The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to introduce our 2013-14 pre and postdoctoral scholars. Selected from upwards of 100 applicants, these scholars will spend the year in residence at CDDRL to pursue their research, work closely with faculty and connect to an innovative learning community. Hailing from Yale University, New York University, Georgetown University and Stanford these scholars bring diverse backgrounds and expertise to enrich the ranks at CDDRL. Please read the Q&A's below to learn more about our new scholars, their research and what brought them to CDDRL. 

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Ana Bracic

Hometown: Slovenska Bistrica, Slovenia

Academic Institution: New York University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: PhD, May 2013

Research Interests: Human rights, Gender and Ethnic Discrimination, State Failure, International Organizations, and using Quantitative and Experimental Methods.

Dissertation Topic/Title: Essays on Human Rights

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? I am excited to become a post-doctoral fellow at the Center because my work closely fits the scholarly agenda of CDDRL. While human rights form the core of my dissertation, I touch on several other topics central to CDDRL—I evaluate the efficacy of a strong mechanism for promotion of democracy, I explore how much worse human rights abuses are in failed states, and I examine the conditions under which ground level NGO action can decrease discrimination against a vulnerable population. The faculty affiliated with the Center have a great deal of expertise in areas relevant to my research efforts - ranging from human rights and consolidation of democracy to field experiments - and I very much look forward to their guidance and advice.

What do you hope to accomplish during your year-long residency at the Center? My central aim is to complete the next phase of my research project on discrimination against the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, while writing a book manuscript that stems from the same project. I hope to build relationships and potentially develop collaborations with members of the academic community at CDDRL and Stanford more generally.

Please state a fun fact about yourself! I used to compete in ballroom dancing.

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Adi Greif

Hometown: Stanford, CA

Academic Institution: Yale University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Political Science, Spring 2014

Research Interests: International Relations, Middle East, Colonialism, Gender Politics, Islamic Law, Demography

Dissertation Topic/Title: "The Long-Term Impact of Colonization on Gender"

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? Improving gender equality is correlated with improved economic growth, democratization and rule of law. In addition to these research themes, CDDRL's focus on both scholarship and policy-relevance is important to me. I hope that understanding the processes leading to changes in gender equality over time will help us pursue better policies for advancing gender equality.

What do you hope to accomplish during your year-long residency at the Center? I hope to turn my thesis into multiple articles. I also intend to write a short monograph analyzing the relationship between opinions on gender, religion and political party affiliation in the Middle East through use of satellite data to proxy for religious piety.

Please state a fun fact about yourself! I live in the same housing complex that I lived in as a child.

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Alexander Lee

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Academic Institution: Stanford University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: PhD, Political Science, September 2013

Research Interests: Historical Political Economy, Development, Colonialism, South Asia, Identity Politics, Terrorism

Dissertation Topic/Title: "Diversity and Power: Caste in Colonial India"

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? Much of my work is on the historical origins of underdevelopment, and I'm interested in exploring contemporary policies that can alleviate these inequalities.

What do you hope to accomplish during your year-long residency at the Center? I hope to develop my dissertation into a book, particularly by adding material on the post-colonial period.

Please state a fun fact about yourself! I make a very good chana masala.

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Hesham Sallam

Hometown: Cairo, Egypt

Academic Institution: Georgetown University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Political Science; 2013-2014

Research Interests: Democratization, Identity Politics and Distribution, Authoritarian Elections, Political Islam; Political Economy of Authoritarianism

Dissertation Topic/Title: “Indispensible Arbiters: Islamist Movements, Economic Liberalization, and Authoritarian Rule in the Arab World”

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? What I find most appealing about CDDRL is its demonstrated commitment to advancing innovative, rigorous research on questions pertaining to the challenges of democratization and other related topics that speak directly to my current work. It hosts a distinguished set of scholars whose work has been highly influential in informing and guiding my own research. As home to the Arab Reform and Democracy Program, CDDRL also offers a great opportunity for engaging with scholars and practitioners who share my strong interest in developing research agendas that could enhance understanding of the Arab uprisings, their origins and the dynamic political and social struggles they encompass.

