve had in trying to reform governments in places like Chile, China, Serbia and Zimbabwe.

“Everyone here has different stories and cultures, but we all talk about the same corruption,” Sidoun says. “We are learning that our problems are not very different.”

Fighting ignorance, encouraging debate

Now in its eighth year, the Draper Hills program – run by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies – has created and grown a worldwide network of up-and-coming leaders.

About 200 fellows from more than 60 countries have passed through the program and are now trying to craft policy and bring about political and economic reform.

“Many governments in Latin America are suffering from very strong political leaders who were elected presidents but think they are little kings or queens who own the country,” says Laura Alonso, a national representative in the Argentine Congress selected as one of this year’s fellows.

“The main problem is that the people who become so powerful distort the rule of law,” she says. “There is a rule of law for their friends and a different rule of law for their enemies. So this is what I want to go home and address – how can we have a rule of law that applies to everyone? My time at Stanford is giving me the perspective I need to go back to the basics of democracy.”

The fellowship program also addresses the overlap of business and government, and has increased its emphasis on the role entrepreneurs play in building democracy.

"We have brought a few entrepreneurs into the group of fellows," says Kathryn Stoner, an expert on Russia who lectured to the fellows about democratic transitions. "It is good for them to know how to get around corrupt practices in government. We also know that a strong middle class is the backbone of democracy. Once people have property, they tend to want to protect it as well as to demand representation for any taxes they pay. Encouraging entrepreneurship then is a good way to pursue both economic and political development worldwide."

While they’re all at Stanford to learn, the fellows are eager to share their newfound knowledge.

Kamal Siddiqi uses his position as a newspaper editor to strengthen democracy in Pakistan. Photo credit: Rod Searcey

Bassim Assuqair was raised in Yemen by parents who forbade him from working as a teenager so he could devote all his energy to his studies. After earning a degree in English education from Sana’a University, he has worked for various development organizations. But he’s most interested in organizing Yemen’s youth and teaching them about the benefits of living in a country with free elections and the rule of law.

“There is so much ignorance, so much illiteracy in my country,” he says. “The people aren’t bad. They’re simple. They need awareness. I want them to know peace. It’s my task – I am ordering myself – to explain to others what I’m learning here.”

Kamal Siddiqi is another self-styled evangelist of democracy. As editor of The Express Tribune, an English-language daily in Pakistan, Siddiqi uses the newspaper as a check on government power while making the case that “a very bad elected prime minister is still better than a very good dictator.”

As a Draper Hills fellow, Siddiqi picked up technological tips and made connections with Stanford faculty that will help him better monitor crime, corruption and his country’s upcoming elections.

“I want to draw on the strength of the faculty and fellows of CDDRL to write for my newspaper,” he says. “They will play a part in my attempt to introduce some more ideas and issues in the general debate on elections and democracy.”

A chance to reflect

When FSI Director Coit D. Blacker and a core group of FSI’s senior fellows – including CDDRL Director Larry Diamond, Stoner-Weiss, former Stanford President Gerhard Casper and Michael A. McFaul, now Washington’s ambassador to Moscow – created the fellowship program, they wanted to give practitioners a chance to reflect and learn about democratic theory.

"We felt that practitioners from developing countries or countries in political and economic transition often feel isolated in the work that they do and they burn out," says Stoner-Weiss. "There were no such programs for international practitioners when we began eight years ago. We wanted to provide them with a sense of international community and the knowledge that they are not toiling away on their own." 

And the lessons the fellows learn from Stanford faculty can be invaluable. When it comes to building a constitution – something several of the fellows grapple with – Francis Fukuyama says there’s only a certain amount of time for a newly formed government to “get it right.”

FSI's Gerhard Casper waves a copy of the Magna Carta while speaking to the fellows about the rule of law. Photo credit: Rod Searcey

“If you don’t, your window of opportunity slams shut,” says Fukuyama, a FSI senior fellow who lectured to the group about economic development and governance.

“But you don’t want to invite more problems by not thinking through exactly what kind of government you want," he says. "You need to have a theoretical and academic perspective.”

