Venezuela’s democratic future will be shaped not only by political transitions, but by how the country manages its most defining structural feature: vast natural resource wealth. Oil has historically been both a source of opportunity and a driver of institutional fragility, contributing to cycles of centralization, rent-seeking, and democratic erosion. As Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo — former oil minister of Venezuela and one of the architects of OPEC — famously warned, petroleum could become “the devil’s excrement,” bringing with it corruption, waste, and institutional decay.

As Venezuela looks ahead to a potential — yet elusive — democratic opening, a central question emerges: can the country escape the historical trap of resource dependence and build a model in which oil supports — not undermines — shared prosperity and democracy?

This session brings together leading thinkers on political economy, development, and global energy to explore how Venezuela can transform its resource wealth into a foundation for democratic stability, economic diversification, and shared prosperity.

SPEAKERS

• Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
  • Development Strategy
• Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
  • Challenges of State-Building and Institutional Development
• Terry Lynn Karl, Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies, Professor of Political Science, William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow & Senior Research Scholar (by courtesy) of FSI/CDDRL, Stanford
  • Political Constraint – Institutional Design
     

MODERATOR

 Héctor Fuentes, Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University

The Global Islamic Revival represents one of the most significant sociopolitical transformations of the past half-century – marked by exceptional religiosity, support for sharia, and gender segregation. Yet existing theories cannot explain its particular timing or global spread across diverse economies, geographies, and political systems. Why did this movement gain traction from the 1970s onward, transforming societies from Egypt to Indonesia to Britain? This review synthesizes cross-regional evidence to assess competing explanations: deep historical roots, contingent shocks, and economic modernization. I then offer a novel theory. First, I argue that there was a crucial transformation in Muslim identity: from locally-based syncretism to state-attempted secular modernization to a reinvigoration of a transnational Muslim identity. Second, I propose the Prestige-Piety Feedback Loop:  modernization paradoxically amplified strengthened adherence to jurisprudential Islam and deference to credentialed religious authorities. As Muslims gained unprecedented access to jurisprudential knowledge, piety and gender segregation became primary markers of status, with profound consequences for women’s status. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Alice Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the Social Science of Development at King's College London. She has also been a Faculty Associate at Harvard Center for International Development and has held previous appointments at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. Her research focuses on social norms and why they change; the drivers of support for gender equality; and workers' rights in global supply chains.

Dr. Evans is writing a book, The Great Gender Divergence (forthcoming with Princeton University Press). It will explain why the world has become more gender equal, and why some countries are more gender equal than others.

The competence of elected officials affects state performance and economic growth, yet it is often difficult to find high human capital, representative citizens willing to put themselves forward as political candidates. We analyze an intervention designed to address this challenge that combines structured community nominations, private screening of technocratic skills, and information provision to political parties in advance of local elections in Sierra Leone.  Estimates show that this successfully identifies individuals who are higher quality and enjoy broader local support than incumbents and status quo candidates.  While new to elected politics, these individuals remain elite, drawn from traditional chiefly families. One quarter of top nominees formally enter politics, positively self-selected on quality and boosted by an encouragement nudge.  Their entry improves the maximum quality observed in the potential candidate pool and among those selected onto the parties’ lists. These results provide proof of concept that there are better people out there willing to run.  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Katherine Casey is a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the faculty director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in lower-income countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability, the influence of foreign aid on economic development, and the provision of local public infrastructure. Her regional focus is Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why did the Soviet Union organize regular elections, national and local, with one candidate and reported 99.9% support with 99.9% turnout? Were the Soviet citizens so stupid that they did not understand that they have no say in choosing their government? The Reverse Cargo Cult metaphor explains why dictators tell their citizens lies that citizens know to be lies: a verifiable lie told by a politician changes citizens' perceptions of politicians and reduces their willingness to replace them. The model explains the mechanics of authoritarian propaganda that puts much emphasis on persuading citizens about foreign politicians.

Konstantin Sonin is the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests include political economics, economic theory, and conflict. 

Sonin earned MSc and PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University and MA in economics from Moscow’s New Economic School (NES). Before joining the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty and as a vice-president of the New Economic School and HSE University in Moscow. Over two decades, he has guest-lectured in dozens of universities, summer schools, and high schools across Russia and worked part-time as a teacher of economics in a high school.

His research has been published in leading academic outlets in economics and political science. In addition to academic work, Sonin blogs, tweets, and op-eds on Russian political and economic issues. In May 2024, Russian authorities sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison (in absentia) for posting information about the atrocities committed by Russian occupying forces in the town of Bucha in Ukraine.

European state development is often used as a model for the emergence of modern nation-states and the international state system. Yet despite many accounts seeking to explain how the European state developed, there is disagreement about fundamental concepts, including what counts as “Europe” and which polities qualify as “states.” This paper examines the implications of different definitions of the European state for our understanding of political development. We give special consideration to political fragmentation, long viewed as a critical prerequisite for Europe’s development of pro-democratic and growth-promoting political institutions. We find that the distinct measures lead to very different conclusions, undermining the idea of European state formation as a uniform process.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Drawing from the author’s latest book, Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible (Oxford University Press, 2025), this talk explores how the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan incubates the historical struggle for democracy in the Arab world. Here, the authoritarian monarchy has never suffered revolution or regime change. Yet the economy struggles, there is neither water nor oil, and perpetual protests punctuate the streets. An invention of British colonialism, the kingdom’s fragile borders are still buffeted by refugee crises and regional conflict, and its geopolitical fate has become encaged by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through it all, Jordan’s past and present deliver astonishing narratives of democratic resilience. Opposition forces within society have long battled to transform their autocratic regime—only to be blunted by repression, statecraft, and Western interests. Yet these dreams and demands persist today, making Jordan a surprising fulcrum for the balance of democracy in the Middle East.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Sean Yom is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Senior Fellow at Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN). His research explores the dynamics of authoritarian institutions, economic development, and US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf. His most recent books include Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible (Oxford University Press, 2025) and The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research since the Arab Uprisings (co-edited with Marc Lynch and Jillian Schwedler; Oxford University Press, 2022).; Oxford University Press, 2022). He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the editorial committee of Middle East Report. He is also a former Stanford CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow (2009-10). AB, Brown University (2003); PhD, Harvard University (2009).

To mark the fifteen-year anniversary of Egypt's January 25 Uprising, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development (ARD) invites you to a panel discussing major findings from the recently released edited volume, Egypt's New Authoritarian Republic, edited by Robert Springborg and Abdel-Fattah Mady and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers (2025).

MODERATOR: Hesham Sallam

SPEAKERS:

• Robert Springborg
• Hossam el-Hamalawy
• May Darwich