Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

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Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is Deputy Director, Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL. Prior to coming to Stanford, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author of two single authored books: Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is also co-editor (along with Michael McFaul) of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004).

She received a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. She speaks Russian and French.

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Satre Family Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Program on International Relations, and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton, she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship, awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective, written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World, co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006); After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997); and Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ilia State University in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Stanford University
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution
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Kathryn Stoner-Weiss Deputy Director, Senior Research Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Department of Political Science
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William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science
Chair of the Department of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Senior Fellow, Stanford King Center on Global Development
Landreth Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
CISAC Affiliated Faculty
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Michael Tomz is the William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and the Landreth Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

Tomz has published in the fields of international relations, American politics, comparative politics, and statistical methods. He is the author of Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries and numerous articles in political science and economics journals.

Tomz received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award, given to a scholar who, within 10 years of earning a Ph.D., has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. He has also won the Giovanni Sartori Award for the best book developing or applying qualitative methods; the Jack L. Walker Award for the best article on Political Organizations and Parties; the best paper award from the APSA section on Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior; the best paper award from the APSA section on Experimental Research; and the Okidata Best Research Software Award. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

Tomz has received numerous teaching awards, including the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Cox Medal for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research. In 2017 he received Stanford’s highest teaching honor, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Tomz holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University; a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Hoover Institution, the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, and the International Monetary Fund.

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Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University, where he is a Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy). He is also Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at CDDRL (formerly the Center for Deliberative Democracy).

He is the author of a number of books, including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (Yale University Press, 1991), The Dialogue of Justice (Yale University Press, 1992 ), The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (Yale University Press 1995). With Bruce Ackerman, he is the co-author of Deliberation Day (Yale University Press, 2004). And more recently, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford University Press, 2009 and Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2018).

He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® — a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece, Mongolia, Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil,  and other countries.

Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.

Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab
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Civil war is very common in the developing world, with harmful welfare effects when it occurs. Many fear that the devastation wrought by violent conflict destroys social capital, impedes economic development, and leads to the recurrence of violence (Paul Collier et al. 2003).

In response, donors are injecting large amounts of aid into post-conflict countries. A significant share of this assistance is spent on "community driven reconstruction" (CDR) programs, which support the establishment of new local institutions in order to promote social reconciliation. Whether this assistance has this effect is, however, largely unknown. Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions in fact have positive effects on local patterns of cooperation? We address this question using a randomized field experiment to evaluate the impact of a CDR project in northern Liberia. The project was funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and implemented by the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Findings suggest that post-conflict development aid can have a measureable impact on social cohesion. In future work, we hope to use the survey data to uncover the mechanisms that account for this main finding.

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American Economic Review
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James D. Fearon
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Russia today is best characterized as an over-managed democracy, where elites pay lip service to democratic norms while actively working to undermine them. This model of governance was shaped during Vladimir Putin's first term in office; faced with a choice between strengthening the democratic elements introduced by former President Yeltsin or tightening state control of the political, economic, and societal sectors, the Kremlin opted for the latter. This paper traces the roots of Putin's widespread and enduring popularity, paying special attention to the second Chechen War and state control of the media. Popular support paved the way for a series of legal reforms that consolidated Putin's power within the government, both destroying Russian federalism and undermining almost all checks on the presidency. The successful completion of the ‘power vertical' was showcased by Medvedev's 2008 election, which illustrated the essentially uncompetitive nature of democracy in Russia today. Consolidation of power has impeded economic growth, mainly due to the high levels of corruption fostered by the ruling clique, but the population continues to believe Putin's leadership is the best available option. Putin appears likely to reassume the presidency in 2012, if not sooner.

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Working Papers
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CDDRL Working Papers
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With what now seem like almost weekly product scandals, recalls, and supply chain exposes, the public increasingly wants to know more about the products they are putting in, on, and around their families. Until recently, consumers had no way to find out the full impacts of the products they consumed. However, with advances in information technologies, product assessment methodologies, and web and mobile platforms, there is now a real potential to radically increase transparency in consumer markets and global supply chains. Dara O'Rourke, Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, will discuss an experiment in providing information to the public about the environmental, social, and health impacts of products and companies: GoodGuide. GoodGuide's award-winning web and iPhone apps have been featured recently in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, and even Oprah's Magazine! Dara will discuss GoodGuide's long-term vision, current strategies, and the information technologies they are applying to this challenge.

Dara O’Rourke is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of GoodGuide. Dara’s research focuses on systems for monitoring the environmental, labor, and health impacts of global production systems. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Business Week, Newsweek, Time, and TechCrunch. Dara has served as a consultant to international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a wide range of domestic and international non-governmental organizations. He has degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Political Science, and Energy and Resources, and he previously taught at MIT.

GoodGuide seeks to revolutionize how consumers see and interact with products and companies. GoodGuide provides a suite of tools that offer information about the environmental, social, and health performance of products and companies to consumers at the point of purchase (through web and mobile apps), and that empower people to screen and compare products based on their personal values and concerns. GoodGuide's tools seek to empower millions of consumers to buy products that better match their values, to avoid products that are detrimental to their health, the environment, or issues they care about, and to participate in a more transparent marketplace.

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Dara O'Rourke Good Guide and Associate Professor of Environmental and Labor Policy Speaker UC Berkeley
Seminars
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This talk will describe the role of data analysis in political transitions to democracy. Transitions require accountability of some form, and in the aggregate, accountability is statistical. In this talk, I will present examples of using several different kinds of data to establish political responsibility for large-scale human rights violations.

Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is the Director of the Human Rights Program at the Benetech Initiative which includes the Martus project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Since 1991, Dr. Ball has designed information management systems and conducted statistical analysis for large-scale human rights data projects used by truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Perú, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, and Chad.

Dr. Ball is currently involved in Benetech projects in Colombia, Burma, Liberia, Guatemala and in other countries around the world.


Wallenberg Theater

Patrick Ball, Ph.D. Director of the Human Rights Program Speaker Benetech
Workshops
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