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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.

Taiwan’s Three Challenges Ahead: The Economy, Cross-Strait Relations, and Democracy

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Speaker Bio:

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The 12th and 13th President (2008-2016) of the Republic of China (Taiwan)                          

Ma Ying-jeou was born in 1950 in Hong Kong, and emigrated in 1951 with his family to Taiwan, where he grew up. He graduated from National Taiwan University’s Department of Law in 1972, then served in the Marines and Navy for two years before earning an LL.M from New York University (1976) and an S.J.D. from Harvard University (1981). Dr. Ma began his political career as the deputy director of the Presidential Office’s First Bureau, and doubled as President Chiang Ching-kuo’s personal English interpreter. After President Chiang passed away in 1988, he held a series of other positions in government, including the Chairman of the Research, Evaluation, and Development Commission, Senior Vice Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, and Minister of Justice. In 1998, he was elected mayor of Taipei, an office he held until 2006. In 2008, he was elected President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) with 58% of the vote, the highest in history, and he was re-elected in 2012. 

During President Ma’s two terms in office, Taiwan’s per-capita GDP (on a PPP basis) rose from US$34,936 to $48,095, passing the U.K., France, Denmark, Italy, Canada, Japan, and South Korea and advancing 10 places in eight years. Taiwan was able to maintain peaceful relations with the Chinese mainland, friendly relations with Japan, and close relations with the United States; relations with all three countries were the best they had been in many decades. In November 2015, President Ma met with the mainland Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Singapore, the first face-to-face meeting between leaders of the two sides in 70 years. President Ma left office on May 20, 2016.    

Traitel Building, Hauck Auditorium

Ma Ying-jeou Former President of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
Panel Discussions
CDDRL Special Events

Learning Lessons? A Comparison of Planning for the Occupations of Japan and Iraq

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Abstract:

In 2002 and 2003, Americans pointed to Japan after the Second World War as a model which proved that enemy countries could be remade into stable democratic allies through short military occupation. Planners and politicians drew on their understanding of events in Japan to learn "lessons" for a post-Saddam Iraq. In the years since, it has become common to blame the failures of intervention in Iraq on American ignorance and insufficient planning. But is that popular characterization correct? This talk discusses whether and how the planning phases for Japan and Iraq differed, and with what implications for the occupied countries.

 

Speaker Bio:

dbarnes1
Dr. Dayna Barnes is a specialist in 20th century international history, American foreign policy, and East Asia. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and assistant professor of history at City, University of London. Her book, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan, was published in Cornell University Press in March 2017.

Visiting Scholar at CDDRL
Seminars

South Africa: Expanding circle of democratization

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Abstract:

The South African democratic process has crossed two significant milestones. One is political legitimacy in the sense that there is no significant threat to the constitution or political systems that the country adopted in 1996. Secondly, the systemic instability threat arising from the counter-revolutionary apartheid forces is now something of the past. There is simply no imminent threat of a retreat to the country’s authoritarian and racist past. The elusive goals remain in the economic arena – namely inclusive growth, widening inequality and slow development. How is the country shaping up to these challenges?

 

Speaker Bio:

maphai
Professor Vincent Maphai an unusual and distinguished career in academia, private sector and public service. He is currently a visiting Professor at Williams College, Massachusetts, Center for Global Studies. In an academic career spanning two decades, he studied and taught at various universities both locally. He was professor extraordinaire in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Africa (UNISA).. who held fellowships at Harvard (1988), Princeton (1989) and Stanford (1995). From 1991 to 1994 he was associate professor and head of the political science department at the University of the Western Cape. He also served as a Research Executive Director of social dynamics at the HSRC for three years..

Vincent Maphai Visiting Professor at Williams College
Seminars

Torture as a method of criminal investigation: the case of criminal justice reform in Mexico

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Speaker Bio:

Beatriz Magaloni Beatriz Magaloni
Beatriz Magaloni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Woods Institute of the Environment (2011-2013) and a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006), won the Best Book Award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association and the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations. Her second book, Strategies of Vote Buying: Democracy, Clientelism, and Poverty Relief in Mexico (co-authored with Alberto Diaz Cayeros and Federico Estévez), studies the politics of poverty relief. Why clientelism is such a prevalent form of electoral exchange, how it distorts policies aimed at aiding the poor, and when it can be superseded by more democratic and accountable forms of electoral exchange are some of the central questions that the book addresses.

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University
Seminars

Valuing Peace: The Effects of Financial Market Exposure on Votes and Political Attitudes

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Abstract:

Financial markets expose individuals to the broader economy. Does participation in fi nancial markets also lead individuals to re-evaluate the costs of conflict, their views on politics and even their votes? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned fi nancial assets from Israeli and Palestinian companies to likely voters and gave them incentives to actively trade for up to seven weeks. Opportunities to trade in fi nancial markets systematically shifted vote choices and increased support for peace initiatives. These effects persist a year after the experiment, and appear consistent with fi nancial market exposure leading to increased awareness of the economic risks of conflict.

 

Speaker Bio:

saumitra jha
Along with being a Senior Fellow at FSI, Saumitra Jha is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow at SIEPR. 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 returning to Stanford, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. Saum 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 received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO, the World Bank and other organizations. Having grown up in England, Scotland and the Indian Himalaya, Saum's research interests now take him to Israel, Japan, Mexico and elsewhere.

