Abstract: 

Do human rights institutions work? To answer this question we examine the effect of these institutions on two kinds of outcomes: physical integrity rights (freedom from torture, government-sponsored killing, political imprisonment, and the like) and civil and political rights (freedoms of speech, assembly, movement, and religion, as well as voting and workers' rights). Our analysis covers up to 143 countries, including some of the world's worst abusers, over the period 1981 to 2004. We arrive at two main conclusions. First, national human rights institutions improve physical integrity outcomes but not civil and political rights practices. This finding reflects a greater worldwide focus on extreme violations such as torture, but also points to widespread resistance among non-Western governments to "Western" civil and political rights standards. Second, we find that time matters: the establishment of a human rights institution contributed initially to greater reports of physical integrity abuses, but practices improved significantly after only four or five years. These institutions shine a bright spotlight on countries negative practices, making it more likely that abuses are detected and cataloged. Over time, however, they help to curb egregious human rights violations. Our findings suggest that human rights institutions are not just futile exercises in governmental hypocrisy; rather, they work to improve human rights practices regardless of the intent of governments.

Speaker bios: 

Image

His recent publications include “Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions” (with W. Cole) American Sociological Review 702-25 2013; “National Incorporation of Global Human Rights: Worldwide Expansion of National Human Rights Organizations, 1966-2004” (with Jeong-Woo Koo).  Social Forces. 87:1321-1354. 2009; “Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-national Analyses, 1975-2008” (with J. Meyer and P. Bromley). Sociology of Education 83: 111-134.  2010; “The Worldwide Spread of Environmental Discourse in Social Science Textbooks, 1970-2010 (with P. Bromley and J. Meyer) Comparative Education Review 55, 4; 517-545. 2011; ‘The Formalization of the University: Rules, Roots, and Routes” (With T. Christensen) Higher Education 65: 695-708 2013; and “The World Society Perspective: Concepts, Assumptions, and Strategies” Comparative Education 423-39 2012.

Image

Recent publications include “Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions, 1981 to 2004,” American Sociological Review 78(4):702–725 (with Francisco Ramirez); “Strong Walk and Cheap Talk: The Effect of the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights on Policies and Practices,” Social Forces 92(1):165–194; “Government Respect for Gendered Rights: The Effect of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on Women’s Rights Outcomes, 1981–2004,” International Studies Quarterly 57(2):233–249; and “Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007,” American Journal of Sociology 117(4):1131–1171. He is also author of Uncommon Schools: The Global Rise of Postsecondary Institutions for Indigenous Peoples (Stanford University Press, 2011).

Abstract:

What explains the decline of clientelism in advanced democracies? This paper examines the United States and Britain from 1880-1920, a period in which political parties shifted from clientelistic to programmatic competition. I theorize that business pressures incentivize parties to change clientelistic strategies. Using archival and quantitative evidence, I find that the rise of managerial capitalism, the establishment of national business organizations, and the increasing costs of clientelism to economic development led businesses to push for programmatic reforms.

Speaker Bio:

Didi Kuo is a fellow with the Project on American Democracy at CDDRL. Her research interests include clientelism, democracy, and corruption. Her book project investigates clientelism in historical and comparative perspective using archival resources and new measures of electoral fraud. She received her PhD in political science from Harvard University in 2013.

Abstract:

Prior work on colonialism has shown that colonial institutions can influence modern developments outcomes, but has not examined the distributional effect of colonialism within societies. This chapter examines how the strategic goals of the colonial state altered the distribution of wealth across Indian caste groups, and how these differences have persisted into the post-independence period. Colonial administrators were only likely to transfer formal or informal power to the precolonial elite if they were secure militarily. This theory is tested using an empirical strategy that uses European wars as an exogenous determinate of colonial military stress. In areas annexed at times of European war, precolonial elites have low levels of wealth today relative to other groups, while in areas annexed at times of peace in Europe precolonial elites retain a more substantial economic advantage. The results highlight the variable impact of colonialism within societies, the strategic nature of colonial policy choices, and the long term consequences of colonial conquest. 

Speaker bio:

Alexander Lee's research focuses on the historical factors governing the success or failure of political institutions, particularly in South Asia and other areas of the developing world. His dissertation examined the ways in which colonialism changed the distribution of wealth in Indian society, and the ways in which these changes affected the development of caste identities. Additional research areas include the study of colonialism and European expansion in a cross- national perspective, and the causes of political violence, especially terrorism. His work has been published in World Politics and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Alex earned his PhD from Stanford in 2013. More information on his work can be found on his website: https://people.stanford.edu/amlee/

The Mediterranean Studies Forum presents a panel discussion about the popular protests and recent developments in the Middle East.

