Stanford University

The Provenance Problem: Research Methods and Ethics in the Age of WikiLeaks

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Register in advance for this webinar: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/8416226562432/WN_WLYcdRa6T5Cs1MMdmM0Mug

 

About the Event: Is there a place for illegal or nonconsensual evidence in security studies research, such as leaked classified documents? What is at stake, and who bears the responsibility, for determining source legitimacy? Although massive unauthorized disclosures by WikiLeaks and its kindred may excite qualitative scholars with policy revelations, and quantitative researchers with big-data suitability, they are fraught with methodological and ethical dilemmas that the discipline has yet to resolve. I argue that the hazards from this research—from national security harms, to eroding human-subjects protections, to scholarly complicity with rogue actors—generally outweigh the benefits, and that exceptions and justifications need to be articulated much more explicitly and forcefully than is customary in existing work. This paper demonstrates that the use of apparently leaked documents has proliferated over the past decade, and appeared in every leading journal, without being explicitly disclosed and defended in research design and citation practices. The paper critiques incomplete and inconsistent guidance from leading political science and international relations journals and associations; considers how other disciplines from journalism to statistics to paleontology address the origins of their sources; and elaborates a set of normative and evidentiary criteria for researchers and readers to assess documentary source legitimacy and utility. Fundamentally, it contends that the scholarly community (researchers, peer reviewers, editors, thesis advisors, professional associations, and institutions) needs to practice deeper reflection on sources’ provenance, greater humility about whether to access leaked materials and what inferences to draw from them, and more transparency in citation and research strategies.

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About the Speaker: Christopher Darnton is a CISAC affiliate and an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously taught at Reed College and the Catholic University of America, and holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. He is the author of Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America (Johns Hopkins, 2014) and of journal articles on US foreign policy, Latin American security, and qualitative research methods. His International Security article, “Archives and Inference: Documentary Evidence in Case Study Research and the Debate over U.S. Entry into World War II,” won the 2019 APSA International History and Politics Section Outstanding Article Award. He is writing a book on the history of US security cooperation in Latin America, based on declassified military documents.

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Christopher Darnton Associate Professor of National Security Affairs Naval Postgraduate School
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Alice Evans — CDDRL Research Seminar

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Seminar details coming soon.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Alice Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the Social Science of Development at King's College London. She has also been a Faculty Associate at Harvard Center for International Development and has held previous appointments at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. Her research focuses on social norms and why they change; the drivers of support for gender equality; and workers' rights in global supply chains.

Dr. Evans is writing a book, The Great Gender Divergence (forthcoming with Princeton University Press). It will explain why the world has become more gender equal, and why some countries are more gender equal than others.

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Alice Evans
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Stephen J. Stedman — Everything's Security and No One is Secure: A Short History of a Vague Concept

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Democracy and security coexist uneasily. Security asserts priority over democracy during emergencies, when democratic processes seem luxuries. Yet deference paid to security can sow the seeds of democracy’s destruction. This prospect is magnified now, as both popular and elite usages of security in the United States have reached their highest levels in history. A short list of recent threats to national security alleged by our leaders includes unions of government workers, wind turbines, Chinese automobiles, Chinese garlic, America’s lack of sovereignty over Greenland, and America’s declining birth rate.

Why is security discourse so pervasive now, and what does this mean for democracy? This talk addresses these questions through examining security's history, focusing on three problematic features — ambiguity, immeasurability, and amorality — and their implications for contemporary democracy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Professor by Courtesy of Political Science, and Director of Stanford's Program in International Relations. He joined Stanford in 1997, initially at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, before moving to the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) in 2010. Previously, he taught at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Washington University in St. Louis.

Professor Stedman has led three major global commissions examining critical aspects of international security and democracy. From 2003-2004, he served as Research Director for the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, and in 2005 as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. This work produced the landmark report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (2004) and led to significant institutional innovations, including the UN peacebuilding architecture (commission, support office, and fund), the mediation support office, a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy, adoption of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, and streamlined decision-making processes for the Secretary General. From 2010 to 2012, he directed the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, which published Deepening Democracy: A Strategy for Improving the Integrity of Elections Worldwide (2012). From 2018 to 2020, he served as Secretary General of the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age, which examined how social media and the internet affect democratic processes, resulting in Protecting Electoral Integrity in the Digital Age (2020).

Professor Stedman's research spans mediation, civil war termination, international institutions, American foreign policy, and democracy. His work has appeared in leading journals, including The Lancet, International Security, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, International Affairs, International Studies Review, and Boston Review. His co-authored book Power and Responsibility (Brookings, 2009) drew praise from Brent Scowcroft, who wrote that "the vision, ideas, and solutions the authors put forward…have the potential to redeem American foreign policy."

A dedicated teacher, Professor Stedman has directed the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL since 2015 and received Stanford's Dinkelspiel Award in 2018 for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. 

