Stanford University

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.

Aytuğ Şaşmaz

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CDDRL Postdoctoral Scholar, 2021-22
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I am a political scientist (PhD degree expected in July 2021 from Harvard) working on political parties, social welfare policies and local governance, primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. My dissertation project focuses on secular parties in the region and explores why they could not form a robust electoral alternative to the Islamist parties in the post-uprisings period. In other projects, I explore voters' responses to executive aggrandizement (focusing on Turkey), and social welfare in the context of ethnic and organizational diversity (focusing on Lebanon). Prior to PhD, I worked as an education policy analyst in Turkey, managing several research projects in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, World Bank and UNICEF. I hold a BA degree in Political Science from Boğaziçi, and Master's degrees from the LSE and Brown. 

Islamists and the Arab Uprisings

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This event is cosponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and the Ten Years On Project, www.TheArabUprisings.org

ABSTRACT

During the height of the mass uprisings against authoritarian rule, excitement about the prospects for a more just and representative political order across the Arab region was often tempered by questions concerning the role that Islamist parties would play in post-authoritarian transitions. Movements that maintained deep social roots but were often on the margins of state power were poised to implement an Islamist political project decades in the making. The outcomes of the subsequent transitions, particularly the legacy of destructive civil conflicts, foreign interventions, and authoritarian resurgence, have frequently obscured attempts to understand the impact of the Arab uprisings on Islamism. 

This talk examines these recent developments by placing them within a broader historical analysis that traces the evolution of Islamist thought and activism from its tentative embrace of the nation state to its wholehearted entry into national party politics. It argues that, by the eve of the uprisings, the posture of Islamist movements reflected a set of political commitments that had emerged largely at the expense of their ideological program and social mission. Rooted in the historical and recent acceptance of state institutions and political structures, expressions of Islamism by parties across the Arab region reflected a shift that subsumed long held beliefs beneath the needs of (alternately or in combination) democratic pluralism and political expediency, most clearly visible in the transformation of Tunisia’s Ennahda Party. That tension has been exacerbated in the wake of political defeats experienced by many of these movements, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. While the “Islamist idea” is likely to endure its current bout with state repression, its survival as a political force in the future will depend on its determination to complete this evolution, a process that was both accelerated and interrupted during the critical moments of the Arab uprisings.

SPEAKER BIO

Abdullah Al Arian

Abdullah Al-Arian is an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar where he specializes in the modern Middle East and the study of Islamic social movements. He is the author of Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat's Egypt (Oxford University Press). His upcoming book compares the historical experiences of Islamist movements in six different Arab states and will be published by Cambridge University Press. He is also editor of the Critical Currents in Islam page on Jadaliyya ezine.

 

*Note: Event time listed above is PST.

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Abdullah Al-Arian Associate Professor of History Georgetown University in Qatar
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Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

The Autocratic Middle Class

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About the Event:

The Autocratic Middle Class studies the post-communist middle classes – not as a force for democracy, but as a source of support for autocracy and authoritarian resilience. It helps to explain why authoritarianism deepened across the ex-Soviet region over a period when the middle class was rapidly expanding; why anti-Putin protests in Russia have thus far failed to achieve a critical mass; and why it has been so difficult to consolidate democracy in Ukraine. Drawing on attitudinal surveys, unique data on protest participation, and extensive fieldwork in the former Soviet Union, this book shows that state dependence weakens the middle classes’ incentives to prefer and pursue democracy and sheds light on why development doesn’t necessarily lead to democratization.

 

About the Speaker:

Bryn Rosenfeld
Bryn Rosenfeld is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. Her research interests include political behavior, development and democratization, protest, post-communist politics, and survey methodology. Her new book, The Autocratic Middle Class examines how middle-class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilience. She is the recipient of a Juan Linz Best Dissertation Prize and a Best Article Award honorable mention, both by the American Political Science Association’s Democracy & Autocracy Section. Her work appears in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Sociological Methods & Research. She holds a PhD from Princeton.

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Bryn Rosenfeld Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University
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Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East

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Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East Agenda (1 of 2)

Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East Agenda (2 of 2)

Panel 1: Digital Activism

Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Opening Remarks: Marc Lynch, Eileen Donahoe, and Larry Diamond

Moderator: Hesham Sallam

  • Wafa Ben-Hassine: “The Hyper-Aware and Not-So-Aware: What's Next for the MENA Region's Activists and Society at Large Vis-a-Vis the Internet?”
  • Adel Iskander: “Re(Membering) Culture and Heritage: Egypt's Latest Political Turf War”
  • Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld: “Civilian Behavior on Social Media During Civil War”
  • Joshua Tucker: “Beyond Liberation Technology? The Recent Uses of Social Media by Pro-Democracy Activists”

 

Panel 2: Authoritarian Abuses of Internet Technologies

Thursday, May 27, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Marc Lynch

  • Marwa Fatafta: “Transnational or Cross-Border Digital Repression in the MENA Region”
  • Andrew Leber: “Social Media Manipulation in the MENA: Inauthenticity, Inequality, and Insecurity” (Co-authored paper with Alexei Abrahams)
  • Marc Owen Jones: “Tracking Adversaries: The Evolution of Manipulation Tactics on Gulf Twitter”
  • Xiao Qiang: “Chinese Digital Authoritarianism and Its Global Impact”

 

Panel 3: Government Reshaping of Norms and Practices to Constrain Online Activity

Tuesday, June 1, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Eileen Donahoe

  • Ahmed Shaheed: “Binary Threat: How State Cyber Policy and Practice Undermines Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa Region”
  • Mona Elswah, Mahsa Alimardani: "The Hurdles Involved in Content Moderation in the MENA Region"
  • Mohamed Najem: “The Role of the Gulf in Governing Digital Space in the Arab Region”
  • James Shires: “The Techno-Regulation of Critical Communications Infrastructures and Their Political Potential in the Gulf”
  • Alexei Abrahams: “The Web (In)Security of Middle Eastern Civil Society and Media”

 

Panel 4: Cross-Border Information Operations

Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Larry Diamond

  • Alexandra Siegel: “Official Foreign Influence Operations: Transnational State Media in the Arab Online Sphere”
  • Hamit Akin Unver: “Russian Disinformation Operations in Turkey: 2015-2020”
  • Shelby Grossman and Renee DiResta: “In-House vs. Outsourced Trolls: How Digital Mercenaries Shape State Influence Strategies”
  • Nathaniel Gleicher: “Covert Manipulation, Overt Influence, Direct Exploit: Understanding and Countering Influence Operations in the Middle East and Beyond”
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When Beijing Goes to Washington: Autocratic Lobbying Influence in Democracies

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On April 21, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted Professor Erin Baggott Carter, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her program, "When Beijing Goes to Washington: Autocratic Lobbying Influence in Democracies," explored how lobbying from China and China-based companies can affect policy in the United States. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

Professor Baggot Carter based her talk on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. According to Baggot Carter, the evidence suggests that Chinese government lobbying makes legislators at least twice as likely to sponsor legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests. Moreover, US media outlets that participated in Chinese-government sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. These results suggest that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity. Watch now: 

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Professor Erin Baggot Carter tells us how autocratic lobbying affects political outcomes and media coverage in democracies.

Stanford Scholars Reflect on the Legacy of Egypt's January 25 Uprising

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In a webinar dated, February 12, 2021, a panel of Stanford University scholars shared their reflections on the legacy of the January 25, 2011 Uprising in Egypt. Marking the 10-year anniversary of the uprising and the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the panel examined the trajectory of authoritarianism in the country over the past decade. Moderated by ARD Associate-Director Hesham Sallam, the panel included former CDDRL Visiting Scholar Nancy Okail, Stanford Professor of History Emeritus Joel Beinin, and CDDRL Senior Research Scholar Amr Hamzawy. The panelists addressed a variety questions including: How have political developments in Egypt and elsewhere in recent years informed our understanding of the January 25 Uprising and its significance? In what ways have authoritarian institutions adapted in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising and how have they shaped the prospects for political change and/or stability? Where are the sites of political contestation and resistance in today’s Egypt?

 

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Joel Beinin Nancy Okail Amr Hamzawy Hesham Sallam
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The Global Infrastructure Gap: Potential, Perils, and a Framework for Distinction

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About the Event:  Poor countries lack infrastructure services: 1.2 billion people have no electricity, and 1 billion live more than 2 kilometers from an all-weather road. In 2015, the World Bank initiated a surge of interest in financing this need when it claimed that rich-country private capital could close the infrastructure services gap, make money, and achieve the sustainable development goals by moving from “billions to trillions” in infrastructure investment in poor countries. This paper assesses and challenges the prevailing gap thinking by introducing an equilibrium framework that distinguishes those poor countries in which the Bank’s three-fold claim is tenable from those where it is not.

 

Peter Blair Henry
About the Speaker:  Peter Blair Henry is Dean Emeritus of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. The youngest person to hold the position, he assumed the Deanship in January 2010 and joined the NYU Stern Faculty as the William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Finance. Henry joined NYU Stern from Stanford University, where he was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics, the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar, and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Henry currently serves as a director of the boards of Citigroup and Nike, as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and is a member of the advisory boards of Protiviti, a global consulting firm, and Biospring Partners, a growth-stage firm that invests in life sciences technology.  He is also Principal investigator of the PhD Excellence Initiative, a Sloan Foundation-funded fellowship program for minority scholars seeking admission to economic doctoral programs.  In 2015, Henry was awarded the Foreign Policy Association Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the organization.

