This book evaluates the global status and prospects of democracy, with an emphasis on the quality of democratic institutions and the effectiveness of governance as key conditions for stable democracy. Bringing together a wide range of the author’s work over the past three decades, it advances a framework for assessing the quality of democracy and it analyzes alternative measures of democracy. Drawing on the most recent data from Freedom House, it assesses the global state of democracy and freedom, as of the beginning of 2015, and it explains why the world has been experiencing a mild but now deepening recession of democracy and freedom since 2005.
A major theme of the book across the three decades of the author’s work is the relationship between democratic quality and stability. Democracies break down, Diamond argues, not so much because of economic factors but because of corrupt, inept governance that violates individual rights and the rule of law. The best way to secure democracy is to ensure that democracy is accountable, transparent, genuinely competitive, respectful of individual rights, inclusive of diverse forms and sources of participation, and responsive to the needs and aspirations of ordinary citizens. Viable democracy requires not only a state that can mobilize power to achieve collective goals, but also one that can restrain and punish the abuse of power—a particularly steep challenge for poor countries and those with natural resource wealth.
The book examines these themes both in broad comparative perspective and with a deeper analysis of historical trends and future prospects in Africa and Asia,. Concluding with lessons for sustaining and reforming policies to promote democracy internationally, this book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in democracy, as well as politics and international relations more generally.
In a recent piece in Stanford News, FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond expresses his thoughts on the ebbing of global democratic expansion, highlighting that not all countries have equal opportunities at achieving democracy and that democratic change should be approached multilaterally.
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Larry Diamond speaks on his new book "In Search of Democracy," at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington, D.C.
Katherine Bersch is a Kellogg Fellow at the University of Notre Dame (2022-23) and the Nancy Akers and J. Mason Wallace Assistant Professor of Political Science at Davidson College. A research affiliate of the CDDRL Stanford Governance Project, she is also a co-founder of the Global Survey of Public Servants. Her research focuses on democratic quality in developing countries, with an emphasis on governance reform and state capacity in Latin America. She is the author of When Democracies Deliver: Governance Reform in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which won the Van Cott Best Book Prize from LASA, the Levine Book Prize from IPSA, and the ASPA Prize for the Best Book Published in Public Administration.
Since Iran's Green Revolution, technology has demonstrated its power to mobilize millions of people demanding political and social change in countries where authoritarian regimes remained untouchable for decades. The same technology and open networks have also been used by oppressive governments to surveil populations and thwart these social movements. In facing these tensions, activists and hackers share a common mission of challenging the status quo to improve existing systems - whether governments or networks. How do the two communities work together to defend civil liberties online and on the ground?
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Rita Zolotova is a Director of Public Policy for Wickr Inc. and the Wickr Foundation where she leads a global effort to raise privacy awareness and provide security education to human rights activists, journalists, and policy-makers. Rita works closely with technology innovators and security experts to engage kids, particularly young girls, in learning about encryption, cyber security and white-hat hacking. Rita came to Wickr from Middlebury College's Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a policy research center focused on WMD security and terrorism issues. At CNS Rita managed online education initiatives, co-directed the development of a policy design framework for the U.S. State Department on ways to employ new media technology in addressing global arms control and nonproliferation threats. Rita has an extensive experience in political consulting and journalism in Russia. She has degrees in Political Science, Management and holds a Masters Degree in Terrorism and Nonproliferation Studies from the Graduate School of Middlebury College.
Wallenberg Theatre
450 Serra Mall #124
(The room is located in the main quad, across the road from Stanford Oval).
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Larry Diamond presents a timeline of democracy charting the spread, regression, and sometimes even collapse, of democracy in the last 40 years.
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Anti-government protesters wave national flags during a demonstration in Bangkok on November 25, 2013.
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.
During the recent meeting between PRC President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, the “1992 One China Consensus” served as a mutually acceptable paradigm for maintaining “peaceful and stable” conditions across the Taiwan Strait. For Xi Jinping, the warmth of the visit thinly veiled a message to Taiwan’s leaders and electorate, as well as to onlookers in Washington. Chinese officials and media clearly link the talks and confirmation of the 1992 Consensus to “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—a concept that is increasingly unpalatable to many in Taiwan. Xi hopes to keep DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (and perhaps even future KMT leaders) in the 1992 Consensus “box” and to co-opt the U.S. in this effort, but perhaps underestimates the political transformation underway on Taiwan.
The Xi administration has also hardened its position regarding “core interests” such as Taiwan, embodied in a “bottom line principle” policy directive that eschews compromise. Although many commentators and most officials across the region have shied away from stating that the PRC and Taiwan are at the crossroads of crisis, the collision of political transformation on Taiwan and the PRC’s “bottom line principle” will challenge the fragile foundations of peaceful cross-Strait co-existence. Changes in the regional balance of military power brought about by a more muscular People’s Liberation Army compounds the potential for increased friction, providing Beijing with more credible options for coercion and deterrence.
This talk will consider the politics and principles involved in cross-Taiwan Strait relations in light of the upcoming 2016 Taiwan elections and the policies of the Xi Jinping administration; and will discuss some of the possible implications for China’s national security policy, regional stability, and the future of cross-Strait relations.
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Mr. Cortez A. Cooper III joined RAND in April 2009, providing assessments of security challenges across political, military, economic, cultural, and informational arenas for a broad range of U.S. government clients. Prior to joining RAND, Mr. Cooper was the Director of the East Asia Studies Center for Hicks and Associates, Inc. He has also served in the U.S. Navy Executive Service as the Senior Analyst for the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific, U.S. Pacific Command. As the senior intelligence analyst and Asia regional specialist in the Pacific Theater, he advised Pacific Command leadership on trends and developments in the Command’s area of responsibility. Before his Hawaii assignment, Mr. Cooper was a Senior Analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc., specializing in Asia-Pacific political-military affairs. Mr. Cooper’s 20 years of military service included assignments as both an Army Signal Corps Officer and a China Foreign Area Officer. In addition to numerous military decorations, the Secretary of Defense awarded Mr. Cooper with the Exceptional Civilian Service Award in 2001.
2016 Taiwan Elections and Implications for Cross-Strait and Regional Security
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.
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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.
Human rights groups have only two assets: people and information. Learn about Benetech's decade of putting information technology tools into the hands of human rights activists, with the goal of making these two assets more effective in advancing the global cause of human rights.
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Jim Fruchterman is the founder and CEO of Benetech, a Silicon Valley nonprofit technology company that develops software applications to address unmet needs of users in the social sector. He is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his work as a pioneering social entrepreneur, including the MacArthur Fellowship, Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Migel Medal - the highest honor in the blindness field - from the American Foundation for the Blind. Since its founding in 1989, Benetech has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Its tools and services have transformed the ways in which people with disabilities access printed information, at-risk human rights defenders safely document abuse, and environmental practitioners succeed in their efforts to protect species and ecosystems. Through his work with Benetech and as a trailblazer in the field of social entrepreneurship, Jim continues to advance his vision of a world in which the benefits of technology reach all of humanity, not just the wealthiest and most able five percent.
Wallenberg Theatre
450 Serra Mall #124
(The room is located in the main quad, across the road from Stanford Oval.)
Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.