Saumitra Jha Associate Professor of Political Economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business
Seminars

Arab Barometer Wave IV

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This event is co-sponsored with The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

ABSTRACT

The Arab Barometer is the first and largest project of its kind that gives voice to the opinions and concerns of ordinary citizens across the Middle East and North Africa. Beginning in 2006, it has conducted rigorous and representative public opinion surveys in 15 countries over four waves. To date, across these waves, more than 45,000 face-to-face interviews have been conducted in the respondent’s place of residence. Among the topics explored are attitudes and values pertaining to politics, economics, religion, democracy, quality of governance, women’s rights, and identity. Arab Barometer data, which are publicly accessible through the Barometer’s website, are a valuable resource for research that seeks not only to describe but also to explain public attitudes on important issues affecting the MENA region. The Arab Barometer is directed by a steering committee composed of team leaders from four institutions in the Arab world and researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan. In this workshop, Amaney Jamal, Mark Tessler and Michael Robbins will present results from the fourth wave of data and an overview of the upcoming fifth wave.

 

SPEAKERS BIO

Amaney A. Jamal is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Jamal also directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development. She currently is President of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS). The focus of her current research is democratization and the politics of civic engagement in the Arab world. Her interests also include the study of Muslim and Arab Americans and the pathways that structure their patterns of civic engagement in the United States. Jamal’s books include: Barriers to Democracy(2007), which explores the role of civic associations in promoting democratic effects in the Arab world (winner of the 2008 APSA Best Book Award in comparative democratization).

Mark Tessler is Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor of Politics at the University of Michigan, where he also previously served as Vice-Provost for International Affairs. He has conducted research in Tunisia, Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Palestine and hasdirected or co-directed social science training and capacity-building programs in nine Arab countries. Tessler is also co-founder and a past president of the American Institution for Maghrib Studies. Among the fifteen books he has authored or coauthored are Public Opinion in the Middle East: Survey Research and the Political Orientations of Ordinary Citizens (2011); and Islam and Politics in the Middle East: Explaining the Views of Ordinary Citizens (2015). His current research examines the way that ordinary citizens in the MENA region think about women’s rights and status and the degree to which their attitudes are, or are not, shaped by religious attachments and understandings.

Michael Robbins is Director of the Arab Barometer. He has led or overseen more than 50 surveys in international contexts and is a leading expert in survey methods to prevent data fabrication. His work on Arab public opinion, political Islam and political parties has been published inComparative Political Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Journal of Democracy. He received the American Political Science Association Aaron Wildavsky Award for the Best Dissertation in the field of Religion and Politics. Previously, he has served as a research fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and aresearch associate at the Pew Research Center.

Following this event, Stanford student presentations will take place in the Reuben Hills Conference Room (2nd Floor Encina East Wing, E207) from 1:30pm to 2:30pm.

Christiana Parreira 
Title: Modernization and the Politics of Contemporary Kinship in the Middle East 
Comments: Amaney Jamal

Scott Williamson 
Title: Electoral Legitimacy and Compliance in Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from the Arab World 
Comments: Michael Robbins

Salma Mousa 
Title: The Casual Effect of Sectarian Violence: Terrorism, Political Preferences, and Religiosity in Iraq 
Comments: Mark Tessler

 

William J. Perry Conference Room,
Encina Hall (Central), 2nd Floor, 616 Serra St,
Stanford, CA 94305

Amaney A. Jamal Professor of Politics Princeton University
Mark Tessler Professor of Politics University of Michigan
Michael Robbins Director of the Arab Barometer Arab Barometer
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

A Brief History of Security

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Speaker(s) Bio:

Dr. Stephen J. Stedman
Stephen Stedman is a Freeman Spogli senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI, an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

 

 

algee hewitt
Mark Algee-Hewitt is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Literary Lab at Stanford, where he currently holds an Annenberg Faculty Fellowship. His research, which has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, focuses on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England and Germany and seeks to combine literary criticism with digital and quantitative analyses of literary texts. Professor Algee-Hewitt directs the Literary Text Mining cluster of the Digital Humanities Minor.

 

 

whitney
Whitney McIntosh is a Research Assistant for the Stanford Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, within the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She is a recent graduate from Stanford University, where she studied both International Relations and English, and received interdisciplinary honors through CDDRL. Her honors thesis explored the evolution and internationalization of the concept of security during the interwar period in France, from 1919-1933. Her research interests currently include global populism, post-truth democracy, and the conceptual evolution of security.

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Deputy Director, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Mark Algee-Hewitt Assistant Professor, Department of English
Research Assistant for the Stanford Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective
Seminars

Is Trump Giving Authoritarianism a Bad Name?

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"Mr. Trump is almost certainly giving authoritarianism a bad name. Support for authoritarian rule declined most among Democrats and young people, while significantly increasing among Republicans. So when it comes to American authoritarianism, perhaps the problem isn’t so much Mr. Trump as it is hyper-partisanship," writes Larry Diamond in The New York Times. Read the full article here.

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Follow the Leader

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A year into the Trump Administration, the health and stability of American democracy remain an open question. At a time when almost four in 10 Americans say they are not satisfied with the way democracy is working in the U.S., there is ample reason to ask how committed the American people are to our democracy. While understanding dissatisfaction with our political system is quite important, knowing the degree to which Americans are open to actual departures from democracy has a deeper, more existential value at a time when populist political leaders and parties have gained significant momentum around the globe. Taking advantage of a battery of questions included in the July 2017 VOTER Survey (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, we seek to understand more about these contemporary Americans who are not only questioning democratic norms but also affirmatively endorsing authoritarian alternatives.

Download PDF followtheleader_2018mar13.pdf

 

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