The Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective is holding a conference on Democracy and its Discontents on October 8-10 in Budapest, Hungary. The conference, co-hosted with Central European University, will bring together scholars of American and European politics to examine topics such as democratic backsliding, inequality, and money in politics. Saskia Sassen of Columbia University will deliver the keynote address.
On Sept. 24, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, together with the Atlantic Council, hosted Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves for a discussion on technology and elections. The conversation - moderated by CDDRL Director Francis Fukuyama – examined Estonia’s technological infrastructure and their use of electronic voting in eight of their past ten elections. The conversation provoked greater questions of security and privacy surrounding cyber governance, as well as the limits of transparency.
For more information on CDDRL, please visit: cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu
For more information on the Atlantic Council, please visit: atlanticcouncil.org
In July, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) welcomed a group of 23 democracy leaders from around the developing world for a three-week training program on democracy, good governance and rule of law reform as part of the 11th annual Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Selected from over 500 applicants, the fellows have diverse backgrounds across sectors and geographies, working in civil society, public service, social enterprise and technology to improve democracy and governance in their home countries.
Fellows were instructed by an all-star roster of Stanford scholars and policy experts with backgrounds in international relations, law, medicine and political science. Lecturers included Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California Tino Cuéllar; former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; and CDDRL Director Francis Fukuyama.
Fellows also visited several major Bay Area technology firms and philanthropic organizations, such as Twitter and the Omidyar Network, to explore new opportunities to support their work.
New to the program this year was the incorporation of TED-style talks, which served as a platform for fellows to practice the technique of storytelling by sharing their personal stories and motivations for pursuing the work they do. Throughout the three-week program, these 9-minute talks provided fellows with a better understanding of their peers’ backgrounds and an opportunity to realize shared experiences.
From finding long-term solutions to refugee crises to the invention of new technologies that curb government corruption, fellows shared impactful stories that cut across sectors and regions, sharing common challenges and pathways to their success. You can find some of their talks below:
Karina Sarmiento (Ecuador)
Regional Director, Asylum Access Latin America
"Building up a Movement: Refugees in Latin America"
Karina Sarmiento is the regional director for Asylum Access Latin America, an international organization working to support refugee rights. Sarmiento leads the organization’s growth and implementation strategy for refugee legal aid clinics, strategic litigation, community legal empowerment and national policy advocacy across Latin America.
Teddy Warria (Kenya)
CEO, Africa 2.0 Kenya
"Connecting Africa"
Teddy Warria is a Kenyan entrepreneur and the CEO of Africa 2.0 Kenya, an action-oriented network of young and emerging leaders from Africa who share a collective vision for the future. Warria is also the director of Africa’s Talking LED, a mobile telecommunications company working to close the information poverty gap in Kenya.
Silvina Rivarola (Argentina)
Criminal Prosecutor, Office of the Attorney General, City of Buenos Aires
"Can Liberal Democracy Exist Without an Independent Justice?"
Silvina Rivarola is a criminal prosecutor with the Attorney General’s office for the City of Buenos Aires where she is in charge of the cybercrime unit. Rivarola has devoted her 25-year career to advancing the rule of law in Argentina’s judicial branch where she previously served as a criminal judge.
Sergii Golubok (Russia)
Human Rights Lawyer
"International Human Rights Courts: What do they mean for Rule of Law?"
Sergei Golubok is a human rights lawyer in Russia who specializes in international human rights law and the protection of constitutional freedoms. Golubok has defended several high profile civil society groups and activists before the United Nations treaty bodies and the European Court of Human Rights.
Oludotun Babayemi (Nigeria)
Co-Founder, Connected Development (CODE)
"Making the State Accountable: Technologies and its Inertia in Nigeria"
Oludotun Babayemi is the co-founder of Connected Development [CODE], an organization that uses online and offline tools to put pressure on governments and organizations in Nigeria to be more accountable and transparent. Their “Follow the Money” campaign has helped to monitor and track public resource allocation so marginalized communities receive government provisions and services.
Catherine Phiri (Zambia)
Public Prosecutor, Government of Zambia
"The Place of Witness in the Criminal Justice System in Zambia"
Catherine Phiri is a public prosecutor for the government of Zambia where she prosecutes cases of corrupt practices, abuse of authority and money laundering that undermine the rule of law. Through her work she has helped implement systems that enhance the efficient and effective flow of cases.
