Sponsored by: Stanford University Libraries, Hoover Institution,

Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Even before the 2016 election campaign, political polarization and filter bubbles in social media and revelations of foreign meddling, Francis Fukuyama raised his concerns about the decline and decay of democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Today we live in a new environment where Americans and others get up to two-thirds of their news — real and otherwise — on Facebook, where Twitter bots magnify propaganda, and where foreigners posing as Americans even organize demonstrations and counter-demonstrations on social media. Yet even without these technological developments, from Eastern Europe to the U.S., we observe the re-emergence of demons we thought we left behind after World War II: the rise of blood and soil nationalism, the decline in rule of law and the institutions that uphold democratic governance: parliaments, courts, a free and unfettered press. We believed that through NATO, the WTO, and the EU democracy and peace would be firmly grounded. What happens when these international organizations begin to unravel? Where are we headed? What have we learned so we can avoid the disasters of the 1930s? What are the fundamental institutional reforms we need to make? How do we accommodate the new superpower China, with its alternative model of governance, not only domestically, but increasingly in the international sphere? These questions will be discussed in a conversation by Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Francis Fukuyama.

Speakers:

Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the former President of Estonia (2006–2016). He has previously also served as Estonian foreign minister, member of European Parliament, and the ambassador of Estonia in Washington. In 2017 Ilves joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford’s hub for researchers tackling some of the world’s most pressing security and international cooperation problems. He is currently Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover Institution.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also a professor by courtesy in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book is Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

While much of the existing literature examines vote buying in the context of party systems, including both competitive and hegemonic party systems, this talk, based on a study coauthored by Professor Susan Whiting, addresses vote buying in a context in which no political party effectively structures electoral competition—village elections in China. This study argues that the lure of non-competitive rents explains variation over time and space in the phenomenon of vote buying. It tests this hypothesis, derived from an in-depth case study, in a separate sample of 1200 households in 62 villages in five provinces, using villagers’ reports of vote buying in elections and survey data on land takings as an indicator of available rents. While the literature views the introduction of elections as increasing accountability of village leaders to voters, vote buying likely undermines accountability. This study suggests that the regime has tolerated vote buying as a means of identifying and coopting influential economic elites in rural communities.

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China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Abstract:

Fukuyama (1989) was right: a centuries-old argument about government should be over. Liberal democracy is the best regime known to us. It isn’t close: for life’s important aspects, including health, wealth, liberty, and peace, democracy dominates all known alternatives. Empirically, however, the argument is not over. Indeed, there is widespread concern that many citizens (and, sadly, some academics) are less enthusiastic about democracy than the evidence warrants. I argue that when we search for solutions to complex problems (e.g., the design of governments) we often make a serious error in our mental representation of the choice problem: instead of using the criterion of the best feasible option, we ignore important constraints and look for an alternative that satisfies certain value-standards. When these standards are unrealistic, as they often are, we can become disillusioned with the best possible option. Robert Michels was wrong; Voltaire, and Henny Youngman, were right.

Speaker Bio:

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Abstract:

Foreign intervention sometimes enters by domestic invitation. Recently, the Malian government asked international actors to send troops to help stabilize and strengthen its rule of law, specifically as it faltered after the country’s coup. In this case, explanations for the intervention by invitation tend to revolve around the relative strength of the government, which was weak compared to the somewhat sophisticated militants that opposed it. Such an explanation, however, is unlikely shed much light on the situation since there are many weak governments with faltering or failing rule of law that do not request or receive such governance assistance, at least as far as reporting on these cases suggests. As the United States and its allies withdraw from the major conflicts of the past decade, the focus of international intervention in conflict and post-conflict contexts is likely to occur in cooperation with host states. This project examines an important set of arrangements for weak states: it identifies and explains when states invite other states to intervene for governance assistance—agreements between sovereign entities—specifically with regard to the security sector. These illustrations and tests draw on new quantitative and qualitative data.

Speaker Bio:

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This talk will be conducted off the record.

This paper introduces the concept of "Thugs-For-Hire" (TFH) as a form of third-party state coercion. Violence or threat of violence, which is essential to the thugs' actions, helps to push through unpopular policies and subjugate recalcitrant population. Third-party violence as a form of privatized covert repression also allows the state to evade responsibility. Weak states are more likely to deploy TFH than strong states do, mostly for the purpose of bolstering their coercive capacity. Yet, state-TFH relationship is functional only in so far as the state is able to maintain an upper hand in exerting control over the violent agents. Third-party violent coercion is also detrimental to state legitimacy. Focusing on China, a seemingly paradoxical case as it is traditionally seen as a strong state, I examine how local states frequently deploy TFH to evict homeowners, enforce one-child policy, collect exorbitant exactions, and to deal with petitioners and protestors.

