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.

The Middle East, North Africa and the World, 1907-2008

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Abstract

Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

 

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

9:00 -10:30 Political Economy

Chair: Robert Crews (Stanford University)

Toby Jones (Rutgers University) “Energy and War in the Persian Gulf” (Abstract)

Brandon Wolfe-Honnicutt (California State University, Stanislaus) “Oil, Guns, and Dollars: U.S. Arms Transfers and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods” (Abstract)

10:45-12:15 Ideas and Institutions

Chair: Aishwary Kumar (Stanford University)

Yoav Di-Capua (University of Texas at Austin) “An Iconic Betrayal: Jean Paul Sartre and the Arab World” (Abstract)

Omnia El Shakry (University of California, Davis) “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Psyche in postwar Egypt” (Abstract)

1:30-3:30 Global Palestine

Chair: Hesham Sallam (Stanford University)

Laleh Khalili (University of London, SOAS) “Palestine and Circuits of Coercion” (Abstract)

Ilana Feldman (George Washington University) “Humanitarianism and Revolution: Samed, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and the work of liberation” (Abstract)

3:15-4:45 Circulation of Popular Culture

Chair: Alexander Key (Stanford University)

Hisham Aidi (Columbia University)  “Frantz Fanon and Judeo-Arab Music” (Abstract)

Paul A. Silverstein (Reed College) “A Global Maghreb: Crossroads, Borderlands, and Frontiers in the Rethinking of Area Studies” (Abstract)

5:00 pm Concluding Remarks

Chair: Joel Beinin (Stanford University)

For more information, please contact The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

*Organized by the The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and co-sponsored by the History Department, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Global Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center*

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Conferences

Conference Report: Coalition Against Corruption [Jan. 2014]

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CoCo 2014 was the inaugural edition of the Coalition against Corruption (CoCo) conference co-hosted by The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, Bangalore and Sunlight Foundation, Washington DC. 

CoCo brought together participants from over fifteen countries and across a wide spectrum comprising researchers and academics, elected representatives, government officials, practitioners, civil society organisations, technologists and citizens. 

Over three days, we engaged in conversations on a wide range of issues on the following corruption types: 

  • Corruption in public resource allocation
  • Political financing and lobbying
  • Corruption in public procurement
  • Retail corruption in public services for citizens

CoCo 2014 explored these corruption-types in an innovative format across the themes of rule of law, tools of transparency and accountability and the impact of grassroots pressure groups and digital platforms. 

Besides the four plenaries, CoCo allowed plenty of time for short presentations, for showcasing practitioner successes and for open group discussions. Part of the agenda was also an “Unconference” session for surfacing and discussing critical challenges that went beyond the four corruption-types in focus at CoCo. 

For more information on the conference and its sponsors, please see here. 

Below is the link for the conference report. 

 

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The EU, the US and Partnership in Development Cooperation: Bridging the Gap? [Dec. 2014]

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Author

Karen Del Biondo

Postdoctoral Scholar at CDDRL, 2012-2013

Postdoctoral Fellow, KFG Transformative Power of Europe, Free University of Berlin, 2013-2014

Abstract

Internationally, there has been an increasing call for ‘partnership’ in development cooperation. This refers to development cooperation based on negotiation with the recipient government on an equal basis. While both the E.U. and the U.S. have formally committed to this principle, the E.U. is known to be a frontrunner in partnership-based development, while the U.S. was found to be rather slow in implementing this agenda. This paper investigates the degree to which E.U. and U.S. development policies reflect partnership, particularly regarding general features, aid characteristics, conditionality and aid selectivity and aid motives. It finds that, while E.U. development cooperation has traditionally been stronger focused on partnership than it is the case for the U.S., in recent years the gap is narrowing. On the one hand, E.U. development policies have increasingly resembled those of the U.S., as E.U. development assistance is becoming more focused on security and there are increasing conditions on budget support. While U.S. development policies are still strongly driven by security motives, the U.S. has recently madeefforts to increase country ownership.

 

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Working Papers
Publication Date
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CDDRL Working Papers
Authors
Karen Del Biondo

Egypt’s Bread Intifada: On the Subject of the People

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Abstract:

Over the last four years of upheaval in the Arab world, the notion of “the people,” Egyptian and otherwise, has proven profoundly resilient.  It is these “people”—as individuals and a collective—that are problematically celebrated as subjects finally fulfilling their long-awaited destiny; dismissed as passive objects duped by external forces and incapable of politics; or incited against as dangerous masses capable of destroying the nation. A return to the historical moment of the “Bread Intifada,” of 1977 interrupts the narrative resilience of the alternating sleep and wakefulness of the Egyptian, and more broadly the Arab people. By engaging 18-19 January 1977 as a moment of politics and popular sovereignty, this project challenges who and what count as political, rational, and legitimate. The role food played in protestors’ and government strategies and demands reveals how basic needs function as a trigger of social upheaval as well as a vehicle of political containment. This project attends to the roles that poverty and hunger play in politics in order to detail critiques of the open door policy. It explores how government officials, journalists, and protestors defined and ultimately contained the “poor” and the “hungry.” More importantly, by studying how protestors narrated and represented themselves and the tools they used to make their claims, this project troubles the construction of the “people.”  In so doing, it explores continuity and rupture between 1977 and 2011. 

