Kleptocracy--well-organized elite corruption--has come to characterize Russia and much of the post-Communist space, and is one of the chief obstacles to democratic development as well as economic growth in Russia and Ukraine.  This panel will feature three experts who have focused on anti-corruption measures in these countries, and will discuss the origins, effects, and future of kleptocracy in the region.

Please join Charles Davidson, the publisher of The American Interest and Director of The Kleptocracy Initiative at the George Mason School of Public Policy, Jeffrey Gedmin, the editor of The American Interest, who previously was president of the Legatum Institute in London and of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe in Prague and Oleksandra Ustinova, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Fellow 2019 and a leading Ukrainian anti-corruptian activist for a conversation on kleptocracy in Russia and Ukraine and how it is abetted by American institutions. The discussion will be moderated by Francis Fukuyama, CDDRL Mosbacher Director and FSI Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, The Humanities Center, The Europe Center and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. 

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Charles Davidson is Publisher of The American Interest magazine (co-founded with Francis Fukuyama in 2005), and Senior Policy Fellow, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.  Since 2006, co-founder of Global Financial Integrity, one of the founders of the FACT Coalition, Executive Producer of Sundance documentary We’re Not Broke, and until recently Executive Director of the Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson Institute. The Kleptocracy Initiative has published a quiver of reports focusing on the civilizational threats we face from the marriage of authoritarianism and kleptocracy. The Kleptocracy Initiative engaged in a broad set of activities for a think tank program, from organizing the first “Klepto Tours” of London, to the premiere of “From Russia with Cash” in DC, the dubbing of a Russian documentary explaining Putin’s rise to power, the establishment of an extensive archive of primary source material, hosting many events, and serving as a platform for anti-kleptocracy convening and information sharing.  Regarding the national security threats associated with kleptocracy, Davidson has testified to the Senate Committee of the Judiciary, the Helsinki Commission, and the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. Prior to 2006, Davidson spent his career in the information technology industry, in various technical/managerial positions, as CIO of a large pan-European logistics company, and in a venture capital partnership until 2008.  Bowdoin College 1981, B.A.  Duke University 1988, MBA

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Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin is editor-in-chief of The American Interest, a publication of politics, public policy, and international affairs. From 2015 to 2018, he was senior adviser at Blue Star Strategies. From 2011 to 2014, Gedmin was President and CEO of the London-based Legatum Institute. Prior to joining the Legatum Institute in early 2011, Gedmin served for four years as President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) headquartered in Prague. Before RFE/RL, Gedmin served as President and CEO of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. Before that, he was Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C and Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative. He is the author/editor of several books, including The Hidden Hand: Gorbachev and the Collapse of East Germany (1992).Gedmin also served as co-executive producer for two major PBS documentaries: "The Germans, Portrait of a New Nation" (1995), and "Spain's 9/11 and the Challenge of Radical Islam in Europe" (2007).  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on several advisory boards, including Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service Masters Program, the Institute for State Effectiveness, the Kleptocracy Initiative (based at the Hudson Institute), the International Republican Institute’s Beacon Project, the Justice for Journalists Foundation, and the Tocqueville Conversations. Together with former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Norm Eisen, Gedmin is co-chair of the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group.

 

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Oleksandra Ustinova is the head of communications and Anti-Corruption in HealthCare Projects at the Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC), in Kyiv, Ukraine. ANTAC is one of the leading watchdog organizations on anti-corruption reform in Ukraine and was one of the founders of new anti-corruption institutions in Ukraine. Serving as a communication and advocacy expert over the last 10 years, Ustinova has successfully advocated for more than 20 national laws. Among them are laws that established new anticorruption and investigative bodies, that now investigate more than 500 criminal cases against politicians including Members of Parliament, Ministers, heads of the Central Election Committee, and the head of the tax service. Ustinova was the first Secretary of the Civil Oversight Council of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU)  - the first independent anti-corruption law enforcement institution in Ukraine. At ANTAC, Ustinova also manages the project “Anti-Corruption in Healthcare” and in 2015 advocated changes to the legislation so all medicine in Ukraine is procured via international organizations. As a result of this legislation, Ukraine has saved up to 40 percent of the state budget for medicine procurement each year.

The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (1949-1987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. This talk is based on an ethnographic study of street-level police practices during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition (i.e. the first term of the Chen Shui-bian administration, 2000-2004). Summarizing the argument of a forthcoming book, Dr. Jeffrey T. Martin focuses on an apparent paradox, in which the strength of Taiwan's democracy is correlated to the weakness of its police powers. Martin explains this paradox through a theory of "jurisdictional pluralism" which, in Taiwan, is  organized by a cultural distinction between sentiment, reason, and law as distinct foundations for political authority. An overt police interest in sentiment (qing) was institutionalized during the martial law era, when police served as an instrument for the cultivation of properly nationalistic political sentiments. Martin's fieldwork demonstrates how the politics of sentiment which took shape under autocratic rule continued to operate in everyday policing in the early phase of the democratic transformation, even as a more democratic mode of public reason and the ultimate power of legal right were becoming more significant.

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Drawing on his latest book, Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom is Wrong (Oxford University Press, 2017), Yukon Huang will highlight the reform challenges that China's leadership, recently anointed at the 19^th Party Congress, will face. These include dealing with negative global opinions of the country, surging debt levels, a prolonged growth slowdown, entrenched corruption, trade and investment tensions and pressures for political liberalization. Dr. Huang argues that many of the mainstream assumptions for addressing these issues are misguided and that the related policy prescriptions are, therefore, flawed.

A book signing will follow. Copies of Dr. Huang's book will be available for purchase

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This module addresses the challenges faced by public sector leaders as they foster economic growth in politically charged environments. Offered in partnership with the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, it uses case studies on how public policy can help the private sector be a constructive force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of the LAD module is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. They must have a solid grasp of country-specific economic, financial, political and cultural realities. Most importantly, they must have a sense of how to set priorities, sequence actions and build coalitions. LAD provides participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions.