Why could politicians of religious minority background assume the highest political offices in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas, in other countries, almost all the national chief executives have been politicians from the religious majority background for decades, if not centuries?

I argue that the leading politicians of religious minority backgrounds in Europe potentially had three “secular” paths out of their marginality: liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. I examine these three paths that religious minority politicians pursued through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), Hungary, and Italy (nationalism). I explain the variation in the rise of the first religious minority chief executives at the national level and the prominence of one of these three specific paths based on the religious configuration of the main actors in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state. Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin politicians to national leadership in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that radically altered the religious-national configuration. Religious minorities’ political (under-)representation constitutes a significant dimension of their (de-)securitization.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Şener Aktürk is Professor in the Department of International Relations at Koç University. He is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on comparative politics of ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. After completing his BA and MA at the University of Chicago and his PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Government at Harvard University. His book, Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 2012), received the 2013 Joseph Rothschild Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Nationalities.

His articles have been published in World Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Mediterranean Politics, Social Science Quarterly, European Journal of Sociology, Nationalities Papers, Problems of Post-Communism, Turkish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Osteuropa, Theoria, Ab Imperio, Insight Turkey, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Perceptions, and various edited books. He is the recipient of the Peter Odegard Award at UC Berkeley, the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant, the Baki Komsuoglu Social Sciences Encouragement Award, the Kadir Has Social Sciences Prize, the TUBA Young Scientist Award, the BAGEP Science Academy Award, and the TUBİTAK Incentive Prize.

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What are the longer-term implications of Russia’s renewed aggression in Ukraine for relations with its Eurasian neighbors it has often referred to as the “near abroad?”

A recent and growing literature suggests that domestic public opinion will play a decisive role in their future foreign policy choices. Based on an original mass survey with an embedded experiment, this talk examines the changes in Kazakhstani public opinion toward maintaining economic and security relations with Russia through international alliances such as the Collective Treaty Security Organization (CSTO). These changes should be viewed in light of both Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 and the Russian-led CSTO’s intervention in the mass protests in Kazakhstan in January 2022. It argues that Kazakhstani public opinion has changed in significant ways — especially across ethnic lines — and that these changes are likely to impact Kazakhstan-Russian relations in general and the future of the CSTO in particular.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Pauline Jones is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan (UM) and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is also Founder and Director of the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC). Previously, she served as the Director of UM’s Islamic Studies Program (2011-14) and International Institute (2014-20). Her past work has contributed broadly to the study of institutional origin, change, and impact in Central Asia. She is currently engaged in multiple research projects: exploring how state regulation of Islam in Muslim-majority states affects citizens’ political attitudes and behavior; identifying the factors that affect compliance with health mitigation policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic; examining the influence that evoking historical memory has on public support for foreign assistance; and developing a toolkit to assess the impact of mass protest and state narratives on domestic and foreign policy change in authoritarian regimes. She has published articles in several leading academic and policy journals, including the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Current History, and Foreign Affairs. She is author (or co-author) of five books, most recently The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (Oxford 2021).

This talk centers around the forthcoming book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, to be published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. Collisions provides historical context for the war that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It weaves together the origins of this war in Russian, Ukrainian, European, and U.S. politics and policy. With an eye to global context, it assesses the many forms of disruption and instability that the war has caused. Two years after the start of this war, Collisions offers a way of taking stock and trying to understand the big-picture implications of this war.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael C. Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a senior non-resident associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Harvard University Press, 2009), and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (Basic Books, 2020). From 2014 to 2016, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. He writes regularly on international affairs for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

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In a synthesis of political theory, historical narrative, and practical advice, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober trace the evolution towards self-government through political bargaining in Athens, Rome, Great Britain, and the United States. Democratic self-government means having no boss other than ourselves. Democracy arises when citizens strike a civic bargain: an always imperfect agreement for how they will govern themselves. For democracy to survive, citizens must agree that security and welfare are common interests; they must set the bounds of citizenship and agree on core institutions. They must be willing to negotiate in good faith and must treat one another as civic friends, not political enemies. They must invest in civic education. Democracy survives when the civic bargain evolves adaptively in the face of new challenges.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Josiah Ober is Constantine Mitsotakis Professor in the School of Humanities and Science, Professor of Political Science and Classics, and Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He is the founder and current faculty director of the Stanford Civics Initiative. He joined the Stanford faculty in 2006, having previously taught at Princeton and Montana State Universities. His scholarship focuses on historical institutionalism and political theory, especially democratic theory and the contemporary relevance of the political thought and practice of the ancient Greeks. He is the author of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason (2022), Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism (2017), The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (2015), and a number of other books. He has published about 100 articles and chapters, including recent articles in American Political Science Review, Philosophical Studies, Polis, and Public Choice. His new book, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives (with Brook Manville), was published in September by Princeton University Press.

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A dictator's power is secure, the authors begin in this muscular, impressive study, only as long as citizens believe in it. When citizens suddenly believe otherwise, a dictator's power is anything but, as the Soviet Union's collapse revealed. This conviction – that power rests ultimately on citizens' beliefs – compels the world's autocrats to invest in sophisticated propaganda. This study draws on the first global data set of autocratic propaganda, encompassing nearly eight million newspaper articles from fifty-nine countries in six languages. The authors document dramatic variation in propaganda across autocracies: in coverage of the regime and its opponents, in narratives about domestic and international life, in the threats of violence issued to citizens, and in the domestic events that shape it. The book explains why Russian President Vladimir uses Donald Trump as a propaganda tool and why Chinese state propaganda is more effusive than any point since the Cultural Revolution.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Erin Baggott Carter (赵雅芬) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is also a non-resident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center. She has previously held fellowships at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics and propaganda. Her first book, Propaganda in Autocracies, explores how political institutions determine propaganda strategies with an original dataset of eight million articles in six languages 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 in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by a number of media platforms, including the New York Times and the Little Red Podcast.

