Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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.
The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) has concluded its third year of the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program held July 30th-August 17th, 2007.
This year's summer fellows program brought 26 leaders from 22 different countries in transition to Stanford for the three-week program. The fellows combined theory with practice as they studied democracy, development, and the rule of law and the links and interactions among the three areas. Not only did the fellows participate in morning seminars with leading Stanford faculty, but they also attended talks by keynote speakers including Carl Gershman and Judge Pamela Rymer to name a few. Furthermore, this year's summer fellows engaged in group discussions and presentations on key issues of democracy, development, and rule of law within their countries and regions. Fellows brought their experiences and knowledge from a wide background of different professions to the discussions and presented their proposals for addressing real-world problems of democratic and economic development.
Throughout their three-week stay, fellows enjoyed the surrounding Bay Area attractions including San Francisco and Monterey, and had the opportunity to visit institutions such as Google, the San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED Radio. The program closed with a graduation dinner on August 17th, 2007 and fellows departed, eager to put to practice what they had gained from their three-week interaction with each other, with the Stanford faculty, and with visiting speakers.
For the last two decades, Soviet and the Russian leaders worked with Western leaders to integrate the former Soviet empire, and above all else Russia, into the western community of states. Disputes over NATO expansion, the wars in Chechnya, or the bombing campaign against Serbia periodically slowed the process of integration. Nonetheless, leaders in both Russia and the West never let the long-term economic, security, and even ideological benefits of integration be jeopardized by these intermittent disagreements.
Globalization, with its volatile mix of economic opportunity and social disruption, is reorganizing production, redefining work, and provoking fundamental changes in the institutions of economic governance. In a world of global supply chains - with links extending across cultural and political boundaries - corporations, unions, NGOs, national governments, and even international labor, trade and financial organizations are all casting about, searching for new strategic directions and/or novel institutional arrangements.
Do international factors, including democracy promotion policies of Western actors, play a significant role in encouraging or discouraging transitions to democracy? If so, when and how do external incentives, financial and technical aid, socialization techniques, diplomacy or demonstration effects influence domestic decision-makers to attempt to transition to democracy? What combination of domestic conditions and external factors are most likely to lead to the weakening of non-democratic regimes and their replacement with democratic governments?
Branko Milanovic is lead economist in the World Bank research group and visiting professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he was a World Bank country economist for Poland and a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1987 from Belgrade University.
Milanovic is an expert in economies in transition, income distribution, and globalization.
Recent publications include: Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton, 2005); Income and Influence: Social Policy and Emerging Economies, with Ethan Kapstein (Russell Sage, 2002); Inequality and Poverty During the Transition From Market Economy (World Bank, 1998).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room