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Date

Thu, 10/08/2015 - 12:00

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With the announcement on Monday that an agreement has been reached on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the controversial trade accord is in the news all across Asia this week. Taiwan is not one of the founding participants, but its leaders have reiterated their determination to join the next round of negotiations if the agreement is ratified and comes into effect. Taiwan's prospects for entry remain uncertain, however, and will depend to a great degree on the attitudes of decision-makers in the United States and the People's Republic of China.

The Taiwan Democracy Project (TDP) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law has been at the forefront of research and discussion on this topic. In the fall of 2013, the TDP held a conference to explore the prospects for Taiwan’s participation in the TPP that brought together policymakers and scholars from Taiwan along with with leading specialists from other Asian countries and the U.S. The key findings of the conference are summarized in a conference report. The key conclusions of the conference remain valid today: it is in Taiwan's national interest to join the TPP; external obstacles to Taiwan's accession to the partnership are signficant but not insurmountable; and Taiwanese policy-makers need to worry about domestic obstacles as much as international ones in seeking TPP membership.

The Taiwan Democracy Project will continue to monitor TPP-related developments over the coming months and plans to revisit Taiwan's prospects for TPP entry in a symposium in February 2016.

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Container ship, Hyundai Freedom, at the Port of Kaohsiung.

Tommy Ian

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The Sunflower Movement and the Future of Taiwan's Political Culture

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 | 12:00 PM -Tuesday, October 13, 2015 | 1:30 PM

Abstract

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 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.

Presentation Slides

Ian Rowen Doctoral Candidate University of Colorado Dept of Geography

Seminars

LAD Course: University of Cape Town, April 2015

Monday, April 20, 2015 | 9:00 AM -Friday, April 24, 2015 | 6:00 PM

The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice (GSDPP), in collaboration with the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD), an affiliate of Stanford University, will be offering a course in April 2015 that addresses some of the challenges faced by public sector leaders as they foster economic growth in politically-charged environments.

This course was run successfully in both 2011 and 2013. The 2015 version – updated with new case studies – will also be facilitated by international and national trainers and experts.

The course is a 5-day, intensive programme for a small number of high level government officials and business leaders from South Africa and other African countries (25-30 in total). It will explore how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a more effective, productive role in economic growth and development. The curriculum is designed to reinforce and illustrate three critically important hypotheses about the role of public policy in private sector development.

Case studies for this course are available here.

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University of Cape Town and the Cape Milner Hotel

Johannesburg, South Africa

Workshops

UCSB historian revisits Egypt's 1977 bread uprising [VIDEO]

Read more about UCSB historian revisits Egypt's 1977 bread uprising [VIDEO]

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Commentary

Date

Sat, 04/11/2015 - 12:00

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As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, UC Santa Barbara Historian Sherene Seikaly discusses her research on Egypt's 1977 bread intifada. A return to the historical moment of the “Bread Intifada,” of 1977 interrupts the narrative resilience of the alternating sleep and wakefulness of the Egyptian, and more broadly the Arab people. By engaging 18-19 January 1977 as a moment of politics and popular sovereignty, Seikaly's project challenges who and what count as political, rational, and legitimate. The role food played in protestors’ and government strategies and demands reveals how basic needs function as a trigger of social upheaval as well as a vehicle of political containment. This project attends to the roles that poverty and hunger play in politics in order to detail critiques of the open door policy. It explores how government officials, journalists, and protestors defined and ultimately contained the “poor” and the “hungry.” More importantly, by studying how protestors narrated and represented themselves and the tools they used to make their claims, this project troubles the construction of the “people.” In so doing, it explores continuity and rupture between 1977 and 2011.

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The Politics of Polarization: Taiwan in Comparative Perspective

Friday, October 17, 2014 | 8:15 AM -Saturday, October 18, 2014 | 3:30 PM

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Over the past year and more, Taiwan’s political elite has been deadlocked over the question of deepening economic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This controversial issue has led to a standoff between the executive and legislative branches, sparked a frenzy of social activism and a student occupation of the legislature, and contributed to President Ma Ying-jeou’s deep unpopularity.

On October 17-18, the Taiwan Democracy Project at CDDRL, with the generous support of the Taipei Economic and Culture Office, will host its annual conference at Stanford University to examine the politics of polarization in Taiwan.

