Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Part of the symposium, "For a Better Democracy: Proportional Representation."
Our guest speaker, Louis Fishman (associate professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York), will discuss domestic politics in both countries and their importance for global democracy and regional security. Further, he will ponder on similarities and differences between the two countries in terms of ethnic divisions and the meaning of citizenship.
The seminar is presented in cooperation with The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, and Stanford's Department of History.
Ayça Alemdaroğlu, associate director of the Program on Turkey and a research scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, will moderate the discussion.
Louis Fishman is an associate professor in the history department at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of the book Jews and Palestinians in the late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland (Edinburgh University Press, January 2020). His academic work focuses on late Ottoman Palestine, the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also regularly contributes to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, where he writes about Turkish and Israeli politics while providing political commentary to other international media and policy outlets. He divides his time between New York, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv.
Zoom registration is available to the public. Only those with an active Stanford ID and access to Encina Hall E008 may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Every September, rising seniors in the Fisher Family Honors Program travel to the nation's capitol for CDRRL's Honors College. During this week-long program, students visit a wide variety of policy-related institutions in Washington, D.C., and gain firsthand exposure to how these organizations, the federal government, and think tanks work to advance democracy and development around the world.
Throughout the week, students will have the opportunity to learn about the government's vision for democracy at the National Security Council, explore an academic view of development from scholars at the World Bank, and dive into the challenges and advantages of empowering local democratic activists — particularly in countries hostile to democracy — with speakers at the National Endowment for Democracy, among other exciting site visits. They are also encouraged to use this time to connect with experts related to their thesis question. The culminating event of the trip will bring current honors students together with alumni from across the greater D.C. area for a networking happy hour.
CDDRL’s Fisher Family Honors Program brings together undergraduates from diverse fields and methodologies who are united by their passion for understanding democracy, development, and rule of law (DDRL). The aim of the program is for students to carry out original, policy-relevant research on DDRL and produce a coherent, eloquently argued, and well-written honors thesis.
This year's Honors College begins on Sunday, September 17, and will be led by Didi Kuo and Stephen Stedman, who jointly direct the honors program, alongside Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy Larry Diamond.
From September 17 through 23, the Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2024 will attend CDDRL's annual Honors College, gaining firsthand exposure to how the federal government, policy organizations, and think tanks work to advance democracy and development around the world.
Please join us on Monday, August 28, to meet CDDRL's six Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development (SU-DD) Fellows. SU-DD is a 10-week training program for Ukrainian practitioners and policymakers. Launched in the fall of 2022, the program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career practitioners working on well-defined projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian democracy, enhancing human development, and promoting good governance.
Meet our Ukrainian fellows and learn first-hand about what they have been working on during their time at Stanford. Hear about their respective projects, each focusing on actionable ways to support Ukraine’s recovery from Russia’s invasion, and find out more about how these practitioners and policymakers plan to launch their rebuilding efforts when they return to Ukraine in September.
This event is taking place in-person only. There will not be an online component.
12:30-12:35 — Introduction (Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL)
12:35-12:55 — Olena Kutsai
1:00-1:20 — Mykhailo Pavliuk
1:25-1:45 — Gulsanna Mamediieva
1:45-2:00 — Break
2:00-2:20 — Konstantyn Chyzhyk
2:25-2:45 — Halyna Yanchenko
2:50-3:10 — Anton Turupalov
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room (Encina Hall East, 2nd floor)
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Last year, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law announced the launch of a new 10-week training program for Ukrainian practitioners and policymakers. The Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development (SU-DD) Program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career practitioners working on well-defined projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian democracy, enhancing human development, and promoting good governance. It builds on some of the successes of the Center’s earlier Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, which hosted 12 Ukrainian fellows across four cohorts.
In May and June, our SU-DD inaugural cohort of six fellows met online with CDDRL faculty to discuss and define the scope of their respective projects, each focusing on actionable ways to support Ukraine’s recovery from Russia’s invasion.
