This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for East Asian Studies.

Abstract: 

Virak Ou will discuss the possibility and demographic underpinnings of a so-called “Cambodian Spring” — and will offer suggestions for what the international community can do to assist Cambodians during this transitional, tense time.   

Speaker Bio: 

Human rights activist and intellectual Virak Ou is the president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), one of Cambodia’s most prominent human rights organizations. Ou is the recipient of the 2007 Reebok Human Rights Award for his campaign to free activists and decriminalize defamation in Cambodia. He is also the founder of the Alliance for Freedom of Expression in Cambodia, otherwise known as AFEC. He is a survivor of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge era and was a child refugee before settling in the United States in 1989. Ou holds an MA in economics from San Jose State University.   

Cambodia is currently experiencing unprecedented social upheaval, in the wake of the hotly contested elections of last summer. Ou’s CCHR has been at the forefront of advocating for human rights protections and free speech for both sides of the political debate. 

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Abstract:

Election observation is central to democracy promotion efforts around the world, yet relatively little is known about observers' effects on electoral quality.  Do election observers deter electoral fraud, violence, and voter intimidation? Or do political parties strategically respond to the presence of observers, thereby negating their impact?  This project leverages the random assignment of 1,000 election observers to polling stations during Ghana's 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections to address these questions.  We show that observers significantly reduce indicators of fraud at the polling stations to which they are deployed. We also find, however, that political parties successfully relocate fraud from observed to unobserved stations in their historical strongholds, where they enjoy social penetration and political competition is low, whereas they are not able to do so in politically competitive constituencies.  The presentation will also report preliminary results from a household survey conducted after the elections designed to measure observers’ effects on patterns of electoral violence and voter intimidation.  The findings have implications for understanding political party behavior and the complex effects of governance interventions.

Speaker Bio:

Eric Kramon received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2013 and is a 2013-14 Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow.  He will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University starting in Summer 2014.  While at CDDRL, he is working on a book project on vote buying and clientelism in Africa, as well as additional projects on the impact of election observation on electoral fraud and electoral quality, ethnicity and the politics of public goods provision in Africa, and the political determinants of good governance reforms.

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Abstract:

Taiwan's system of neighborhood-level governance has origins in institutions of local control employed by both the Republican-era Kuomintang and the Japanese colonizers. In more recent times, the neighborhood wardens (lizhang, 里長) have come to play a complex set of roles, including state agent, political party operative, and community representative. Wardens of a new generation, with more women in their ranks than ever before, have adopted new practices and built different relationships with their communities, parties, and city governments compared to those of the older, often clan-based bosses.

Focusing on Taipei with glances at other locales, this paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews, surveys, public records, and other sources. It explores the particular kind of political and civic engagement that the neighborhood governance system elicits. It is statist; though independent in many respects, wardens have government-mandated duties and work closely with city and district officials. Community development associations (shequ fazhan xiehui), as well as other neighborhood groups and wardens themselves, compete for and receive government funding. Warden elections are also deeply democratic in ways that, in global perspective, are unusual for such ultra-local urban offices. Over the past 25 years, elections have become hotly contested, voter turnout has risen to remarkably high rates, and KMT dominance has partially given way to political pluralization. Citizens’ participation in this setting, like others, often shows deep divisions along partisan lines, with wardens and local associations split by party loyalties. Finally, civic engagement with the neighborhood system shows an inverted class bias. Residents with less education, for example, are more likely to know their wardens and vote in warden elections. Politics in Taiwan’s li thus has evolved substantially over time, and also contrasts in multiple ways with Western images of neighborhood politics.

Speaker Bio:

Benjamin L. Read is an Associate Professor of Politics at UC Santa Cruz. His book, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford University Press, 2012) uses surveys, interviews, and participant observation to compare the ways in which constituents perceive and interact with the urban administrative structures found in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere in the region. He edited Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (Routledge, 2009), also on the role of state-sponsored organizations, and has published research on civil society groups as well, particularly China's nascent homeowner associations. Read's next book, Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles, co-authored with Diana Kapiszewski and Lauren Morris MacLean, will be published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, the China Journal, the China Quarterly, the Washington Quarterly, and several edited books. He earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University in 2003.