Speaker Bio:

sherenesphoto Sherene Seikaly

   
Sherene Seikaly is Assistant Professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the co-editor of the Arab Studies Journal, and co-founder and editor of Jadaliyya e-zine. Seikaly's Men of Capital in Times of Scarcity: Economy in Palestine (Stanford University Press, forthcoming) explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body.

This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute and the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

 

 

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Okimoto Conference Room
3rd Floor East Wing
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305

Sherene Seikaly Assistant Professor of History UCSB
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

Crowdsourcing a Meeting of Minds

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Crowdsourcing is an increasingly powerful method for combining amateurs' efforts to recreate an expert's abilities. However, across domains from design to engineering to art, few goals are truly the effort of just one person — even one expert. If we can now crowdsource simple tasks such as image labeling, how might we coordinate many peoples' abilities toward far more complex and interdependent goals? In this talk, I present computational systems for gathering and guiding crowds of experts --- including professional programmers, designers, singers and artists. The resulting collectives tackle problems modularly and at scale, dynamically grow and shrink depending on task demands, and combine into larger organizations. I'll demonstrate how these expert crowds, which we call Flash Teams, can pursue goals such as designing new user experiences overnight and producing animated shorts in two days.
 
As new forms of online work such as Flash Teams emerge, new forms of digital labor challenges also arise. I will introduce our work creating an online platform to facilitate collective action for workers on the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace. Our reflection from this effort: the nature of online communities make it easy to form new forms of publics to form, but equally easy for them to stall, face internal friction, and ultimately disintegrate.

Speaker Bio

msb hoover Michael Bernstein

Michael Bernstein is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction group and is a Robert N. Noyce Family Faculty Scholar. His research in human-computer interaction focuses on the design of crowdsourcing and social computing systems. This work has received Best Paper awards and nominations at premier venues in human-computer interaction and social computing (ACM UIST, ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, AAAI ISWSM). Michael has been recognized with the NSF CAREER award, as well as the George M. Sprowls Award for best doctoral thesis in Computer Science at MIT. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

This event is part of the Liberation Technology Seminar Series. 

School of Education

Room 206

Michael Bernstein Assistant Professor, Computer Science; Co-Director, Human-Computer Interaction Group, Stanford
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
Program on Liberation Technology

One Step at a Time: The Effects of an Early Literacy Text Messaging Program for Parents of Preschoolers

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Abstract

Substantial systematic differences exist in children’s home learning experiences. The few existing parenting programs that have shown promise often are not widely accessible, either due to the demands they place on parents’ time and effort or cost. In this study, we evaluate the effects of READY4K!, a text messaging program for parents of preschoolers designed to help them support their children’s literacy development. The program targets the behavioral barriers to good parenting by breaking down the complexity of parenting into small steps that are easy-to-achieve and providing continuous support for an entire school year. We find that READY4K! positively affected the extent to which parents engaged in home literacy activities with their children by 0.22 to 0.34 standard deviations, as well as parental involvement at school by 0.13 to 0.19 standard deviations. Increases in parental activity at home and school translated into student learning gains in some areas of early literacy, ranging from approximately 0.21 to 0.34 standard deviations. The widespread use, low cost, and ease of scalability of text messaging make texting an attractive approach to supporting parenting practices.

Speaker Bio

susanna loeb Susanna Loeb

Susanna Loeb

Barnett Family Professor of Education, Stanford University

Faculty Director, Center for Education Policy Analysis

Co-Director, Policy Analysis for California Education

 

 

 

This event is part of the Liberation Technology Seminar Series. 

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School of Education

Room 206

Susanna Loeb Faculty Director Faculty Director, Center for Education Policy Analysis
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

CDDRL Senior Honors Program Information Session

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This event is open to Stanford undergraduate students only. 

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is currently accepting applications from eligible juniors due February 27, 2015 who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL) from any university department. CDDRL faculty and current honors students will be present to discuss the program and answer any questions.

For more information on the CDDRL Senior Honors Program, please click here.

 

CDDRL Class of 2015 Class of 2015 in front of the White House with Francis Fukuyama.

 

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Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Honors Program Director

Didi Kuo

Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.

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