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This week we launched the long-awaited 17th year of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's Draper Hills Summer Fellowship Program. Founded in 2005 with generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, Draper Hills is an executive training program for world leaders striving to promote democracy. For the next two weeks, Fellows will participate in workshops led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty to study new theories and approaches to democratic development.

Fellows in the class of 2021 were selected from among thousands of applicants for their ground-breaking work to defend democracy. These 34 leaders drawn from 30 countries around the world are pioneering new approaches and models to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. Representing business, government, and the nonprofit sector, our fellows are working on the frontlines of democratic change to combat the global rise of authoritarianism and populism. In countries moving towards democracy, our fellows are working to institutionalize new systems and practices to support democratic transitions.

An Unconventional Year


Traditionally, Fellows would travel from their home countries to the U.S. and spend three weeks on campus at Stanford learning together. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the program is currently taking place virtually for the first time (for the same reasons, the program did not run in 2020). The shift to online programming posed a number of logistical obstacles – from what time to run virtual sessions when participants span over a dozen time zones, to how to foster the sense of belonging and personal connections that occur more naturally with in-person settings.

To begin addressing the latter, Fellows were sent welcome packages to build excitement and foster community both within the program and Stanford. Upon receiving hers, Aisha Yesufu of Nigeria shared "I am so excited at the different people I'll be meeting from all over the world, and also learning from different people, lecturers, professors... It's going to be quite interesting and, for me, that is what I am most looking forward to," along with the video below:

"One of the most important things I have ever been involved with."


Opening against the backdrop of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the importance of the Draper Hills program and the need to promote democratic change is now more evident than ever.

The inaugural session for the 2021 cohort began with Francis Fukuyama introducing the fellows to several of the esteemed faculty they will be learning from over the next two weeks, including Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and Michael McFaul. McFaul shared that not only did he found the program, but "it is one of the most important things I have ever been involved with." Jensen later added that "participating in this program is one of the great pleasures I have every year."

More to Come


Throughout the next two weeks, our Draper Hills Fellows will examine the political development, democratic transitions, and the relationship of law to economic development, public administration, administrative law, transitional justice, food security, and global health policy, among others. The group is eager to learn, and we look forward to seeing the many great things the training they receive here will enable them to do in their home countries and beyond.

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For the next two weeks, Fellows will participate in workshops led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty to study new theories and approaches to democratic development.

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Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce our four incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2016-2017 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community. 

The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research, while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL. 

Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.

Topics of the incoming cohort include electoral fraud in Russia, how the elite class impacts state power in China, the role of emotions in support for democracy in Zimbabwe, and market institutions in Nigeria. 

Learn more in the Q&A below.


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Natalia Forrat

CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow

Hometown: Tomsk, Russia

Academic Institution: Northwestern University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Sociology, April 2017

Research Interests: authoritarianism, state capacity, social policy, civil society, trust, Russia and post-communist countries

Dissertation Title: The State that Betrays the Trust: Infrastructural State Power, Public Sector Organizations, and Authoritarian Resilience in Putin's Russia

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? I study the connection between state capacity and political regimes - the topic that is at the core of many research initiatives at CDDRL. Learning more about this work and receiving feedback for my dissertation will enrich and sharpen my analysis, while helping me to place it into a comparative context. I am looking forward to discussing my work with the faculty who study the post-Soviet region. I also will explore policy implications of my work with the help of policy experts at CDDRL.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? Besides finishing writing my dissertation, I will workshop three working papers to prepare them for publication. The first one argues that Putin's regime used the school system to administer a large-scale electoral fraud in 2012 presidential elections; the second one shows how the networks of social organizations were used by subnational autocrats to strengthen the regime; and the third one will look at the factors that make the abuse of such organizations more difficult in some regions. In addition to these papers I will continue developing my post-graduation research project exploring the relationship between social trust and distrust, institutions, political competition, and democratization.

Fun fact: I have spent 25 years of my life in Siberia, and I can tell you: Chicago winters are worse!

