Recent experimental evidence finds that the decision maker in a collective decision making entity with proposal power attracts a disproportionate amount of the blame or reward by those materially affected by these decisions. In the case of coalition governments evidence suggests that voters have heuristics for assigning responsibility for economic outcomes to individual parties and that they tend to disproportionately direct the economic vote toward the Prime Minister party. This essay demonstrates that voters also identify the Finance Minister party as an agenda setter on economic issues depending on whether the coalition context exaggerates or mutes its perceived agenda power. We define cabinet context as the extent to which coalition parties take issue ownership for particular policy areas. We find that when decision making is compartmentalized, voters perceive the finance minister as having agenda power and hence it receives a relatively larger economic vote; in more “diffuse” cabinet contexts it is the PM Party that is attributed responsibility for the economy.

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He draws on theory, experiments and public opinion analysis to understand how citizens solve decision-making challenges. This includes looking at how citizens use information shortcuts to make decisions. For example in ‘Context and Economic Expectations: When Do Voters get it Right?’ (British Journal of Political Science, 2010), he demonstrates how information shortcuts result in quite accurate expectations regarding price fluctuations in 12 European countries. One of his current areas of interest is the micro-foundations of cheating and unethical behaviour. He has run real effort tax compliance experiments designed to understand who cheats at taxes, the results of which are summarized in ‘Why We Cheat?’ (currently under review). An extension of this project examines tax compliance in different tax regimes.

Ray has served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Experimental Political Science. He is one of the founders of the European Political Science Association and the International Meeting on Behavioural Science (IMESBESS), and he is currently Vice President of the Midwest Political Science Association. In 2015, Ray was selected as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Cross-Whitehall Trial Advice Panel to offer Whitehall departments technical support in designing and implementing controlled experiments to assess policy effectiveness. He was recently nominated to the Evidence in Governance and Politics network.

This event is co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution.

Abstract:

Ever since the Millennium Message, Putin's first presidential speech on January 1, 2000, the Kremlin's political architects have cultivated a narrative of Russia as a unique nation on a righteous path toward restored greatness. The process of myth-making is intertwined with the policies involved in remaking Russia as a global power, as the regime builds legitimacy through careful messaging on Russian nationhood, history, morality, and geopolitical strength, using law and policy to embed those concepts as institutions and persuade citizens that Russia needs autocracy to survive. This talk traces the Kremlin's cooptation of culture and history to tell a certain story about Russia and its citizens, and examines public opinion polls to assess the degree to which the strategy is working, as well as street protests and radical performance art that attempts to claim spaces of agency for citizens who don't fit into the mythic mold.

Speaker Bio:

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Matteo Renzi was born in Florence in January 1975. In 2004 he was elected president of the province of Florence; five years later, in 2009, he was elected Mayor of Florence. In 2012 he ran in the primary elections for the centre-left, losing in the run-off. In 2013 he stood once again in the primaries, this time for leader of the Italian Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD), winning with 67.5% of the vote.

Abstract:

Russia has evolved into an autocracy under Putin's 18-year long rule. The political landscape resembles a desert with just a few oases of relatively strong civil initiatives and political movements. Under these circumstances, people who are eager to continue their activities inside Russia - be it cultural or philanthropic projects - face hard moral choices to either collaborate with the regime or refuse to do so and sacrifice many opportunities along the way. In light of these circumstances, is there any ground for optimism? What are the necessary pre-conditions for strong movements in Russia? What are the visions for post-Putin Russia? Zhanna Nemtsova, the founder of the Boris Nemstov Foundation for Freedom and a news show/anchor for the Deutsche Welle broadcaster shares her insights into the current state of affairs in Russia during this special lunchtime event hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Speaker Bio:

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At 11am on November 11, 1918, the armistice that effectively ended the First World War was signed. What came to be known as “The Great War” had a profound and lasting impact on the cultural fabric of the nations involved: as Paul Fussell wrote, “its dynamics and iconography proved crucial to the political, rhetorical, and artistic life of the years that followed; while relying on inherited myth, war was generating new myth.” Over the course of the 20th century, the concept of war evolved beyond historically traceable moments and events to include the consideration of war as site and influence shaping every aspect of lived experience. This conference seeks to examine ways in which literature and the arts have taken up and taken apart war and the myths surrounding it -- grappling with it both as subject and context while also considering the ways in which the experience of war molded, mutilated, and morphed artistic forms. Though the word “centennial” often rings of monolithic celebration, it is equally an opportunity to highlight the attempts of writers and artists to contain, contend, or survive war and to question and problematize preconceptions and existing views of war by investigating their inherently bipolar nature.