 

 

The Global Infrastructure Gap: Potential, Perils, and a Framework for Distinction
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Peter Blair Henry Dean Emeritus of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business
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CDDRL Special Events

American Affective Polarization in Comparative Perspective

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About this Event:  American political observers express increasing concern about affective polarization (i.e., partisans’ resentment toward political opponents). We advance debates about America’s partisan divisions by comparing affective polarization in the USA over the past twenty-five years with affective polarization in nineteen other Western publics. We conclude that American affective polarization is not extreme in comparative perspective, although Americans’ dislike of partisan opponents has increased more rapidly since the mid 1990s than in most other Western publics. We then show that affective polarization is more intense when unemployment and inequality are high; when political elites clash over cultural issues such as immigration and national identity; and in countries with majoritarian electoral institutions. Our findings situate American partisan resentment and hostility in comparative perspective and illuminate correlates of affective polarization that are difficult to detect when examining the American case in isolation.

 

About the Speaker: 

Noam Gidron
Noam Gidron is an assistant professor (lecturer) at the Department of Political Science and the Joint Program in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His research interests lie at the intersection of political behavior and political economy. 

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Noam Gidron Assistant professor (lecturer) at the Department of Political Science and the Joint Program in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Refraction and the Rise of the Strategist

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About this Event: There is no shortage of scholarship on the rise of strategic experts—campaign strategists, consultants, and the like—in Western politics. Some accounts treat the rise of the strategist as an effect of the functional demands of party competition, linked with technological change and the accumulation of political data; others see the rise of the strategist as a symptom of a larger process of party decline. In this seminar I'll present a different argument: the rise of the strategist was linked with a turn, especially on the left, toward prioritizing markets over constituents. This argument is built on an "inside-out" (or refraction) analysis that traces the rise and fall of dominant party experts, attending to the link between their social location and their conceptions of the economic world, democratic politics and experts' public roles.  I will conclude by outlining a new project that builds on this work, tentatively titled Strategy and Democracy.

 

Stephanie Mudge
About the Speaker: Stephanie Mudge is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis and co-editor of a new book series, Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology. Her recent book, Leftism Reinvented (2018, Harvard University Press), is a cross-national study of how Western parties of the mainstream left shifted from socialism, to Keynesianism, to neoliberalism over the course of the 20th Century. She has published on a range of topics including neoliberalism, the sociology of parties and European technocratic expertise in venues including the Socio-Economic Review, the American Journal of Sociology and the Annual Review of Sociology. She is presently developing projects on the trajectory of "independence" in the case of the European Central Bank and the rise of strategists in American politics.

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Stephanie Mudge Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis
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Gandhi's Gift: How Nonviolent Protests Fail and Succeed

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About this Event: In this book project, we walk in the footsteps of the pioneers of the nonviolent approach to provide a reinterpretation of the histories of the great movements of the twentieth century from a game theoretic perspective, bringing to bear a host of new quantitative analyses to understand the challenges they faced, when they were successful at overcoming them and why. We develop a simple conceptual framework for understanding the strategies available to both the leaders and the followers of political movements, the media and outside audiences, as well as the regimes that they seek to influence, and how these decisions interact. We use this framework to highlight the presence of three key tensions that exist in many political movements.

These tensions include: those between the allure of violence and the seeming pedestrianism of nonviolence, between the need for numbers and the need for focus, and between organizations that depend on grassroots mobilization versus hierarchies and leadership. 

In light of the framework and new quantitative evidence, we then retrace and re-examine the decisions of the participants of the Indian Independence Movement in each of their three great nonviolent drives for change---the Non-Cooperation Movement of the 1920s, the Civil Disobedience Movement of the 1930s and the Quit India Movement of the 1940s---and how they succeeded or failed in addressing these tensions. At each step, we also discuss both grand strategy and the effectiveness of local tactics. We next compare the Indian experience with the movements that came after, including the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Arab Spring and recent protests around the world. Finally, we draw on what we have learned to suggest ideas for better implement nonviolent protests today.

 

About the Speaker:

Saumitra Jha
Along with being a Senior Fellow at FSI, Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of economics and of political science, and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In 2020–21, he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Jha’s research has been published in leading journals in economics and political science, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Development Economics, and he serves on a number of editorial boards. His research on ethnic tolerance has been recognized with the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 and his co-authored research on heroes with the Oliver Williamson Award for best paper by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics in 2020. Jha was honored to receive the Teacher of the Year Award, voted by the students of the Stanford MSx Program in 2020.

 

 

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Saumitra Jha

Graduate School of Business 655 Knight Way Stanford, CA 94305
(650) 721 1298
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Associate Professor of Political Economy, GSB
Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science
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Along with being a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. 

Jha’s research has been published in leading journals in economics and political science, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Development Economics, and he serves on a number of editorial boards. His research on ethnic tolerance has been recognized with the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 and his co-authored research on heroes with the Oliver Williamson Award for best paper by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics in 2020. Jha was honored to receive the Teacher of the Year Award, voted by the students of the Stanford MSx Program in 2020.

Saum holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to rejoining Stanford as a faculty member, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. He has been a fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Jha has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/WTO, the World Bank, government agencies, and for private firms.

 

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Dan C. Chung Faculty Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
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