Brett Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Brett received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and has previously held fellowships at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

Brett's research focuses on politics in the world's autocracies. His first book, Propaganda in Autocracies, marshals a range of empirical evidence to probe the politics of autocratic propaganda. His second book project, Autocracy in Post-Cold War Africa, explores how Central Africa's autocrats are learning to survive despite the nominally democratic institutions they confront and the international pressure that occasionally makes outright repression costly. His other work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, and Journal of Democracy, among others.

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This presentation examines the failure of state-building efforts in Afghanistan and argues that the international community's focus on building state capacity quickly led to the resurrection of centralized state institutions from Afghanistan's Soviet past. These institutions emphasized national governmental power and fiscal control, which significantly widened the disconnect between the Afghan state and society, posing substantial challenges to building political stability and economic development. Centralized models are in conflict with societies that have strong norms of local self-governance or are skeptical of the state. The Afghan bureaucracy, which shaped individual interactions with the state, was also overlooked. Paradoxically, efforts to build a strong state undermined it, and Afghanistan remains trapped in a vicious cycle of state collapse. This dilemma is not unique to Afghanistan but is also faced by other countries, such as Somalia and Ethiopia, where Soviet-era institutions cast a strong shadow on governance. The argument highlights that bridging the gap between de facto and de jure institutions is the key to stability, legitimacy, and development.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili is the Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy, and public sector reform. She is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was named one of the world's top global thinkers by Prospect Magazine (UK).

Murtazashvili is the author of Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which received the Best Book Award in Social Sciences from the Central Eurasian Studies Society and received honorable mention from the International Development Section of the International Studies Association. She is also the author of Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan (with Ilia Murtazashvili) (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and several other books. Murtazashvili has advised the United States Agency for International Development, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, World Bank, the US Department of Defense, the United Nations Development Program, and UNICEF. She served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

She is the past-president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society and was elected board member of the Section for International and Comparative Public Administration of the American Society of Public Administration. She is also a member of PONARS Eurasia, a research organization focused on security issues in Eurasia. She previously served as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

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Peace settlements ending civil wars often pursue political solutions that require violent actors to transition to political parties and engage with politics peacefully. Some provide reserved seats, quotas, or guaranteed cabinet positions to safeguard these electoral transitions. What are the consequences of safeguards on rebel party grassroots? Scholarship on political affirmative action generally concludes that reservations are beneficial. However, safeguards may hinder the consolidation of rebel parties by generating counterproductive incentives, demobilizing the party base. I study the case of the former FARC-EP party Comunes, who were granted 10 legislative seats in the 2016 peace agreement. I implement a priming experiment with this crucial but difficult to reach population to assess the consequences of this provision. On average, primed participants reported less interest in a range of party-building activities. However, heterogeneity suggests these safeguards may come at the cost of civilian grassroots specifically, further concentrating rebel party activism among ex-combatants.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

María Ignacia Curiel is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is an empirical scholar using experimental, observational, and qualitative data to study violent conflict and elections, peacebuilding, and representation.

Her recent work analyzes political parties with rebel origins and the conditions that shape their commitment to electoral competition. This work draws both from an in-depth empirical study of Comunes, a Colombian political party formed by the former FARC guerrilla, and from the study of broad patterns in rebel party behaviors across contexts. She received her PhD in Political Science from the Department of Politics at New York University.

She has previously conducted research for the United Nations University Center for Policy Research on excombatant reintegration into civilian life, the Inter-American Development Bank on the evolution of Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, and a Caracas-based organization on state-sponsored killings and police militarization. She was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and lived in New York from 2011-2023.

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Over the past century, we have explored the solar system, split the atom, and wired the Earth, but somehow, despite all of our technical prowess, we have struggled to understand something far more important: our own cultural differences. Using a variety of methodologies, our research has uncovered is that many cultural differences reflect a simple, but often invisible distinction: The strength of social norms. Tight cultures have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance, while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive. The tightness or looseness of social norms turns out to be a Rosetta Stone for human groups. It illuminates similar patterns of difference across nations, states, organizations, and social class, and the template also explains differences among traditional societies. It’s also a global fault line: conflicts we encounter can spring from the structural stress of tight-loose tension. By unmasking culture to reveal tight-loose dynamics, we can see fresh patterns in history, illuminate some of today’s most puzzling trends and events, and see our own behavior in a new light. At a time of intense political conflict and rapid social change, this template shows us that there is indeed a method to the madness, and that moderation – not tight or loose extremes – has never been more needed.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michele Gelfand is the John H. Scully Professor of Cross-Cultural Management and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business School and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Her work has been published in outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, Nature Human behavior, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, among others. Gelfand is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press). Her book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World was published by Scribner in 2018. She is the Past President of the International Association for Conflict Management and co-founder of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution. She received the 2016 Diener award from SPSP, the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, the 2019 Outstanding Cultural Psychology Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2020 Rubin Theory-to-Practice award from the International Association of Conflict Management, the 2021 Contributions to Society award from the Academy of Management, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation. Gelfand was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

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