Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
Larry Diamond breaks down Beijing’s efforts to direct “sharp power” against institutions in the United States in this podcast. Listen here.
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ABSTRACT: The United States has been the world’s dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts believe China is taking its place. Is China an emerging superpower? Should the United States gear up for a new cold war in Asia? In this seminar, I show that China actually lags far behind the United States by the most important measures of national wealth and power—and will probably fall further behind in the coming decades. The most likely threat to American security, therefore, is not a confident Chinese peer competitor, but a deeply insecure China that lashes out after failing to live up to the global hype about its rise. I will discuss how the United States can contain this threat without starting a cold or hot war with Beijing.
PROFILE: Michael Beckley is an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University and a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on the rise of China and has received “best article” awards from the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association and has been featured by numerous media, including CNN, Fox News, the Financial Times, the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post. Previously, Professor Beckley worked at the U.S. Department of Defense, the RAND Corporation, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He currently consults for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the Joint Staff, and the National Intelligence Council. He holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University and his first book, Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower, was published last fall by Cornell University Press. Part of his talk is based on a Foreign Affairs web article that was named one of the ten “best of 2018.”Image
Stanford’s Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice, UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, and the Civic Space Initiative invite you to participate in a roundtable discussion with Clément Voule, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, on the role of technology companies in defending freedom of assembly and association online.
In recent years, the right to free assembly and association online has been challenged from numerous sides, often under the pretext of national security, public order, morality, and prevention of abuse. These restrictions include blocking of groups and websites focused on minority groups, large-scale Internet shutdowns, mass online harassment and doxing campaigns, and the use of facial recognition software to identify protesters. Violations of offline rights are spilling over into online spaces, where their impact ripples through entire societies. This creates an urgent need for the protection of these rights in new domains. The United Nations is seeking input from the private sector, academic experts, and the broader public on how to protect these shrinking spaces.
Participants are invited to share cases in which individual and collective rights to peacefully assemble online were violated. The conversation will inform the Special Rapporteur’s report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on threats to free assembly in the digital realm and how they can be addressed.
Lunch will be provided prior to the event.
We Look forward to your attendance at this special event.
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
Abstract:
Why were Islamists less polarizing in Tunisia than their counterparts in Egypt after the downfall of the autocratic regime in 2011? While the electoral processes that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt rapidly polarized society, the Muslim Brothers in Tunisia formed a coalition with secular groups to pry power from the old power centers immediately after the removal of Ben Ali. Different approaches focused on Tunisians’ liberal culture and their proximity to Europe. Scant attention paid to both the historical and political-strategic conditions that shaped boundaries of interactions between Islamists and non-Islamists. I argue that the historical relations between the state and Islamists affect the distribution of power between them on the one hand, and their secular opponents on the other. In Tunisia, Islamist and non-Islamist forces believed in the necessity of conciliation (or were forced to do so by political circumstances). They, therefore, reached across ideological lines and struck deals to hold democratic institutions.
Speaker Bio:
Abstract:
Ever since the Millennium Message, Putin's first presidential speech on January 1, 2000, the Kremlin's political architects have cultivated a narrative of Russia as a unique nation on a righteous path toward restored greatness. The process of myth-making is intertwined with the policies involved in remaking Russia as a global power, as the regime builds legitimacy through careful messaging on Russian nationhood, history, morality, and geopolitical strength, using law and policy to embed those concepts as institutions and persuade citizens that Russia needs autocracy to survive. This talk traces the Kremlin's cooptation of culture and history to tell a certain story about Russia and its citizens, and examines public opinion polls to assess the degree to which the strategy is working, as well as street protests and radical performance art that attempts to claim spaces of agency for citizens who don't fit into the mythic mold.
