About the Event

This conversation with Behlul Özkan (Marmara University)and Mehmet Ali Tuğtan(Bilgi University) will examine the adverse and long-lasting impact of the US-led anti-communism on Turkish democracy. We will trace the roots of current authoritarianism in the top-down Islamization of society and institutions since the 1950s, paying special attention to the role of the military- an institution often regarded as the protector of secularism.

This event is a part of the Program on Turkey. It is co-organized by the Ottoman Turkish Studies Association and supported by OTES@Stanford.

 

About the Speakers

Behlül Özkan received his PhD from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in 2009. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Marmara University, Istanbul. Özkan is the author of From the Abode of Islam to the Turkish Vatan: Making of a National Homeland in Turkey (Yale University Press, 2012). He also contributed op-eds to New York Times, Huffington Post, Open Democracy. Özkan is also a board member of European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). In recent years his academic studies has been focused on Political Islam in Turkey and Europe.

Mehmet Ali Tuğtan is assistant professor in International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. He has a PhDin Political Science from Boğaziçi University. His research focuses on Turkish-American Relations, Contemporary World Politics and Security Studies. Dr. Tugtan has edited a book on the Turkish involvement in the Korean War (Kore Savaşı: Uzak Savaşın Askerleri) published in 2013.

About this Event: In this book project, we walk in the footsteps of the pioneers of the nonviolent approach to provide a reinterpretation of the histories of the great movements of the twentieth century from a game theoretic perspective, bringing to bear a host of new quantitative analyses to understand the challenges they faced, when they were successful at overcoming them and why. We develop a simple conceptual framework for understanding the strategies available to both the leaders and the followers of political movements, the media and outside audiences, as well as the regimes that they seek to influence, and how these decisions interact. We use this framework to highlight the presence of three key tensions that exist in many political movements.

These tensions include: those between the allure of violence and the seeming pedestrianism of nonviolence, between the need for numbers and the need for focus, and between organizations that depend on grassroots mobilization versus hierarchies and leadership. 

In light of the framework and new quantitative evidence, we then retrace and re-examine the decisions of the participants of the Indian Independence Movement in each of their three great nonviolent drives for change---the Non-Cooperation Movement of the 1920s, the Civil Disobedience Movement of the 1930s and the Quit India Movement of the 1940s---and how they succeeded or failed in addressing these tensions. At each step, we also discuss both grand strategy and the effectiveness of local tactics. We next compare the Indian experience with the movements that came after, including the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Arab Spring and recent protests around the world. Finally, we draw on what we have learned to suggest ideas for better implement nonviolent protests today.

 

About the Speaker:

Along with being a Senior Fellow at FSI, Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of economics and of political science, and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In 2020–21, he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

 

About the Event:  Decentralization and community-driven development programs have become increasingly common policies to attempt to improve the distribution of public goods across low- and middle-income countries. We study a series of reforms in the city of Delhi that decentralized the administration of discretionary school-level budgets to elected bodies of parents. We find that parents have preferences for representatives that are substantially more educated than them and discriminate against Muslims. Parents act on these preferences when given the opportunity to elect SMC members. They elect parents that are wealthier and more educated and are also of higher status. The paper provides empirical evidence to the question of under what conditions decentralization leads to elite capture. When bureaucrats have a stronger say in the selection of representatives, budgets are captured to reflect the preferences of state representatives, rather than constituents.

 

About the Speaker:  Emmerich Davies is an Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Center for International Development, and a co-convener of the Brown-Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics. He studies the political economy of education with a regional focus on South Asia. His work has been published in Comparative Political Studies and Governance. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, and his B.A. in political science and economics from Stanford University.

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This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

How does autocratic lobbying affect political outcomes and media coverage in democracies? This talk focuses on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. It includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. The evidence suggests that Chinese government lobbying makes legislators at least twice as likely to sponsor legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests. Moreover, US media outlets that participated in Chinese-government sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. These results suggest that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity.