One of the key components of the SU-DD program is for fellows to also participate in our three-week-long Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program. We were delighted to welcome them to campus in July for this opportunity to create connections and synergies and gain a deeper understanding of shared development problems and solutions from a variety of country contexts far beyond Ukrainian borders. Participating in this program also expanded the network for our Ukrainian fellows to draw upon as they continue their work and implement their projects when they leave Stanford on September 1.
During the final three weeks of the SU-DD program, our Ukrainian fellows are visiting Silicon Valley tech companies, meeting with local business experts, politicians, government officials, and Stanford faculty, and working on implementation plans for their projects.
Learn more about each of our fellows and their projects below, and join us on Monday, August 28, at 12:30 pm, to hear them present their ideas.
Anton Turupalov is a political consulting and government relations professional in Ukraine with extensive experience in public service. He has previously served as Deputy Mayor of Mykolayiv, Advisor to the Minister of Healthcare of Ukraine, and Advisor to the Head of the Parliament of Ukraine. Anton's expertise lies in regional policy and local administration. As a key advisor on regional policy to the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, he played a pivotal role in implementing groundbreaking system changes, including land and administrative reform. Anton organized Ukraine's first coronavirus isolation facility during the COVID-19 pandemic under challenging circumstances. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, Anton co-organized the Assistance Coordination Center in Warsaw, a hub for coordinating humanitarian aid between Ukrainian and Polish authorities, international donors, and organizations. Currently based in Warsaw, Anton serves as an advisor to the Minister of Agriculture and Food of Ukraine.
Project Description: Anton is spearheading the creation of the Ukrainian Endowment for Democracy (UED), a platform dedicated to protecting and developing democracy in Ukraine. The UED aims to promote the transformation of the political system, establish effective institutions, and introduce equal rules of the game to build sustainable democracy. The Endowment’s mission is to promote democratic institutions, foster economic development, and support the political system’s evolution. UED will bring together responsible businesses and experienced reformers to address systemic national problems, shape the national agenda, partner with international organizations, and work on two fronts: promoting democracy and building a strong economy. It will support the development of democratic institutions, political parties, civil society organizations, and independent media, and promote Ukraine as a regional leader of democracy, as well as support Ukraine’s integration with Europe and the West.
In addition to establishing the UED, Anton is working on a secondary project focused on improving the efficiency, transparency, and responsiveness of reconstruction and humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine. The project aims to develop a one-stop-shop system connecting international donors, relevant national government ministries, agencies, and local actors (region, town, and community-level stakeholders). This platform will enable a more transparent, efficient, and responsive mechanism for coordinating aid efforts in Ukraine, reducing corruption, improving prioritization, lowering net costs, and facilitating communication of needs and systemic issues by local administrations.
Gulsanna ("Sanna") Mamediieva led strategic planning and European integration of the digital sector of Ukraine as Director General for EU Integration at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. She played a significant role in Ukraine’s integration into the EU Digital Single Market and the rapid digital transformation of Ukraine, including building the government ecosystem “Diia” (The State and Me), which makes it easy and secure for Ukrainians to obtain digital documents (driver’s licenses, passports, etc.), access public services online (such as paying taxes, business registration), developing digital skills, electronic communication and growth of ICT industry. This influence made Ukraine one of the world leaders in public innovation and, without exaggeration, European “digital tiger.” It also served as a backbone of Ukrainian resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and wartime. Since February 2022, she has coordinated international technical assistance to support Ukraine’s digital resilience. Gulsanna also initiated exporting Ukrainian digital transformation experience to other countries. The first case is with Estonia, which will present its government state application, “Mrik,” which is based on Ukraine’s “Diia” app. Gulsanna currently serves as an Advisor to the Vice Prime Minister on Innovation, Technology and Education, and to the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. She is also Director for Programs and Partnerships at Digitally GovTech Center of Excellence, a member of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence, and Coordinator for Ukraine at Eastern Partnership Harmonization Digital Market initiative. She was a Visiting Fellow at the McCourt School for Public Policy at Georgetown University before arriving at Stanford this summer. She holds a Master’s degree in Information Technology Law from the University of Tartu, Estonia, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Internet Law at Carleton University in Canada. Before her government role, Gulsanna worked as an IT lawyer at DLA Piper Ukraine, specializing in ICT and Intellectual Property.