Co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, and the Stanford Humanities Center Workshop on Ethnic Minorities, Religious Communities and Rights and Democracy in the Modern Middle East and Central Asia.

Amr Adly (Stanford University), “Egypt after June 30^th: Between Abortive and Potential Fascism”

Adly is postdoctoral fellow in Stanford CDDRL’s Arab Reform and Democracy Program. He received his Ph.D. in political and social Sciences from the European University. His research focuses on state reform and development in the context of the Middle East. He is currently working on a project about entrepreneurial reforms in Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab Spring.

Ayça Alemdaroğlu (Stanford University), “Youth and Politics in Turkey”

Alemdaroglu is a lecturer in Stanford's Introductory Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cambridge. Her research and teaching interests include social inequality and change, youth experiences, gender and sexuality, experiences of modernity, commercialization of education, nationalism and eugenics. In Winter 2014, she will teach ANTHRO 149A/URBANST144 Tahrir to Taksim: Cities and Citizens in the Middle East.

Alexander Key (Stanford University), “Should It Matter What We Call It? Islamic, Democratic, and Spring Politics”

Key is assistant professor of Arabic and comparative literature at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University. His research focuses on literary and intellectual history of the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds from the seventh century, together with Western political thought and philosophy. He is currently working on two book projects about the Arabic philosophy of language during the 11th century. Key is founding editor of New Middle Eastern Studies, where he has edited articles on women Iran's nuclear program, Salafi conceptions of citizenship, and art in the Arab Spring. 

Kabir Tambar  (Stanford University), “Popular Protest and the Politics of the Present in Turkey”Panelists will discuss the contemporary political situation in the Middle East with special respect to Egypt and Turkey.

Tambar is assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. As an anthropologist of the Middle East and Muslim world, he has published widely on secular political identities, contemporary appropriations of and challenges to Turkish nationalism, and the politics of devotional affect in Alevi Muslim contexts. His book, The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Voice and the Demands of History in Turkey, is coming out from Stanford University Press in 2013.

Abstract
We know poor governance when we see it, and we also have models of effective, responsive, and accountable governments across the globe. But the truth is that we know much less about how change happens. The limits of legal reforms and institutional forms imported from the outside are apparent, and additional resources are rarely a solution on their own.  Scholars increasingly agree on the need to develop reforms with greater consideration of local context and capacity.  New technologies create opportunities for institutional design, yet many widely touted interventions fail to attract government and citizen users.

Against this backdrop, Associate Professor of Political Science Jeremy Weinstein and I partnered over the 2012-2013 academic year to design the Governance Collaboratory. Our goal is to use the methods of human centered design to help civil society actors and government reformers develop innovations with the potential to disrupt the status quo. We conceived and tested five prototypes for our program, which involved applying the process of design thinking to various governance challenges around the world. I will discuss the key insights we uncovered relating to the substantive problems we addressed, as well as our findings on the utility of design thinking to support governance innovation.

Jenny Stefanotti is currently a fellow at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, where she applies design thinking to her work at the intersection of technology and international development. She is co-founder of the Governance Collaboratory, a Stanford-based program which supports civil society activists and government reformers to develop innovations that make government more efficient, empower people to have a say in how they are governed, and hold those in power accountable for what they deliver.

Prior to her post at the d.school, Jenny spent over ten years addressing strategic challenges across private, public, and non-profit sectors. She holds a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Abstract
To what extent can information and technology be used to eliminate government corruption? In this talk, I examine an ambitious "open governance" experiment by the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within a bureaucracy to reduce corruption. In this talk, I examine attempts of the state in achieving transparency through intra-state surveillance using technologies and by creating a hybrid state-civil society institution to involve beneficiaries to openly inspect formerly closed government records through a process of "social audits". While, acknowledging that endemic corruption that tends to happen in the local "last mile" of such schemes have reduced, I show how local bureaucrats and politicians also discovered ways to subvert these efforts of control. My work suggests that the future of such informational transparency government programs lies in recognizing that the move towards "openness" is more of a political project than a technological and bureaucratic one that needs wider participation from those it intends to benefit.

 Rajesh Veeraraghavan is a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information. Prior to his doctoral work, he was an associate researcher at Microsoft Research, India, where his work focused on building appropriate technologies for agriculture. In his past, he worked as a software developer at Microsoft in the US for several years. He has volunteered for the non-profit Association for India's Development in the US for a decade. Veeraraghavan holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Clemson University, Master's degree in Economics from Cleveland State University, and Bachelor's degrees in Economics and Management from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India.