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Abstract

Latin America has gone through a major transformation in the past two decades. According to the United Nations, with the discovery of new oil and mineral deposits and increases in energy exports, manufacturing, and tourism, Latin America's economic growth and development will increase, and the region's global influence will become greater and greater.

In The Shared Society, Alejandro Toledo, whose tenure as president of Peru helped spur the country's economic renaissance, develops a plan for a future Latin America in which not only is its population much better off economically than today but the vast 40 percent of its poor and marginalized are incorporated into a rising middle class, democratic institutions work more effectively, and the extraordinary ecosystem of Latin America is preserved.

Speaker Bio:

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Alejandro Toledo served as the President of Peru from 2001 to 2006 and has been honored by the U.S. Senate for his policies during that tenure. He has held positions at the World Bank and the United Nations and was a Visiting Scholar in International Affairs at Harvard University as well as at Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Fellow and Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution. Toledo founded and continues to serve as the President of the Global Center for Development and Democracy in Washington, DC. 

This event is sponsored by CDDRL, FSI, the Center for Latin American Studies and Redwood Press.

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Abstract:

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American democracy differs greatly from other democracies around the world.  But is the American way more or less efficacious than comparable democracies in Asia, Latin America, or Europe?  What if the United States had a prime minister instead of (or in additional to) a president, or if it had three or more parties in Congress instead of two?  Would there be more partisan animosity and legislative gridlock or less?  These are the kinds of questions that thinking about U.S. government in comparative perspective helps us to analyze.

Speaker Bios:

Arend Lijphart 

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Arend Lijphart is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.  His research has focused on the prospects of democracy in ethnically divided societies like Belgium, Lebanon, South Africa, and India, and on different forms of democracy—especially the contrast between majoritarian and consensus democracy and between presidential and parliamentary systems—and their strengths and weaknesses.  He is the author or editor of more than twenty books; the most recent are Patterns of Democracy (1999, 2nd ed, 2012),  Thinking About Democracy (2008), and A Different Democracy (co-authored with Steven L. Taylor, Matthew S. Shugart, and Bernard Grofman, 2014). 

Lijphart received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1963, and was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Leiden in 2001, Queen’s University Belfast in 2004, and the University of Ghent in 2009.  He served as president of the American Political Science Association in 1995-96, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the Netherlands Academy of Sciences.

Matthew Shugart

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Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis

This event is co-sponsored with CDDRL's Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective. 

Abstract:

African civil society is grappling with the stagnation of democratization after the highs of the Arab Spring and the crackdowns in its aftermath. Many governments, including several in sub-Saharan Africa, have retreated to repressive laws, big security budgets and expensive patronage that is straining resources and, in some instances, reigniting tensions between communities. More than dealing with bad governance as usual, African civil society is challenged to find new ways to protect the most vulnerable groups. Renowned Ugandan lawyer Nicholas Opiyo, celebrated anti-corruption activist John Githongo, and distinguished scholar of democracy, Larry Diamond, unpack the tool kit for civil society actors to find new ways to confront old dangers to minorities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Bios:

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John Githongo

John Githongo, former correspondent for The Economist, is a courageous leader in the struggle to combat corruption and improve governance in Kenya. 

Selected in 2011 as one of the world’s 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine and one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, Mr. Githongo currently serves as CEO of Inuka Kenya, an NGO that works with Kenyan youth to provide civic education and address societal problems.

From 2003 to 2004, he served as permanent secretary for governance and ethics in Kenya’s post-transition government, and risked his life and career to expose one of the biggest government corruption scandals in Kenyan history. 

Mr. Githongo has served as CEO of Transparency International Kenya, vice president of World Vision, senior associate member at St. Antony’s College Oxford, and member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. 

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Nicholas Opiyo

Opiyo is a former Secretary of the Ugandan bar association and a vocal defender of human rights outside the courts as regular commentator on public affairs. He heads Chapter Four Uganda – a legal charity and think tank named after Chapter Four, the bill of rights in Uganda’s constitution. As well as consulting widely on human rights related issues for the World Bank and other international agencies, he leads a team of lawyers seeking out strategic litigation in defense of human rights and providing immediate legal representation to human rights defenders. His public interest cases include challenges to Uganda’s anti-pornography law, discrimination under the HIV Prevention and Control Act, Uganda’s laws on defamation and freedom of expression amongst others. He is also engaged in litigation before the regional East African Court of Justice as well before the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights.

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Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development.

Abstract:

The original Civic Culture model portrayed the ideal democratic citizen as an “allegiant” personality who dutifully participates in elections to entrust elites with legitimate power. The allegiant citizen trusts elites, the decision making process and institutions and abstains from disruptive non-electoral participation. The new book, The Civic Culture Transformed, argues that this model is outdated. In established democracies around the world, citizens have turned away from allegiance towards a decidedly “assertive” posture to politics: they are less trustful of politicians, parties and institutions, and are more likely to challenge government with their political demands. Most important, societies in which this transition from an allegiant to an assertive model of citizenship is most advanced are better performing democracies—in terms of both accountable and effective governance.

Speaker Bio:

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He was founding director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine and the Survey Research Center at Florida State University. His current research examines the changing norms of citizenship in the United States and other advanced industrial democracies, and how these norms are reshaping the democratic process in positive and negative ways. This has produced The Apartisan American: Dealignment and Changing Electoral Politics (CQ Press, 2012) and The Good Citizen (CQ Press, 2009). A related research program focuses on comparative electoral politics based on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. The first book from this project was Citizens, Choice and Context and a second book, Political Parties and Democratic Linkage, won the GESIS-Klingemann Prize.