Project Description: Sanna has a number of tech policy areas of interest. She would like to learn more about innovation strategy development, edTech, govTech, military tech, AI for public purpose, saving ecosystems, biotech and medtech, and innovation parks. She is also interested in developing solutions and learning about comparative practices for upskilling and reskilling displaced people, mostly women, with a specific focus on the ICT sector. She has been very involved in building Ukraine’s digital capacity and IT sector development. Sanna is also interested in helping to build further digital capacities for better governance at both the local and national levels. To achieve this, she is keen on connecting with individuals in California, including local government representatives, who are engaged in similar efforts. She is also eager to connect with women in the Bay Area who have participated in ICT-related retraining and reskilling initiatives.
Gulsanna is interested in technology around elections, blockchain, and security that would be involved in structuring a way in which all displaced Ukrainians might have the opportunity to vote in the next round of presidential and/or parliamentary and local elections. She endeavors to understand the risks and benefits of such a system and, thus, is interested in connecting with experts in technical/computer science who are conversant in blockchain and e-voting, if only to explain why these ideas may not work that well. She is also interested in digital diplomacy, promoting and sharing Ukrainian digital transformation experiences.
Halyna Yanchenko was elected to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) in 2019 and is the Deputy Chair of Sluha Narodum “SN” (Servant of the People), a centrist, pro-European and anti-corruption Party. Shortly after her election, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, tapped her to lead government investment efforts. In January 2022, she was appointed as a Secretary in the National Investment Council of Ukraine. In addition, she chairs the Temporary Special Commission of the Verkhovna Rada on protecting investor rights. Prior to being elected to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, she led the Civil Oversight Council at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. In 2014-2015 was a deputy of the Kyiv city council. Halyna earned a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She also studied for one year at Wichita Falls High School in Texas.
Project Description: Halyna has many interests and was an important voice in the political process that led to the creation of “Diya” (a state cell phone application that has electronic IDs and provides public services to citizens and businesses) to make it easy and secure for Ukrainians to obtain digital drivers’ licenses, passports, health cards, and the like. This was very successful, and Ukrainians can now do all of this on their smartphones. Building on this success, Halyna is interested in using technology to assist in quickly employing veterans and returning displaced Ukrainians post-war. She is interested in engaging foreign investment for the recovery of Ukraine. She also wants to learn more about platforms and systems that can match skills with reconstruction priorities (as well as helping to map out those priorities). She would benefit from making connections in the private sector, including tech companies that could be helpful in these areas, as well as learning more from people who have worked in post-conflict zones on reconstruction priorities and organization. She also seeks to meet with emergency and disaster preparedness and recovery organizations at the state, federal and local levels or other contacts who may have experience in some of these areas.
Konstantyn ("Kostya") Chyzhyk is a Partner at British-Ukrainian law and consultancy firm Hillmont Partners, helping international companies develop business in Ukraine and advising the government and the parliament on economic and judicial reforms. As Deputy Minister of Energy and Ecology, Konstantyn coordinated European integration, investments, digital transformation, and security, worked on renewable energy sector stabilization and reform, launched new auctions on gas extraction, and managed the largest sectoral loan and grant portfolio in the government of $1.2B. As Deputy Head and later as Head of the Investment Promotion Office under the President of Ukraine, Konstantyn unlocked and secured more than $1B of foreign direct investments. As Head of Communications and International Relations of the Ministry of Finance, he promoted IMF-backed reforms and managed cooperation with investors and the IMF, World Bank, EBRD, and EIB.
