Stanford University

International Relations

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.

Electoral Integrity, Violence and Vote-Buying

This two day workshop will bring together scholars whose research actively engages problems of electoral irregularities.  Irregularities range from high levels of pre-election violence to electoral fraud to vote-buying and patronage. All these tactics potentially affect the outcomes of elections and all disempower citizens in their attempts to have their voices heard in the polity. On the whole, scholars who have concentrated on understanding patronage and clientelism have not interacted with those working on electoral fraud, and neither group has talked at great length to those expert in electoral violence. This workshop will bring together scholars with specific expertise in each of these topics in order to establish a new dialogue across expertise. 

 

Agenda (subject to change):

Day One: April 12, 2013

8:30-9:00 am Breakfast

9:00-9:10 am—Welcoming Remarks Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University; Miriam Golden, UCLA

9:10-10:30 am—Panel 1: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (1)

  • Karen Ferree, UCSD: “Violating the Secret Ballot: The Political Logic of Fraud in Ghana’s 2008 Elections”
  • James Long, Harvard University: “Scalable Information and Communications Technology Reduces Electoral Fraud in Fragile Democracies”
  • Discussant: Miriam Golden, UCLA

10:30-10:45 am Break

10:45-12:10 pm—Panel 2: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (2) 

  • Isabela Mares, Columbia University: “The supply of electoral intimidation: Evidence from Imperial Germany”
  • Eric Kramon and Miriam Golden: “Electoral Violence and Fraud in the 2012 Ghanaian Elections: Polling Station Results”
  • Discussant: James Fearon, Stanford University 

12:10-2:00 pm Lunch

2:00-3:25 pm—Panel 3: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (3)

  • George Ofosu, UCLA: “Transitional Multiparty Elections: Do Military Regimes Perform Better at Promoting Fair Elections?”
  • Joseph Asunka, UCLA: “Electoral investment through formal institutions”
  • Discussant: Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University

3:25-3:40 pm Break

3:40-5:00 pm—Panel 4: Clientelism 

  • Mike Callen, UCSD, and Saad Gulzar, NYU: “Clientelism and Health Worker Absence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Pakistan”
  • Nahomi Ichino, Harvard: “Crossing the Line: Local Ethnic Geography and Voting in Ghana”
  • Discussant: Barbara Geddes

Day Two: April 13, 2013

9:00-9:30 am Breakfast

9:30-11:00 am—Panel 5: Clientelism and Vote Buying 

  • Sarah Brierley, UCLA: “Buying votes or buying time? Gift giving as an extension of the political party network in Ghana”
  • Simeon Nichter, UCSD: “Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism”
  • Discussant: Fred Finan, University of California, Berkeley 

11:00-11:15 am Break

11:15-11:45 am—Concluding Session and Discussion

 

 

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CISAC Conference Room

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Workshops

Ethnicity and Political Responsiveness in China

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Speaker Bio:

Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.

For more on Greg's research, please visit:

http://web.mit.edu/polisci/people/gradstudents/greg-distelhorst.html

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Greg Distelhorst

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.

For more on Greg's research, please visit:
Governance Project Pre-doctoral Fellow 2012-2013
Greg Distelhorst Pre-doctoral Fellow (The Governance Project), 2012-2013 Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Can You Hear Me Now? Law Enforcement Surveillance of Internet and Mobile Communications

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Abstract
Telecommunications carriers and service providers now play an essential role in facilitating modern surveillance by law enforcement agencies. The police merely select the individuals to be monitored, while the actual surveillance is performed by third parties: often the same email providers, search engines and telephone companies to whom consumers have entrusted their private data.

 Although assisting Big Brother has become a routine part of business, the true scale of law enforcement surveillance has long been shielded from the general public, Congress, and the courts. However, recent disclosures by wireless communications carriers reveal that the companies now receive approximately one and a half million requests from U.S. law enforcement agencies per year.

When automated, industrial-scale surveillance is increasingly the norm, is communications privacy a thing of the past? For those of us who'd like to keep our private information out of government databases, what options exist, and which tools and services are the best?

 Christopher Soghoian is the Principal Technologist and a Senior Policy Analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project.

He completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University in 2012, which focused on the role that third party service providers play in facilitating law enforcement surveillance of their customers. His research has appeared in publications including the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and been cited by several federal courts, including the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Between 2009 and 2010, he was the first ever in-house technologist at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, where he worked on investigations of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Netflix. Prior to joining the FTC, he co-created the Do Not Track privacy anti-tracking mechanism now adopted by all of the major web browsers.

Wallenberg Theater

Christopher Soghoian Principal Technologist Speaker ACLU
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Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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The International Criminal Court: The Next Decade

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Richard Steinberg is Professor of Law at UCLA and the Director of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project. In addition to his UCLA appointment, Professor Steinberg is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Department of Political Science.

Professor Steinberg has written over forty articles on international law. His most recent books are Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY (forthcoming 2010, Martinus Nijhoff), International Institutions (co-edited, 2009, SAGE), International Law and International Relations (co-edited, 2007, Cambridge University Press), and The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Economics, Law, and Politics of the GATT/WTO (co-authored, 2006, Princeton University Press).