Myat Ko (Burma)
Co-Founder, Yangon School of Political Science
"Transition and Survival of Democracy in Burma"
Myat Ko is the co-founder of the Yangon School of Political Science where he directs the school’s political education department working to train and empower citizens with knowledge to support Burma’s political development. In 2012, he participated in an election observation process held under the Yangon School.
Roukaya Kasenally (Mauritius)
Senior Advisor, African Media Initiative
"Mauritius: The Dwindling Democratic Star"
Kasenally is a senior advisor with the African Media Initiative, an organization supporting independent media on the African continent. Kasenally has served as a researcher for a number of pan-African democratic and governance institutions and co-founded an advocacy organization to engage the Mauritian public in democratic development. Kasenally also teaches at the University of Mauritius.
Bruno Defelippe (Paraguay)
Co-Founder and CEO, Koga Social Business Lab
"How Changing Businesses Can Change the World"
Bruno Defelippe is a social entrepreneur who has launched several social initiatives to engage young people to solve social and environmental challenges in Paraguay. He is the co-founder and CEO of Koga Social Business Lab, which incubates social businesses and provides a strong ecosystem for social entrepreneurs to thrive.
Both South Korea and Taiwan are considered consolidated democracies, but the two countries have developed very different sets of electoral campaign regulations. While both countries had highly restrictive election laws during their authoritarian eras, they have diverged after democratic transition. South Korea still restricts campaigning activities, including banning door-to-door canvassing, prohibiting pre-official period campaigning, and restricting the quantity and content of literature. Taiwan has removed most campaigning restrictions, except for finance regulations. This study explores the causes of these divergent trajectories through comparative historical process tracing, using both archival and secondary sources. The preliminary findings suggest that the incumbency advantage and the containment of the leftist or opposition parties were the primary causes of regulation under the soft and hard authoritarian regimes of South Korea and Taiwan. The key difference was that the main opposition party as well as the ruling party in South Korea enjoyed the incumbency advantage but that opposition forces in Taiwan did not. As a result, the opposition in Taiwan fought for liberalization of campaign regulations, but that in South Korea did not. Democratization in Taiwan was accompanied by successive liberalizations in campaign regulation, but in South Korea the incumbent legislators affiliated with the ruling and opposition parties were both interested in limiting campaigning opportunities for electoral challengers.
Bio:
Dr. Jong-sung You is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. His research interests include comparative politics and the political economy of inequality, corruption, social trust, and freedom of expression. He conducts both cross-national quantitative studies and qualitative case studies, focusing on Korea and East Asia. He recently published a book entitled Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared with Cambridge University Press. His publications have appeared at American Sociological Review, Political Psychology, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Asian Perspective, Trends and Prospects, and Korean Journal of International Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and taught at UC San Diego. Before pursuing an academic career, he fought for democracy and social justice in South Korea.
Jong-sung You
Senior Lecturer
College of Asia and the Pacific, Australia National University
Based on first-hand participant-observation, this talk will examine the culture, politics, and spatiality of the Sunflower Movement. Taiwan's most significant social movement in decades, the Sunflower Movement not only blocked the passage of a major trade deal with China, but reshaped popular discourse and redirected Taiwan's political and cultural trajectory. It re-energized student and civil society, precipitated the historic defeat of the KMT in the 2014 local elections, and prefigured the DPP's strong position coming into the 2016 presidential and legislative election season.
The primary spatial tactic of the Sunflowers-- occupation of a government building-- was so successful that a series of protests in the summer of 2015 by high school students was partly conceived and represented as a "second Sunflower Movement". These students, protesting "China-centric" curriculum changes, attempted to occupy the Ministry of Education building. Thwarted by police, these students settled for the front courtyard, where a Sunflower-style pattern of encampments and performances emerged. While this movement did not galvanize the wider public as dramatically as its predecessor, it did demonstrate the staying power of the Sunflower Movement and its occupation tactics for an even younger cohort of activists.
The Sunflower Movement showed that contingent, street-level, grassroots action can have a major impact on Taiwan's cross-Strait policies, and inspired and trained a new generation of youth activists. But with the likely 2016 presidential win of the DPP, which has attempted to draw support from student activists while presenting a less radical vision to mainstream voters, what's in store for the future of Taiwanese student and civic activism? And with strong evidence of growing Taiwanese national identification and pro-independence sentiment, particularly among youth, what's in store for the future of Taiwan's political culture?