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China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

China has pivoted away from export-oriented development towards a strategy of domestic urban and infrastructural construction.  This pivot is especially visible in rural China, where migrant laborers withstand uniquely low wages by relying on subsistence farming practices.  Yet, at the same time, this low-waged labor system is disrupted by an ongoing urbanization boom which terminates rural land-use rights.  I argue that two political institutions prop up contradictory developmental dynamics.  First, China’s localized welfare policies strip rural workers of social rights in cities, which compel them to maintain rural households to supplement their low urban wages.  China’s decentralized fiscal system, however, simultaneously requires rural governments to fund social expenditures for a labor force employed elsewhere, which they do by commoditizing and acquiring financing through rural land sales.  Such land commoditization disrupts rural-urban labor migration, however, because it removes the rural wage supplement that enables migrants to withstand low wages.

[[{"fid":"229452","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"3":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; padding: 0px; float: left; width: 300px; height: 281px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"3"}}]]Julia Chuang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Her research uses ethnography to show how the movement of people shapes global economic processes. Her book manuscript, The Changing Foundations of Chinese Development, applies this method to the Chinese economy. It follows labor brokers and migrant workers as they move between the villages where they live and the cities where they work. Her book shows how their migrations reflect ongoing tensions and changes in the way Chinese markets – and their reliance on labor and land in particular – operate today. Publications from this project have appeared in Gender & Society, Journal of Peasant Studies and The China Quarterly.

Professor Chuang received a PhD in 2014 from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2014 to 2016 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

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China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Abstract:

While populism takes different forms in different countries, the success of populist parties and leaders comes from their ability to represent grievances. Current analyses emphasize the personality, background and rhetoric of populist leaders, but, often neglect the intermediary mechanisms that help populists not only address and represent but also generate “the people” from a diverse set of constituencies. By focusing on the authoritarian populist context of Turkey, this paper examines the role of pro- government and government-organized NGOs in helping the ruling Justice and Development Party connect with, represent, and shape the youth public in the aftermath of the uprisings across the wider Middle East. The paper argues that the making of authoritarian Turkey and the resilience of President Erdoğan should be traced as much to the mechanisms of consent-building as to the mechanisms of coercion.

Speaker Bio:

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Abstract: The West has no peer competitors in conventional military power.  But its adversaries are increasingly turning to asymmetric methods for engaging in conflict.  Cyber-enabled information warfare (CEIW) leverages the features of modern information and communications technology to age-old techniques of propaganda, deception, and chaos production to confuse, mislead, and to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes—and a recent example of CEIW can be seen in the Russian hacks on the U.S. presidential election in 2016.  CEIW is a hostile activity, or at least an activity that is conducted between two parties whose interests are not well-aligned, but it does not constitute warfare in the sense that international law or domestic institutions construe it.  Nor is it cyber war or cyber conflict as we have come to understand those ideas.  Some approaches to counter CEIW show some promise of having some modest but valuable defensive effect.  If better solutions for countering CEIW waged against free and democratic societies are not forthcoming, societal discourse will no longer be grounded in reason and objective reality—an outcome that can fairly be called the end of the Enlightenment.

Speaker bios: Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He recently served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

To read more about Herb Lin's interests, please read "An Evolving Research Agenda in Cyber Policy and Security."

Jackie Kerr is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Her research examines cybersecurity and information security strategy, Internet governance, and the Internet policies of non-democratic regimes.  She was a 2015-2016 Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation in 2014-2015.  Jackie holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University.  She has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar, and has previous professional experience as a software engineer.

Abstract: It has been more than a decade since the UN Security Council enacted Resolution 1540—the most far-reaching of international instruments to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism. It requires states to adopt and enforce effective laws to keep WMD materials outside the reach of terrorists. Scholars and policy makers compliment 1540 for making WMD trafficking illegal, for raising awareness of threats and increasing states’ capacity to reduce them. In 2017, one hundred and seventy-six states reported to the UN on domestic measures they took to comply with 1540. These numbers may produce a false sense of confidence in universal implementation of 1540. The threat of WMD terrorism remains potent. Allegations of ISIS using mustard agents against the Kurds, North Korea shipping chemicals to Syria or middlemen trafficking nuclear materials via Moldova suggest that the international response to WMD smuggling has not achieved its desired results. It is, therefore, important to evaluate the UN’s role in preventing WMD terrorism, and explore ways to further strengthen it. Drawing on interviews, fieldwork and observation data, this talk will examine the 1540 regime’s setup and its performance. It will outline policy options to improve the international counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism regime.

Speaker  bio:  Sarah Shirazyan is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. Her research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She received her Doctor of Juridical Sciences Degree from Stanford Law School. Her dissertation empirically analyzes the effectiveness of the UN Security Council Resolution 1540 in preventing terrorists from accessing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sarah designed Interpol-Stanford policy lab and serves as a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. For her outstanding research, teaching and community service, Stanford named Ms. Shirazyan as one of the recipients of Gerald J. Lieberman Award.

In addition to her academic experience, Sarah has held multiple posts with leading tech companies and international organizations. Sarah worked at Facebook’s Global Policy Team, where she developed company’s engagement strategies with inter-governmental organizations. Ms. Shirazyan also designed the data protection and privacy curricula for legal professionals at the Council of Europe. Prior to that, Ms. Shirazyan was a Drafting Lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights; worked on nuclear security issues at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs; and handled international drug cartel investigation cases at the INTERPOL Secretariat.