Helen Stacy is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL

As a scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights, Helen Stacy has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. Her recent scholarship has focused on how international and regional human rights courts can improve human rights standards while also honoring social, cultural, and religious values.

Bechtel Conference Center

Helen Stacy Speaker
Richard Steinberg Director, Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project: Professor of Law Speaker UCLA
Lectures

New Technologies and Human Rights Monitoring

Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and Google.org, convened a two-day workshop to advance strategic thinking on how to leverage new technologies to strengthen U.N. human rights monitoring around the world.

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Workshops

The World Bank and IFC's Doing Business Project: A Template for Promoting Economic Reforms?

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Abstract:

The World Bank and IFC's Doing Business project has used indicators capturing important dimensions of the business environment to catalyze reforms in a large number of countries. In its tenth year of operation, this talk will focus on the methodological underpinnings of the project, the results obtained on the ground, the challenges ahead and why this matters for the goal of poverty reduction and economic convergence. For more information, please visit: www.doingbusiness.org

Speaker Bio:

Augusto Lopez-Claros became the director of global indicators and analysis in the World Bank–IFC Financial and Private Sector Development Vice Presidency in March 2011. Previously he was chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports.

Before joining the Forum he was an executive director with Lehman Brothers (London) and a senior international economist. He was the International Monetary Fund’s resident representative in the Russian Federation during 1992–95. Before joining the IMF, Lopez-Claros was a professor of economics at the University of Chile in Santiago. He was educated in England and the United States, receiving a diploma in mathematical statistics from Cambridge University and a PhD in economics from Duke University. He is a much-sought-after international speaker, having lectured in the last several years at some of the world’s leading universities and think tanks. In 2007 he was a coeditor of The International Monetary System, the IMF, and the G-20: A Great Transformation in the Making? and The Humanitarian Response Index: Measuring Commitment to Best Practice, both published by Palgrave. He was the editor of The Innovation for Development Report 2009–2010: Strengthening Innovation for the Prosperity of Nations, published by Palgrave in November 2009.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Augusto Lopez-Claros Director of Global Indicators and Analysis Speaker The World Bank-IFC
Seminars

Visualizing Political Struggle in the Middle East

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Abstract:

Marking the publication of Lina Khatib's latest book Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle, this seminar focuses on the evolution of political expression in the Middle East over the past decade, highlighting the visual dimension of power struggles between citizens and leaders in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

About the speaker:

Lina Khatib is a co-founder and Program Manager of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Lina is a founding co-editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, a multidisciplinary journal concerned with politics, culture and communication in the region, and in 2009 co-edited (with Klaus Dodds) a special issue of the journal on geopolitics, public diplomacy and soft power in the Middle East. She also edited the Journal of Media Practice from 2007-2010. She is one of the core authors of the forthcoming Arab Human Development Report (2012) published by the UNDP.

She has written two books, Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (IB Tauris 2006), which is a study of the link between international relations and film, focusing on 25 years of cinematic representation of politics in the region (1980-2005), from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Gulf War to Islamic fundamentalism, and Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond (IB Tauris 2008). The book takes a socio-political approach to the study of Lebanese cinema over the last thirty years, focusing on the issues of Lebanese national identity, history, sectarian conflict, and memory of the Civil War.

Lina has recently finished writing a book titled Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle for IB Tauris. The book examines the power struggles among states, other political actors, and citizens in the region that are expressed through visuals, and focuses on case studies from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Iran, with a focus on the role of the image as a political tool in the Arab Spring. She has also recently led a multidisciplinary research project on US public diplomacy in the digital age, in collaboration with the University of Oxford and the University of Wolverhampton, the outcome of which will appear in the Middle East Journal in 2012.

Before joining the academic field, Lina worked in broadcast journalism in Lebanon. She is a frequent commentator on the Middle East in the media with appearances on Al-Jazeera (Arabic and English), CNN, BBC, Sky News and other media outlets across the globe.

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Lina Khatib Program Manager for the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court kicks off human rights seminar series

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The Program on Human Rights at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law inaugurated the 2012-2013 Sanela Diana Jenkins Speaker Series by hosting a Dec. 7 seminar with the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Honorable Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The lecture series will bring to light current challenges and possibilities for the ICC over the next decade, which include: how to determine reparations for victims; U.S. and ICC relations; and nation-state cooperation. During the 2012-2013 academic year, the series will examine the ICC by hosting debates with local, national and international experts, academics and activists.

On July 1, 2002, the ICC was established by more than 100 nations to ensure that those who have committed violations of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are brought to justice. National governments that have signed the treaty establishing the ICC have promised to progressively structure their national criminal systems so these egregious human rights violators will be brought before their own people and courts under fair trial processes.

In the last decade the ICC has brought 16 cases to the court from seven different conflicts in Africa.

