The faculty and staff of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, as well as the undersigned alumni of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, wish to protest the completely unjustified arrest and pending trial of the researcher Tatiana Kouzina on June 28, 2021 by Belarusian authorities. Ms. Kouzina now faces unspecified criminal charges that could lead to her extended detention.

Following a fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, there have been ongoing peaceful protests and demonstrations in opposition of the Belarusian government and President Alexander Lukashenko. During this time, the government has unjustly arrested thousands of activists and protesters. Waves of repression reached politicians, civil society organizations, media, the research community, and ordinary citizens. The arrest of Ms. Kouzina is another in a series of troubling steps that the Belarusian government has taken against its people. We call for the release of Ms. Kouzina and other political prisoners currently being held in Belarus.

Ms. Kouzina is a highly respected Belarusian expert who was the co-founder, teacher, and researcher at the School of Young Managers in Public Administration (SYMPA) and the Belarusian Institute for Public Administration Reform and Transformation (BIPART). In this capacity, she conducted substantial research in the field and contributed to numerous policy and research documents, including as part of SYMPA's participation in EU-STRAT, an international research project implemented by a consortium of the leading European universities (including the Free University of Berlin and Leiden University, Netherlands) and think tanks in 2016-2019. As a long-time recognized member of the Belarusian research community, Ms. Kouzina has contributed immensely to its development and sustainability. From 2010-2015, she was the Executive Director of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS) and has cooperated with the Belarus Research Council (BRC), other Belarusian think tanks, and civil society organizations throughout her career.

Ms. Kouzina's arrest is a shocking example of the current Belarusian regime's repressive policies that have attacked other members of the Belarusian research and expert community. As researchers ourselves and members of the broader global democratic community, we strongly protest this arbitrary arrest and demand that Ms. Kouzina be released immediately.

Signed,

Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA

Michael McFaul, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA

Olga Stuzhinskaya, international affairs and development expert, founder and former director of the Office for a Democratic Belarus in Brussels, CDDRL alumni 2006

Victor Liakh, East Europe Foundation, Ukraine

Hoi Trịnh, Board Member, VOICE, USA

Anna Dobrovolskaya, Memorial Human Rights Center, Россия

Mahdi Al Hajat, free journalist, Iraq

Haykuhi Harutyunyan, Corruption prevention commission, Armenia

Ruby Tetteh, Deputy Director, MOTI, Ghana

Denis Volkov, CDDRL alumni, Russia

Dmytro Potekhin, CEO, Factology.Systems, Ukraine

Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, Stanford University, USA

Sasha Jason, Program Manager, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA

Professor Donald Emmerson, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Stanford University, USA

Jamie O'Connell, Lecturer in Residence, Stanford Law School, and CDDRL affiliated faculty, USA

Belinda Byrne, Program Administrator, Stanford University, USA

Katherine Welsh, Administrative Associate at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, USA

Amr Hamzawy, Senior research scholar, Stanford University, USA

Erik Jensen, Professor of the Practice of Law, Director, Rule of Law Program, Stanford Law School, USA

Anna Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, Stanford University, USA

Marcel Fafchamps, Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Stanford University, USA

Yusmadi Yusoff, People's Justice Party (KEADILAN), Malaysia

Olga Aivazovska, Head of Board, Civil Network OPORA, Ukraine

Befekadu Hailu, Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD), Ethiopia

Varvara Pakhomenko, Consultant, Russia

Olena Sotnyk, Human rights defender, Ukraine

Elsa Marie DSilva, Red Dot Foundation, India

Laila Kiki, The Syria Campaign, Syria

Alla Kos, Austria

Nino Evgenidze, EPRC, Georgia

James D. Fearon, Professor, Stanford University, USA

Nino Chichua, Georgia Healthcare Group, Georgia

Janaína Homerin, Draper Hills Summer Fellow, Brazil

David Smolansky, Mayor in Exile, Venezuela

Hadeel AlQaq, Jordan

Eka Kemularia, Director, Green Line, Georgia

Yuriy Bugay, Independent consultant, NGO activist, Ukraine

Lauren Weitzman, Program Manager CDDRL, Stanford University, USA

Steve Luby, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, USA

On April 21, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted Professor Erin Baggott Carter, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her program, "When Beijing Goes to Washington: Autocratic Lobbying Influence in Democracies," explored how lobbying from China and China-based companies can affect policy in the United States. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

Professor Baggot Carter based her talk on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. According to Baggot Carter, the evidence suggests that Chinese government lobbying makes legislators at least twice as likely to sponsor legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests. Moreover, US media outlets that participated in Chinese-government sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. These results suggest that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity. Watch now: 

In a webinar dated, February 12, 2021, a panel of Stanford University scholars shared their reflections on the legacy of the January 25, 2011 Uprising in Egypt. Marking the 10-year anniversary of the uprising and the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the panel examined the trajectory of authoritarianism in the country over the past decade. Moderated by ARD Associate-Director Hesham Sallam, the panel included former CDDRL Visiting Scholar Nancy Okail, Stanford Professor of History Emeritus Joel Beinin, and CDDRL Senior Research Scholar Amr Hamzawy. The panelists addressed a variety questions including: How have political developments in Egypt and elsewhere in recent years informed our understanding of the January 25 Uprising and its significance? In what ways have authoritarian institutions adapted in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising and how have they shaped the prospects for political change and/or stability? Where are the sites of political contestation and resistance in today’s Egypt?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's Democratic Party suffered a devastating defeat in a special election for mayoral posts in the country’s two largest cities, Seoul and Busan. “These mayoral elections became a referendum on the ruling party,” says APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin in an interview on CNBC Squawk Box Asia. “South Korean voters gave the Moon administration a red card.”

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Anger at soaring housing prices and ongoing investigations into accusations of corruption has decimated the credibility of Moon and his left-leaning Democratic Party in the eyes of many voters. “The South Korean people have begun to believe that the current government is quite incompetent,” Shin says. In the foreign policy arena, too, the Moon administration has been on a downhill slide. It has failed to make a breakthrough on the stalemate with North Korea, has seen the relationship with Japan deteriorating to the worst it has ever been and is struggling to contend with China.

But it is domestic policy, particularly containing housing prices, that will be the key issue in next year’s presidential election, Shin argues. Another issue to watch is COVID-19, he notes. A year ago, South Korean voters rewarded the administration’s handling of the pandemic, but now the government is facing a backlash over its slow vaccine rollout.