This conference will bring together specialists from Taiwan, the U.S., and elsewhere in Asia to examine the sources and implications of this political polarization in comparative perspective. It will include a special case study of the Trade in Services Agreement with China that triggered this past year’s protests, as well as a more general overview of the politics of trade liberalization in Taiwan, prospects for Taiwan’s integration into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional trade agreements, and a consideration of the implications for Taiwan’s long-term democratic future.

Conference speakers will include: Chung-shu Wu, the president of the Chung-hwa Institute of Economic Research (CIER) in Taipei; Steve Chan of the University of Colorado; Roselyn Hsueh of Temple University; Yun-han Chu, the president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; and Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Panels will examine the following questions:

1. What are the sources and implications of political polarization in Taiwan, and how have these changed in recent years?

2. How does Taiwan’s recent experience compare to political polarization in other countries in Asia (e.g. South Korea, Thailand) and elsewhere (the US)?

3. To what extent does the latest political deadlock in Taiwan reflect concern over the specific issue of trade with the People’s Republic of China, versus a deeper, systemic set of problems with Taiwan’s democracy?

4. How are globalization and trade liberalization reshaping Taiwan’s domestic political economy, and what are the prospects for forging a stronger pro-trade coalition in Taiwan that transcends the current partisan divide?

The conference will take place October 17-18 in the Bechtel Conference Room in Encina Hall at Stanford University. It is free and open to the public.

Conference Resources

Conference Papers

How Cross-Strait Trade and Investment Is Affecting Income and Wealth Inequality in Taiwan by Chien-Fu Lin, National Taiwan University

Generational Differences in Attitudes towards Cross-Straits Trade by Ping-Yin Kuan, Department of Sociology & International Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, National Chengchi University

Change and the Unchanged of Polarized Politics in Taiwan by Min-Hua Huang, National Taiwan University; Center for East Asia Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution

Social Media, Social Movements and the Challenge of Democratic Governability by Boyu Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University, Institute of Political Science

Coping with the Challenge of Democratic Governance under Ma Ying-jeou by Yun-han Chu, National Taiwan University

Taiwan’s Bid for TPP Membership and the Potential Impact on Taiwan-U.S. Relations by Kwei-Bo Huang, National Chengchi University, Department of Diplomacy

In the Wake of the Sunflower Movement: Exploring the Political Consequences of Cross-Strait Integration by Pei-shan Lee, National Chung Cheng University, Political Science Department

The Roots of Thailand’s Political Polarization in Comparative Perspective by Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University; The Institute of Security and International Studies

The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Economic Integration by Chen-Dong Tso, National Taiwan University

The China Factor and the Generational Shift over National Identity by Mark Weatherall, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

Taiwan’s Strategy for Regional Economic Integration by Chung-Shu Wu, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research

Polarized Electorates in South Korea and Taiwan: The Role of Political Trust under Conservative Governments by Hyunji Lee, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

Polarization in Taiwan Politics by Steve Chan, University of Colorado, Boulder

Agenda

Conference Biographies

Taiwan Polarization Conference Flyer

Politics of Polarization in Taiwan: Conference Report

Conferences

Marcel Fafchamps

Read more about Marcel Fafchamps

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

fafchamp@stanford.edu

Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Professor, by courtesy, of Economics

marcel_fafchamps_2025.jpg

Marcel Fafchamps is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Previously, he was the Satre Family Senior Fellow at FSI. Fafchamps is a professor (by courtesy) for the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His research interests include economic development, market institutions, social networks, and behavioral economics — with a special focus on Africa and South Asia.

Prior to joining FSI, from 1999-2013, Fafchamps served as professor of development economics in the Department of Economics at Oxford University. He also served as deputy director and then co-director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. From 1989 to 1996, Fafchamps was an assistant professor with the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Following the closure of the Institute, he taught for two years at the Department of Economics. For the 1998-1999 academic year, Fafchamps was on sabbatical leave at the research department of the World Bank. Before pursuing his PhD in 1986, Fafchamps was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for 5 years during his employment with the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees employment, income distribution, and vocational training in Africa.

He has authored two books: Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (MIT Press, 2004) and Rural Poverty, Risk, and Development (Elgar Press, 2003), and has published numerous articles in academic journals.

Fafchamps served as the editor-in-chief of Economic Development and Cultural Change until 2020. Previously, he had served as chief editor of the Journal of African Economies from 2000 to 2013, and as associate editor of the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the Revue d'Economie du Développement.

He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliated professor with J-PAL, a senior fellow with the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a research fellow with IZA, Germany, and with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, UK, and an affiliate with the University of California’s Center for Effective Global Action.

Fafchamps has degrees in Law and in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

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