Stanford University

SAID Annual Conference: Rethinking Reform Innovations in Improving Governance

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The Stanford Association for International Development (SAID) and partners present the 2012 SAID Annual Conference entitled, Rethinking Reform: Innovations in Improving Governance. The keynote address will be given by John Githongo, CEO of Inuka Kenya Trust and the former permanent secretary for government and ethics to the president of Kenya. The conference features leading practitioners and academics at the forefront of working to improve governance outcomes worldwide. Panels will explore the following topics; transparency and accountability to fight corruption, grassroots institutional development, ICT for governance, and leadership to build accountable states.

The complete agenda with list of panelists can be found below.

This conference is free and open to the public. 

To register for the event, please complete the registration found here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2914739063

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Cubberley Auditorium

John Githongo CEO, Inuka Kenya Trust, Former Permanent Secretary for Government and Ethics to the President Keynote Speaker Kenya

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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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
diamond_encina_hall.png 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.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Moderator Stanford UniversityStanford University
Jonas Moberg Head of Secretariat Speaker Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
Angelo Izama Ugandan Journalist Speaker Stanford University
Robert Klitgaard Professor Speaker Claremont Graduate University
Kavita N. Ramdas Executive Director, Program on Social Entrepreneurship, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law Speaker Stanford University
Warren Krafchik Director Speaker International Budget Partnership
Muadi Mukenge Director for Sub-Saharan Africa Speaker The Global Fund for Women
Katherine Casey Professor Speaker Stanford Graduate School of Business
Alex Howard Gov 2.0 Correspondent Moderator O'Reilly Media
Bryan Sivak CIO Speaker State of Maryland
Abhi Nemani Director of Strategy Speaker Code of America
Jeremy M. Weinstein Senior Fellow Moderator FSI, Stanford University

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Francis Fukuyama Oliver Nomellini Senior Fellow Speaker FSI, Stanford University
Hajia Amina Mohammed Az-Zubair Former Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Speaker
Richard Messick Senior Public Sector Specialist Speaker The World Bank
Stacy Donohue Director of Investments Speaker Omidyar Network
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Tavneet Suri- Liberation Technology Seminar Series

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Tavneet Suri is a development economist, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Broadly, she studies the evolution of markets and various market failures in these economies. In particular, her main areas of focus are agriculture and formal and informal financial access. For example, she has worked on the adoption of seed technologies in Kenya and the extent of informal risk pooling mechanisms in rural Kenya. Her ongoing research includes understanding the adoption and impact of mobile money (M-PESA) in Kenya; the role of infrastructure in agricultural markets in Sierra Leone; the diffusion of improved coffee farming practices through social networks in Rwanda; the role of different types of formal and informal collateral in credit markets for assets in Kenya. She regularly spends time in the field, managing her various research projects and data collection activities.

Tavneet is a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER, an Affiliate of BREAD, J-PAL and CEPR, and Co-Director of Agriculture Research Program at the International Growth Center.

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Tavneet Suri Assistant Professor of Applied Economics Speaker MIT
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Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Vote Buying and Democracy in Africa: Lessons from Experiments in Kenya

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Abstract: 

Vote buying is widespread during multiparty elections in many African countries.  Despite its prevalence, vote buying's secretive and sensitive nature poses a challenge to empirical research on the subject.  In this talk, CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow Eric Kramon will present evidence from experiments conducted in Kenya that shed light on the extent to which vote buying influences vote choice, why it is effective, how it relates to ethnic voting, and what its implications are for government responsiveness and accountability to poor voters.

Speaker Bio:

Eric Kramon is a 2011-12 pre-doctoral fellow at CDDRL and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. In his dissertation, he investigates vote buying during African elections. Using a set of field experiments and surveys conducted in Kenya, the project explains why vote buying persists and is effective, and examines its implications for democratic accountability and the political representation of the poor. Eric is also working on several projects about the impact of ethnic favoritism by politicians on public goods provision and general health and welfare in multiple African countries. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the Journal of Democracy.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Eric Kramon Pre-doctoral Fellow 2011-2012 Speaker CDDRL
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d.school uses mobile technology for social issues in Kenya

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The November 17 Liberation Technology Seminar was co-hosted by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a nonpartisan economic policy research organization that unites remarkable economic talent from all parts of Stanford University. This seminar featured four student-led design projects that were created in the Designing Liberation Technologies course taught each spring at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) by professors' Josh Cohen and Terry Winograd. The class works in partnership with the University of Nairobi's School of Computing and Informatics to develop user-based designs that address outstanding challenges in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. 

Josh Cohen described the three main elements of the design school class:

(1) There is a focus on user/human-centered design. Projects are designed based on a close engagement with end users: the people who will be using the solutions. (2) Courses are inter-disciplinary. The idea is to take people who are deeply embedded in a certain discipline and put them together with people from other disciplines. In order to come up with a solution to a real problem, team collaboration is necessary and (3) The approach to problem solving is about practice, not about theory. It is necessary to fail early and fail often in the process of creating workable solutions.