 

 

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Shelby Grossman

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Reading, MA

Academic Institution: Harvard University

Discipline & Graduation Date:  Government, Summer 2016

Research interests: political economy of development, private governance, market institutions, Sub-Saharan Africa, survey methods

Dissertation Title: The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: Evidence from Lagos

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? I was attracted to CDDRL largely for its community of scholars. Affiliated faculty work on the political economy of development and medieval and modern market institutions, topics that are tied to my own interests.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? I plan to prepare a book manuscript based on my dissertation, a project that explains variation in the provision of pro-trade institutions in private market organizations through the study of physical marketplaces in Nigeria. In addition, I will continue to remotely manage an on-going project in Nigeria (with Meredith Startz) investigating whether reputation alleviates contracting frictions. I also plan to work on submitting to journals a few working papers, including one on the politics of non-compliance with polio vaccination in Nigeria (with Jonathan Phillips and Leah Rosenzweig). 

Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, not all cheese is vegetarian. I have a website to help people determine if a cheese is vegetarian or not: IsThisCheeseVegetarian.com. 

 

 

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Daniel Mattingly

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Oakland, California

Academic Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science, Summer 2016

Research Interests: Governance, rule of law, state building, authoritarian politics, Chinese politics

Dissertation Title: The Social Origins of State Power: Democratic Institutions and Local Elites in China

What attracted you to CDDRL?  The Center has a fantastic community of scholars and practitioners who work on the areas that I'm interested in, including governance and the rule of law. I'm excited to learn from the CDDRL community and participate in the Center's events. The fellowship also provides me with valuable time to finish my book manuscript before I start teaching.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? While at CDDRL, I plan to prepare my book manuscript and to work on some related projects on local elites and state power in China and elsewhere. 

Fun fact: I grew up on an organic farm in Vermont.

 

 

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Lauren E. Young

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Saratoga, CA

Academic Institution: Columbia University 

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science (Comparative Politics, Methods), May 2016 (defense), Oct 2016 (degree conferral)

Research Interests: political violence, political economy of development, autocratic persistence, democratization, protest, electoral violence

Dissertation Title: The Psychology of Repression and Dissent in Autocracy

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? As a graduate of the CISAC honors program when I was an undergraduate at Stanford, I have seen first-hand how intellectually stimulating, collaborative, and plugged into policy CDDRL is. While at the center I will be revising my dissertation work on the political psychology of participation in pro-democracy movements in Zimbabwe for submission as a book manuscript, and moving forward new projects that similarly seek to understand how different forms of violence by non-state actors affects citizens' preferences and decision-making. Because of its deep bench of experts on autocracy, narco-trafficking, and insurgency, CDDRL will add enormous value to these projects.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL?  During my fellowship year, my primary goal is to revise my research on Zimbabwe into a book manuscript. I defended my dissertation as three stand-alone articles, including two experiments showing that emotions influence whether opposition supporters in Zimbabwe express their pro-democracy preferences and a descriptive paper showing that repression has a larger effect on the behavior of the poor. To prepare the book manuscript during my fellowship, I will bring in additional quantitative and qualitative descriptive evidence and tie the three papers together into a cohesive argument about how opposition supporters make decisions about participation in protest, why emotions have such a large effect on these decisions, and how this affects variation across individuals and the strategic choices of autocrats and activists.

Fun fact: During my fieldwork I took an overnight train from Victoria Falls to a southern city in Zimbabwe and hitch-hiked into a national park. It got a little nerve-wracking when night started to fall, but ended with  an invitation to a barbecue! 

 

 
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Abstract
Diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death for children under five years of age, globally.  Barriers to improving outcomes include an inability to identify cases early, provide support, and understand transmission collectively at the household level.   In this talk, we will propose a project to use crowdsourcing to identify pre-emergency patients with diarrheal disease at the level of the household, improve outcomes by providing basic 24 hour access to oral rehydration solution via a social business model at the level of pharmacies, and establish a novel method for patient recruitment to increase statistical power while decreasing the cost of clinical research.  Our primary and initial use case will be twice annual cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh.  Partners include Stanford University, Medic Mobile, ideSHi, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Dr. Eric Nelson studied evolution at Cornell University (BA)  and conducted marine microbial ecology research in Papua New Guinea.  He then received a Masters Degree for studies on the symbiosis between light-producing bacteria and marine animals at the University of Hawaii.  Then he switched to microbial pathogenesis during my MD PhD training at Tufts University.  During this time, he received a Fogarty NIH fellowship to research cholera transmission at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.  DR. Nelson co-authored an ebook called the Cholera Outbreak Training and Shigellosis (COTS) Program that has taken him to outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Haiti.  He also finished a Stanford pediatrics residency in 2013 and was awarded a Pediatric Global Health Postdoctoral Fellowship through the Stanford Society of Physician Scholars.  His core effort now is to explore ways to leverage mobile technology to overcome poverty-based barriers to improve health outcomes from diarrheal diseases.

