Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
How can we encourage illegal actors to seek assistance from the state? Lawbreakers are generally hesitant to engage with the state, out of fear of incurring sanctions for having violated the law. They hesitate to seek law enforcement help if they are victims of crimes. They also shy away from other state institutions that could provide them with assistance such as social and health services, or education. The paper addresses this question by evaluating whether an incentive can increase HIV/AIDS testing amongst lawbreakers, who responds, and why. It presents a randomized field experiment in which sex workers in Beijing, China were assigned an incentive for getting an HIV test.
Speaker Bio:
Margaret Boittin is a fellow at CDDRL. She is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley, and her JD at Stanford. Her dissertation examines regulation in China, focused on state intervention in prostitution from the perspectives of health, policing, and business. Her work combines ethnographic methods, as well as field and survey experiments.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Margaret Boittin has a JD from Stanford, and is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation is on the regulation of prostitution in China. She is also conducting research on criminal law policy and local enforcement in the United States, and human trafficking in Nepal.
Speaker Bio:
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.
Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952. He 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 from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.
Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of a new magazine, The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), and Kansai University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, member of the Board of Governors of the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
CISAC Conference Room
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is 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 Program, 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 most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in the spring of 2022.
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.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School. 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 2024)
A global movement has been underway to use innovative technology platforms to record, store, process, and disseminate public information to advance transparency and accountability. A multitude of actors in government, civil society, and academia have been pioneering innovations to increase citizen engagement and democratic practices worldwide.
On March 11-12, the Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is convening a conference to examine these digital tools and their impact on the development of democratic development. Hosted in partnership with U.C. Berkeley’s Data and Democracy Initiative, the two-day conference will bring together academics, practitioners, and policy-makers to examine the theoretical and practical implications of the right to information, transparency, and governance.
Speakers include former Chief Technology Officer of the Icelandic Constitutional Council, Finnur Magnusson, who will share how Iceland’s public participated in the drafting of a new draft constitution through a crowd-sourcing event on Facebook and Twitter. Twenty-five citizens were elected to be part of a council that formulated the draft constitution. Last year, the council delivered the world’s first “crowd-sourced constitution” that included progressive legal reforms for government transparency, human rights, and civic participation.
Representing the City of San Francisco, Deputy Innovation Officer Shannon Spanhake will be discussing the Open Innovation Program. Led by Mayor Edwin M. Lee, the Open Innovation Program enables job creation, citizen engagement, and government efficiency. Last year the program introduced the Improve SF Campaign to encourage the local community to address civic challenges through an online platform. Spanhake will speak about this initiative on a panel devoted to innovations in civic participation with panelists hailing from U.S. and Canadian city governments.
One of the nation’s leading advocates for open government, John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation, will address his work on increasing transparency in the U.S. government, from legislation and accountability in Congress to ethics and information policy in the executive branch. Academic speakers include: Jeremy M. Weinstein, associate professor of political science at Stanford University; Guy Grossman, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania; Helene Landemore, assistant professor of political science at Yale University; and Daniel Posner, professor of political science at MIT, among others.
Thirty-five speakers will present their papers and initiatives in short plenary sessions and the afternoon will be spent in workshop sessions where participants will have the opportunity to propose a theme of their choice to explore within the right to information theme.
All sessions will be held at Stanford University's Bechtel Conference room in Encina Hall and are free and open to the public. Space is extremely limited so please RSVP here to attend. A complete agenda can be found here.
For conference updates via Twitter please visit #RTITECH.
Abstract:
It has been said that constitutional court judges around the world increasingly participate in a "global judicial dialogue" that causes judges to make increased use of foreign law. This is a dialogue, however, from which the members of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court are largely excluded. Taiwan’s precarious diplomatic situation and intense lobbying by China have effectively prevented the members of Taiwan's Constitutional Court from participating in international judicial gatherings and official visits to foreign courts. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese Constitutional Court routinely engages in extensive consideration of foreign law, either expressly or implicitly, when deciding cases. This fact casts doubt on the notion that "global judicial dialogue" explains judicial use of foreign law. Comparison of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court and U.S. Supreme Court demonstrates that “global judicial dialogue” plays a much smaller role in shaping a court’s utilization of foreign law than institutional factors such as (a) the rules and practices governing the composition and staffing of the court and (b) the extent to which the structure of legal education and the legal profession incentivizes judges and academics to possess expertise in foreign law.
Speaker Bio:
David Law is Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He works in the areas of law and political science, public law, judicial behavior, comparative constitutional law, and comparative judicial politics. Born and raised in Canada, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford, a B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has previously taught at the University of San Diego School of Law and the University of California, San Diego political science department and has been a visiting professor at the National Taiwan University College of Law, Seoul National University School of Law, and Keio University Faculty of Law in Tokyo, and a visiting scholar at the NYU School of Law. His current research focuses on the identification, explanation, and prediction of global patterns in constitutional law, and his recent scholarship on constitutional globalization and the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution has been featured in a variety of domestic and international media.
CISAC Conference Room
Abstract:
Azerbaijan has a unique approach to Internet regulation that represents a ‘middle path’ between open access and censorship. Because the Internet is both unpredictable and a prime venue of unsanctioned content, it threatens what the Azerbaijani government values most: power through consistency, consistency through power.
There are three generations of Internet control that a government can use. The first generation is widespread filtering and direct censorship. Second generation controls manipulate regulations on acceptable content and change the "use of defamation, slander, and ‘veracity’ laws, to deter bloggers and independent media from posting material critical of the government or specific government officials, however benignly (including humor)". The third generation competes with Internet freedom "through effective counter information campaigns that overwhelm, discredit or demoralize opponents".
