This week we launched the long-awaited 17th year of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's Draper Hills Summer Fellowship Program. Founded in 2005 with generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, Draper Hills is an executive training program for world leaders striving to promote democracy. For the next two weeks, Fellows will participate in workshops led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty to study new theories and approaches to democratic development.

Fellows in the class of 2021 were selected from among thousands of applicants for their ground-breaking work to defend democracy. These 34 leaders drawn from 30 countries around the world are pioneering new approaches and models to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. Representing business, government, and the nonprofit sector, our fellows are working on the frontlines of democratic change to combat the global rise of authoritarianism and populism. In countries moving towards democracy, our fellows are working to institutionalize new systems and practices to support democratic transitions.

An Unconventional Year

Traditionally, Fellows would travel from their home countries to the U.S. and spend three weeks on campus at Stanford learning together. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the program is currently taking place virtually for the first time (for the same reasons, the program did not run in 2020). The shift to online programming posed a number of logistical obstacles – from what time to run virtual sessions when participants span over a dozen time zones, to how to foster the sense of belonging and personal connections that occur more naturally with in-person settings.

To begin addressing the latter, Fellows were sent welcome packages to build excitement and foster community both within the program and Stanford. Upon receiving hers, Aisha Yesufu of Nigeria shared "I am so excited at the different people I'll be meeting from all over the world, and also learning from different people, lecturers, professors... It's going to be quite interesting and, for me, that is what I am most looking forward to," along with the video below:

"One of the most important things I have ever been involved with."

Opening against the backdrop of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the importance of the Draper Hills program and the need to promote democratic change is now more evident than ever.

The inaugural session for the 2021 cohort began with Francis Fukuyama introducing the fellows to several of the esteemed faculty they will be learning from over the next two weeks, including Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and Michael McFaul. McFaul shared that not only did he found the program, but "it is one of the most important things I have ever been involved with." Jensen later added that "participating in this program is one of the great pleasures I have every year."

More to Come

Throughout the next two weeks, our Draper Hills Fellows will examine the political development, democratic transitions, and the relationship of law to economic development, public administration, administrative law, transitional justice, food security, and global health policy, among others. The group is eager to learn, and we look forward to seeing the many great things the training they receive here will enable them to do in their home countries and beyond.

Brazil is China’s most important economic and political partner in South America, as well as a key participant in the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) grouping of emerging powers that China increasingly leads. When it comes to global aspirations, China and Brazil have historically been in sync on their critiques of the liberal international order, if not on their preferred remedies. Historically, their prescriptions for foreign policy differ in important ways. China would prefer a world order that better accommodates its interests, and it is becoming less reluctant to use the threat of force in foreign policy to maintain its ascendancy in its geopolitical neighborhood. Brazil traditionally has preferred a rules-bound liberal international order that applies to everyone, especially superpowers. Unlike China, it foreswears the use of coercion in international affairs, even to protect its interests in its immediate neighborhood, South America.

Read the rest at Brookings

There is a Korean expression that means “to become soaked by a drizzle without noticing.” This metaphor is a timely warning against the gradual decline of democratic norms. Though some of the changes underlying this global phenomenon are subtle, they are producing creeping, piecemeal erosions of democracy and pluralism. The signs of democratic backsliding are now emerging everywhere in South Korean society, and a failure to recognize and robustly counter their effects may create future costs that prove unbearable. 

My new article, “Korean Democracy Is Sinking Under the Guise of the Rule of Law,” published in the April 2020 issue of the South Korean magazine Shindonga (New East Asia, the oldest monthly in Korea), examines how the Moon administration is sinking into a democratic recession and considers its actions as a case study with lessons for averting broader, global trends in democratic decline.

In all corners of the world, we witness freely elected leaders gradually dismantle democratic institutional safeguards, fuse political polarization with chauvinistic populism, and focus on narrow interpretations of the national interest just as China and Russia expand their scope of influence via “sharp power,” subversive means.

South Korea is no exception to these currents. A politics of extreme confrontation and polarizing rhetoric of "us" and "them" are becoming the country’s new normal. The Moon administration’s aggressive assertion of a Manichean logic of good and evil that justifies their vitriolic attacks on perceived opposition is evidenced in its campaign of “eradicating deep-rooted evils” from Korean society and politics.

As my analysis shows, this crusading mindset has insinuated itself into more concrete actions by the Moon government, such as the calculated blurring of the separation of powers through political interference in the courts, deliberate changes to longstanding election laws that damage the spirit of democracy, and the blatant use of double standards and ideological loyalty in the execution of national policies. Similar patterns are taking hold in populist governments the world over, and – perhaps most disconcertingly – they transpire not through the strong-arming of a military coup or violent political disruption but through the legal procedures and policies meant to keep such canker in check.

To overcome its wave of democratic recession South Korea must cast away political polarization and demonstrate a firm resolve to act in accordance with democratic norms. The upcoming April 15 legislative election must sound a clear alarm against all actors who damage these core principles, regardless of their party affiliation and irrespective of their ideology. 

Read the complete English translation of my article or the original Korean version here: