Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

LAD Workshop: Strathmore Business School 2016

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This five-day intensive program for a select group of mid-high-level East African government officials and business leaders is designed to address how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a larger, more constructive role as a force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of this LAD-SBS program is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. For example, they must have a solid grasp of country-specific economic, financial, political and cultural realities. Most importantly, they must have a sense of how to set priorities, sequence actions and build coalitions. This program is designed to provide participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions. 

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Nairobi, Kenya

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Leadership Academy for Development Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development

Tales of freedom and justice

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The 12th annual Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program gathered 25 democracy leaders from around the developing world for a three-week training program on democracy, good governance, and the rule of law reform. Selected from a large pool of applicants, the fellows have diverse backgrounds across sectors and geographies, working in civil society, public service, social enterprise, media and technology.

Fellows were instructed by an all-star roster of Stanford scholars and policy experts, including former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama and Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Fellows also met industry leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google, democracy leaders such as Carl Gershman of the National Endowment for Democracy and others. During the program, they shared their personal stories about the struggle in their home countries, but also stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, stories of optimism and endurance.

You can find some of their talks below and for more videos visit our YouTube channel. 

 

Kasha Nabagesera (Uganda)

The founding member of Uganda's LGBTI Movement

"I am the only founding member of Uganda's LGBTI movement who is still based in the country"

 

 

Kasha Nabagesera is the executive director of Kuchu Times Media Group, the first LGBTI media platform in Africa. She is known as the “founding mother” of the LGBTI movement in Uganda - where homosexuality is illegal - advocating for equal rights and the eradication of all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Listen to her story about big losses and big wins, everyday dangers and hope.

Rafael Marques de Morais (Angola)

Investigative reporter, MakaAngola

"Why the government is after you when you are sleeping so much?"

Rafael Marques de Morais is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist in Angola, working to investigate corruption and abuse of power by the country’s ruling family. He founded Makaangola, a watchdog website dedicated to exposing corruption and human rights abuses in Angola. Find out why his son thinks that his father is harmless for the government.

Belabbes Benkredda (Algeria)

The founder of Munathara Initiative

"Debate is the central part of the democratic equation."

Belabbes Benkredda is an award-winning social innovator and the founder of the Munathara Initiative, the Arab world’s largest online and television debate forum highlighting voices of youth, women, and marginalized communities. Operating in 11 Arab countries, Munathara’s monthly prime-time TV debates are the only civil society-run, independent political talk program on Arabic television. Munathara Initiative organized over 650 workshops with more than 10 thousand participants from 12 countries. They have around 90 thousand of registered users. More importantly, Munathara Initiative provided safe public space for young women to voice their opinions and mark their presence in public, traditionally dominated by the middle-aged men.  

 

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LAD Course: Case Teaching and Case Study Writing for Public Policy at the Ukrainian Catholic University

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This workshop course is designed to develop skills that faculty in policy-focused universities and training institutions can use both to develop interactive and participant-centered teaching styles and to help faculty develop skills in case writing.

The first two days mostly involve "how to" lessons on both teaching and writing, interspersed with activities where the participants work in teams to prepare case teaching plans and class openings that they present to all of the participants. The initial emphasis is on case teaching, since before participants can write a successful case, they must understand how learning in a case-oriented classroom takes place.  The workshop includes case discussions on several existing cases, combined with a “post-mortem” of what worked and what did not in both the written case and the case discussion. We discuss core teaching strategies including development of time management plans, whiteboard management plans, how to pose opening questions, “cold-calling” versus “warm calling,” and how to close a case-discussion class with “Take-Aways.”  

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Ukrainian Catholic University campus

Lviv, Ukraine

Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development

LAD Course: LBSNAA Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration

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This five day intensive program for a select group of mid- and high-level Indian government officials and business leaders is designed to address how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a larger, more constructive role as a force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of this LAD-LBSNAA program is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. This program is designed to provide participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions. 

Download pdf

LBSNAA Campus

Mussoorie, India

Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development

Introducing CDDRL's incoming pre- and postdoctoral fellows

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Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce our four incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2016-2017 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community. 

The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research, while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL. 

Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.

Topics of the incoming cohort include electoral fraud in Russia, how the elite class impacts state power in China, the role of emotions in support for democracy in Zimbabwe, and market institutions in Nigeria. 

