*Open only to Stanford students.* 

Speaker Bio: 

Zahera Harb is one of the six 2013-2014 FSI-Humanities Center International Visitors and will be in residence at Stanford in May 2014. She is Senior Lecturer in International Journalism at City University London. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in journalism studies from Cardiff University (United Kingdom). As an expert on Arab media, she has published widely on journalism ethics, conflict and war reporting, political communication and representation of Muslims and Islam in western media. Her recent publications include Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (2013) and Channels of Resistance: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media (2011). Dr. Harb also has 11 years of experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organizations.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Humanities Center, Arab Studies Table, Stanford Language Center. 

Abstract:

Moulay Hicham’s newly published memoir, Journal d’un prince banni, retells his personal life within the context of devastating political critique against the Moroccan political system, its authoritarian monarchy, and the “deep state” within that resists democratic change, the Makhzen.  Written during Moulay Hicham's time as a fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford University, the volume is neither a settlement of accounts nor a gossipy narrative of frivolous stories.  It instead uniquely ensconces vivid personal recollections within the context of authoritarian politics.  The prince witnessed the rise of the system under King Hassan II, the long-lasting ruler who eliminated all opposition, centralized power, and linked a loyal community of courtiers, elites, and cronies to his will—the Makhzen.  The memoir reveals how Moulay Hicham’s aspirations towards autonomy and independence were constantly blocked by this system, often by either the King himself or his coercive apparatus, comprising the intelligence services and military.  At the same time, the nearly half-century reign of King Hassan exposes critical insight into the development of Moroccan politics and identity, from his acumen regarding the Western Sahara problem to his ability to make the kingdom a focal point of Arab politics after the demise of Nasserism. 

Those personal observations on governance continue with the royal ascent of Hassan’s son, Mohamed VI, who assumed the throne in 1999 and is Moulay Hicham’s cousin.  Replacing Hassan’s powerfully intent personality was this more humane yet political disengaged new king.  His inability to curb the Makhzen and enact meaningful democratic reforms shows the system’s very success.  Whereas the pressures of conforming to the system crushed many of those personalities who grew up in the court, Moulay Hicham managed to elude this destructive side through his self-imposed exile to the United States and his intellectual decision to criticize an authoritarian machine to which he was meant to belong.  As the memoir concludes, such resistance to change implicates the monarchy’s future.  Decades of political exclusion, false promises, and rising inequality have alienated much of the Moroccan public.  As the Arab Spring showed, such discontentment portends to future social and political conflict that could well discredit the monarchy, resulting in its overthrow after 350 years of continuous reign.

Journal d’un prince banni has become a literary and political phenomenon in Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora worldwide.  Its release ignited tumultuous debates within the press, social media, and civil society.  Dubbed an “exceptional document” by Le Nouvel Observateur, the memoir has become one of the best-selling non-fiction works in France.  Though print versions are currently unavailable in Morocco, electronic versions have been downloaded and disseminated on an exponential scale.  Arabic, English, and other language-editions are scheduled for release in the near future.

Speaker Bio:

Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde,  Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.

In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe. 

Abstract:

Why do some ruling parties last in power for decades despite facing regular, contested elections?  Well-known examples include the PRI in Mexico, the LDP in Japan, the PAP in Singapore, and the ANC in South Africa. The existence of these long-lived “dominant parties” raises normative concerns: can we really call these regimes democratic if there is never, or rarely, ruling party turnover? They also present a theoretical puzzle: if opposition parties are able to contest elections that decide who rules, why do they consistently fail to win? In this talk, I approach these questions by focusing on variation in ruling party duration.  Drawing on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence, I show that “dominant” parties are typically the first to hold office in a new regime, and often have played a central role in founding it.  As a consequence, these ruling parties frequently start out with enormous electoral advantages over their competitors in the party system, including a strong party “brand,” a disciplined and well-resourced party organization, and the ability to shape and manipulate the rules of competition. These advantages allow them to endure in power by winning consecutive elections for a generation or more.  Only with the erosion of these advantages do elections become more competitive, and the risk of ruling party defeat increases. Once dominant parties are defeated, subsequent partisan competition becomes much more even, and regular rotation in power becomes the norm.  Thus, one-party dominance is best thought of as a kind of temporary “adolescence” on the way to fully consolidated democracy.  

Speaker Bio:

Kharis Templeman received a BA (2002) from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in political science (2012) from the University of Michigan. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.  As a graduate student, he worked in Taipei at the Election Study Center, National Cheng Chi University, and later was a dissertation research fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.  His dissertation examined the development of Taiwan’s competitive party system from a comparative perspective, including a large study of the origins and decline of dominant party systems around the world over the last 60 years.

Current research interests include democratization, party system development in newly-contested regimes, and political institutions, with a regional focus on the new and transitioning democracies of Pacific Asia.  He is currently a regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy project.  Other ongoing collaborations include research on constitutional design for divided societies, on the arms-allies tradeoff in client states, and on intra-tribal voting coordination in elections in Jordan.

On March 14-15, the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, held a workshop on electoral system alternatives in the United States. The workshop brought together a number of scholars of American electoral institutions, practitioners working to implement electoral reforms, and experts on electoral systems reforms in advanced democracies. The workshop examined how different electoral systems options have worked in other countries, and what the implications of similar reforms might be in the United States.

Among other things, the workshop asked:

• How might plurality elections in single-member districts in the United States skew democratic outcomes? Is there a relationship between the electoral system and the problems we see today, such as ideological and political polarization?
• What lessons might be drawn from reforms in other countries? Examples include the single-transferable vote (STV) in Ireland, the alternative vote (AV) in Australia, and mixed-member systems in Italy, Japan, and New Zealand;
• How might we go about reforming American electoral systems -- through local, state, or federal means, and through engagement with which types of political and civil service actors?
• How has ranked-choice voting (RCV) worked in local experiments in the United States, including in Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA; and Cambridge, MA?
• How might electoral systems reforms interact with other proposed political reforms in the United States, including the National Popular Vote for the Electoral College, top-four primaries, and the adoption of redistricting commissions? 

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