Speaker Bio
Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.
Ian Rowen is PhD Candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and recent Visiting Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Fudan University. He participated in both the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements and has written about them for The Journal of Asian Studies, The Guardian, and The BBC (Chinese), among other outlets. He has also published about Asian politics and protest in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (forthcoming) and the Annals of Tourism Research. His PhD research, funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, has focused on the political geography of tourism and protest in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has almost 15 million followers on Twitter and over almost 30 million “likes” on Facebook, making him among the most followed politicians on social media. With a mix of ‘feel good’ messages, shout-outs to other celebrities, well-timed ritualized responses, as well as a careful strategy of ‘followbacks’ for a small selection of his most active followers, Modi grew his following dramatically since 2013. This talk looks at ways in which Twitter is used as part of a larger brand management exercise through which Modi has emphasized different issues at various phases of his political evolution.
Joyojeet examines four specific phases, during each of which, the focus of his social media message evolved based on electoral or post-election needs. While Twitter helped Modi circumvent the mainstream media and directly reach a significant constituency of listeners, he also examines how social media was central to Modi's image shaping as a technology-savvy leader who represents pan-Indian aspirations of modernity, away from Modi’s own past image in the popular media as a divisive communal politician.
Bio
Joyojeet Pal is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information where his work focuses on user experience and accessibility in low and middle-income countries. His recent research looks at the use of social media in political communication in India, specifically on the role of political branding online in India. He is one of the technical collaborators on the Unfinished Sentences project examining oral histories of the El Salvador civil war, and leads the Colombia Digital Culture project at the University of Michigan. He researched and produced the award-winning documentary, "For the Love of a Man" based on the fan following of South Indian film star Rajnikanth.
Note: Those of you attending this talk may be interested in a related event, "Why India Matters", a talk by Richard Verma, 25th US Ambassador to India.
Wallenberg Theatre
450 Serra Mall #124
(The room is located in the main quad, across the road from Stanford Oval).
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Please RSVP. We will close registration once the attendance list reaches 250 people.
Abstract:
On September 24, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in partnership with The Atlantic Council will present a public address by President Toomas Ilves of Estonia on the future of technology in elections. Elections are set to take center stage in the coming year, in this country and abroad. As technology plays an increasingly large role in people’s lives, the discussion—moderated by CDDRL Director Francis Fukuyama— will explore its role in elections worldwide. President Ilves of Estonia—the only country in the world to use Internet voting for national elections— will discuss how technology can promote transparency, inclusion, and stronger democracies.
This event is a partnership between Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Atlantic Council, a DC-based think-tank committed to promoting constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs.
Bio:
Toomas Hendrik Ilves was elected President of the Republic of Estonia in 2006 and re-elected in 2011. He served as Chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012, and since November 2012 he became Chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board. His interest in computers stems from an early age – he learned to program at the age of 13 - and he has been promoting Estonia’s IT-development since the country restored its independence. Prior to his presidency, he served as Ambassador of Estonia to the United States of America and Canada (1993 -1996). In this position, he initiated the Tiger Leap initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online. He also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1996-1998; 1998-2002) and Member of the Estonian Parliament (2002-2004). In recent years, President Ilves has spoken and written extensively on integration, transatlantic relations, e-government, and cyber security. He graduated from Columbia University in 1976 and received his Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves
President
Republic of Estonia
During a recent trip to Burma, CDDRL’s Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama sat down with The Irrawaddy to weigh in on the country’s democratic transition and the upcoming general elections this November. In a series of interviews, both scholars highlighted recent events—including an internal political coup while they were there—to caution against these setbacks and suggest reforms to support Burma’s political development.
The Deliberative Poll at the Internet Governance Forum 2015 (DP@IGF2015) project is a joint initiative between CDDRL's Program on Liberation Technology and the Center for Deliberative Democracy. It is designed to extend deliberation and consultation within Internet governance through a proven consultative mechanism, the Deliberative Poll, which brings together a representative sample of a community for discussions among participants and with stakeholders. A pilot project will launch at the 2015 Internet Governance Forum in Brazil this November.
Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.