Learn more in the Q&A below.

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Natalia Forrat

CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow

Hometown: Tomsk, Russia

Academic Institution: Northwestern University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Sociology, April 2017

Research Interests: authoritarianism, state capacity, social policy, civil society, trust, Russia and post-communist countries

Dissertation Title: The State that Betrays the Trust: Infrastructural State Power, Public Sector Organizations, and Authoritarian Resilience in Putin's Russia

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? I study the connection between state capacity and political regimes - the topic that is at the core of many research initiatives at CDDRL. Learning more about this work and receiving feedback for my dissertation will enrich and sharpen my analysis, while helping me to place it into a comparative context. I am looking forward to discussing my work with the faculty who study the post-Soviet region. I also will explore policy implications of my work with the help of policy experts at CDDRL.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? Besides finishing writing my dissertation, I will workshop three working papers to prepare them for publication. The first one argues that Putin's regime used the school system to administer a large-scale electoral fraud in 2012 presidential elections; the second one shows how the networks of social organizations were used by subnational autocrats to strengthen the regime; and the third one will look at the factors that make the abuse of such organizations more difficult in some regions. In addition to these papers I will continue developing my post-graduation research project exploring the relationship between social trust and distrust, institutions, political competition, and democratization.

Fun fact: I have spent 25 years of my life in Siberia, and I can tell you: Chicago winters are worse!

 
 

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Shelby Grossman

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Reading, MA

Academic Institution: Harvard University

Discipline & Graduation Date:  Government, Summer 2016

Research interests: political economy of development, private governance, market institutions, Sub-Saharan Africa, survey methods

Dissertation Title: The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: Evidence from Lagos

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? I was attracted to CDDRL largely for its community of scholars. Affiliated faculty work on the political economy of development and medieval and modern market institutions, topics that are tied to my own interests.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? I plan to prepare a book manuscript based on my dissertation, a project that explains variation in the provision of pro-trade institutions in private market organizations through the study of physical marketplaces in Nigeria. In addition, I will continue to remotely manage an on-going project in Nigeria (with Meredith Startz) investigating whether reputation alleviates contracting frictions. I also plan to work on submitting to journals a few working papers, including one on the politics of non-compliance with polio vaccination in Nigeria (with Jonathan Phillips and Leah Rosenzweig). 

Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, not all cheese is vegetarian. I have a website to help people determine if a cheese is vegetarian or not: IsThisCheeseVegetarian.com. 

 
 

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Daniel Mattingly

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Oakland, California

Academic Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science, Summer 2016

Research Interests: Governance, rule of law, state building, authoritarian politics, Chinese politics

Dissertation Title: The Social Origins of State Power: Democratic Institutions and Local Elites in China

What attracted you to CDDRL?  The Center has a fantastic community of scholars and practitioners who work on the areas that I'm interested in, including governance and the rule of law. I'm excited to learn from the CDDRL community and participate in the Center's events. The fellowship also provides me with valuable time to finish my book manuscript before I start teaching.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? While at CDDRL, I plan to prepare my book manuscript and to work on some related projects on local elites and state power in China and elsewhere. 

Fun fact: I grew up on an organic farm in Vermont.

 
 

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Lauren E. Young

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Saratoga, CA

Academic Institution: Columbia University 

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science (Comparative Politics, Methods), May 2016 (defense), Oct 2016 (degree conferral)

Research Interests: political violence, political economy of development, autocratic persistence, democratization, protest, electoral violence

Dissertation Title: The Psychology of Repression and Dissent in Autocracy

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? As a graduate of the CISAC honors program when I was an undergraduate at Stanford, I have seen first-hand how intellectually stimulating, collaborative, and plugged into policy CDDRL is. While at the center I will be revising my dissertation work on the political psychology of participation in pro-democracy movements in Zimbabwe for submission as a book manuscript, and moving forward new projects that similarly seek to understand how different forms of violence by non-state actors affects citizens' preferences and decision-making. Because of its deep bench of experts on autocracy, narco-trafficking, and insurgency, CDDRL will add enormous value to these projects.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL?  During my fellowship year, my primary goal is to revise my research on Zimbabwe into a book manuscript. I defended my dissertation as three stand-alone articles, including two experiments showing that emotions influence whether opposition supporters in Zimbabwe express their pro-democracy preferences and a descriptive paper showing that repression has a larger effect on the behavior of the poor. To prepare the book manuscript during my fellowship, I will bring in additional quantitative and qualitative descriptive evidence and tie the three papers together into a cohesive argument about how opposition supporters make decisions about participation in protest, why emotions have such a large effect on these decisions, and how this affects variation across individuals and the strategic choices of autocrats and activists.