November 10, 2018 (Day 2)
SCHEDULE:

• 9 – 11am - 2nd PANEL
  Chair: Jennifer Scappettone (University of Chicago, Associate Professor)
   
• Aubrey Knox (CUNY, PhD Student)
  "The Regulated Body: The Grand Palais as Military Hospital in World War I"
• Joanna Fiduccia (Reed College, Assistant Professor)
  "A Destructive Character: Alberto Giacometti’s Crisis of the Monument"
• Hadrien Laroche (INHA, France, Philosopher and Researcher)
  "Duchamp's waste: Trauma, Violence and Aesthetics"
   
• 11 - 11.30am – COFFEE BREAK
   
• 11.30am - 12.45pm – KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Jay Winter (Yale University, Emeritus Professor)
"All the Things We Cannot Hear: Silences of the Great War"

• 12.45am – 2pm – LUNCH BREAK
   
• 2 - 4.30pm - 3rd PANEL
  Chair: Peter Stansky (Stanford University, Emeritus Professor)
   
• Martin Löschnigg (University of Graz, Austria, Professor)
  "‘The extreme fury of war self-multiplies’: First World War Literature and the Aesthetics of Loss"
• Ron Ben-Tovim (Ben Gurion University, Israel, Post-Doc), Boris Shoshitaishvili (Stanford University, PhD Student)
  "Re-Enchanting the World after War: J. R. R. Tolkien, David Jones, and the Revision of Epic"
• Anna Abramson (MIT, Post-Doc)
  "Atmospheric Myths of The Great War"
• Isaac Blacksin (UC Santa Cruz, PhD Student)
  Senseless Encounter, Immutable Sense: The Contradictions of Reporting War

• 4.30 – 4.45pm – COFFEE BREAK
   
• 4.45 – 6pm – KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Alexander Nemerov (Stanford University, Professor)
"A Soldier Killed in the First World War"

For more info,  please email: massucco@stanford.edu

Sponsored by:  the Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures;  Stanford Department of Art and Art History; Theater and Performance Studies; Stanford Humanities Center; The Europe Center; Dept. of French and Italian; Dept. of History; Dept. of German Studies; and the Dean's Office of Humanities and Sciences.

At 11am on November 11, 1918, the armistice that effectively ended the First World War was signed. What came to be known as “The Great War” had a profound and lasting impact on the cultural fabric of the nations involved: as Paul Fussell wrote, “its dynamics and iconography proved crucial to the political, rhetorical, and artistic life of the years that followed; while relying on inherited myth, war was generating new myth.” Over the course of the 20th century, the concept of war evolved beyond historically traceable moments and events to include the consideration of war as site and influence shaping every aspect of lived experience. This conference seeks to examine ways in which literature and the arts have taken up and taken apart war and the myths surrounding it -- grappling with it both as subject and context while also considering the ways in which the experience of war molded, mutilated, and morphed artistic forms. Though the word “centennial” often rings of monolithic celebration, it is equally an opportunity to highlight the attempts of writers and artists to contain, contend, or survive war and to question and problematize preconceptions and existing views of war by investigating their inherently bipolar nature.

November 9, 2018 (Day 1)
SCHEDULE:

• 4 – 4.30pm – OPENING REMARKS
• 4.30 - 7pm - 1st PANEL

Chair: Russell Berman (Stanford University, Professor)

• Greg Chase (College of the Holy Cross, Lecturer)
• ‘Death is not an event of life’: How Wittgenstein’s War Experience Re-Shaped His Philosophy
• Victoria Zurita (Stanford University, PhD Student)
• Ironic prospects: hope in Jean Giono’s To the Slaughterhouse
• André Fischer (Auburn University, Assistant Professor)
• Politics by other means: War photography in the work of Ernst Jünger
• Nicholas Jenkins (Stanford University, Associate Professor)

For more info,  please email: massucco@stanford.edu

Sponsored by:  the Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures;  Stanford Department of Art and Art History; Theater and Performance Studies; Stanford Humanities Center; The Europe Center; Dept. of French and Italian; Dept. of History; Dept. of German Studies; and the Dean's Office of Humanities and Sciences.