Project Description: Kostya wants to use his time at Stanford to develop a new vision for ways in which to attract foreign direct investment to Ukraine. He is interested in learning more about strategic, sectoral, and institutional policy and regulatory frameworks that Ukraine would need to have in place in order to attract foreign capital post-war. He is keen on engaging with professionals from private equity and venture funds. Additionally, he seeks to connect with regional authorities, both at the state and local levels, if applicable, who are actively involved in economic development and the promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI). Kostya's intention is to gain insights from California's initiatives in this realm and also understand more about the factors that investors prioritize when considering investment in post-conflict areas.
Mykhailo Pavliuk is vice-chairman of the Chernivtsi Oblast (state) legislature in Ukraine. Among his central duties is the protection of the mutual interests of communities (known in Ukrainian as hromadas) and local governing bodies. His interests have long been focused on Euro-Atlantic integration, decentralization and deconcentration of authority in Ukraine, and the engagement of public and non-governmental organizations in policymaking. As acting Governor of the Chernivtsi Oblast State Administration in 2018-2019, Mykhailo focused on the creation of a successful administrative structure of new, capable, self-sufficient communities. In 2006-2010 shortly after his university graduation, he also organized long-term public discussions about the advantages for Ukraine of European Union and NATO membership. In his spare time, Mykhailo volunteers to deliver humanitarian aid to liberated areas of Ukraine and to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He also supports internally displaced persons in Chernivtsi and coordinates their resettlement.
Project Description: Mykhailo’s project is about local self-governance — its decentralization, finalization, and implementation in the post-war period in Ukraine. He wants to learn more about checks and balances between executive and local self-governance in the United States, how to empower self-sufficient communities (hromadas in Ukrainian, which are literally community-based forms of governance) and enrich them with practices of good governance (transparent, responsive and efficient), and also ways in which to engage citizens in local public issues. During his time at Stanford, he is interested in meeting with local government representatives in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Mountain View, as well as state (California) government actors to understand better how (or whether) this works here.
Olena Kutsai is a lawyer with more than 15 years of experience in the international corporate sector, including work for Chevron and Scorpio Real Estate corporations. Olena currently serves as a Member of the Secretariat of the Business Ombudsman Council of Ukraine and is a Member of the Peace Coalition. In the Business Ombudsman Council, Olena leads high-level dialogues focused on improving the business environment in Ukraine. She is responsible for strategic cooperation with a number of stakeholders, including the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. Olena drives several special initiatives to support the reconstruction and recovery of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022. She also develops policy recommendations promoting good governance, sustainable development, and the rule of law in Ukraine, working with the Government of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada (parliament), the Office of the President of Ukraine, business associations, non-governmental institutions, international financial institutions (World Bank, EBRD), and international development organizations such as USAID and Agriteam. Olena is an author and co-author of the Council’s educational webinars and training for the private and public sectors. She holds a Master’s of Public Administration from the Ukrainian Catholic University and a Master’s of Law from the Eastern European University. Olena is a graduate of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Leadership Academy for Development (Stanford University) and an advanced leadership course at Harvard Business School.
Project Description: Olena has an extensive background in business development and business advocacy. Her primary interest revolves around exploring effective strategies to reconstruct and revitalize the business community in Kherson, a region in southeastern Ukraine liberated from Russian occupation in the spring of 2022. Her overarching goal is to create models that can be scaled, adapted, and implemented in other parts of Ukraine.
Her past work has been focused on helping businesses forced to relocate from occupied or conflict-ridden areas of Ukraine. She helped these businesses secure new operational spaces, access essential services like electricity and internet, and rebuild disrupted supply chains to resume production. In Kherson, specific challenges arise due to the aftermath of flooding caused by the Russian military's destruction of the Khakovka Dam on June 6, 2023. Alongside her focus on business recovery, Olena also seeks to address the cleanup and restoration of vital services like electricity and internet, as well as the rebuilding of other infrastructure destroyed in the flooding.