While Azerbaijan does little first generation control (although it has sporadically filtered opposition news sources, especially before elections), it instead discourages technology use in three ways: media framing (third generation), monitoring (third generation) and arrests (second and third generation). Together these have created psychological barriers that impacts Azerbaijani technology use.
Despite this, the Azerbaijani government repeatedly claims that "there is Internet freedom in Azerbaijan." By electing to define Internet freedom in the strictest sense of the word, the government uses a semantic shift to deflect criticism.
A mixed-methods nationally representative study of Azerbaijani Internet use will demonstrate the detrimental effect Azerbaijani government efforts to dissuade Internet use has on Internet use and free expression.
Katy E. Pearce is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and holds an affiliation with the Ellison Center for Russian East European, and Central Asian Studies. She specializes in technology and media use in the Former Soviet Union. Her research focuses on social and political uses of technologies and digital content in the transitioning democracies and semi-authoritarian states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, but primarily Armenia and Azerbaijan. She has a BA (2001) in Armenian Studies and Soviet Studies from the University of Michigan, an MA (2006) in International Studies from the University of London School for Oriental and African Studies, and a PhD (2011) in Communication from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a Fulbright scholar (Armenia 2007-2008).
Online campus map:
http://campus-map.stanford.edu/
ONLINE RSVP required by 4 pm on 2/19:
http://creees.stanford.edu/event/roundtable-new-europe
Until recently, democracies in new European Union members and aspirants were believed to be on their way to consolidation. Nonetheless, the recent financial crisis has had important political implications, with renewed fears of instability and even reversal of democratic gains. In Hungary, the Fidesz government has changed the Constitution and the electoral system, and has fired more than 10,000 government employees amid complaints of political discrimination. In Romania, austerity measures have led to in-fighting between the president and the parliament-backed prime minister, resulting in a failed attempt to impeach the president, and EU concerns over government attacks on the independence of the Constitutional Court. Moreover, the December 9, 2012, Romanian elections have dealt a decisive victory to the prime minister’s Social Liberal Union, which will likely make co-habitation with the current president crisis-prone. Bulgaria is another recently admitted EU member wherein concerns over the rule of law negatively affected democratic performance, while Serbia has recently elected a nationalist government with connections to the Milosevic regime. These developments raise doubts over the sustainability of New Europe’s democratic gains, and warrant a reassessment of the consolidation of these democracies.
Landau Economics Building, SIEPHR conference room A
This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Table
Abstract:
Ahmed Benchemsi, a Stanford visiting scholar and award-winning Moroccan journalist, will introduce "FreeArabs.com". The new media outlet aims to provide the Arab Spring secular generation with a global platform, a digital haven for speaking out, building ties and developing a strong network. Under the editorial line "Democracy, Secularism, Fun" and with a newsy and arty activist tone, Free Arabs will expose corruption and authoritarianism in the Middle East, invoke genuine democracy as a challenge to Islamists, and fight to restore the real meaning of secularism (ie, freedom of choice) in a region where this word has long been demonized by both oppressive governments and religious zealots.
Speaker Bio:
Ahmed Benchemsi is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His focus is on "The seeds of secularism in the post-Spring Arab world".
Before joining Stanford, Ahmed was the publisher and editor of Morocco's two best-selling newsweeklies TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic), which he founded in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Covering politics, business, society and the arts, Ahmed's magazines were repeatedly cited by major media such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and more, as strong advocates of democracy and secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.
Ahmed received awards from the European Union and Lebanon's Samir Kassir Foundation, notably for his work on the "Cult of personality" surrounding Morocco's King. He also published op-eds in Le Monde and Newsweek where he completed fellowships.
Ahmed received his M.Phil in Political Science in 1998 from Paris' Institut d'Etudes Politiques (aka "Sciences Po"), his M.A in Development Economics in 1995 from La Sorbonne, and his B.A in Finance in 1994 from Paris VIII University.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
CDDRL
616 Serra Street
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305
Ahmed Benchemsi is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His focus is on the democratic grassroots movement that recently burgeoned in Morocco, as in Tunisia and Egypt. Ahmed researches how and under what circumstances a handful of young Facebook activists managed to infuse democratic spirit which eventually inspired hundreds of thousands, leading them to hit the streets in massive protests. He investigates whether this actual trend will pave the way for genuine democratic reform or for the traditional political system's reconfiguration around a new balance of powers - or both.
Before joining Stanford, Ahmed was the publisher and editor of Morocco's two best-selling newsweeklies TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic), which he founded in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Covering politics, business, society and the arts, Ahmed's magazines were repeatedly cited by major media such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and more, as strong advocates of democracy and secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.
Ahmed received awards from the European Union and Lebanon's Samir Kassir Foundation, notably for his work on the "Cult of personality" surrounding Morocco's King. He also published op-eds in Le Monde and Newsweek where he completed fellowships.
Ahmed received his M.Phil in Political Science in 1998 from Paris' Institut d'Etudes Politiques (aka "Sciences Po"), his M.A in Development Economics in 1995 from La Sorbonne, and his B.A in Finance in 1994 from Paris VIII University.
The fourth annual conference of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) organized in collaboration with the University of Tunis, El Manar and the Centre d'études maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT), took place in Tunis on March 28 and 29, 2013. The conference theme 'Building Bridges: Towards Viable Democracies in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya' examines the cornerstones of democratic transition in those countries.
The conference engaged leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from all three countries, as well as international experts, to reflect on the process of democratization in those countries from a comparative perspective. The key issues the conference addressed are:
The conference agenda and report are available for download from the links below.
Sheraton Hotel, Tunis, Tunisia