FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling.
FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world.
FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.
The January Taiwan Elections and the Implications for Cross-Strait Relations
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Religion or Politics? Elections and the Adoption of Shari’a Law in Muslim-Majority Democracies—The Case of Indonesia
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Debate surrounding democratization in Muslim-majority countries has centered on the potential for the political process to strengthen or constrain radical Islamist forces. Virtually absent from this discourse is empirical evidence linking the passage of Islamist policies to subsequent electoral outcomes at the local level. Aiming to fill this gap, Dr. Buehler will present and analyze an original dataset of shari’a regulations passed by local governments across Indonesia. He will examine the content and timing of newly-passed shari’a regulations in relation to geopolitical history, the electoral cycle, and electoral outcomes. Such regulations are strongly concentrated in areas with a history of political Islam. They map on to the electoral cycle in ways that suggest that those passing them are motivated less by religious doctrine than by the quest for electoral advantage. However, those passing shari’a regulations do not excel in subsequent elections. In Indonesia, profane political agendas appear to trump Islamist agendas.
Michael Buehler’s specialty at SOAS is Southeast Asian politics with particular reference to state-society relations during democratization and decentralization. His many publications include articles in Comparative Politics, Party Politics, and Indonesia; chapters in Beyond Oligarchy, Deepening Democracy in Indonesia, and Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia; and on-line contributions to Aljazeera, The Diplomat, and New Mandala. His book “The Politics of Shari’a Law: Islamist Activists and the State in Democratizing Indonesia” will be published by Cambridge University Press in August 2016.Image
Michael’s scholarly career has included teaching positions and research fellowships at Columbia University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. His doctorate is from The London School of Economics and Political Science.
Michael Buehler
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Michael Buehler
Lecturer in Comparative Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Seminars
The Fate of Authoritarian Elites Under Democracy
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Abstract:
Why do some former authoritarian elites face punishment for their misdeeds after democratic transition whereas others remain untouched or even end up being re-elected to political office, re-appointed in government, or on the boards of state-owned or major private enterprises? Drawing on a new dataset on the upper echelon of outgoing authoritarian elites in countries across Latin America over the last century, this project investigates for the first time why new democracies punish selected former authoritarian elites whereas others elide punishment entirely and even flourish under democracy.
Speaker Bio:
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Michael Albertus is the 2015-16 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the William C. Bark National Fellow. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His main research focus is on the political conditions under which governments implement egalitarian reforms.
His first book, Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform, published by Cambridge University Press, examines why and when land reform programs are implemented. His second book project, Flawed by Design: Authoritarian Legacies Under Democracy, explores the role of outgoing authoritarian elite-designed institutions on democratic functioning. Other research interests include political regime transitions and stability, politics under dictatorship, clientelism, and civil conflict. Albertus' work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Economics & Politics, Comparative Politics, World Development, International Studies Quarterly, and Latin American Research Review.
Michael Albertus
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago
Seminars
International Dimension of Autocratization in post-Soviet Eurasia
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**This event is co-sponsored with CREES**
Abstract:
Twenty five years have passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (the USSR), when the fifteen new independent states of Eurasia started the process of regime transition and state- and nation-building. All of the former Soviet republics have the same departure point – the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Twenty five years later, in 2016, there is an enormous variation in the outcomes of regime transition across post-Soviet Eurasia: from autocracies (e.g., Belarus) to democracies (Baltic states). Thus, this experience of post-Soviet Eurasian states requires development of new theoretical approaches that would allow for better understanding of rapid dynamics in this part of the world and of the phenomenon of external dimension of regime transition in general.
Speaker Bio:
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Anastassia V. Obydenkova holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Science from the European University Institute (2006, Florence, Italy), M.A. from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), and a Summa Cum Laude Diploma in Political Science and International Relations from Moscow Lomonosov State University; Diploma Cum Laude in Foreign Languages from the Department of Foreign Languages of the Moscow State University. Her main research interests are autocracies, democratization and regime transition, federalism, decentralization, sub-national political regimes, international organizations, and area studies (former Soviet States of Eurasia).
Anastassia V. Obydenkova
Regional Fellow at Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
Seminars
Varieties of Democracy
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Abstract:
The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project is a large-scale data collection effort focused on the construction of a wide-ranging database different understandings of what democracy is (e.g., electoral democracy, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, and egalitarian democracy). The V-Dem dataset is highly disaggregated (350 specific indicators), and it extends back to 1900 and covers virtually all sovereign and semi-sovereign polities of the world. In the talk, Skaaning will present the different features of the dataset, including the use of expert surveys, the employment of a sophisticated measurement model to take different levels of reliability and bias into account, and the challenge of establishing cross-country equivalence in the scores. The V-Dem dataset will be compared with the well-known democracy measures provided by Freedom House and Polity, and the analytical leverage will be illustrated with a few examples from ongoing research.
Speaker Bio:
Svend-Erik Skaaning is professor of political science at Aarhus University, Denmark, and he is co-principal investigator of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and Conflict and Democratization (CODE) projects. He has published numerous articles on democratization, civil liberties, and the rule of law in international journal, such as Journal of Democracy, Democratization, Perspectives on Politics, and Political Research Quarterly. Skaaning has also published a number of books on these issues, including Requisites of Democracy (Routledge), Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective (Routledge), and The Rule of Law: Definition, Measures, Patterns, and Causes (Palgrave). Skaaning is currently working on a book manuscript on democracy and dictatorship in the interwar years and papers on relationship between democracy on the one hand and conflict and human development on the other.Image
Svend-Erik Skaaning
Professor of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark
Seminars