Erin Baggott Carter is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. There, she is also a Co-PI at the Lab on Non-Democratic Politics. She received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and was previously a Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics and propaganda. She recently completed a book on autocratic propaganda based on an original dataset of eight million articles in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish drawn from state-run newspapers in nearly 70 countries. She is currently working on a book on how domestic politics influence US-China relations. Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Brookings Institution, and the Washington Post Monkeycage Blog.

 

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This event is part of the 2021 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, Biden’s America, Xi’s China: What’s Now & What’s Next?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

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The United States has historically played an important role in promoting democracy to countries across the globe. But is the role of the U.S. as a leading advocate for democracy now diminished following the recent U.S. election and mob attack on the U.S. Capitol? 

The panel for this event will feature democracy activists from around the world, all of whom are graduates of the Draper Hills Program at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). In a discussion moderated by Professor Francis Fukuyama, they will offer their perspectives on the need for democracy promotion in their home countries at the current moment, particularly what role the new Biden administration could constructively play. Professor Michael McFaul’s recent series of articles [https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/sell-it-again-uncle-sam/] in American Purpose, an online magazine recently launched by Professor Fukuyama, about the need for democracy promotion, will be the starting point for the discussion. Professor McFaul will offer introductory remarks.

PANELISTS:

 

Kondo Moussa, Class of 2018, Mali - Director Accountability Lab Mali . Kondo founded and runs the Mali chapter of the Accountability Lab, a U.S.-based nonprofit that promotes public accountability in six African and Asian countries. Rather than condemning corrupt leaders, it works to boost the influence of their honest counterparts, running grassroots “Integrity Idol” campaigns to celebrate their good work. Communities nominate local civil servants, and the Lab then profiles the top five on TV. The movement reaches a broader audience, as viewers across the country vote for their favorite candidates. It also runs in-country incubators to train and mentor “accountrapreneurs” who launch their own accountability projects. Kondo, a journalist, started Mali’s Lab after spending six months embedded with Liberia’s team during his 2015 Mandela Washington Fellowship. While Accountability Lab is not new, Kondo has successfully adapted it to a new and challenging context.

 

 

Shaili Chopra, Class of 2019, India - An Indian journalist turned entrepreneur whose work is focused on championing real women and their stories across India. Chopra is the founder of SheThePeople.TV, which is India's only women's channel. SheThePeople.TV is a form of digital democracy where women get to choose, speak up, and set the agenda. Chopra uses the internet to spotlight issues of women's rights, their role in a democracy, and empower them in a digitally connected world. Chopra is the recipient of India's highest honor in journalism and counted among the top 50 most influential women in media in India and is a Vital Voices fellow. She holds a BA in Economics from Delhi University and a Masters diploma in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai.  

 

 

Mohamad Najem, Class of 2019, Lebanon - Mohamad is the executive director of the Beirut–based digital rights organization Social Media Exchange (SMEX), the Middle East and North Africa’s leading digital rights research and policy advocacy organization. His work includes local and regional advocacy campaigns, research on privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression. Najem organized “Bread & Net”, the first unconference in the Middle East and North Africa region that tackled topics related to technology and human rights. Najem’s career began in the humanitarian aid arena. Najem was a 2014 New America Foundation Fellow and an alumnus of the Arts, Sciences, and Technology University in Lebanon where he completed his Masters in Business Administration. 

 

 

Anna Dobrovolskaya Class of 2019, Russia – is a human rights activist based in Moscow, serving as the executive director of the Memorial Human Rights Center (MHRC). The Center is the biggest Russian human rights NGO, working to provide legal aid and consultation for refugees and asylum seekers, monitoring human rights violations in post-conflict zones and advocating for a human-rights based approach in fighting terrorism; as well as raising awareness about politically-motivated repression in Russia and maintains its own list of political prisoners. Dobrovolskaya’s areas of expertise include human rights education and awareness-raising activities and programs for young people and activists since 2008. She is a member of the Council of Europe pool of trainers. Her work currently lies in NGO management and providing consultancy to various human rights groups and initiatives. Anna was the author of the first Russian play about the life of human rights defenders, which is being performed in Teatr.doc since 2017.

 

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

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An assessment of Russia that suggests that we should look beyond traditional means of power to understand its strength and capacity to disrupt international politics.

