Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies Amichai Magen Amichai Magens writes about the Second "Mapacha" and the changes it wrought.
A first-year studying political science and international relations, Soraya is interested in the intersection of democratic promotion and great power politics, studying the causes of democratic recession and development. She has also done research on domestic gender equity and child wellbeing policy. As a Hoover Institution NSAF mentee, she is exploring national security policy.
Professor Alon Tal’s career has been a balance between academia and public interest advocacy. Between 2021–2022, he was a member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament, where he served as chair of the subcommittee for environmental and climate impact on health. Presently he has an appointment as professor in the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University. Tal has held faculty posts at Stanford, Ben Gurion, Hebrew, Michigan State, Otago, and Harvard Universities. He has also founded several Israeli environmental organizations, including Adam Teva V’Din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, and the Arava Institute. He has served as deputy chair of Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, where for many years he oversaw national forestry policy in Israel and is currently co-chair of Zafuf, the Israel Forum for Population, Environment and Society. He plays fiddle and mandolin in the Arava Riders, a leading Israeli bluegrass band.
How should we think about wars in the Middle East? Past scholarship has made great strides in unpacking the region’s nuanced conflict dynamics, but the literature lacks a broader framework to examine how diverse factors interact with the international system and with each other. In a recent CDDRL Research Seminar, Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, applies a framework of “Warscape Theory” to better understand patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region.
Three observations motivate this project. First, Middle Eastern wars are intricately interconnected. Militias, religious divisions, and refugee crises harbor no regard for borders. Second, these conflicts are long and protracted; wars may simmer down, but they never go away. The potential recurrence of direct violence remains a constant fear and expectation. Third, Middle Eastern political science has remained fairly insular, largely sticking to within region comparisons. Lynch’s warscape intervention draws inspiration from a body of anthropological research on wars in Sub-Saharan Africa, which share many similarities with wars in the Middle East. They rarely have a clear starting or ending point, they are constantly shaped by external great power interventions, and they possess a self-perpetuating dynamic that makes conflict resolution incredibly difficult to achieve.
What qualifies a region as a “warscape?” First, warscapes have protracted conflicts with periods of remission and resurgence. Second, warscape conflicts are highly transnationalized and are not contained by borders in any meaningful sense. Third, violence tends to be highly variable, both temporally and spatially. Significant intra-state differences in violence render state-level observations unhelpful; one part of the country might live in full-fledged war while another remains oblivious to the violence. Fourth, the relative strengths of belligerents are less clear than they present. Combatants possess variable motivations for participating in armed conflict, choosing to pick up and drop arms situationally. Finally, almost as a marketing tactic, groups often distinguish themselves by engaging in extreme — and sometimes performative — brutality. Beheadings, immolations, and other acts of terror simultaneously scare enemies at home and attract support from Gulf sponsors.
Why care about this new lens for studying the Middle East? This warscape framework describes a complicated reality that existing terms like “civil war” struggle to capture. It analytically repositions the state from being the central actor to only one of multiple “competing political orders” while contextualizing micro-level ethnographic observations within a broader landscape of global arms flows and international power structures. Lynch hopes scholars may leverage this lens to investigate how conflict dynamics play out differently in warscape regions compared to non-warscape regions.
Lynch’s characterization of the Middle East as a “warscape” does not suggest that war in the Middle East is inevitable. Instead, putting an end to wars in the Middle East requires a systematic understanding of how actors and structures from the individual level to the transnational level interact with one another. Warscape theory, as Lynch proposes, may enable us to better capture the full range and complexity of these interconnected conflicts.
Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, applies a framework of “Warscape Theory” to better understand patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region.
This talk will examine how technology can amplify deliberative democracy to foster a more informed and engaged society. Drawing on findings from two nationally representative online Deliberative Polls called America in One Room, the talk will demonstrate how online deliberation is alleviating polarization and producing lasting effects with hopes for a more deliberative society. The talk will also explore how the AI-assisted Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, which has logged over 100,000 deliberation hours in over 35 countries and 25 languages, has been used to facilitate high-quality, structured discussions on complex issues, including democratic reform and the implications of generative AI and metaverse governance. By integrating insights from research and practice, the session will demonstrate how deliberation can empower voters, improve decision-making, and counteract the polarization threatening democracy.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Alice Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.
Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Encina Hall, E103
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.
Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world, at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.
This study examines the evolution of Turkey's electoral dynamics from 1990 to 2023, focusing on social cleavages and democratic backsliding's impact on party competition and voter behavior. Using data from the World Values Survey and Turkish Elections Studies, the analysis tracks changes that enabled the conservative pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party's (AKP) rise within Turkey's sociopolitical context. It explores the "alla Turca kulturkampf" or center-periphery cleavage's role in shaping the electoral landscape, especially during the AKP's post-2002 rule. Findings indicate that electoral choices now reflect attitudinal differences over group identities, with the AKP's dominance linked to the cultural cleavage's persistence around the center-periphery divide, the decline of the Kemalist modernization program, and the periphery's capture of the center. The study also addresses challenges from gender inequality, income disparity, and new urbanites' impact on modernization, providing insights into the interplay between social change, democratic backsliding, and electoral dynamics in unconsolidated democracies.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ali Çarkoğlu is a political scientist specializing in elections, voting behavior, public opinion, and Turkish politics. He has led and participated in major cross-national and national projects such as the Turkish Election Study (TES), Turkish Giving Behaviour Study, International Social Survey Program (ISSP), and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). I took part in the planning committees for Modules 5 and 6 in CSES and ISSP modules on family and changing gender roles (2012, 2022), religion (2018), and social networks (2017). He is the founding PI in TES and developed the campaign media content data program, which documents daily campaign content for over ten national newspapers since 2002.
Ali's current research is an exploration of the secularization process in Turkey, a topic where the evidence has so far been mixed. Some scholars find the Turkish experience to possess reflections of secularization, as expected following classical modernization theory, while others present evidence that contradicts these expectations. The most recent contributions to this literature now focus on outliers where resistance to secularization exists, and one even finds a resurgence of religiosity in various dimensions of social life. He focuses on Turkey, which can be considered an outlier. In the past, he has contributed to this literature through several projects and articles and touched upon the enduring influence of religion in political life.
His main argument in this project is that Turkish society's dual character, where a potentially secularizing group faces an increasingly resacralizing group, is responsible for the contrasting findings about secularization and creating the Turkish outlier. He follows historical and quantitative research, bringing together comprehensive data that focus on the country's critical areas of social development. Ali argues that underlying Turkish ideological and affective polarization is the dual character of Turkish society with opposing secularization trends.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.
I am a political scientist specializing in elections, voting behavior, public opinion, and Turkish politics. I have led and participated in major cross-national and national projects such as the Turkish Election Study (TES), Turkish Giving Behaviour Study, International Social Survey Program (ISSP), and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). I took part in the planning committees for Modules 5 and 6 in CSES and ISSP modules on family and changing gender roles (2012, 2022), religion (2018), and social networks (2017). I am the founding PI in TES and developed the campaign media content data program, which documents daily campaign content for over ten national newspapers since 2002. My work can be accessed here.
My current research is an exploration of the secularization process in Turkey, a topic where the evidence has so far been mixed. Some scholars find the Turkish experience to possess reflections of secularization, as expected following classical modernization theory, while others present evidence that contradicts these expectations. The most recent contributions to this literature now focus on outliers where resistance to secularization exists, and one even finds a resurgence of religiosity in various dimensions of social life. I focus on Turkey, which can be considered an outlier. In the past, I have contributed to this literature through several projects and articles and touched upon the enduring influence of religion in political life.
My main argument in this project is that Turkish society's dual character, where a potentially secularizing group faces an increasingly resacralizing group, is responsible for the contrasting findings about secularization and creating the Turkish outlier. I follow historical and quantitative research, bringing together comprehensive data that focus on the country's critical areas of social development. I argue that underlying Turkish ideological and affective polarization is the dual character of Turkish society with opposing secularization trends.
Encina Hall, C139-d
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Aleeza is a Program Manager at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She moved to Stanford from Boston in August 2024. Prior to working at CDDRL, she worked in programming and community engagement at a university and a synagogue, as well as in IT, customer success, and marketing. Aleeza received her bachelor’s in psychology from Princeton University. She loves creative writing, arts and crafts, animals, and long walks with friends.
The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors from any university department who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL).
Join CDDRL faculty and current honors students on Wednesday, January 22, at 12:00 pm, to discuss the program and answer questions.
The application period opens on January 6, 2025, and runs through February 14, 2025.
For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
In recent years, creeping demographic changes and deep political divisions have made many Israelis worry about the fragmentation of their society into several contending “tribes.” In a 2015 talk that became known as “The Four Tribes Speech,” Israel’s President, Reuven Rivlin, observed that Israel was rapidly transforming from a country defined by a unified national ethos into one where secular, nationalist-religious, ultraorthodox Jews, and Israeli Arabs increasingly possess separate identities. But some are fighting back, seeking to renegotiate the Israeli social contract and rejuvenate a cohesive center.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Yoav Heller is co-founder and chairman of “The Fourth Quarter”, an Israeli NGO and mass movement dedicated to rebuilding Israeli modern democratic centrism. A historian by training, Yoav has had a rich career in media – including Ynet, Israel's largest online media site, which he helped establish and in which he served as senior editor – education and community leadership. Yoav Heller holds a BA in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in Management and Education from Tel Aviv University. He completed his Ph.D. in History at the University of London, Royal Holloway College Holocaust Research Institute.
Virtual Event Only.
Virtual Event Only.
Ari Shavit – one of Israel’s most experienced, critical, and erudite political analysts – was one of the first people in the world to put pen to paper in the aftermath of the October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. In his latest book (published in Hebrew, with an English edition forthcoming), Shavit argues that Israel now finds itself in an existential war with Iran. It is a crisis from which, Ari Shavit argues, Israel will either emerge victorious and transformed or cease to exist.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ari Shavit is a leading Israeli columnist, author, and political analyst. Born in Rehovot, Israel, Shavit studied philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, before embarking on a distinguished career in journalism. In the early 1990s he was chairman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and in 1995 he joined Haaretz, where he served on the editorial board until 2016. His recent books include the New York Time bestseller My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2013) and Existential War: From Catastrophe, to Victory, to Revival (2024) [Hebrew].
Virtual Event Only.
Virtual Event Only.