Given the significant environmental damage in Kherson, Olena has found value in connecting with experts in food sustainability at Stanford, as well as climate and environmental scientists like David Lobell. She also seeks to engage with and learn from individuals with experience in disaster cleanup and recovery, both within California and on a national and international scale.
Meet the six fellows selected to participate in the first cohort of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program.
Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce the incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2023-2024 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community.
The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL.
Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.
Hometown: Caracas, Venezuela
Academic Institution: New York University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): PhD in Political Science, expected September 2023
Research Interests: Political parties with violent origins, post-conflict politics, peacebuilding and democracy, political integration and representation, and Latin America.
Dissertation Title: Essays on the Political Paths of Former Fighters
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? CDDRL is an ideal intellectual environment for scholars like myself who are invested in producing innovative empirical research on pressing and policy-relevant questions of governance, conflict, and development. I look forward to the opportunity to learn from, and collaborate with, fellow postdoctoral scholars and the wide variety of experts associated with the Center studying conflict and democracy across contexts.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? I plan on advancing my book manuscript on the perseverance of political parties with violent origins and preparing it for publication. I also aim to advance my broader research agenda by investigating the fundamental tension democracies face when considering the inclusion (or exclusion) of groups with violent origins, the consequences of these decisions, and strategies to minimize violence and democratic erosion.
Fun fact: I was once almost a backup dancer for the late icon Celia Cruz.
Hometown: Huntington Beach, CA
Academic Institution: Princeton University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): PhD in Politics, August 2020
Research Interests: African political economy, climate change, causal inference, machine learning
Dissertation Title: Essays on Electoral and Inter-Ethnic Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? CDDRL is making an interdisciplinary effort to tackle issues at the intersection of climate change and political economy.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? I hope to help establish CDDRL's research agenda on the political economy of climate change, especially research into how climate change is affecting democratic governance in the developing world.
Fun fact: I still get lost on campus.
Hometown: Piliscsaba, Hungary
Academic Institution: Stanford University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): JSD (Doctor of the Science of Law), expected June 2024
Research Interests: Economic and reputational effects of the erosion of the rule of law, rule of law measure construction, and research design for rule of law impact studies.
Dissertation Title: How Much Does the Rule of Law Matter for the Economy? A Novel Approach to Rule of Law Impact Studies and Two Implementations on European Union Member States.
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/Postdoctoral program? The vibrant intellectual community of fellows and scholars at CDDRL and the possibility of working alongside highly driven researchers as a source of inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and future collaborations drew me to the CDDRL fellowship program.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? Aided by invaluable insights from the CDDRL community, I would like to polish and submit two dissertation papers for publication.
Fun fact: I can’t tell jokes. Every time I try to tell one, I fail to make it funny.
Hometown: Monster, the Netherlands
Academic Institution: Stanford University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): Ph.D. Management Science and Engineering
Research Interests: Deliberative democracy, participatory budgeting, and online community organizing.
Dissertation Title: Design and Evaluation of Online Technologies for Societal Decision-Making
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? I have been an interdisciplinary scholar for many years and look forward to engaging with the interface between engineering and democracy from the other side of campus!
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? I hope to make further progress towards building a toolkit for decision-makers to engage residents meaningfully and effectively.
Fun fact: I have been active in the Wikimedia community for many years.
Hometown: Sichuan, China
Academic Institution: Stanford University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): PhD in Political Science, expected June 2024
Research Interests: Authoritarian politics, information technology, Chinese political economy, big data, and computational methods.
Dissertation Title: AI, Bureaucracy, and Information Manipulation: The Political Economy of Digitalizing Governmental Operations in China
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? The Center is host to a group of leading scholars on the most pressing issues facing democracy and autocracy in today’s challenging world.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? I plan to complete my book-style dissertation project on how information technologies are integrated into bureaucratic operations in China and how that has led to unintended consequences on information manipulation, economic growth, official corruption, and central-local relations. I will also revise and prepare several working papers for publication.
