Stanford University

Democracy

Global Populisms: A Threat to Democracy?

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THIS EVENT IS AT THE CAPACITY AND CLOSED. 

 

Conference Program

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3

8:45-10:30  Panel 1: Populism as a Threat — Chaired by Anna Grzymala-Busse

  • Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College | Columbia University, "Populism Is a Symptom Rather Than a Cause: The Decline of the Center-life and Rise of Threats to Liberal Democracy"
  • John Carey, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College, "The People Versus the Elites: What Do They Value and How Much Do Their Judgments of Democracy Differ?”
  • Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution, Stanford University, "When Does Populism Become a Threat to Democracy?"
  • Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, "The Cultural Dimensions of Populism”
  • Rick Perlstein, Journalist and bestselling author, "Why Populism Should Not Be an Epithet."

— 10:30-10:45: Coffee break —

10:45-12:30  Panel 2: American Populism — Chaired by Didi Kuo

  • Julia Azari, Associate Professor of Political Science, Marquette University, "Populism, Polarization and American Political Parties” 
  • David Kennedy, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University, “The Paradoxes of American Populism”
  • Kirk Hawkins, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, "Populism in Comparative Perspective: America and the 2016 Presidential Election”
  • Rob Mickey, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan — Ann Arbor, “Anti-anti Populism, or: The Threat of Populism to U.S. Democracy Is Exaggerated”
  • Rick Valelly, Claude C. Smith '14 Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College, “The Populist Scare of the 1890s -- And the Aftermath that Changed American Populism"

— 12:30-1:30: Lunch —

1:30-3:15  Panel 3: Comparative Perspectives  — Chaired by Matthias Matthijs

  • Anna Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute, “Populist or Authoritarian: The Erosion of Democracy in Poland and Hungary”
  • Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University, “Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in Latin America”
  • Kenneth Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, Cornell University, "Bipolar Disorders: Partisan Alignments and Populist Out-flanking in the Post-liberal Order”
  • Milada Vachudova: Associate Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, "From Competition to Polarization: How Populists Change Party Systems to Concentrate Power”
  • Julie Lynch, University of Pennsylvania, “Populism, Partisan Convergence, and Redistribution in Western Europe”

— 3:15-3:30: Coffee break —

3:30-5:00  Panel 4: International Linkages  — Chaired by Michael McFaul

  • Valerie Bunce, Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government, Cornell University, "The Putin Regime, Populism Promotion, and the 2016 US Presidential Election"
  • Francis Fukuyama, Olivier-Nomellini Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University "Immigration and Citizenship as Factors in the Rise of Populism"
  • Kathleen McNamara, Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University, "When the Banal Becomes Political: the EU in the Age of Populism”
  • Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution, Stanford University, "Is Putin a Populist and Why Does It Matter?”
  • Lucan Way, Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, "Is Russia a Threat to Western Democracy?"

 

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4

 9:00-11:00  Panel 5: Inequality, Investment and Economic Strain — Chaired by Francis Fukuyama

  • Kathy Cramer, Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin — Madison, "The Views of Populists: What Trump Voters’ Perspectives and Perceptions of Trump Voters Tell Us about the Threat of Populism to U.S. Democracy"
  • Didi Kuo, Research Scholar, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University, “Parties and Policy Convergence”
  • Margaret Levi, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University, "Populism and the Decline of Labor Unions”
  • Pia Malaney, Senior Economist, Institute for New Economic Thinking"Economic Nationalism as a Driving Force of Populism in the U.S.”
  • Kenneth Scheve, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University "The Economic Origins of Authoritarian Values: Evidence from Local Trade Shocks in the United Kingdom”

— 11-1 pm Lunch and concluding discussion —

 

CISAC Central, 2nd Floor, Encina Hall at Stanford University, 616 Serra Street, Stanford, CA 94305

Conferences

Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2017 Report Launch

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Please join Freedom House and Stanford's Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) for the West Coast launch of the latest edition of Freedom on the Net, Freedom House's annual study of Internet freedom around the world. 

