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This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

How does autocratic lobbying affect political outcomes and media coverage in democracies? This talk focuses on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. It includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. 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.

Erin Baggott Carter is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. There, she is also a Co-PI at the Lab on Non-Democratic Politics. She received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and was previously a Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics and propaganda. She recently completed a book on autocratic propaganda based on an original dataset of eight million articles in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish drawn from state-run newspapers in nearly 70 countries. She is currently working on a book on how domestic politics influence US-China relations. Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Brookings Institution, and the Washington Post Monkeycage Blog.

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The United States has historically played an important role in promoting democracy to countries across the globe. But is the role of the U.S. as a leading advocate for democracy now diminished following the recent U.S. election and mob attack on the U.S. Capitol? 

The panel for this event will feature democracy activists from around the world, all of whom are graduates of the Draper Hills Program at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). In a discussion moderated by Professor Francis Fukuyama, they will offer their perspectives on the need for democracy promotion in their home countries at the current moment, particularly what role the new Biden administration could constructively play. Professor Michael McFaul’s recent series of articles [https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/sell-it-again-uncle-sam/] in American Purpose, an online magazine recently launched by Professor Fukuyama, about the need for democracy promotion, will be the starting point for the discussion. Professor McFaul will offer introductory remarks.

PANELISTS:

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Mohamad Najem, Class of 2019, Lebanon - Mohamad is the executive director of the Beirut–based digital rights organization Social Media Exchange (SMEX), the Middle East and North Africa’s leading digital rights research and policy advocacy organization. His work includes local and regional advocacy campaigns, research on privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression. Najem organized “Bread & Net”, the first unconference in the Middle East and North Africa region that tackled topics related to technology and human rights. Najem’s career began in the humanitarian aid arena. Najem was a 2014 New America Foundation Fellow and an alumnus of the Arts, Sciences, and Technology University in Lebanon where he completed his Masters in Business Administration. 

Anna Dobrovolskaya Class of 2019, Russia – is a human rights activist based in Moscow, serving as the executive director of the Memorial Human Rights Center (MHRC). The Center is the biggest Russian human rights NGO, working to provide legal aid and consultation for refugees and asylum seekers, monitoring human rights violations in post-conflict zones and advocating for a human-rights based approach in fighting terrorism; as well as raising awareness about politically-motivated repression in Russia and maintains its own list of political prisoners. Dobrovolskaya’s areas of expertise include human rights education and awareness-raising activities and programs for young people and activists since 2008. She is a member of the Council of Europe pool of trainers. Her work currently lies in NGO management and providing consultancy to various human rights groups and initiatives. Anna was the author of the first Russian play about the life of human rights defenders, which is being performed in Teatr.doc since 2017.

This event is co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, is a sweeping bill that aims to strengthen American democracy. Included in the bill are reforms to election administration, campaign finance, gerrymandering, and voting rights. H.R. 1 passed the House in 2019, and is likely to be brought up in Congress again this year.  

What exactly is included in H.R. 1 and what are the arguments of its supporters and detractors? Join us for a deep dive into four components of this historic legislation. Each panel brings together advocates, critics, and academics to describe the specific reforms under consideration.   

These panels are co-sponsored by the Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

For more on H.R. 1, please visit our resource page here. 

Slides from the Brennan Center on the For the People Act can be found here.

Monday, Feb 1, 12:00 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Election Administration 

H.R. 1 creates federal standards for the administration of elections, eases voter registration rules, expands ballot access through early and mail voting, and strengthens voting system security.  

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University  
 

Session Speakers:

Leigh Chapman, Senior Director of Voting Rights Program, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights 
Nick Penniman, Founder and CEO, Issue One  
Wendy Weiser, Vice President for Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice  
Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, Co-Director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
David Becker, Executive Director and Founder, Center for Election Innovation & Research

Tuesday, Feb 2, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Voting Rights

H.R. 1 recommits to the protections of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, restores felony voting rights, creates safeguards against purges of voting rolls, and requires voter-verified paper ballots.

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

Session Speakers:

Dale Ho, Director, ACLU Voting Rights Project  
Myrna Perez, Director, Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program  
Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)  
Guy-Uriel Charles, Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law, Duke Law School

Monday, Feb 8, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Gerrymandering

H.R. 1 bans partisan gerrymandering, establishes uniform rules for the drawing of districts, and requires independent redistricting commissions for congressional redistricting.

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

Session Speakers:

Ben Ginsberg, Lecturer, Stanford Law School  
Ruth Greenwood, Co-Director of Voting Rights and Redistricting, Campaign Legal Center 
Michael Li, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center’s Democracy Program  
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Tuesday, Feb 9, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Campaign Finance

H.R.1 includes several changes related to disclosure of certain campaign finance activities, regulation of on-line campaigning, and enforcement through the Federal Election Commission.

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

Session Speakers: 

Bradley Smith, Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law, Capital University Law School  
Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law 
Meredith McGehee, Executive Director, Issue One  
Alex Kaplan, Vice President of Policy & Campaigns, RepresentUs  
Adav Noti, Senior Director, Trial Litigation & Chief of Staff, Campaign Legal Center

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An assessment of Russia that suggests that we should look beyond traditional means of power to understand its strength and capacity to disrupt international politics.

Too often, we are told that Russia plays a weak hand well. But, perhaps the nation's cards are better than we know. Russia ranks significantly behind the US and China by traditional measures of power: GDP, population size and health, and military might. Yet 25 years removed from its mid-1990s nadir following the collapse of the USSR, Russia has become a supremely disruptive force in world politics. Kathryn E. Stoner assesses the resurrection of Russia and argues that we should look beyond traditional means of power to assess its strength in global affairs. Taking into account how Russian domestic politics under Vladimir Putin influence its foreign policy, Stoner explains how Russia has battled its way back to international prominence.

