Ideological Migration in the US Congress: Out of Step but Still in Office
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McFaul returns to Stanford
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When Michael McFaul steps down from his post as Washington’s ambassador to Moscow later this month, he will return to Stanford where he is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a former director of the institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).
Announcing his decision this week to leave Russia following the Winter Olympics, McFaul wrote on his blog that "it is time to come home."
"We are immensely proud of the service Michael McFaul has rendered in these past five years of steering U.S. policy toward Russia, first at the National Security Council and then for the past two years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "During this time, he has navigated skillfully through some of the toughest challenges in U.S. foreign policy, showing that it is possible for the United States to advance its strategic interests while also standing up for its values of freedom, democracy and an open society."
At Stanford, McFaul will resume his academic activities as a professor in the department of political science, a resident faculty member at CDDRL and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
"Ambassador McFaul's return is a sterling opportunity for Stanford and FSI," said FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. "His unique experience as a diplomat and a leading scholar are enormous assets to our centers and educational programs, and to the entire university."
McFaul has worked in the Obama administration for the past five years, and was tapped as ambassador in 2011. He arrived in Russia with the mandate to reset relations with Moscow, which proved to be challenging in a political climate marked by increasing tensions between the two countries. From the ban on U.S. adoptions to the Edward Snowden affair, McFaul faced many setbacks as he embarked on his political mandate.
Nevertheless, McFaul leaves Moscow citing major gains in improving trade and tourism between the two countries, having worked to secure Russia's membership to the World Trade Organization and a new visa regime. He was also integral to negotiating the historic agreement with Russia to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised McFaul's service in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, "From the New START Treaty to securing Russian cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program, to resupplying our troops in Afghanistan and expanding our trade, there’s scarcely an issue in our bilateral agenda that didn’t benefit from Mike’s steady hand and good old fashioned willpower."
Kerry continued to commend McFaul's deep commitment and engagement with Russian civil society on human rights and the independent media, which often invoked tension with the Russian government.
McFaul was a trailblazer in public diplomacy, using the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook to connect to audiences in Russia and beyond. In his blog, McFaul admits to never having sent a tweet before his time as ambassador but now reaches over 60,000 followers through his Twitter account.
"He grasped the importance of social media in an information age, but he also grasped a much more essential truth: that all people everywhere should be able to express themselves and, ultimately, determine how they are governed," said Kerry. "That’s an enduring conviction, and Mike leaves behind an enduring legacy."
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<i>The Act of Killing (Director's Cut)</i> Film Screening and Panel Discussion
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*This event is free and open to the public.*
PANELISTS
Don Emmerson - Director of the Southeast Asia Forum, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Erik Jensen - Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School; Senior Advisor for Governance and Law, The Asia Foundation; Senior Research Scholar, CDDRL; Director, Rule of Law Program, Stanford Law School
Norman Naimark - Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division; Professor of History
Diane H. Steinberg (Panel Chair) - Visiting Scholar at Stanford's Program on Human Rights, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)
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The Act of Killing visits former Indonesian death squad killers who wreaked havoc in 1965 and 1966 in the aftermath of Indonesia's military coup and yet have never been held accountable for slaughtering between 200,000 to 2 million people in a genocide often forgotten. The dramatic reenactments of the murders in the documentary catalyze an unexpected emotional journey for Anwar Congo from arrogance to regret as he confronts for the first time in his life the full implications of what he has done.
The Act of Killing is an award-winning documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer with co-director Christine Cynn and and an anonymous co-director from Indonesia. It is a Danish-British-Norwegian co-production, presented by Final Cut for Real in Denmark and produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen. It was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
"Director Joshua Oppenheimer has made a documentary in which he interviews the leaders of Indonesian death squads, who were responsible, collectively, for the deaths of millions of Communists, leftists and ethnic Chinese in 1965 and 1966. But he doesn't just interview them. He has them re-enact their crimes and even invites them to write, perform and film skits dramatizing their murders." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/8/2013
"Director Joshua Oppenheimer has made a documentary in which he interviews the leaders of Indonesian death squads, who were responsible, collectively, for the deaths of millions of Communists, leftists and ethnic Chinese in 1965 and 1966. But he doesn't just interview them. He has them re-enact their crimes and even invites them to write, perform and film skits dramatizing their murders." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/8/2013
"The Act of Killing is a bold reinvention of the documentary form, as well as an astounding illustration of man's infinite capacity for evil." Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald, 8/15/2013
After the screening of the Director's Cut of The Act of Killing (160 minutes), there will be a thirty-minute panel discussion.
For more information regarding the film, please visit: http://theactofkilling.com/.
This event is presented and sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, CDDRL's Program on Human Rights, and the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education.