 

Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy

 

Speakers and Panelists

Michael Abramowitz

President, Freedom House

 

Larry Diamond

Senior fellow, FSI and the Hoover Institution

 

Sanja Kelly

Director, Freedom on the Net, Freedom House

 

Xiao Qiang

Founder and editor-in-chief, China Digital Times (CDT)

 

Paola Ricaurte Quijano

Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico

 

Dariya Orlova

Mohyla School of Journalism, Kiev, Ukraine 

 

Justine Isola

Product Policy Manager, Facebook

 

 

Moderator

Eileen Donahoe

Executive director, Global Digital Policy Incubator

 

Can't join in person? This event will be Livestreamed here: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordCDDRL/

 

Tweet with us at #NetFreedom2017

 

 

 

Bechtel Conference Center (Encina Hall)

616 Serra St.

Stanford, CA 94305-6055

 

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Panel Discussions
CDDRL Special Events

Checks and Balances

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"The normal functioning of our check-and-balance system has been dependent on some degree of cooperation between the parties. It has seized up in recent years as the parties have become more polarized and ideological," writes CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama for The American Interest. Read the article here.

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Poli-Sci for the Trump Era

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“All of us involved with the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective think the demarcation between American and comparative politics is fuzzy,” Kuo said -- hence the program's name. Even the center’s Americanist faculty members do comparative work, she added, and the “rest of us are comparativists who have long believed that the U.S. should be considered a case in comparative analysis,” says Didi Kuo for www.insidehighered.com. Read the article here.

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Labor Activism under Egypt’s New Authoritarianism

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ABSTRACT

Despite security surveillance, forced dismissals of labor activists, and referrals of labor activists and protesters to military trials, labor activism remains at the forefront of societal resistance to authoritarian policies and practices in today’s Egypt. Unionized workers in public and private industrial facilities, as well as civil servants inside the state bureaucracy, continue to demonstrate and organize strikes to articulate their economic and social demands and to defend workers’ rights to freedoms of expression and association. Protests by labor activists have even impacted key sectors, such as public transportation and healthcare. While the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration has settled some formal complaints and requests filed by workers and civil servants, most cases have been referred to labor courts. The ministry has also resorted to providing temporary financial assistance and other short-term benefits to appease some workers and civil servants and to address the upsurge in labor protests. This talk will examine the various administrative, security, legislative, and judicial tools that the regime of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has employed to undermine labor activism. Joel Beinin will serve as a discussant.

 

SPEAKER BIO

Amr Hamzawy is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL. He studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo. Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a senior fellow in the Middle East program and the Democracy and Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC. 

His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world. He is currently writing a new book on contemporary Egyptian politics, titled Egypt’s New Authoritarianism.

Hamzawy is a former member of the Egyptian parliament, and was elected to office in the country’s first legislative elections following the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the Egyptian independent newspaper al-Shorouk and a weekly op-ed to the London based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi.

 

DISCUSSANT BIO

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982 before coming to Stanford in 1983.  From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo.  In 2002 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

Beinin’s research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel and on US policy in the Middle East.  He has written or edited eleven books, most recently Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2015); Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, 2nd edition (Stanford University Press, 2013) co-edited with Frédéric Vairel; and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Solidarity Center, 2010).

 Reuben Hills Conference Room
 2nd Floor East Wing E207
 Encina Hall
 616 Serra Street
 Stanford, California 94305

Amr Hamzawy

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Amr Hamzawy is the director of the Carnegie Middle East Program. He studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo.

His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world. His new book On The Habits of Neoauthoritarianism – Politics in Egypt Between 2013 and 2019 appeared in Arabic in September 2019.

Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi.

 

Former Senior Research Scholar, CDDRL
Senior Research Scholar, CDDRL
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

U.S.-China Rivalry and the Origins of Taiwan's Developmental State

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Abstract 

Scholars have credited a model of state-led capitalism called the developmental state with producing the first wave of the East Asian economic miracle. Using historical evidence based on original archival research, this talk offers a geopolitical explanation for the origins of the developmental state. In contrast to previous studies that have emphasized colonial legacies or domestic political factors, I argue that the developmental state was the legacy of the rivalry between the United States and Communist China during the Cold War. Responding to the acute tensions in Northeast Asia in the early postwar years, the United States supported emergency economic controls in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to enforce political stability. In response to the belief that the Communist threat would persist over the long term, the U.S. strengthened its clients by laying the foundations of a capitalist, export-oriented economy under bureaucratic guidance. The result of these interventions was a distinctive model of state-directed capitalism that scholars would later characterize as a developmental state.

I verify this claim by examining the rivalry between the United States and the Chinese Communists and demonstrating that American threat perceptions caused the U.S. to promote unorthodox economic policies among its clients in Northeast Asia. In particular, I examine U.S. relations with the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, where American efforts to create a bulwark against Communism led to the creation of an elite economic bureaucracy for administering U.S. economic aid. In contrast, the United States decided not to create a developmental state in the Philippines because the Philippine state was not threatened by the Chinese Communists. Instead, the Philippines faced a domestic insurgency that was weaker and comparatively short-lived. As a result, the U.S. pursued a limited goal of maintaining economic stability instead of promoting rapid industrialization. These findings shed new light on the legacy of statism in American foreign economic policy and highlight the importance of geopolitics in international development.

 

Bio

James Lee

James Lee is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He specializes in International Relations with a focus on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and relations across the Taiwan Strait. James also serves as the Senior Editor for Taiwan Security Research, an academic website that aggregates news and commentary on the economic and political dimensions of Taiwan's security.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), both part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

James Lee Ph.D. Candidate Princeton University
Lectures

Oleksandra Matviichuk

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Visiting Scholar, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program 2017-18
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Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights defender who works on issues in Ukraine and the OSCE region. At present she heads the human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, and also coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. The activities of the Center for Civil Liberties are aimed at protecting human rights and establishing democracy in Ukraine and the OSCE region. The organization is developing legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement agencies and judiciary, conducts educational activities for young people and implements international solidarity programs. 

The Euromaidan SOS initiative group was created in response to the brutal dispersal of a peaceful student rally in Kyiv on November 30, 2013. During three months of mass protests that were called the Revolution of Dignity, several thousand volunteers provided round-the-clock legal and other aid to persecuted people throughout the country. Since the end of the protests and beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the initiative has been monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the hybrid war in the Donbas and conducting the “LetMyPeopleGo” international campaign to release political prisoners detained by the Russian authorities. 

Oleksandra Matviichuk has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of alternative reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. In 2016 she received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from missions to the OSCE.

Protecting democracy from online disinformation requires better algorithms, not censorship

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"New laws in democratic countries that force social media platforms to remove disinformation will encourage autocratic countries to do the same, with devastating effects on human rights," writes Global Digital Policy Incubator Director Eileen Donahoe in her op-ed "Protecting Democracy from Online Disinformation Requires Better Algorithms, Not Censorship." Read here. 

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Special Event: Party Politics and Cross-Strait Relations in Taiwan after the 2016 Elections

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For this special theme panel, the Taiwan Democracy Project has invited presentations that examine important changes in Taiwan’s party politics and cross-Strait relations since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen and a DPP majority in the legislature in Taiwan in January 2016. The event will be held in San Francisco, CA, directly following the conclusion of the American Political Science Association annual conference there, and is open to the public. Conference attendees with an interest in Taiwan are especially encouraged to attend.

 

The event will include two panels followed by open discussion:

 

12:00-1:30pm  

Panel I. Party Politics after the 2016 Elections

1.     Nathan Batto, “The KMT Party Organization”

2.     Austin Wang, “The DPP Party Organization”

3.     Da-chi Liao, “New Party Organizations”

Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University

Discussant: Kharis Templeman, Stanford University

 

2:00-3:30pm  

Panel II. Cross-Strait Relations and Taiwan’s Foreign Policy after the 2016 Elections

4.     Dalton Lin,  “Beijing’s Taiwan Policy after the 2016 Elections”

5.     Shirley Lin,  “Taiwan and the High Income Trap”

Chair: Kharis Templeman

Discussant: Larry Diamond 

 

The Taiwan Democracy Project is a research program affilated with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Insitute for International Studies, Stanford University. This event is made possible by generous support from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco.

Taiwan Politics after the 2016 Election
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Beijing's Taiwan Policy after the 2016 Elections
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The DPP after 2016
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2nd Floor, Olympic Room

Westin St. Francis Union Square, 

335 Powell St.

San Franciso, CA 94102

Nathan Batto Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science Academia Sinica
Austin Wang Doctoral Candidate Duke University
Da-Chi Liao Professor, Institute of Political Science National Sun Yat-sen University
Dalton Lin Assistant Professor of International Affairs Georgia Tech
Shirley Lin Professor of Political Science University of Virginia and Chinese University of Hong Kong
Panel Discussions
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