Too often, we are told that Russia plays a weak hand well. But, perhaps the nation's cards are better than we know. Russia ranks significantly behind the US and China by traditional measures of power: GDP, population size and health, and military might. Yet 25 years removed from its mid-1990s nadir following the collapse of the USSR, Russia has become a supremely disruptive force in world politics. Kathryn E. Stoner assesses the resurrection of Russia and argues that we should look beyond traditional means of power to assess its strength in global affairs. Taking into account how Russian domestic politics under Vladimir Putin influence its foreign policy, Stoner explains how Russia has battled its way back to international prominence.

From Russia's seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine to its military support for the Assad regime in Syria, the country has reasserted itself as a major global power. Stoner examines these developments and more in tackling the big questions about Russia's turnaround and global future. Stoner marshals data on Russia's political, economic, and social development and uncovers key insights from its domestic politics. Russian people are wealthier than the Chinese, debt is low, and fiscal policy is good despite sanctions and the volatile global economy. Vladimir Putin's autocratic regime faces virtually no organized domestic opposition. Yet, mindful of maintaining control at home, Russia under Putin also uses its varied power capacities to extend its influence abroad. While we often underestimate Russia's global influence, the consequences are evident in the disruption of politics in the US, Syria, and Venezuela, to name a few. Russia Resurrected is an eye-opening reassessment of the country, identifying the actual sources of its power in international politics and why it has been able to redefine the post-Cold War global order.

This event is co-sponsored with the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

About the Event:  Increasing access to higher education is often seen as a threat to authoritarian regimes. Accordingly, authoritarian rulers would limit access to avoid the spread of anti-regime sentiments. Turkey suggests an interesting case. The consolidation of single party-rule overlapped with an impressive expansion of higher education, by 170 percent, from 76 in 2002 to 206 in 2020. This paper examines these two trends in connection with each other by focusing on universities' role as infrastructural mechanisms for both democratic culture and state coercion.  

About the Event: Do programmatic policies always yield electoral rewards? A growing body of research attributes the adoption of programmatic policies in African states to increased electoral competition. However, these works seldom explore how the specifics of policy implementation condition voters’ electoral responses to programmatic policies over time, or changes in electoral effects throughout policy cycles. We analyze the electoral effects of both the promise and implementation of a programmatic policy designed to increase secondary school enrollment in Tanzania over three election cycles. We find that the incumbent party benefited from a campaign promise to increase access to secondary schooling, but incurred an electoral penalty following implementation of the policy. We do not find any significant electoral effects by the third electoral cycle. Our findings illuminate temporal dynamics of policy feedback, the conditional electoral effects of programmatic policies, and the need for more studies of entire policy cycles over multiple electoral periods.

 

About the Speaker:  Dr. Ken Opalo is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. His research interests include the political economy of development, legislative politics, and electoral accountability in African states. Ken’s current research projects include studies of political reform in Ethiopia, the politics of education sector reform in Tanzania, and electoral accountability under devolved government in Kenya. His works have been published in Governance, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies. His first book, titled Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Post-Colonial Legacies (Cambridge University Press, 2019) explores the historical roots of contemporary variation in legislative institutionalization and strength in Africa. Ken earned his BA from Yale University and PhD from Stanford University.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event: This book examines the creation and consequences of executive constraints in authoritarian regimes. How do some dictatorships become institutionalized ruled-based systems, while others remain heavily personalist? Once implemented, do executive constraints actually play an effective role in promoting autocratic stability? To understand patterns of regime institutionalization, I study the emergence of constitutional term limits and succession procedures, as well as elite power-sharing within presidential cabinets. This project employs a wide range of evidence, including an original time-series dataset of 46 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2010, formal theory, and case studies. Altogether this book paints a picture of how some dictatorships evolve from personalist strongman rule to institutionalized regimes. 

 

About the Speaker: Anne Meng is an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia. Her research centers on authoritarian politics, institutions, and elite powersharing. Her new book, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes, examines how executive constraints become established in dictatorships, particularly within constitutions and presidential cabinets. Her new work focuses on autocratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement in non-democracies. She has also published articles on authoritarian ruling parties, term limit evasion, and leadership succession. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.