Speaker Bio:
Alice E.M. Underwood is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is a Weiland Fellow at Stanford and a former Title VIII Fellow at the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and has published with Intersection, The Russia File, Russian Life, and Harvard International Review.Image
Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program and
the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Indonesia features Southeast Asia’s most vibrant and dynamic democracy, but debilitating institutional dysfunctions persist. Age-old patronage-style practices remain commonplace, despite voter demands for governance reform. In effect, two mutually incompatible systems operate simultaneously: the rule of law on the one hand—“Ruler’s Law” on the other. The disarray provides space for mafias and Islamist fringe groups to wield clout. The contradiction tends to deter investment that Indonesia sorely needs in order to escape a “middle-income trap.” What are the prospects for change in the April 2019 national elections? Join the Indonesia political analyst Kevin O’Rourke for a presentation and discussion of poll data, political trends, and potential post-2019 scenarios in the world’s fourth most populous country.
Kevin O’Rourke’s Reformasi Weekly analyzes politics and policy-making for organizations operating in Indonesia. Subscribers include embassies, NGOs, universities, and companies. His firm, Reformasi Information Services, provides political risk consulting and customized research. His latest publication, 2019 Election Primer: Players, Playing Field and Scenarios (Nov. 2018), reviews in detail the rules, issues, and possible results of the country’s nationwide elections in April 2019. Earlier writings include Who’s Who in Yudhoyono’s Indonesia (2010) and Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Soeharto Indonesia (2002). Kevin started his career in Indonesia in 1994 as an equity research analyst. He is a graduate of Harvard University with an honors degree in government.Image
For three and a half decades following the end of the Maoist era, China adhered to Deng Xiaoping’s policies of “reform and opening to the outside world” and “peaceful development.” After Deng retired as paramount leader, these principles continued to guide China’s international behavior in the leadership eras of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Admonishing Chinese to “keep your heads down and bide your time,” these Party leaders sought to emphasize that China’s rapid economic development and its accession to “great power” status need not be threatening to either the existing global order or the interests of its Asian neighbors. However, since Party general secretary Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the situation has changed. Under his leadership, China has significantly expanded the more assertive set of policies initiated by his predecessor Hu Jintao. These policies not only seek to redefine China’s place in the world as a global player, but they also have put forward the notion of a “China option” that is claimed to be a more efficient developmental model than liberal democracy.
While Americans are well acquainted with China’s quest for influence through the projection of diplomatic, economic, and military power, we are less aware of the myriad ways Beijing has more recently been seeking cultural and informational influence, some of which could undermine our democratic processes. These include efforts to penetrate and sway—through various methods that former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull summarized as “covert, coercive or corrupting”—a range of groups and institutions, including the Chinese American community, Chinese students in the United States, and American civil society organizations, academic institutions, think tanks, and media.
Some of these efforts fall into the category of normal public diplomacy as pursued by many other countries. But others involve the use of coercive or corrupting methods to pressure individuals and groups and thereby interfere in the functioning of American civil and political life.
On November 25, Russian border patrol ships rammed a Ukrainian naval tug and then fired upon and seized it along with two Ukrainian gunboats that were legally attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov. Russia then temporarily closed the strait to all Ukrainian shipping. What is the significance of these Russian actions for Ukraine and, more broadly, for the West, and how should the West respond?
Stanford's Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, the Europe Center together with FSI faculty members has organized a special panel discussion to address these issues on Wednesday, November 28 at 4:30 pm in the Rueben Hills conference room on the 2nd floor of Encina Hall in the East Wing.
Please join Ambassador Steven Pifer, Ambassador Michael McFaul, and our CDDRL Ukrainian Emerging Leaders (Nataliya Mykolska, Ivan Prymachenko and Oleksandra Ustinova) for this special event to diagnose the situation in Ukraine and what it means from a US and Ukrainian perspective.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Rueben Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor Encina Hall
The two-day forum, part of a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, led by the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Karl Eikenberry and Stephen Krasner, gathered experts to examine trends in civil wars and solutions moving forward.
The Council on Foreign Relations presently tracks six countries in a state of civil war, including three (South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Yemen) where the situation is currently worsening. Furthermore, three states (Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Nigeria) are experiencing sectarian violence with the potential to become larger conflicts. With two months still remaining in 2018, the combined fatalities in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen alone is fast approaching 100,000 for the year.