What do you hope to accomplish during your year-long residency at the Center? During my residency at the Center, I look forward to finishing my dissertation writing, along with a number of related research projects pertaining to the relationship between contentious politics and formal electoral competition in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings.

Please state a fun fact about yourself! I’m a dedicated bikram yogi and a strong believer that every great idea begins with a deep backward bend.

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Anna West

Hometown: Bay Area

Academic Institution: Stanford University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Anthropology, June 2015

Research Interests: Critical ethnographic approaches to development and the state, the role of traditional authorities in post-colonial democracies, global health, citizenship, human rights, and discourses of participation and community in Southern Africa, particularly Malawi.

Dissertation Title: "Health Promotion, Citizenship, and Rural Governance in Malawi"

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program?  I am drawn to CDDRL's focus on the complex intersections between development and governance, and to the Center's embrace of both theoretical and policy dimensions of scholarship on these themes. My dissertation research in Malawi examines how modular global health interventions engage local power structures, patronage systems and political cultures. In particular, I focus on traditional authorities' involvement in rural health promotion and examine the continuing salience of chiefly governance for local and national discourse on community participation, human rights and citizenship. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research to trace the salience of health promotion strategies for the formation and consolidation of ideas, values and processes of governance and democracy in Malawi. I look forward to stimulating conversations with faculty and visiting scholars through the Center's Programs on Poverty and Governance and Human Rights and the CDDRL-affiliated Center for Innovation in Global Health.

What do you hope to accomplish during your year-long residency at the Center? I will be returning from 18 months of fieldwork in Malawi this fall and am excited to join CDDRL's diverse community of scholars. I aim to complete a draft of my dissertation during my fellowship year. As a social and cultural anthropologist, I especially look forward to sharing my findings and seeking feedback from faculty mentors and fellows in other disciplines with shared interests in the quality of and contestations around democratic processes in post-colonial African states.

In May, the general elections in Pakistan returned two-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his party - the Pakistan Muslim League - to office. Sharif faced off against Imran Khan, a former Cricket star turned politician whose promises of reform resonated amongst younger voters.

Despite a heightened state of election-related violence and insecurity, voter turnout stood at an historic high of 55 percent.

While Pakistan’s elections and smooth democratic transition have been deemed a success, reports by some observers cited irregularities, vote rigging and intimidation.

Kamal Siddiqi, a 2012 Draper Hills Summer Fellow alumni, covered the elections as editor of The Express Tribune, a national English language daily newspaper published from Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

In the interview that follows, Siddiqi comments on this historic election and what it means for Pakistan's democratic future.

Were you surprised by the outcome of the Pakistani elections?

No, I was not surprised with the fact that Nawaz Sharif's party won a thumping majority. This had been predicted by most of us given that the three other major parties - the Pakistan People's Party, the Awami National Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement - were not campaigning because of terrorist attacks on their rallies.

I was surprised, however, at the fact that Imran Khan's party - Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) - did so well in Karachi and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northwestern province of Pakistan.

Why do you think Nawaz Sharif was re-elected to a third term as prime minister as opposed to Imran Khan or Ameen Faheem? 

There was a genuine desire for change, especially in Pakistan's most populous province - Punjab. People were fed up with power outages, rising crime and stories of government corruption. Since Punjab is Sharif's home province and it has 50 percent of the seats of parliament, that change was inevitable.

Imran Khan seemed to be a darling of the international media, was it the same for the Pakistani media?

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Kamal Siddiqi during the 2012 Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program at Stanford University. Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

He may have been a darling for the Western media but for the local media Imran Khan and his supporters were a headache. They are new to the electoral process and yet they are the least tolerant. In our experience, Imran Khan gave a statement - which we published - and the next thing we knew, we were being accused of yellow journalism. They have a lot to learn.

What was it like to cover the election for The Express Tribune?

This time around, the elections were very violent and I told my reporters - especially those in Peshawar - not to take any risks. At the same time we enjoyed reporting on the election, especially by using social media. We got a lot of feedback and stories from public sources who sent us clips from their phones and tweeted about their experiences. A lot of the information was instant and in areas where there were problems, like the late opening of polling stations, we were inundated with people calling and texting. It was clearly much more transparent than previous polls.

What contributed to the high voter turnout?

