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.
Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America
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Presentation
Democratic Careening: Accountability Dynamics Across Asia
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Abstract:
Democracy in the developing world is generally outliving expectations, but not outperforming them. Nearly four decades after the “Third Wave of democratization” began and more than two decades after the Cold War ended, there has not been any “third reverse wave” of authoritarianism. Political scientists need to transcend our rightful concerns with how and why young democracies collapse or consolidate, and devote more attention to considering how and why they careen. I define democratic careening as regime instability and uncertainty sparked by intense conflict between political actors deploying competing visions of democratic accountability. It occurs when actors who conceive of democracy as requiring substantial inclusivity of the entire populace (i.e. vertical accountability) clash with rivals who value democracy for its constraints against excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, particularly in the political executive (i.e. horizontal accountability). India and Indonesia will be shown to be cases where vertical and horizontal accountability have recently been advanced in tandem more than at each other’s expense, which has kept democratic careening to a relative minimum. By contrast, Thailand and Taiwan have recently experienced more serious clashes between proponents of vertical accountability and defenders of horizontal accountability at a national scale, although in informatively distinctive ways.
About the speaker:
Dan Slater is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His book manuscript examining how divergent historical patterns of contentious politics have shaped variation in state power and authoritarian durability in seven Southeast Asian countries, entitled Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia, was published in the Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics series in 2010. He is also a co-editor of Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford University Press, 2008), which assesses the contributions of Southeast Asian political studies to theoretical knowledge in comparative politics. His published articles can be found in disciplinary journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, and Studies in Comparative International Development, as well as more area-oriented journals such as Indonesia, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, and the Taiwan Journal of Democracy. He has recently received four best-article awards and two best-paper awards from various organized sections of the American Political Science Association and American Sociological Association.
Philippines Conference Room
Dan Slater
Associate Professor of Political Science
Speaker
University of Chicago
Francis Fukuyama
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
0
f.fukuyama@stanford.edu
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
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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Seminars
Taiwan’s Maturing Democracy
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On May 14, the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) at Brookings and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University hosted a seminar analyzing progress and challenges in the consolidation of Taiwan’s democratization and reforms. While the presidential and legislative elections held on January 14 were interpreted by many as proof that Taiwan’s democratic system—including its government and society—has matured since the first transition of political power in 2000, both big-picture and day-to-day challenges to effective democratic governance remain.
The seminar featured leading practitioners and political scientists from Taiwan and the United States. Panelists examined reforms that have been enacted in Taiwan over the past decade, and analyzed their impact on the functions of government agencies, political parties, and other non-governmental organizations. They also discussed how reform and consolidation are affecting policy and public perception of the system.
Participants
9:00 AM — Panel 1: Government
David Brown, Adjunct Professor, Paul H, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Nigel N.T. Li, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Law, Soochow University
Adjunct Professor, Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Taiwan University
Da-Chi Liao, Professor of Political Science, National Sun Yat-sen University
Jiunn-rong Yeh, Professor, College of Law, National Taiwan University
11:00 AM — Panel 2: Politics and Society
John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina
Shelley Rigger, Brown Professor of East Asian Politics Chair, Department of Political Science, Davidson College
Erich Che-wei Shih, News Anchor and Senior Producer, CTi Television
Eric Chen-hua Yu, Assistant Professor of Political Science, National Chengchi University
12:45 PM — Lunch
1:45 PM — Panel 3: Implications of Democratic Consolidation
Richard C. Bush III, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
Larry Diamond, Professor of Political Science; Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University
Alan Romberg, Distinguished Fellow and Director, East Asia Program, The Stimson Center
Ho Szu-yin, Professor, Department of Political Science, National Chengchi University
Audio recordings of the event are available online at the Brookings website here:
Falk Auditorium,
The Brookings Institution,
1775 Massachusetts Ave.,NW
Washington, DC
Larry Diamond
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
ldiamond@stanford.edu
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Conferences
The Spillover Effect of National Health Insurance on Household Consumption Patterns in Taiwan
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Stanford conference to explore indigenous rights in Latin America
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The indigenous population in Latin America ranks among the highest in underdevelopment in the world, experiencing high levels of illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, disease, discrimination, violence and expropriation of their lands. In an effort to examine the common trends, actors, and challenges affecting this vulnerable community, the Program on Human Rights (PHR) at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) together with the Center for Latin American Studies is hosting a one-day conference on Tuesday, May 8 2012 at Stanford University to shed light on the important human rights issues indigenous populations face.
Alejandro Toledo, the former president of Peru and its first president of indigenous descent will deliver the opening address. Toledo was a visiting scholar at CDDRL from 2007-2009. The conference will bring together a diverse group of scholars to present research papers on a range of topics relating to indigenous communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, including: violence and security, education, the effect of climate change, health challenges, cultural survival, national and international property rights and political movements.
According to Helen Stacy, the director of the Program on Human Rights, “The goal of the conference is to create an integrated network of professionals that includes Stanford University students, faculty and researchers, who will advance and support continuous research on human rights issues affecting indigenous people in Latin America.”
The lunchtime keynote address will be delivered by the former first lady of Peru, Eliane Karp-Toledo, an anthropologist and economist who specializes in Andean indigenous cultures. Conference speakers include: Alexia Romero, a second year JD candidate at Stanford University, who will address the issue of indigenous property rights; Oliver Kaplan, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, who will explore civil war violence in Columbia; Paul Kim, assistant dean and chief technology officer for Stanford’s School of Education, who will speak about the impact of mobile phone technology for indigenous people in Latin America; and Claire Mantini-Briggs, visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology, who will discuss inequalities in epidemiology and human rights.
The Center on Latin American Studies and the Program on Human Rights view this conference as the beginning of an ongoing research initiative to examine the state of indigenous rights.
The sessions begin at 9:00 am and will be held in the Bechtel Conference Center. They are free and open to the public. To view the complete program and RSVP to the conference, please click here.
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What Really Happened: Lessons Learned from the Egyptian Revolution
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Abstract:
Ahmed Salah, Egyptian activist and 2011 Draper Hills Summer fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law will tell the true story of how the Egyptian Revolution started, with all the challenges and obstacles and how they were overcome. Debunking the more mainstream popular version of the story, Salah will provide an overview of what has been happening ever since, and examine the current and future possibilities for the revolution in Egypt.
Speaker Bio:
Ahmed Salah was co-founder, strategist and foreign affairs representative of the April 6 Youth Movement until the end of 2012, co-devised and implemented the plan that led to the first day of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, 2011. Salah is one of the co-founders of the Egyptian Movement for Change, Kifaya (Enough!) and was one of its leaders until mid 2008, he also co-founded and lead the first anti-Mubarak youth movement called Youth For Change in 2005 till 2006, and leads the Coalition of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Ahmed Salah
Egyptian activist and 2011 Draper Hills Summer Fellow
Speaker
CDDRL
Seminars
Patterns of Elderly Life Expectancy in Three Chinese Cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei
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Patterns of Elderly Life Expectancy in Three Chinese Cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei
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Head of Stanford Technology Ventures Program joins faculty advisory council
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The Program on Social Entrepreneurship welcomes the newest member of the Faculty Advisory Council, Dr. Tina Seelig, who brings her expertise in high-technology entrepreneurship education to enrich and inform program development. Seelig is the executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering, and also teaches courses at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.
Seelig's latest book published in April 2012 entitled, inGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity, decodes creativity and how it can be taught, learned, and inspired by the everyday. She is also the author of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.
On May 3 at 6:30 p.m., Seelig will debut her latest book at the Stanford Bookstore at a reading and signing of inGenius. For more information, please click here.
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