Fun fact: During my fieldwork I took an overnight train from Victoria Falls to a southern city in Zimbabwe and hitch-hiked into a national park. It got a little nerve-wracking when night started to fall, but ended with  an invitation to a barbecue! 

 

 
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Stanford CDDRL calls on the Bahraini authorities to release travel ban on Sheikh Al Salman

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Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law calls on the Bahraini authorities to release the travel ban on Sheikh Maytham Al Salman. Sheikh Al Salman was selected to participate in the 2016 Draper Hills Summer Fellowship Program at Stanford University from over 500 applicants based on the significant contributions that he has made to build more tolerant societies to counter violence and extremism in the Middle East.

 

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The faculty and staff at CDDRL have been notified that his passport has been held – without his consent - by the Bahraini authorities who have refused to release it to allow him to travel. We are very disappointed and shocked by the Bahraini government’s decision to prevent Sheikh Al Salman from traveling to attend our academic program at Stanford University. We join the international community in condemning this decision and call upon the Bahraini authorities to reverse this decision and allow Sheikh Al Salman to participate in our leadership development program this July.

 

Sheikh al-Salman is well recognized for his work building tolerant societies in the Middle East and countering incitement to violence and discrimination in accordance with international human rights standards, in particular respect for freedom of expression as per Articles 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Bahrain is not a signatory. He is the director of Middle East North Africa Coalition Against Hate Speech; chairperson of Bahrain Interfaith; head of the religious freedom unit at Bahrain Human Rights Observatory; member of the UN committee for partnering with Interfaith leaders; member of the UN advisory committee for the role of religious leaders in preventing genocide; and Arabian Gulf representative of International association for religious freedom. Sheikh Al Salman is applauded for his calls for equal citizenship, his condemnation of all forms of discrimination and his opposition to violence and extremism in the name of religion.

 

Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Sarina Beges, Associate Director Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

 

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LAD Course: LBS National Academy of Administration

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This five day intensive program for a select group of mid-level Indian government officials is designed to address how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a larger, more constructive role as a force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of this LAD-LBSNAA program is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. For example, they must have a solid grasp of country-specific economic, financial, political and cultural realities. Most importantly, they must have a sense of how to set priorities, sequence actions and build coalitions. This program is designed to provide participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions. 

Mussoorie-248179 (Uttarakhand)

India

Workshops

LAD Course: Strathmore Business School 2016

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This five day intensive program for a select group of mid- and high-level African government officials and business leaders is designed to address how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a larger, more constructive role as a force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of this LAD-Strathmore program is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. For example, they must have a solid grasp of country-specific economic, financial, political and cultural realities. Most importantly, they must have a sense of how to set priorities, sequence actions and build coalitions. This program is designed to provide participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions. 

Nairobi, Kenya

Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development Workshops

LAD Course: CIPE and Ukrainian Catholic University

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This workshop course is designed to develop skills that faculty in policy-focused universities and training institutions can use both to develop interactive and participant-centered teaching styles and to help faculty develop skills in case writing. The first two days mostly involve "how to" lessons on both teaching and writing, interspersed with activities where the participants work in teams to do things like prepare case teaching plans and class openings that they present to all of the participants. The initial emphasis is on case teaching, since before participants can write a successful case, they must understand how learning in a case-oriented classroom takes place.  The workshop includes case discussions on several existing cases, combined with a “post-mortem” of what worked and what did not in both the written case and the case discussion. We discuss core teaching strategies including development of time management plans, whiteboard management plans, how to pose opening questions, “cold-calling” versus “warm calling,” and how to close a case-discussion class with “Take-Aways." In discussing case-writing, the course addresses issues such as how to decide on a case theme and learning objectives, what material should be included and left out (or relegated to appendices), and how to build participant engagement into the way a case is written.  Later workshop sessions will include topics such as how to write multi-player simulation exercises that have students play roles of participants in the policy situation.

Lviv, Ukaine

Workshops
Leadership Academy for Development Workshops
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