One of the achievements of Imran Khan's party was that it motivated the youth. Also, this was the second general election without any interruption. This also helped people to get involved in the process.

What issues were most important for the average Pakistani voter when they went to the polls?

The law and order situation and crime were issues that many leaders talked about as was good governance and the fight against corruption. Power outages and the state of the economy also featured in the debates. Finally, the drone strikes by the U.S. helped some parties garner votes especially in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

How do you think the violence surrounding the elections has affected Pakistan's political climate, if at all?

The violence gave an edge to the right of center parties like Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party and Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insafparty whose rallies were not attacked. The three main left of center parties - the ruling Pakistan People's Party and its coalition allies - were affected by the consistent attacks and bomb blasts at their rallies and their election offices. This became one factor in their poor showing at the polls.

How does this election impact the future of democracy in Pakistan, if at all?

The manner in which an independent election commission conducted the elections, how the polls were held, how power was transferred and how all parties accepted the results have been very encouraging. People by and large have accepted democracy as the best way to move ahead and by turning up in large numbers they rejected the call by extremists like the Taliban to reject this form of government.

On August 16 the Karachi office of Siddiqi's "The Express Tribune" was attacked by gunmen who fired shots injuring two staff members. You can read more here to learn about the incident and how the media are often trapped in the line of fire.  

Many resource dependent states have to varying degrees, failed to provide for the welfare of their own populations, could threaten global energy markets, and could pose security risks for the United States and other countries.  Many are in Africa, but also Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Burma, East Timor), and South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador) Some have only recently become – or are about to become – significant resource exporters.  Many have histories of conflict and poor governance.  The recent boom and decline in commodity prices – the largest price shock since the 1970s – will almost certainly cause them special difficulties.  The growing role of India and China, as commodity importers and investors, makes the policy landscape even more challenging.

We believe there is much the new administration can learn from both academic research, and recent global initiatives, about how to address the challenge of poorly governed states that are dependent on oil, gas, and mineral exports.  Over the last eight years there has been a wealth of new research on the special problems that resource dependence can cause in low-income countries – including violent conflict, authoritarian rule, economic volatility, and disappointing growth.  The better we understand the causes of these problems, the more we can learn about how to mitigate them.

There has also been a new set of policy initiatives to address these issues: the Kimberley Process, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the World Bank’s new “EITI plus plus,” Norway’s Oil for Development initiative, and the incipient Resource Charter.  NGOs have played an important role in most of these initiatives; key players include Global Witness, the Publish What You Pay campaign, the Revenue Watch Institute, Oxfam America, and an extensive network of civil society organizations in the resource-rich countries themselves.

Some of these initiatives have been remarkably successful.  The campaign against ‘blood diamonds,’ through the Kimberley Process, has reduced the trade in illicit diamonds to a fraction of its former level, and may have helped curtail conflicts in Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.  Many other initiatives are so new they have not been have not been carefully evaluated.

This workshop is designed to bring together people in the academic and policy worlds to identify lessons from this research, and from these policy initiatives, that can inform US policy towards resource-dependent poorly states in the new administration.

Ten years after President Bush attempted to reduce U.S. involvement in statebuilding, America and its allies are more heavily involved in it than ever before.  There simply are no viable alternatives to stabilizing fragile states. And yet the tremendous sacrifices we make to rebuild states too often produce regimes where corruption and other abuses of power prevail. In turn these undermine the legitimacy of the regimes and render stability ever more elusive.

The international community may share responsibility for creating this accountability gap. In Afghanistan, the rush to build up the power of the government and to respect its sovereignty have weakened constraints that would subject that power to the will of the Afghan people.

Amid struggles over flawed elections and corruption these past two years, practitioners on the ground have experimented with new approaches to close the accountability gap in Afghanistan. NATO military approaches to governance-led operations have been matched by parallel civilian efforts to work from the bottom-up in engaging Afghan communities and helping them seek solutions through the nascent institutions of the Afghan government. 

These efforts face an uphill challenge, but represent the best hope for closing an accountability gap that threatens all statebuilding efforts. This symposium at Stanford University will bring together practitioners and experts to share experiences and explore options to improve the contemporary practice of statebuilding.