The panelists consisted of students who were working with partners in Kenya on how mobile technology could be used to address various social issues. A multidisciplinary team of students work in close collaboration with partners in Kenya, and some of these ideas are now being tested on the ground.

The first project that was described was M-maji (mmaji.wordpress.com). Sangick Jeon described how water in Kibera is scarce, costly and contaminated. Their aim is to use the nearly ubiquitous mobile technology to improve access to water. Vendors are able to advertise their water and then buyers can ask questions and provide feedback. This saves the time and resources that it takes to find clean water.

Nishuari, the second project, addresses the problem of inaccurate advice and rumors which lead to risky sexual behavior and often HIV and AIDS. They provide a mobile counseling service whereby individuals can submit health questions and receive responses from trained counselors using text messages. This helps to break down logistical and social barriers.

The third, Makmende considered the issue of serious crime in Kibera. Their aim is to look at how individuals can get safely from Point A to Point B. They set up walking groups so that people would not have to walk alone. Over 90% of people had a mobile phone and this was seen to be an effective way of building timely communication, so that groups of people can coordinate to walk more safely to reach their destinations.

The final project was Take Taka, which was the one project that was not focused on using computer technology. The team took up sanitation as the project and decided early on that the use of mobile phones adds no value to the issue. The focused instead of designing a special sanitary bucket that could be used instead of a toilet inside the home, and on developing a system of transmitting the deposits to a biogas unit. This project however has not been carried forward.

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Liberation Technology Seminar Series launches for the fall quarter

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The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set for an exciting fall quarter. Held on Thursdays from 4.30 to 6 pm at Wallenberg Theater, this 1-unit seminar course is co-taught by CDDRL director Larry Diamond and Professor of Computer Science Terry Winograd. Hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, this seminar series features guest speakers who introduce students to cutting-edge theoretical and practical applications of new technologies.

Beginning on October 6, the seminar series will kick off with Andrew McLaughlin an expert on internet regulation who served in the Obama administration and worked with Google’s policy division. The quarter will continue featuring new research, innovative Lib Tech products and stimulating debate on the impact technology has on ‘liberation’.

Technology and revolutions debate

When protestors waged a revolution across the Arab world in January, they did not set out to make life interesting at Stanford. Whether they intended to or not they have achieved just that. We are now mired in the debate on the impact of technology in revolutions that has become more interesting since the Arab Spring. Ramesh Srinivasan Assistant Professor in Design and Media/Information Studies at UCLA, will speak to this debate based on his recent field work in Egypt on October 20. Evgeny Morozov a visiting scholar for the Program on Liberation Technology will revisit the debate at the end of the quarter based on his new work. For those who have heard him caution against the use of technology before the Arab Spring, it may be an interesting time to revisit Morozov's arguments on December 1.

Lib Tech products

At the core of this debate is the idea that technology is ever-evolving. Some are creating systems to give governments greater control, while others seek to protect the activists. New ideas and products are changing this landscape every day. To take an example, at a recent hack-a-thon in San Francisco there was a suggestion to encrypt sensitive messages in a Beyonce song. If that works out, you may be able to swing a leg and send a message at least until a technology comes up to trace your steps. We could not have a LibTech seminar series without taking a look at such innovations. 

Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez from Witness will give a taste of this evolving drama through their work on the use of videos for human rights. They will offer ideas to harness its power without exposing the activists to its dangers on October 27. 

The Fall series will also feature Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, speaking to their ultra fast blogs that are making inroads among African NGOs on October 13. Paul Kim of Stanford University will discuss his experiments with delivering education through mobile phones. For those who enjoy the 'hands on experience,' word is that Paul Kim will bring his mobile phones for us to play with on November 3! On December 8, Jeff Klingner of Benetech will give a presentation on databases that help track human rights abuses.

D-School presentation

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

For those interested in registering for the course it is available on Explore Courses as CS 546: Seminar on Liberation Technologies and POLISCI 337S. We encourage others to attend who are interested in the topics, speakers, or liberation technology in general.

To view the complete Liberation Technology Seminar Schedule, please click here.

 

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development is now accepting applications for the Class of 2014

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About the Program

Launched in 2005, the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship on Democracy and Development Program  is a three-week executive education program that is hosted annually at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program brings together a diverse group of 25-30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and international development from transitioning countries. This training program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work.

For three weeks during the summer, fellows participate in academic seminars that expose them to the theory and practice of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Delivered by leading Stanford faculty from the Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Departments of Economics and Political Science, these seminars allow emerging leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote democratic change in their home countries.

Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government, and the justice system, provide a practitioners viewpoint on such pressing issues in the field. Past program speakers have included; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Kavita Ramdas, former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Stacy Donohue, director of investments at the Omidyar Network; Maria Rendon Labadan, Deputy Director of USAID; and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Fellows also visit Silicon Valley technology firms to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices on a global scale.

The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

About the Faculty

The program's all-volunteer interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists, lawyers, and economists, pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas and learn first-hand about the challenges activists face in places where democracy is at threat. CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows faculty includes; Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Francis Fukuyama, Steve Krasner, Avner Greif, Helen Stacy, and Nicholas Hope.

About our Draper Hills Summer Fellows

Our network of 186 alumni who graduated from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program hail  from 57 developing democracies worldwide. Their professional backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they confront in their home countries, but the one common feature is their commitment to building sound structures of democracy and development. The regions of Eurasia, which includes the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, along with Africa constitute over half of our alumni network. Women represent 40% of the network and the program is always looking to identify strong female leaders working to advance change in their local communities.

Previous Draper Hills Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, attorneys general, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, think-tank managers, and members of the international development community. The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year.

Please see the alumni section of the website for a complete listing of our program alumni.

Our Summer Fellows include:

  • The former Prime Minister of Mongolia
  • Political activists at the forefront of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
  • Advocate for the high court of Zambia
  • Deputy Minister of the Interior of Ukraine
  • Peace advocate and human rights leader in Kenya
  • Journalists advocating for a greater role for independent media
  • Leading democratic intellectual in China
  • Social entrepreneur using technology for public accountability in India

 

 Funding

Stanford will pay travel, accommodation, living expenses, and visa costs for the duration of the three-week program for a certain portion of applicants. Participants will be housed on the Stanford campus in residential housing during the program. Where possible, applicants are encouraged to supply some or all of their own funding from their current employers or international nongovernmental organizations.

 

 




 
 
 
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Eric Kramon

Encina Hall, C139
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow 2013-2014, CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow 2011-2013
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Eric Kramon received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2013 and is a 2013-14 Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow.  He will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University starting in Summer 2014.  While at CDDRL, he is working on a book project on vote buying and clientelism in Africa, as well as additional projects on the impact of election observation on electoral fraud and electoral quality, ethnicity and the politics of public goods provision in Africa, and the political determinants of good governance reforms.

Mobile-for-Development Meets Human-Centered Design: Field Experiments in Kenya

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*******NOTE CHANGE OF LOCATION*******

Abstract
The proliferation of information and communication technology in even the lowest-income communities has created space for innovative ICT-based approaches to global poverty. However, projects of this kind are often ineffective because they focus excessively on technological solutions and are inattentive to user needs, preferences, and capacities. This seminar will present four projects that attempt to overcome these limitations in Kenya using "human-centered design" -- an approach to design that is anchored in ethnographic engagement with end-users.

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building,
Koret Taube Conference Room, 366 Galvez
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Nan Zhang Speaker Stanford University
Jess Auerbach Speaker Stanford University
Eric Ruth Speaker Stanford University
Sunny Jeon Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
Program on Liberation Technology

Education for All? The Political Economy of Primary Education in Kenya

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Daniel Posner is Total Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  His research focuses on ethnic politics, research design, distributive politics and the political economy of development in Africa. His work investigates, among other topics, the sources of ethnic identification and the political, social and economic outcomes that ethnicity affects-coalition-building, voting, collective action, public goods provision, and economic growth-with special attention to the mechanisms through which it has its impact. His methodological approach is to find creative ways to maximize leverage for making strong descriptive and causal claims, through the use of experiments (in the lab, in the field, and occurring "naturally"), new data sources (including the re-appropriation of data collected for other purposes), and the adoption of techniques from other disciplines such as satellite geography, public health, and behavioral economics.

His most recent co-authored book, Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage, 2009) employs experimental games to probe the sources of poor public goods provision in ethnically diverse communities. His first book, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa (Cambridge, 2005), explains why and when politics revolves around one dimension of ethnic cleavage rather than another. He has received several awards for his work, including the Luebbert Award for best book in Comparative Politics (2006 and 2010), the Heinz Eulau Award for the best article in the American Political Science Review (2008), the Michael Wallerstein Award for the best article in Political Economy (2008), the best book award from the African Politics Conference Group (2006), and the Sage Award for the best paper in Comparative Politics presented at the APSA annual meeting (2004). He has been a Harvard Academy Scholar (1995-98), a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution (2001-02), a Carnegie Scholar (2003-05) and, this year, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2010-11). He currently serves on the editorial boards of World Politics, PS, and the Annual Review of Political Science. He is the co-founder of the Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE). He received his BA from Dartmouth College and his PhD from Harvard University. Before moving to MIT, he taught for twelve years at UCLA.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Daniel Posner Total Professor of Political Science Speaker Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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