From Russia's seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine to its military support for the Assad regime in Syria, the country has reasserted itself as a major global power. Stoner examines these developments and more in tackling the big questions about Russia's turnaround and global future. Stoner marshals data on Russia's political, economic, and social development and uncovers key insights from its domestic politics. Russian people are wealthier than the Chinese, debt is low, and fiscal policy is good despite sanctions and the volatile global economy. Vladimir Putin's autocratic regime faces virtually no organized domestic opposition. Yet, mindful of maintaining control at home, Russia under Putin also uses its varied power capacities to extend its influence abroad. While we often underestimate Russia's global influence, the consequences are evident in the disruption of politics in the US, Syria, and Venezuela, to name a few. Russia Resurrected is an eye-opening reassessment of the country, identifying the actual sources of its power in international politics and why it has been able to redefine the post-Cold War global order.

This event is co-sponsored with the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

About the Event:   In partnership with The Hoover Project on China's Global Sharp Power, Jonathan Hillman from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Min Ye from Boston University, and Glenn Tiffert from Stanford's Hoover Institution discuss the current status of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which stands to be the largest bilateral infrastructure development program of the century. The event will discuss Hillman's new book, The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century and Ye’s new book, The Belt, Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998-2018 and review the impacts of BRI on global trade and geopolitics.

About the Speakers:

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Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at CDDRL for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan and Thailand. 

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event: The paradox of analyzing politics in Myanmar is never knowing whether or not events should surprise us. What Myanmar’s traumatic political history tells us is likely to happen is often diametrically opposed to what comparative and theoretical perspectives tell us is likely to happen. This presentation will consider Myanmar’s past decade of experimenting with reversible political reforms – which at least for now seems to have culminated in the military coup of February 1^st – from both of these divergent perspectives. It will then draw upon those perspectives to offer several optimistic scenarios, before puzzling over how to assess the relative likelihood of the main optimistic and pessimistic scenarios coming to pass.

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ABSTRACT 

This talk is based on the speakers’ recently published edited volume The Unfinished Arab Spring: Micro-Dynamics of Revolts between Change and Continuity. Adopting an original analytical approach in explaining various dynamics at work behind the Arab revolts and giving voice to local dynamics and legacies rather than concentrating on debates about paradigms, we highlight micro-perspectives of change and resistance as well as of contentious politics that are often marginalized and left unexplored in favor of macro-analyses. First, we re-examine the stories of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Algeria through diverse and novel perspectives, looking at factors that have not yet been sufficiently underlined but carry explanatory power for what has occurred. Second, rather than focusing on macro-comparative regional trends – however useful they might be – we focus on the particularities of each country, highlighting distinctive micro-dynamics of change and continuity. ​

SPEAKERS BIO

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About the Event:  Increasing access to higher education is often seen as a threat to authoritarian regimes. Accordingly, authoritarian rulers would limit access to avoid the spread of anti-regime sentiments. Turkey suggests an interesting case. The consolidation of single party-rule overlapped with an impressive expansion of higher education, by 170 percent, from 76 in 2002 to 206 in 2020. This paper examines these two trends in connection with each other by focusing on universities' role as infrastructural mechanisms for both democratic culture and state coercion.  

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About the Speaker:  Ayça Alemdaroğlu is the Associate Director of the Program on Turkey and Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She is a political sociologist, focusing on social and political inequality and change in Turkey and the Middle East.

Ayça’s recent work examines youth politics, and authoritarianism. In “Governing youth in times of dissent: Essay competitions, politics of history and affective pedagogies” (forthcoming in Turkish Studies), she  examines the politics of history and emotional tactics the Justice and Development Party (AKP) uses in its effort to control, administer and recruit youth. In this work, she argues that the resilience of the AKP regime lies not only in the benefits the party has provided to previously disadvantaged groups and its coercive methods towards dissent, but also lies in the party’s articulation of political differences and its mobilization of emotions through intermediary channels between the party and the people. In “The AKP’s Problem with Youth”, Ayça examines the significance of youth for the AKP and the politics of its tremendous expansion of religious education in Turkey. In “Dialectics of Reform and Repression: Unpacking Turkey’s Authoritarian ‘Turn’”, she analyzes the dynamics and dialectics of reform and repression in the last two decades. Instead of reading contemporary Turkey as a case of relapse from reform into repression, as many commentators do, the article shows that reform and repression have been concomitant and complementary modes of the AKP governments.

She received her BSc. degree in political science and sociology from the Middle East Technical University, her MA in political science from Bilkent University, and her PhD in sociology from University of Cambridge. 

About the Event: Do programmatic policies always yield electoral rewards? A growing body of research attributes the adoption of programmatic policies in African states to increased electoral competition. However, these works seldom explore how the specifics of policy implementation condition voters’ electoral responses to programmatic policies over time, or changes in electoral effects throughout policy cycles. We analyze the electoral effects of both the promise and implementation of a programmatic policy designed to increase secondary school enrollment in Tanzania over three election cycles. We find that the incumbent party benefited from a campaign promise to increase access to secondary schooling, but incurred an electoral penalty following implementation of the policy. We do not find any significant electoral effects by the third electoral cycle. Our findings illuminate temporal dynamics of policy feedback, the conditional electoral effects of programmatic policies, and the need for more studies of entire policy cycles over multiple electoral periods.

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