Human Rights at Stanford
Related Multimedia
Presentation
Human Rights at Stanford
Related Multimedia
Presentation
Human Rights at Stanford
Related Multimedia
Presentation
Human Rights at Stanford
Related Multimedia
Presentation
The Impact of Technology Access on Protest Frequency in Authoritarian Regimes
-
Patrick Meier will be presenting the preliminary results of his dissertation research that draws on a nested analysis approach. The results are from the first half of his dissertation research--namely a large-N study to determine whether technology access is a statistically significant predictor of protest frequency in countries under repressive rule.
Patrick Meier is a PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). Patrick's dissertation research seeks to determine whether local access to new media and digital technologies changes the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil resistance movements. He also co-authored an applied econometric study related to his research for Harvard University's Berkman Center for the Study of Internet and Society. Patrick has consulted on projects directly related to his dissertation research. Patrick is on the Boards of Ushahidi, DigiActive and Digital Democracy, and a graduate of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Patrick has presented his research worldwide and is regularly interviewed by specialized and popular press.
http://www.thetibetconnection.org/ournextprogram.html
Summary of the Seminar
Patrick Meier, a PhD Candidate at Fletcher School, Tufts University introduced his research to investigate the relationship between increased availability of ICTs and popular resistance movements.
A key question in the relatively new field of digital activism is whether new technologies will help or hinder efforts to remove authoritarian governments. What we tend to see are patterns of repression by regimes, followed by circumvention as activists find ways to work around new restrictions. The ability to learn and adapt would seem to be crucial in determining whether activists or governments gain the upper hand.
When studying this area more closely, a number of research gaps emerge. Firstly, many studies use ‘information revolution' and ‘internet' interchangeably; this fails to recognize the importance of other technologies such as mobile phones. Secondly, discourses from complexity science that model how networks operate have not yet been brought into this literature. Thirdly, since the majority of studies to date are qualitative in nature, there is a real lack of quantitative analysis. The result is that we are left with a collection of anecdotes, some demonstrating that technology has promoted activism, and others detailing how repressive regimes are using technology successfully for their own ends. This anecdotal approach produces little clarity about the relationship between technology and political activism.
One of the aims of Patrick's dissertation research is to help fill this quantitative void. He is currently conducting a large-N study that will try to answer the question: are ICTs a statistically significant predictor of protest activism? The study looks at 38 countries between1990 and 2007. Countries were selected using two criteria: first, whether they were defined as having a score in the range -5 to -10 on the Polity IV measure of autocratic tendency; second, whether they were featured amongst the prominent examples in the existing literature about digital activism. To measure levels of protest activity, Patrick will be using a data set that uses Reuters newswire reports. Control variables include population, levels of unemployment, internal wars and elections.
Preliminary findings are quite counter intuitive, suggesting that there is a negative relationship between increasing use of technologies like mobile phones and numbers of protests. Recognizing some of t he inherent problems and limitations associated with a large-N study, Patrick will also be conducting detailed qualitative research into four case study countries to gain a better understanding of how technology impacts activism in different contexts.
Patrick will be updating progress and results of his research at his blog iRevolution.
Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160
Patrick Meier
N/A
0
CDDRL Fellow 2010-2011
Patrick Meier is the Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi and the co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. He serves on the boards of the Meta-Activism Project (MAP) and Digital Democracy. Patrick was previously the co-director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's (HHI) Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning. He has consulted for several international organizations on numerous crisis mapping and early warning projects in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Patrick is completing his PhD at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His dissertation focuses on the the impact of information and communication technologies on the balance of power between repressive regimes and popular movements. He has an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and is an alum of the Sante Fe Institute's (SFI) Complex Systems Summer School.
Patrick blogs at iRevolution.net
Seminars
Open Borders and the Claims of Community
-
Joseph H. Carens is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto (Ph.D., Yale). He is the author of Culture, Citizenship and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness (OUP: 2000) as well as three other books and more than 60 articles or book chapters. He is currently writing a book on the ethics of immigration, tentatively titled Who Belongs? Immigration, Democracy and Citizenship.
Abstract
In this paper (which is a chapter from a book manuscript on the ethics of immigration), I explore the principled challenges to open borders that grow out of concerns for community. I begin with the claim that our moral commitments to freedom and equality apply only within the boundaries of the state. Next I consider the relationship between sovereignty and immigration. I then turn to the threats that some say free movement would pose to national security, to democratic values, and to public order. After that, I consider the argument that opening borders fails to give the priority that is due to compatriots. Next, I ask whether preservation of a welfare state might make limits on immigration morally permissible. Then I consider whether the desire to maintain a shared culture can justify restrictions on immigration. Finally, I take up the argument that free movement is incompatible with communal self-determination and with the shared responsibility that flows from collective self-governance and sustains it.
Spoiler alert. I think that none of these objections succeeds in undermining the fundamental case for open borders.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Joseph Carens
Professor, Political Science
Speaker
University of Toronto
Workshops
Aiding Latin America's Poor
Paragraphs
(excerpt) Social policy in Latin America has traditionally failed to benefit the poor. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the main redistributive efforts in the region went into building welfare states. Yet unlike their European counterparts, these Latin American welfare states are highly “truncated,” meaning that whatever their nominal degree of universality, in fact they only cover those with formal employment. The poor, being mostly outside the formal sector of the economy, are outside the ambit of the welfare state as well. Latin American social-insurance programs—maternity and family benefits, health insurance, old-age pensions, and disability benefits—typically began as emoluments meant for relatively small groups such as state employees, armed-forces personnel, and those working in certain favored industries. The welfare state’s coverage gradually expanded throughout the twentieth century until most formal workers came under its umbrella, though even then agricultural workers were almost always left out.
Once nominally financed by contributions, most of these programs are now in fact funded more or less directly by taxes. Because “the regressivity in social insurance schemes has not been helped by any significant progressivity in tax financing,” these schemes foster a “reverse Robin Hood effect” in which the poor are made to pay for the benefit of the rich. Latin American social policy, in other words, has mostly worked backwards, making preexisting economic and social inequalities wider rather than narrower.
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros is associate professor of international relations and Pacific studies and director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Beatriz Magaloni is associate professor of political science at Stanford University. This essay is based on a paper presented at an April 2009 conference in Bratislava funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund.
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Journal of Democracy
The Origins of Authoritarianism in Pakistan
Paragraphs
What ails the Pakistani polity? Since its emergence from the detritus of the British Indian Empire in 1947, it has witnessed four military coups (1958, 1969, 1978 and 1999), long periods of political instability and a persistent inability to consolidate democratic institutions. It also witnessed the loss of a significant portion of its territory (East Pakistan) in 1971 following the brutal suppression of an indigenous uprising in the aftermath of which some ten million individuals sough refuge in India. The flight of the refugees to India and the failure to reach a political resolution to the crisis precipitated Indian military intervention and culminated in the creation of the new state of Bangladesh.
Pakistan's inability to sustain a transition to democracy is especially puzzling given that India too emerged from the collapse of British rule in South Asia. In marked contrast to Pakistan, it has only experienced a brief bout of authoritarian rule (1975-1977) and has managed to consolidate democracy even though the quality of its democratic institutions and their performance may leave much to be desired.
A number of scholars have proffered important explanations for Pakistan's failure to make a successful transition to democracy. This essay will argue that all the extant explanations are, at best, partial and incomplete. It will then demonstrate that the roots of Pakistan's propensity toward authoritarianism must be sought in the ideology, organization and mobilization strategy of the movement for the creation of Pakistan.
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
CDDRL Working Papers