Cubberley Auditorium
Conferences
Technology for Social Benefit and Civic Engagement: CITRIS and the Data & Democracy Initiative
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Abstract
Social media and new technology are being harnessed for social benefit in contexts from healthcare, economic development, and sustainable energy to civic engagement and government transparency in California and worldwide. The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing these problems and promoting innovation for students, faculty and entrepreneurs. In this talk, I will give a short overview of CITRIS's programs and initiatives, before diving into specific projects in the areas I lead: the Data and Democracy Initiative and the Social Apps Lab.
Camille Crittenden joined the Data and Democracy Initiative as Director in May 2012 and was named Deputy Director of CITRIS in May 2013. Prior to this appointment, she served as Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, where she was responsible for overall administration of the Center, including fundraising, communications, and outreach, and helped to develop its program in human rights, technology, and new media. She held previous positions as Assistant Dean for Development in the division of International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley and in development and public relations at University of California Press and San Francisco Opera. She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Wallenberg Theater
Camille Crittenden
Deputy Director, CITRIS & Director, Data and Democracy, CITRIS
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UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley
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Speaker
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Conference Report: Trans-Pacific Partnership [Oct. 2013]
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On Oct. 11-12, 2013, the Taiwan Democracy Project convened a conference on “The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Taiwan’s Future Development Strategy” at Stanford. The meeting was sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University, and supported with generous funding from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco.
The conference brought together an impressive collection of academics, government officials, and policy-makers from Taiwan, the U.S., and many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region for a frank, wide-ranging set of discussions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its potential impact on Taiwan.
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The Next Democratic Century
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In an article published in the January 2014 issue of Current History, Larry Diamond urges civil society and policy leaders to stay optimistic about democracy’s future, arguing that its historical moment has not passed. Despite recent examples of democratic breakdowns, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, Diamond claims that values are shifting, giving way to an empowered and vocal citizenry, which may pressure governments toward more accountable and democratic forms of rule.
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Current History
New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan
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New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan takes a creative and comparative view of the new challenges and dynamics confronting these maturing democracies.
Numerous works deal with political change in the two societies individually, but few adopt a comparative approach—and most focus mainly on the emergence of democracy or the politics of the democratization processes. This book, utilizing a broad, interdisciplinary approach, pays careful attention to post-democratization phenomena and the key issues that arise in maturing democracies.
“As two paradigmatic cases of democratic development, Korea and Taiwan are often seen as exemplars of both modernization and democratization. This volume both contributes and moves beyond this focus, looking forward to assess the maturation but also the risks to democracy in both countries. With its strong comparative focus and a sober appreciation of how hard it can be not to just to attain but to sustain democracy, it represents a major contribution."
— Benjamin Reilly, Dean, Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Murdoch University
What emerges is a picture of two evolving democracies, now secure, but still imperfect and at times disappointing to their citizens—a common feature and challenge of democratic maturation. The book demonstrates that it will fall to the elected political leaders of these two countries to rise above narrow and immediate party interests to mobilize consensus and craft policies that will guide the structural adaptation and reinvigoration of the society and economy in an era that clearly presents for both countries not only steep challenges but also new opportunities.
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Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. He is also Director of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Gi-Wook Shin is Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies, and Professor of Sociology at Stanford.
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Stanford University Press
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9780804787437
Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico
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We study the governance of public good provision in poor communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. We estimate the effect of usos y costumbres—a form of participatory democracy prevalent in indigenous communities—on the provision of local public goods. Because governance is endogenous, we address selection effects by matching on municipal characteristics and long-term settlement patterns. Using a first-differences design we show that these municipalities increase access to electricity, sewerage, and education faster than communities ruled by political parties. We also show they are places of vibrant political participation, not authoritarian enclaves protecting the political monopoly of local bosses.
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World Development
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The Performance of Democracies
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Abstract:
The Performance of Democracies is a research project that will start in May 2014. The project is funded by the European Research Council, the budget is 4.2 mil. Euro. The problems this project will address are the following. While more countries than ever are now considered to be democratic, there is only a very weak, or none, correlation between standard measures of human well-being and measures of democracy. A second problem is that a large number of democracies turn out to have severe difficulties managing their public finances in a sustainable way. The third problem is that democracy seems not to be a cure against pervasive corruption. Empirical research shows that these problems have severe consequences for citizens’ perception of the legitimacy of their political system. The project intends to use an institutional approach to answer the question why some democracies perform better than others.
Speaker Bio:
Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at University of Gothenburg in Sweden where he is head of the Quality of Government (QoG) Institute. The QoG Institute consists of about twenty researchers studying the importance of trustworthy, reliable, competent and non-corrupt government institutions.
Rothstein took is PhD at Lund University in 1986 and served as assistant and associate professor at Uppsala University 1986 to 1994. He has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, Cornell University, Harvard University, Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, the Australian National University and the University of Washington in Seattle. In 2006, he served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University.
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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Bo Rothstein
August Röhss Chair in Political Science
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University of Gothenburg
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