“The ICC is now firmly established as international destination for genocidaires,” said Helen Stacy, director of the Program on Human Rights. “In the coming decade, we shall know better whether the ICC deters would-be genocidaires before they commit their awful crimes. The next decade will also show if the world's biggest exceptionalists — such as the U.S. and China —are willing to accept ICC jurisdiction. The time is ripe for this series to assess the impact of the international criminal justice on human rights after devastating conflict, both its triumphs and its shortcomings,” continued Stacy.

Moreno-Ocampo came to the ICC with a distinguished record as a prosecutor in the trials of Argentine military officials of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Over his ten year term in the ICC, Moreno-Ocampo was responsible for establishing the Office of the Prosecutor as an institution, opening ICC investigations and prosecuting those who were ultimately brought to trial.

The ICC and Moreno-Ocampo symbolize historic achievements in international law. The 121 signatories to the treaty recognizing the ICC demonstrated that international criminal justice is an important issue on the global political agenda. In addition, the ICC’s actions in its first decade have not only had a positive impact on the lives of tens of thousands of direct victims, but also for millions of people in affected communities and societies who have re-built their lives after years of civil war, genocide, murder, rape and the destruction of property.  

“We are looking forward to a lively conversation about important issues of global politics and justice at Stanford and on the web,” said Richard Steinberg, visiting professor of international relations at Stanford and editor-in-chief of the Online Forum. Steinberg, who is also a professor of Law at UCLA, added, “The series will feature debate on key questions about the ICC, including the extent to which peace and international justice are compatible and how the ICC can retain its legitimacy as a justice institution while navigating the perils of international politics.”

The Sanela Diana Jenkins ICC Speakers Series will take place over three academic quarters: a fall quarter workshop with Luis Moreno-Ocampo; a winter quarter speaker series open to the entire Stanford community and the public (and also a one-unit credit course for Stanford students); and a spring quarter conference. The results of these conferences will be compiled in a working papers series on the ICC and international criminal justice. Beginning January 8, 2013, speaker series presentations will also be presented to and debated by a global audience on the Human Rights & International Criminal Law Online Forum at www.stanfordhumanrights.com.

 For more information on the series, please visit: http://humanrights.stanford.edu/events/one_decade_of_the_international_….

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Democracy and Discontent in Sri Lanka

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Abstract:

The sanguinary Sri Lankan civil war was brought to a close in May 2009. The means adopted to bring an end to this conflict have come under considerable external criticism on the grounds of the indiscriminate use of force. Regardless of how the conflict was terminated, its end should have enabled the regime in Sri Lanka to reassure the minority Tamil community that their interests would not be overlooked in its wake. Instead the country has witnessed waves of ethnic triumphalism and dissenters have faced intimidation. Unless these trends are reversed, despite the existence of the formal trappings of democracy, the future of Sri Lanka as a viable democratic state could well be in jeopardy.

Speaker Bio:

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has previously taught at James Madison College of Michigan State University, Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Ganguly has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a Guest Scholar at the Center for Cooperative Monitoring in Albuquerque and a Visiting Scholar at the German Institute for International and Area Studies in Hamburg.

He was also the holder of the Ngee Ann Chair in International Politics at the Rajaratnam School for International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in the spring term of 2010.  Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Security, Asian Survey, Current History, the Journal of Democracy, International Security and Security Studies. A specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 20 books on the region.  

His most recent books are India Since 1980 (with Rahul Mukherji), published by Cambridge University Press and Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation and Limitations on Two-Level Games (with William Thompson) published by Stanford University Press. He is currently at work on a new book, Deadly Impasse: India-Pakistan Relations at the Dawn of a New Century for Cambridge University Press.

His article on corruption in India was just published in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and he is currently writing a new book with Bill Thompson entitled The State of India (for Columbia University Press) which seeks to assess India's prospects and limitations of emerging as a great power

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Sumit Ganguly Professor, Political Science Speaker Indiana University, Bloomington
Seminars

Challenges of Private Sector Development in the Middle East and North Africa

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Abstract:

The roots of the revolts known as the Arab Spring lie in many sources but one of the leading causes was the high rates of unemployment, low skill levels, and the growth of the youth populations. Now Arab governments are faced with the dual challenges of creating new political and economic systems that can meet the needs and demands of the peoples of their countries. This presentation will focus on the role of the private sector and the need to build an entrepreneurial eco-system that can foster rapid economic growth. Practical examples of reform programs will be emphasized drawing from the work of the Center for International Private Enterprise.

Speaker Bio:

John D. Sullivan is the executive director of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce. As associate director of the Democracy Program, Sullivan helped to establish both CIPE and the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. After serving as CIPE program director, he became executive director in 1991. Under his leadership CIPE developed a number of innovative approaches that link democratic development to market reforms: combating corruption, promoting corporate governance, building business associations, supporting the informal sector, and programs to assist women and youth entrepreneurs. Today, CIPE has more than 90 full-time staff with offices in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

Sullivan began his career in Los Angeles’ inner city neighborhoods, helping to develop minority business programs with the Institute for Economic Research and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. In 1976 he joined the President Ford Election Committee in the research department on campaign strategy, polling, and market research.  Sullivan joined the public affairs department of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1977 as a specialist in business and economic education.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

John D. Sullivan Executive Director Speaker The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)
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