Stanford University

Health and Medicine

FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.

FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.

The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh

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We conducted a cluster-randomized trial to measure the effect of community-level mask distribution and promotion on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021 (N = 600 villages, N = 342,183 adults). We cross-randomized mask type (cloth vs. surgical) and promotion strategies at the village and household level. Proper mask-wearing increased from 13.3% in the control group to 42.3% in the intervention arm (adjusted percentage point difference = 0.29 [0.26, 0.31]). The intervention reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]), especially among adults 60+ years in villages where surgical masks were distributed (aPR = 0.65 [0.45, 0.85]). Mask distribution and promotion was a scalable and effective method to reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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A randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 shows that the intervention increased mask-use and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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Innovations for Poverty Action
Authors
Stephen P. Luby

Solving Public Problems

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About the Seminar: In this time of great challenges, our democracies urgently need to produce citizens who can move from demanding change to making it. But the skills for doing so are not innate, they are learned. In this talk, Beth Simone Noveck will discuss how both citizens and governments can take advantage of digital technology, data, and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerful solutions to contemporary problems. Drawing on the latest methods from data and social sciences, including original survey data from around the world, she proposes a practical set of methods for public servants, community leaders, students, activists, and anyone who wants to be a catalyst for positive social change.

 

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Beth Simone Noveck Headshot
About the Speaker: Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Family Center for Global Impact and its partner project, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. The author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix Our Government and Change Our World (Yale Press 2021) (named a Best Book of 2021 by Stanford Social Innovation Review), she is also Core Faculty at the Institute for Experiential AI (IEAI) at Northeastern. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy appointed her as the state’s first Chief Innovation Officer and Chancellor Angela Merkel named her to her Digital Council in 2018. Previously, Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative under President Obama. UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government.

In addition to Solving Public Problems, Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard Univ Press 2015) and Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009) and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005).

Online, via Zoom.

Beth Simone Noveck Director | The GovLab
Seminars

Egypt Scholar Reexamines 2011 Uprising in New Book

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In a talk hosted by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy on November 10, 2021, Mona El-Ghobashy, Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at New York University, discussed her latest book Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation (Stanford University Press 2021). During the event, co-sponsored by Stanford’s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Ten Years On Project, El-Ghobashy shared an interpretation of Egypt’s 2011 uprising that uncovers some lost connections between democracy and revolution.

You can purchase the book online, and watch a recording of the event below:

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Mona El-Ghobashy Hesham Sallam
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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL hosted a talk featuring Mona El-Ghobashy, Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at New York University, who discussed her latest book – Bread and Freedom: Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation (Stanford University Press 2021).

Tunisian Activists Examine the Threat of Authoritarian Resurgence

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In a panel discussion hosted by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy on October 29, 2021, Tunisian Member of Parliament Saida Ounissi and I Watch Founder Achraf Aouadi examined the evolving political conflicts in Tunisia since the July 25 power grab executed by President Kais Saied. The panelists discussed the challenges recent developments have posed to Tunisia's struggling democracy and the prospects for building consensus around an inclusive process of political reform.

Click below to watch a video recording of the panel.

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Achraf Aouadi Saida Ounissi Hesham Sallam
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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL hosted a panel featuring Tunisian activists, who examined the threat of authoritarian resurgence in the country after the power grab executed by President Kais Saied on July 25, 2021.

Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on “America in One Room”

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This paper is positioned at the intersection of two literatures: partisan polarization and deliberative democracy. It analyzes results from a national field experiment in which more than 500 registered voters were brought together from around the country to deliberate in depth over a long weekend on five major issues facing the country. A pre–post control group was also asked the same questions. The deliberators showed large, depolarizing changes in their policy attitudes and large decreases in affective polarization. The paper develops the rationale for hypotheses explaining these decreases and contrasts them with a literature that would have expected the opposite. The paper briefly concludes with a discussion of how elements of this “antidote” can be scaled.

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American Political Science Review
Authors
James S. Fishkin
Alice Siu
Larry Diamond
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pp. 1 - 18

Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program Information Session AY 22-23

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors on who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL) from any university department.  The application period opens on January 10, 2022 and runs through February 11, 2022.   For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.

Join us online via Zoom on Friday, January 21st at 12:00pm (PST) to learn more! 

REGISTER NOW

CDDRL faculty and current honors students will be present to discuss the program and answer any questions.

 

Online via zoom. REGISTER HERE.

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
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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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Didi Kuo

Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.

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Remembering Chito Gascón

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Nora Sulots
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The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is deeply saddened by the loss of beloved Draper Hills alumnus José Luis Martín C. (“Chito”) Gascón, who passed away after a short battle with COVID-19 on October 9, 2021, at the age of 57.

A Filipino lawyer, human rights activist, and civil organizer, Gascón served as the Chair of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights from 2015 to 2021, having been appointed by President Benigno S. Aquino III. Prior to this, he also served as a member of the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board and as a member of the Philippine Congress, where he helped to pass monumental legislation to promote the prevention of human rights abuses. He contributed to the founding of the International Center for Innovation, Transformation, and Excellence in Governance; the Institute for Leadership, Empowerment, and Democracy; and the Asian Policy Network. Gascón’s career also included teaching law and political science at Ateneo de Manila University and De la Salle University.