Fun fact: In all three places where I have attended school since childhood, the regional or even global technology center is always located next door. This was the Mozi Bridge in Chengdu, Zhongguancun in Beijing, and, of course, Silicon Valley here in the Bay Area.
Hometown: Macomb, MI
Academic Institution: Stanford University
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): PhD in History, expected 2024
Research Interests: Soviet Union, East Europe, Post-Soviet Successor States, Spatial History, Nationalism, Architecture
Dissertation Title: Expropriating Mezhyhirya: State Property Regimes from the Russian Empire to the Maidan
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? I was attracted by the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary components of my research and the chance to get to meet other scholars interested in the history of democracy.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? I hope to gain new perspectives on my research as I revise my dissertation and explore potential next projects related to democracy and the rule of law.
Fun fact: I have ridden the entire length of the Trans-Siberian railway between Moscow and Vladivostok one and a half times (the second time, I transferred at Irkutsk and went to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia).
Hometown: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Academic Institution: University of Chicago
Discipline and degree conferral date (or expected): Ph.D., Political Science, 2023 (expected)
Research Interests: Democracy, governance, and political violence.
Dissertation Title: Coercion and Capture in Democratic Politics
What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/ Postdoctoral program? I was drawn to CDDRL’s vibrant intellectual community and to the opportunities it offers to learn from scholars working on questions of democracy and political conflict in different settings around the world.
What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at CDDRL? During my time at the Center, I’m hoping to develop my book manuscript and a few related projects, and hopefully launch new collaborations with others in the CDDRL community.
Fun fact: I’ve never lived west of Chicago (and never experienced a winter without snow!)
The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to welcome six pre- and postdoctoral fellows who will be joining us for the 2023-24 academic year. These scholars will spend the academic year focusing on the Center's four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law.
Lodewijk Gelauff is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Deliberative Democracy Lab in CDDRL. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and received his doctorate in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford in 2023 with his dissertation on "Design and Evaluation of Online Technologies for Societal Decision Making."
In his work, he works with societal decision-makers to use and improve tools to engage residents or stakeholders in their decisions. As part of this, he managed the development and use of a few tools, including a video chat platform to facilitate small-group discussions without a human moderator and a voting platform for participatory budgeting that is used by dozens of cities in the United States.
In his recent work, he focuses on designing experiments and developing data sets that allow more in-depth analysis of how stakeholders use these technologies in practice. Lodewijk is actively involved as a volunteer with the Wikimedia community and was named the Wikimedia Laureate (a career award) in 2021 for his volunteer activities.
Andres Uribe is a scholar of democracy, governance, and political violence. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2023. His book project, "Coercion and Capture in Democratic Politics," examines how armed non-state groups seek to influence the democratic process. Through quantitative, computational, and archival analysis of rebel, paramilitary, and criminal groups in Latin America, he identifies the conditions that lead these actors to intervene in electoral politics, the structural forces that determine whether they succeed or fail, and the consequences of these interventions for democratic institutions and policy outcomes. Other projects explore processes of modern state-building, governance by non-state actors, and the political strategies of anti-democratic politicians. His research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Presidential Studies Quarterly.
What would Americans really think if they could discuss the issues in depth in moderated small group discussions with fellow citizens, if they had access to vetted and balanced briefing materials, and if they could get their questions answered by panels of competing experts representing different points of view? While many commentators think that our political differences are intractable, particularly on issues of how to conduct our elections or how to change our democracy, the results detailed below show many significant changes toward bipartisan agreement, even on the most contentious issues.
The Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab, in collaboration with Helena and various partners, has conducted a national Deliberative Poll® to determine what Americans would really think about possible reforms to our democracy and our electoral processes if they had a chance to weigh the options under good conditions. This project received crucial support from Porticus, the Skoll Foundation, the Thiry-O’Leary Foundation, and other donors.