And the learning goes both ways.

“I’m getting the problems and issues of 22 countries downloaded onto me in a very short period of time,” says Erik Jensen, a law professor and CDDRL faculty member who also helped start the fellowship program.

“The fellows bring important insights and opinions that don’t land on the front page of The New York Times, but are integral to understanding what’s going on in the developing world,” he says. “That’s pretty great to have in one room.”

Courage, risk and magic

After building momentum and attracting a growing number of faculty who wanted to work with the fellows, the program that began in 2005 quickly caught the interest of venture capitalist Bill Draper and philanthropist Ingrid Hills. Their $1.5 million gift gave the program its name in 2007.

Draper’s interest in the program is deeply tied to his background running the United Nations Development Programme between 1986 and 1994.

“There are wonderfully courageous leaders in this world who are willing to take risks,” Draper says. “It’s magical what can happen, and I’ve seen how one person really can make an enormous difference. A lot of people selected for this fellowship program have that opportunity.”

Hills anticipates the fellows will create a network that extends beyond the three weeks they spend together at Stanford. And former fellows plan to connect in Africa later this year to explore how to combat regional corruption and increase government accountability.

“My hope is that the program will give the fellows the knowledge and tools to build an infrastructure in their respective countries based on democratic principles,” Hills said.

Diamond, whose opening day lecture on defining democracy sets the stage for the learning that unfolds over the coming weeks, says the program ultimately invests in people with the potential to expand democracy.

“It gives them skills, ideas and comparative experiences to draw on,” he says. “Some of these people will continue to work in an important and incremental way to advance and defend human rights and the rule of law. Some will go on to have very prominent roles in government and civil society.”

Life sentence

Some of them, like Ethiopia’s Birtukan Midekssa, are already renowned political leaders whose stories underscore the most extreme hardships of building democracy.

Pardoned from the lifelong prison sentence she received for opposing Ethiopia's authoritarian government, Birtukan Midekssa is still fighting for democratic reform. Photo credit: Rod Searcey

By the second time Midekssa was in prison, her daughter was old enough to ask if her mother was going to come home.

“I’ll be back,” Midekssa told the 3-year-old. But the promise was tenuous. She was serving a life sentence, convicted of trying to overthrow Ethiopia’s constitutional order. Her actual crime was promoting honest democracy in a country run by a government intolerant of dissent and dismissive of civil liberties.

She was first sentenced to life in prison in 2005. Her daughter was 8 months old and Midekssa – then a federal judge – was just elected deputy chair of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy. Her party had won a majority in parliament, but Prime Minister Meles Zenawi cracked down on the rising opposition. Midekssa and about 30,000 others were thrown in jail. Security forces killed nearly 200 demonstrators during rallies that began peacefully.

Midekssa was pardoned 18 months later, but re-arrested in 2008 after being accused of violating the terms of that agreement. She had also recently been elected chair of a new opposition group.

“They had me in solitary confinement and cut off from the entire world,” she says. “Sometimes I felt like the whole world was forgetting about me.”

It had not. When she was pardoned again in 2010, throngs of overjoyed supporters greeted her with shouts, songs and dance when she returned to her neighborhood in Addis Ababa.

But Midekssa was drained. Her party was weakened and her political prospects were uncertain. With few options in Ethiopia, she and her daughter moved to the United States in 2011.

“There was little I could do,” she says. “I wanted to learn more, study more and figure out how to establish democracy and stability.”

Landing a Draper Hills fellowship meant the chance to tap into a deep academic perspective and think about how she might take another pass at building democracy when Ethiopia’s authoritarian system shows some sign of opening up.

“She’s not a revolutionary in favor of violence or radical change,” Diamond says. “If the regime decides it wants to negotiate a process of political reform and put the political system on the foundations of greater legitimacy, she’s one of the first people they’d need to reach out to.”

But until they do, Midekssa will wait patiently. Studying. Retooling. Sharing her experiences. And repeating the promise she made to her daughter years ago:

“I’ll be back.”