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Eric Nelson, MD PhD Pediatric Global Health Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker Stanford University School of Medicine
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Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Economics
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Marcel Fafchamps is the Satre Family senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Fafchamps is a professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research interest includes economic development, market institutions, social networks, and behavioral economics -- with a special focus on Africa and South Asia.

Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as professor of development economics for the Department of Economics at Oxford University. He also served as deputy director and then co-director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. From 1989 to 1996 Fafchamps was an assistant professor with the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Following the closure of the Institute, he taught for two years for the Department of Economics. For the 1998-1999 academic year, Fafchamps was on sabbatical leave at the research department of the World Bank. Before pursuing his PhD in 1986, Fafchamps was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for five years during his employment with the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency overlooking issues of employment, income distribution, and vocational training in Africa.

He has authored two books, Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence, published by MIT Press in 2004 and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development, published in 2003 by Elgar Press and has published numerous articles in academic journals.

Fafchamps serves as the editor-in-chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change. Previously he had served as chief editor of the Journal of African Economies from 2000 until 2013, associate editor for the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the Revue d'Economie du Développement.

He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliated professor with J-PAL, a senior fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a research fellow with IZA, Germany, and with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, UK, and an affiliate with the University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action.

Fafchamps has degrees in Law and in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California Berkeley. 

Curriculum Vitae

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Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law invites you to a screening of A Whisper to a Roar, a film chronicling the stories of five democracy activists in Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Venezuelan student leader Roberto Patiño, one of the activists featured in the film. Moderated by Larry Diamond.

Monday, November 12, 2012

7:00-9:30 pm

Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University

RSVP is not required

CUBBERLEY AUDITORIUM

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
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MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab WorldWill 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
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It's the middle of the night when Maina Kiai receives an urgent plea from a human rights advocate in Russia. A recent draft law threatens to block civil society organizations from accessing foreign funding, cutting off their financial lifeline and exposing them to close monitoring by the state. Their work reporting on the government's moves to choke public dissent and suppress free speech is in jeopardy if this law is passed by the Russian legislature.

As the special rapporteur on the rights of peaceful assembly and association for the United Nations, Kiai's job is to collect first-hand information on human rights abuses and bring it to the attention of the international community.

Kiai is one of about 50 lawyers, experts and advocates around the world who volunteer their time as special rapporteurs for the U.N. Human Rights Council. With mounting case loads, a limited staff and shrinking budgets, special rapporteurs are left with little support to fight injustice and aid victims of some of the gravest human rights abuses.

In search of new tools to empower their work, the rapporteurs are now tapping the academic and innovative resources at Stanford to help them do their jobs better.

Harnessing the power of technology

Professor Jeremy Weinstein led the August workshop on new technologies and human rights monitoring.
Photo credit: Sarina Beges

Recognizing that technology can increase productivity and efficiency, Stanford’s Jeremy M. Weinstein organized a workshop to bring technologists together with the rapporteurs and other experts to explore how new technologies can help them magnify their impact.

Weinstein, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, pushed for the use of new technologies as tools for promoting human rights and democracy when he served as the director of democracy and development on the National Security Staff of the White House.

“Special Rapporteurs occupy a unique position, with the legitimacy and mandate of the United Nations behind them as they track human rights abuses around the world," Weinstein said. "New technologies have the potential to amplify their voices, extend their reach, and ensure that citizens around the world have access to this valuable mechanism.”

Weinstein says the rapporteurs can use simple technologies such as database management systems and mobile phone applications to manage the volume of inquiries they receive, increase their response time to victims’ needs and build political support for their recommendations.

Juan Méndez, the rapporteur responsible for tracking torture and other abuses, receives upwards of 50 complaints a day from citizens and NGOs around the world. He wants a way to better organize, process and prioritize inquiries that would allow him to respond to victims in a more strategic, timely and systematic way.

"We have been self conscious of the need to apply new technologies and we are always looking for better ways of applying technology," Méndez said. "In my case, there is quite a learning curve to understand what the new technologies are and how they might work."

One of the most powerful tools for a special rapporteur is the country visit where they spend two to three weeks in a country of concern, visiting local nongovernmental organizations, meeting with government officials, holding press conferences and arranging visits with victims. Special rapporteurs must be invited by the host government to visit and countries with some of the most egregious human rights abuses on record - such as Iran and Zimbabwe - deny them access.