Reacting to the news of Chito's death on Twitter, FSI Director Michael McFaul called him “a true hero for human rights.” Larry Diamond also paid tribute, noting that “he was eloquent, fearless, humble, and deeply devoted to democracy” and one of the Philippines’ “great civil society leaders.”

In 2005, Chito was a member of the first class of CDDRL's Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, which trains global leaders working on the front lines of democratic change. Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, noted that he was "a pioneer with us and with all that he did."

In addition to his time as a Draper Hills Summer Fellow, Chito Gascón was a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 2007. Former NED president and frequent Draper Hills contributor Carl Gershman shared that “Chito was a brilliant and dedicated democracy activist, a gentle personality with a tough inner core and immense courage. He will be sorely missed by countless friends, myself included, and by people around the world who are fighting for democracy and human dignity.”

Draper Hills class of 2005 on Encina Hall stairs
2005 Draper Hills Summer Fellows cohort. Chito is pictured in the back row between Kathryn Stoner and Larry Diamond.
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Chito Gascón Photo: Joseph Pascual/Esquire Philippines
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A member of the inaugural Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program cohort in 2005, Chito died from COVID-19 on October 9, 2021.

Mofeed-19 Looks at Reporting on COVID-19 in Egypt

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the third episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world. The podcast is part of the Mofeed-19 Project, an initiative that builds foundational resources for understanding how the politics and societies of the Arab world have adapted in light of the pandemic. Mofeed-19 is supported in part by the Open Society Foundation.

Cohosted by ARD Scholars Amr Hamzawy and Hesham Sallam, the third episode features award-winning journalist and Mada Masr Editor Lina Attalah. The episode examines the challenges of reporting about the pandemic in Egypt and explains the conditions that have shaped dominant narratives about COVID-19 in the country.

Watch the third episode below, and follow the podcast on Spotify:

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Mofeed-19 Podcast Examines Jordan's Response to COVID-19

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the second episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.
Mofeed-19 Podcast Examines Jordan's Response to COVID-19
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ARD Launches Podcast on Politics of COVID-19 in the Arab World

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the launch Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.
ARD Launches Podcast on Politics of COVID-19 in the Arab World
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ARD Launches CARDs Interview Series

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL is pleased to announce the launch of an interview series titled “Conversations on Arab Reform and Democracy” (CARDs).
ARD Launches CARDs Interview Series
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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the third episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.

Mofeed-19 Podcast Examines Jordan's Response to COVID-19

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the second episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world. The podcast is part of the Mofeed-19 Project, an initiative that builds foundational resources for understanding how the politics and societies of the Arab world have adapted in light of the pandemic. Mofeed-19 is supported in part by the Open Society Foundation.

Cohosted by ARD Scholars Amr Hamzawy and Hesham Sallam, the second episode features Professor of Virology ‪Azmi Mahafzah‬, who was previously Jordan's minister of higher education and president of the University of Jordan. The episode describes and analyzes the Jordanian government's response to the pandemic and the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in the country.

Watch the second episode below, and follow the podcast on Spotify:

Follow Mofeed-19 on Social Media

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the second episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.

Market Structure and Extortion: Evidence from 50,000 Extortion Payments

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About the Session: How do gangs compete for extortion? Using detailed data on individual extortion payments to gangs and sales from a leading wholesale distributor of consumer goods and pharmaceuticals in El Salvador, we document evidence on the determinants of extortion payments, firm responses to extortion, and effects on consumers. We exploit a 2016 non-aggression pact between gangs to examine how collusion affects extortion in areas where gangs previously competed. While the non-aggression pact led to a large reduction in violence, we find that it increased extortion by 15% to 20%. Much of the increase in extortion was passed-through to retailers and consumers: we find a large increase in prices for pharmaceutical drugs and a corresponding increase in hospital visits for chronic illnesses. The results shed light on how extortion rates are set and point to an unintended consequence of policies that reduce competition between criminal organizations.

 

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About the Speaker: Carlos Schmidt-Padilla received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development. Since September 2021, Carlos has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Impact Labs (SIL), affiliated with PovGov at CDDRL. Broadly, his research interests encompass the political economy of development of Latin America and of sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, he studies questions concerning crime, human capital, immigration, and policing in developing countries. Carlos is from San Salvador, El Salvador.

Carlos Schmidt-Padilla

Online, via Zoom

Carlos Schmidt-Padilla

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Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Impact Labs (SIL), affiliated with PovGov at CDDRL, 2021-22
External Collaborator, PovGov
Carlos Schmidt-Padilla

I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where I was also a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development. Broadly, my research interests encompass the political economy of development of Latin America and of sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, I study questions concerning crime, human capital, immigration, and policing in developing countries. I am from San Salvador, El Salvador.

Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Impact Labs (SIL), affiliated with PovGov at CDDRL
Seminars
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