It was against this backdrop that Shorenstein APARC’s U.S.-Asia Security Initiative (USASI), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and the School for International Studies at Peking University recently co-hosted the security workshop “Civil Wars, Intrastate Violence, and International Responses.” Held in Beijing, on October 22-23, the workshop brought together thirty-five U.S. and international experts to gain a wider perspective on intrastate violence and consider the possibilities for, and limits of, intervention. The workshop is the latest activity of the AAAS project on Civil Wars, Violence, and International Responses, chaired by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, director of USASI, and by Stephen Krasner, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and professor of international relations.
“Some of the major discussion topics included the appropriate political and economic development models to apply to fragile states recovering from internal conflict, justifications for intervention, and the likely impact of great power competition on the future treatment of civil wars." - Karl Eikenberry
Workshop participants included academics and professionals with expertise in political science, global health, diplomacy, refugee field work, United Nations, and the military. Countries represented at the table included the United States, Ethiopia, France, and China. Throughout the two-day session, they examined three crucial questions: What is the scope of intrastate conflicts and civil wars, and to what extent is it attributable to domestic or international factors? What types of threats to global security emanate from state civil wars? What policy options are available to regional powers and the international community to deal with such threats?
USASI Director Karl Eikenberry addresses one of the sessions
The workshop’s timing and location was prescient. Over the past two decades, China’s global exposure–through trade, investment, and financing–has increased dramatically. Coupled with a growing number of its citizens living abroad, China’s equity in other states has reached the point where it has a direct interest in those experiencing or are at risk of political instability and internal violence. Indeed, through its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, China has the opportunity to help stabilize fragile states by stimulating economic development.
“The workshop revealed, at least for me, that China is backing away from its absolute defense of sovereignty and non-intervention,” said Stephen Krasner. “As Chinese interests have expanded around the world, and as both its investments and the number of its citizens living abroad have increased, the Chinese have become more concerned with political conditions in weakly governed countries.”
With China’s growing policy and academic interests in addressing civil wars and intrastate violence, as well as its higher international profile in places like United Nations peacekeeping operations, the Beijing event provided an excellent opportunity for Chinese experts to exchange views with their international colleagues.
Paul H. Wise, MD, MPH; Senior Fellow at Stanford Health Policy
The Beijing workshop was arranged into four sessions, with themes focusing on trends in intrastate violence, the threats it poses to international security, the limits of intervention, and advice to policymakers.
Each panel included presentations of prepared papers, moderator comments, and an open discussion by all participants. A fifth and final session provided an opportunity to summarize the preceding discussions. The workshop then closed out with an open conversation, where participants offered insight and policy recommendations developed over the preceding two days of dialogue.
The "Civil Wars, Intrastate Violence, and International Responses” workshop marks the second phase of the AAAS project by the same name that launched in 2015. The first phase of the project culminated in the publication of 28 essays across two volumes of the AAAS quarterly journal Dædalus. The ongoing second phase consists of a series of roundtables and workshops in which project participants engage with academics and with government and international organization officials to build a larger conceptual understanding of the threats posed by the collapse of state authority associated with civil wars, and to contribute to current policymaking. Project activities have included meetings with the United Nations leadership and staff; academic activities in the United States; sessions with the U.S. executive and legislative branches; and a visit to Nigeria.
Throughout the workshop, Chatham House Rule of non-attribution applied to all dialogue. A workshop report will be published by the co-hosts in early 2019.
The U.S.-Asia Security Initiative is part of Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). Led by former U.S. Ambassador and Lieutenant General (Retired) Karl Eikenberry, USASI seeks to further research, education, and policy relevant dialogues at Stanford University on contemporary Asia-Pacific security issues.
March 1, 2019 update: the workshop report is now available online. Download the report >>
Participants in the “Civil Wars, Intrastate Violence, and International Responses” workshop