Due to the sensitivity of their findings, special rapporteurs are granted independence and impartiality in their jobs as they often have to say things that make governments uncomfortable. Sharing their findings is a challenge. Other than media coverage, the rapporteurs don’t have easy access to a large audience or the resources to disseminate their findings and recommendations widely in local languages.

But social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter could help heighten their profiles and improve communication with the public. During country missions, for instance, tweets and Facebook posts could easily advertise their visits to attract media and share their findings.

Tapping Stanford's technical edge

Since returning to Stanford where he is a resident faculty member at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), Weinstein has been using the university's technical edge to benefit those working to advance democratic practices.

Technologists and human rights leaders gathered at Stanford’s d.school to innovate and create new technologies for U.N. special rapporteurs.
Photo credit: Sarina Beges

Teaming up with the Brookings Institution and Google, CDDRL hosted an August workshop to bring together four special rapporteurs, civil society activists, technologists, and government donors to brainstorm how to best pair human rights monitors with the technology they need to be more effective in their work.

"What we’ve done is bring together a group of people who normally don’t talk to each other and got them to think about the subject from various users' points of view - the human rights victim, the civil society activist, the governments, and the special rapporteurs themselves,” said Ted Piccone, a senior fellow and deputy director for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and author of a new book, Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights . “But we also have experts from technology, from human rights organizers, from think tanks and research organizations, so the combination of smarts and ideas in that mix is fantastic."

The second day of the workshop was held at Stanford's d. school – the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design – where participants put the needs of the user at the center of the design process. Armed with an endless supply of markers, sticky notes and whiteboards, participants divided into groups to brainstorm how technology can assist the special rapporteurs with their mounting caseloads.

The ideas laboratory

Bringing the human rights and technology communities together underscored the gap that exists between the two worlds. Few of the special rapporteurs were using or familiar with technology tools ranging from social media, database management and encryption software.

While the digital divide may be large for some, it was evident from the technologists in the room that there are an abundance of innovative technologies to validate, manage and interpret data for special rapporteurs’ use.

"I would really love a streaming analysis, so public information out there is streamed to me live," said Kiai, the special rapporteur who focuses on assembly and association rights. "I would also like to have a website that can be accessed by activists around the world as a way to communicate and send updates to me."

Sanjana Hattotuwa demonstrates a mock-up of the Web-based dashboard designed for the special rapporteurs.
Photo credit: Sarina Beges

One of the ideas presented by Sanjana Hattotuwa, a special advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation based in Geneva, is a mobile application that would allow anyone anywhere in the world to utilize audio, video, or text to submit a report of a human rights abuse.

"They could track it with a confirmation number, and it's a very easy way of submitting information to the special rapporteurs," said Hattotuwa. This could be a very promising innovation for victims to submit reports from the ease of a mobile device, and to bring them to the attention of the special rapporteurs in real time.

Hattotuwa said data obtained through this app could be fed into a Web-based dashboard system that would feature a world map highlighting where the reports are coming from, allowing the special rapporteur to process and visualize information. The dashboard would also feature a curated news feed.

While the special rapporteurs left the workshop more informed of these new tools and with some tangible ideas of how to enhance their work, many questions remained about the costs and training required for the users, as well as how to build political support for a future with more visible and accessible special rapporteurs.

"I think that there will always be institutional constraints - political constraints - things that we need to work through," said Méndez, the rapporteur who tracks torture cases. "But the four rapporteurs that are here these two days can actually carry the message of technology's use to the U.N. and try to resolve them."

Bringing the two worlds together for this workshop helped close the digital gap and introduce the potential that technology represents to the human rights community and beyond.

"What struck me most is how much there is out there, and how hard it is for us without context, to understand the tech world and how useful it can be," said Kiai. "So that of itself was a revelation."

 

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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.”

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From Argentina to Zimbabwe, the 2012 Draper Hills Summer Fellows are working on the front lines of democracy, development, and the rule of law —often under threat— to improve their respective societies and defend the principles of justice and freedom.

Twenty-five leaders from 23 countries compose this year's class. More than half are women championing and inspiring new democratic models by leading pro-democracy movements in Ethiopia, empowering female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, and reforming the criminal justice system in Georgia. They are joined by Arab Spring activists from Libya and Syria who have been jailed and persecuted for their work upholding human rights principles.

Across Africa, this year's fellows are bolstering good governance, combating corruption, increasing access to justice, and regulating natural resources. The fellows also include judges, national representatives, and police commissioners from Asia and Latin America who are enhancing transparency in government, strengthening civil service administration, and promoting electoral transparency.