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456

Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Conference Room E-008 in Encina Hall, East, may attend in person.

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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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).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen J. Stedman Senior Fellow Presenter Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Katherine Casey — Candidate Entry into Local Government

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The competence of elected officials affects state performance and economic growth, yet it is often difficult to find high human capital, representative citizens willing to put themselves forward as political candidates. We analyze an intervention designed to address this challenge that combines structured community nominations, private screening of technocratic skills, and information provision to political parties in advance of local elections in Sierra Leone.  Estimates show that this successfully identifies individuals who are higher quality and enjoy broader local support than incumbents and status quo candidates.  While new to elected politics, these individuals remain elite, drawn from traditional chiefly families. One quarter of top nominees formally enter politics, positively self-selected on quality and boosted by an encouragement nudge.  Their entry improves the maximum quality observed in the potential candidate pool and among those selected onto the parties’ lists. These results provide proof of concept that there are better people out there willing to run.  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Katherine Casey is a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the faculty director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in lower-income countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability, the influence of foreign aid on economic development, and the provision of local public infrastructure. Her regional focus is Sub-Saharan Africa.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456

Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Conference Room E-008 in Encina Hall, East, may attend in person.

Katherine Casey

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Professor of Political Economy, Stanford GSB
Faculty Director, Stanford King Center on Global Development
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Katherine Casey is Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Faculty Director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in developing countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability and the influence of foreign aid on economic development. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. 

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Katherine Casey The RoAnn Costin Professor of Political Economy Presenter Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
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Michael Albertus — Winning Under Electoral Authoritarianism: Turning Out the “Right” Votes in Venezuela

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Mike Albertus Seminar5.14.26

Electoral autocracies have become one of the most prevalent forms of authoritarian rule. In these regimes, incumbents use state resources to shape electoral competition and bias outcomes in their favor. Existing research highlights media control, clientelism, and opposition harassment as central strategies. This paper identifies a distinct mechanism: the manipulation of electoral infrastructure as a tool of dispersed political engineering. We study this mechanism in Venezuela, an archetypal case of contemporary electoral autocracy, where the number of voting centers has nearly doubled over the last two decades. Using a novel panel dataset of geocoded polling centers covering 2000–2024, we examine the determinants of new center creation. We show that new voting centers are significantly more likely to be established in areas that previously exhibited stronger support for the incumbent. This relationship holds after accounting for population dynamics and spatial factors. The effect is particularly pronounced in urban areas and among centers that can be identified as politically motivated additions to the electoral infrastructure. We also find evidence that local pro-government organizations contribute to this process by generating bottom-up demand for new centers. These findings highlight how incumbents in electoral autocracies can manipulate the organization of elections to maintain political advantage.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael Albertus is a CDDRL Visiting Scholar and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research examines democracy and dictatorship, inequality and redistribution, property rights, and civil conflict. He has authored five books and over thirty peer-reviewed articles. His most recent book, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, published by Basic Books in 2025, examines how land became power, how it shapes power, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with. Albertus' work has also been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, World Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Development Economics, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and elsewhere. 

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456

Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Conference Room E-008 in Encina Hall, East, may attend in person.

Michael Albertus Visiting Scholar Presenter Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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Dipin Kaur | Coethnic Counterinsurgents: Explaining Security Force Ethnic Composition in Wartime

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About the event: Why do states draw security forces from the same social bases as insurgent groups in some conflicts, but rely on rival social outgroups in others? In identity-driven conflicts, recruiting insurgent-coethnics – personnel who share an ethnic or religious identity with insurgents – can improve access to local information, enhance state legitimacy, and enable selective violence. Yet it can also undermine discipline and cohesion within the coercive apparatus by raising the risks of defection, indiscipline, and divided loyalty. Existing scholarship has shown that such recruiting decisions can shape battlefield effectiveness and regime survival, but we know relatively little about how states decide whether to leverage or sideline personnel drawn from insurgents’ own social bases. Kaur argues that states strategically shape the ethnic composition and deployment of their security forces in response to the organizational risks that insurgent-coethnics may pose to the state’s coercive apparatus. Coethnics can be co-opted as counterinsurgents only when insurgencies are sufficiently weakened to make coethnics willing to collaborate with the state, and when the state’s coercive institutions are structured to reduce the risk of insubordinate collective action. She tests this argument through a mixed-methods design that combines within- and cross-conflict evidence from counterinsurgency campaigns in India and the British Empire. Taken together, the study shows how states manage organizational risk from internal conflict through the recruitment, reassignment, deployment, and withholding of coethnic personnel. In doing so, it demonstrates that the ethnicity of security forces is itself an ethno-political outcome shaped by wartime dynamics.

About the speaker: Dipin Kaur is an India-U.S. Security Studies Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ashoka University. Her research focuses on state strategy in the shadow of political violence, the politics of post-conflict transitions, and public opinion in polarized settings. Her book project draws on case studies from India and the British Empire to explain why states vary in their reliance on particular ethnic groups as counterinsurgents in response to conflict. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University (2022) and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

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Dipin Kaur
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2026 CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program Award Winner Presentations

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CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. Please join us for this seminar to hear our Honors Program award winners present their research.

Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to the E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

 

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María Ignacia Curiel
María Ignacia Curiel
Stephen J. Stedman
Stephen J. Stedman

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Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

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Constructing Utopias: China’s New Town Movement in the 21st Century

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Amid groundbreaking political reforms and the largest mass migration in human history, China created over 3,800 new towns to house its burgeoning urban population and sustain rapid economic growth. Driven by marketization, global trade, inter-city competition, and an exponentially growing real estate industry, this continuous urban expansion represents the most extensive urbanization initiative in history. Contemporary Chinese new towns have emerged as a national campaign to reimagine the Chinese city and reshape the global geo-economic landscape. This talk examines four decades of Chinese urbanization through the lens of urbanism and utopianism. Case studies—including the Suzhou Industrial Park, Shanghai's One City and Nine Towns, and prototypical eco-cities—illuminates fundamental issues of economic vitality, cultural identity, environmental sustainability, and socio-spatial dynamics. Ultimately, the talk explores the complex interplay between space production and social transformation within the context of neoliberalism and globalization.

Speaker:

Zhongjie Lin

Zhongjie “Jeffrey” Lin is Benjamin Lin Presidential Professor of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he serves as Head of the Urban Design program and directs the Future Cities Initiative. An internationally renowned expert in urban planning and design, Dr. Lin has published numerous books on Asian architecture and cities, including Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan (2010/2023), Vertical Urbanism: Designing Compact Cities in China (2018), and Constructing Utopias: China’s New Town Movement in the 21st Century (2025). He was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Abe Fellowship, and three Graham Foundation awards.

 

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Philippines Conference Room (C330)
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

Zhongjie “Jeffrey” Lin, Professor, University of Pennsylvania
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Konstantin Sonin REDS Seminar | The Reverse Cargo Cult: Why Authoritarian Governments Lie to Their People

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KonstantinSoninRedsSeminar4.9.26

Why did the Soviet Union organize regular elections, national and local, with one candidate and reported 99.9% support with 99.9% turnout? Were the Soviet citizens so stupid that they did not understand that they have no say in choosing their government? The Reverse Cargo Cult metaphor explains why dictators tell their citizens lies that citizens know to be lies: a verifiable lie told by a politician changes citizens' perceptions of politicians and reduces their willingness to replace them. The model explains the mechanics of authoritarian propaganda that puts much emphasis on persuading citizens about foreign politicians.

 

Konstantin Sonin is the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests include political economics, economic theory, and conflict. 

Sonin earned MSc and PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University and MA in economics from Moscow’s New Economic School (NES). Before joining the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty and as a vice-president of the New Economic School and HSE University in Moscow. Over two decades, he has guest-lectured in dozens of universities, summer schools, and high schools across Russia and worked part-time as a teacher of economics in a high school.

His research has been published in leading academic outlets in economics and political science. In addition to academic work, Sonin blogs, tweets, and op-eds on Russian political and economic issues. In May 2024, Russian authorities sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison (in absentia) for posting information about the atrocities committed by Russian occupying forces in the town of Bucha in Ukraine.


REDS: RETHINKING EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY


The REDS Seminar Series aims to deepen the research agenda on the new challenges facing Europe, especially on its eastern flank, and to build intellectual and institutional bridges across Stanford University, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to current global challenges.

REDS is organized by The Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Learn more about REDS and view past seminars here.

 

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Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse, Kathryn Stoner
Konstantin Sonin John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor Presenter University of Chicago
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Can Law and Ethics Limit Harm to Civilians in War? Evidence from the U.S. Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq | Andrew Bell

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About the event: Can international law and ethics lead to greater protection of civilians in war? How can these norms influence military conduct on the battlefield? This talk examines whether and how international law and ethical norms can contribute to the protection of civilians in war. Governments and militaries invest substantial resources in training soldiers in the law of armed conflict and professional military ethics, yet there is limited empirical evidence about whether these norms meaningfully shape conduct on the battlefield. Drawing on combatant surveys, interviews, and data on U.S. Army prosecutions, this research analyzes U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to assess how legal and ethical norms influence the behavior of combatants and the treatment of civilians during military operations.

About the speaker: Andrew Bell is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University, a J.D.–M.A. from the University of Virginia, and an M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School. He previously served with the U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and the International Committee of the Red Cross and was an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Indiana University. He is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and has deployed in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

William J. Perry Conference Room

Andrew Bell
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