Selected from a pool of 460 applicants, the 2012 class will arrive at Stanford on July 22 to begin a three-week training program at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Fellows live together on the university’s campus where they will connect with peers, exchange experiences, and receive academic training from a team of interdisciplinary faculty.

One of the few programs of its kind in academia, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program combines the rich experiences of practitioners with academic training to maximize the impact of their work advancing political, economic, and social change.

Academic sessions are delivered by a team of Stanford political scientists, lawyers, and economists who are pioneering innovative research in the field of democratic development. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas, and learn more about the situations they study from afar. Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government agencies, and the U.S. justice system provide a practitioner’s perspective on pressing issues. Site visits to Silicon Valley firms round out the experience, allowing fellows to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices.

Entering its eighth year, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program includes a network of 200 alumni from 57 developing democracies. The program is funded by the generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

To learn more about the 2012 Draper Hills Summer Fellows and their innovative work, please click here.  

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Eleven talented Stanford seniors have completed the Undergraduate Senior Honors Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) to graduate with honors in democracy, development, and the rule of law. Completing their theses on issues of global importance ranging from the impact of technology on government openness to the effectiveness of democratic governance projects, CDDRL honors students have contributed original research and analysis to policy-relevant topics. They will graduate from Stanford University on June 17.

Over the course of the year-long program, students worked in consultation with CDDRL affiliated faculty members and attended honors research workshops to develop their thesis project. Many traveled abroad to collect data, conduct interviews, and to spend time in the country they were researching. Collectively, their topics documented some of the most pressing issues impacting democracy today in China, Sudan, Greece, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Latin America, and beyond.  

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In recognition of their exemplary and original senior theses, Mitul Bhat and John Ryan Mosbacher received the CDDRL Department Best Thesis Award for their research exploring welfare programs in Latin America and the developing oil industry in Uganda, respectively. Otis Reid received the David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prize and the Firestone Medal for Excellence, the top prizes for undergraduate social science research, for his thesis on the impact of concentrated ownership on the value of publically traded firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

After graduation, several honors students will leave Stanford to pursue careers at McKinsey & Company consulting group, serve as war crime monitors in Cambodia, work at a brand and marketing consultancy in San Francisco, conduct data analysis at a Palo Alto-based technology firm, work at a Boston-based international development finance startup using targeted investment for poverty alleviation, and conduct research in the political science field. The rest will be pursuing advanced and co-terminal degrees at Columbia Journalism School, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University.

A list of the 2012 graduating class of CDDRL Undergraduate Honors students, their theses advisors, and a link to their theses can be found here:

 

 

Mitul Bhat

Not All Programs are Created Equal: An Exploration of Welfare Programs in Latin America and their Impact on Income Inequality

Advisor: Beatriz Magaloni

 

Shadi Bushra

Linkages Between Youth Pro-Democracy Activists in Sudan and the Prospects for Joint Collective Action

Advisor: Larry Diamond

 

 

Colin Casey

Waging Peace in Hostile Territory: How Rising Powers and Receding Leadership Constrained US Efforts in Sudan 

Advisor: Francis Fukuyama

 

Nicholas Dugdale

Is Reform Possible at a Time of Political Crisis?: An Assessment of Greece's Efforts to Combat Tax Evasion and Shadow Economy Participation 

Advisor: Francis Fukuyama

 

Daniel Mattes

Nunca Más: Trials and Judicial Capacity in Post-Transitional Argentina 

Advisor: Helen Stacy

 

Hava Mirell

 

Keeping Diamonds “Kosher”: Re-evaluating the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in the Wake of Zimbabwe’s Marange Diamond Crisis 

Advisor: Kathryn Stoner-Weiss

 

Jack Mosbacher

Bracing for the Boom: Translating Oil into Development in Uganda 

Advisor: Larry Diamond

 

Jenna Nicholas

21st Century China: Does Civil Society Play a Role in Promoting Reform in China?  

Advisors: Francis Fukuyama & Thomas Fingar

 

Daniel Ong

 

Beyond the Buzzword: Analyzing the "Government 2.0" Movement of Technologists Around Government 

Advisor: Larry Diamond

 

Annamaria Prati

United Nations Development Programme: An Analysis of the Impact of the Structure on the Efficacy of its Democratic Governance Projects

Advisor: Stephen Stedman

 

Otis Reid

Monitoring, Expropriating, and Interfering: Concentrated Ownership, Government Holdings, and Firm Value on the Ghana Stock Exchange

Advisor: Avner Greif

 

 

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Abstract:  

The "spirit of democracy" has recently been undermined in several African countries as authoritarian methods have been the preferred approach. In countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger and Gabon political change has come through the following means; military interventions ousting former presidents clinging to power after their terms; violently repressed popular unrests leading to power-sharing solutions, or former presidents being replaced by their sons. In few countries such as Guinea, free elections were organized after several decades of dictatorship.   

In this seminar, CDDRL Post-Doctoral Fellow Landry Signé will examine what makes certain countries adopt and consolidate liberal or electoral democracies when others stay authoritarian - whether competitive, hegemonic or politically closed. Signé will analyze the transformations of political regimes and democratization in the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over the two last decades contrasting various political trajectories, comparing results between successful and failed countries, and exploring the conditions that create, maintain and sustain democracies. 

Speaker Bio:  

Landry Signé is a recipient of the 2011-2013 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is working on a project entitled “The Efficiency of the Political Responses to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis in Africa: Does the Political Regime and Economic Structure Matter?”. He completed his PhD in Political Science (2010), with the Award of Excellence, at the University of Montreal, and has been bestowed the Award for Best International PhD Dissertation of 2011 by the Center for International Studies and Research (CÉRIUM). His dissertation is entitled “Political Innovation: The Role of the International, Regional and National Actors in the Economic Development of Africa”. 

Prior to joining the CDDRL, Dr. Signé was a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on African Studies, lecturer on Emerging African Markets: Strategies, Investments and Government Affairs at the Stanford Continuing Studies, founding president of a Canadian corporation specialized in public affairs and business development, part-time professor and lecturer in political science at Ottawa University and the University of Montreal, administrator at the United Nations Association of Canada-Greater Montréal, and president of the Political Commission of Montreal-CJ. He has worked or interned at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, the Senate of France, the National Assembly of Cameroon, and the French Distributor, Casino Group. He studied Political Science, International Relations, Communication and Business at the University of Montreal, Lyon 3 University, Sciences Po Paris, Sandar Institute, Stanford Continuing Studies, and McGill University.

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Visiting Scholar 2013; Postdoctoral Scholar 2011-2013
Landry Signé
PhD

Professor Landry Signé is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Center for African Studies, founding chairman of the award-winning Global Network for Africa’s Prosperity, special adviser to world leaders on international and African affairs, full professor and senior adviser on international affairs to the chancellor and provost at UAA, and partner and chief strategist at a small African-focused emerging markets strategic management, investment, and government affairs firm. He has been recognized as a World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, Andrew Carnegie fellow as one of the “most creative thinkers,” Woodrow Wilson Public Policy fellow, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons in the World, Private Investors for Africa Fellow, and Tutu Fellow who “drives the transformation of Africa,” among others. Previously, Landry was founding president of a business strategy and development firm based in Montreal and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. He has also served on the board of organizations such as AMPION Catalyst for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa, Citizens Governance Initiative, and the United Nations Association of Canada–Montreal, and was appointed by a United Nations Under-Secretary-General to serve on the Global Network on Digital Technologies for Sustainable Urbanization. He is the author of numerous key academic and policy publications on African and global affairs, with a special interest in the political economy of growth, development and governance; the politics of economic reform, foreign aid, and regional integration; entrepreneurship, non-market and business strategies in emerging and frontier countries; institutional change, political regimes, and post-conflict reconstruction; state capacity and policy implementation. Professor Signé received the fastest tenure and promotion to the highest rank of full professor of political science in the history of United States universities, for a scholar who started at an entry-level position in the discipline. He is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and presenter at conferences worldwide, engaging a broad variety of business, policy, academic, and civil society audiences. He has won more than 60 prestigious awards and distinctions from four continents and his work has appeared in The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and the Harvard International Review. Professor Signé was educated in Cameroon (with honors and distinction), in France (valedictorian and salutatorian), earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Montreal (Award of Excellence and Award for the Best International PhD Dissertation), and completed his Postdoctoral Studies at Stanford University (Banting fellowship for best and brightest researchers). He has also completed executive leadership programs at the University of Oxford Said School of Business (Tutu fellowship) and Harvard Kennedy School (World Economic Forum fellowship).

Landry Signé Postdoctoral Scholar 2011-2013 Speaker CDDRL
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