Abstract:

     While the reelection of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, relieved concerns about an immediate deterioration in cross-Strait relations, the future of ties between Beijing and Taipei remain uncertain. Much will depend on the PRC’s policy. Moreover, calls in the United States either to abandon Taiwan or, conversely, to embrace it ever more closely as a hedge against the Mainland’s growing strength, have yet to play themselves out. Alan D. Romberg will address the implications of the election for these issues, as well as for Sino-American relations and for the region.

Speaker Bio:

     Alan Romberg is the director of the East Asia program at Stimson. 

     Before joining Stimson in September 2000, he enjoyed a distinguished career working on Asian issues, both in and out of government, including twenty years as a US Foreign Service Officer. Romberg was the principal deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff and deputy spokesman of the department. He served in various capacities dealing with East Asia, including director of the Office of Japanese Affairs, member of the Policy Planning staff for East Asia, and staff member at the National Security Council for China. He served overseas in Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

     Additionally, Romberg spent almost ten years as the CV Starr Senior Fellow for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy. 

     Romberg holds an MA from Harvard University, and a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Despite the many benefits of democracy, some scholars believe that introducing elections in ethnically divided states can lead to the politicization of identity and to ethnic conflict. Yet few scholars have explored what compels politicians to mobilize around identity in the first place. In search of an answer, Jeremy Menchik and George Washington University doctoral student Colm Fox compiled the only known dataset of campaign advertisements—over 5,000 political banners, posters, and stickers—across hundreds of electoral districts in the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, Indonesia. They coded these advertisements for the use of religious, ethnic, nationalist, party, and regional symbols in order to then explain their variation. Their findings shed light on how “politics works” in a new Muslim democracy and suggest that parties, including Islamists, are strategic about their use of identity appeals. Menchik will illustrate this and other findings with ample recourse to visual images.

Dr. Jeremy Menchik is a 2011–12 Shorenstein Fellow. His PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison drew on two years of field research to explain variations in religious and political tolerance in Indonesia during the twentieth century. He has been a Luce Scholar at Columbia University and a visiting fellow at the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta. He is working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation: Tolerance Without Liberalism: Islamic Institutions in Twentieth Century Indonesia.

Co-sponsored with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University.

Abstract:

Since the very beginning of the state formation, Angolan political elites of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) agreed that liberal democracy would be the form of government. However, in 1975 MPLA inaugurated a formal authoritarian regime that lasted until 1991. From 1991 to 2010, Angola had a democratic interim constitution and in 1992 had the first national multiparty elections as well as presidential ones of its history. In 2008, Angola held its second legislative elections and in 2010 a new and definite constitution was approved. Nevertheless, democratic development did not lead to the end of a successful democratic transition process started in 1991 or to the consolidation of democracy. The answer can probably be found in the politics of curbing democratic development, which constitutes the aim of this presentation by Professor Fernando Macedo of the Lusíada University of Angola.

Speaker Bio:

Fernando Macedo teaches political science and constitutional law at Law Faculty since 2007 and Angolan constitutional law and human rights in the department of international relations since 2006 at Lusíada University of Angola. He is currently the coordinator of the department of international relations of Lusíada University of Angola.

Fernando Macedo has co-authored with Pedro Franco Romão a book named Anotações à Lei da Prisão Preventiva em Angola, printed by Livraria Almedina of Portugal. He wrote three articles, the first one, Human Rights and Global Security, was published in Revista Brasileira de Estudos Constitucionais in 2008. The second, Civil Society and Political Power, in Sociedade Civil e Política em Angola, organized by Nuno Vidal and Justino Pinto de Andrade in 2008; and the third one, Advocacy and Citizenship, in Encontros, by the Angolan Bar Association in 2011.

Ambassador Joon-woo Park, the 2011–12 Koret Fellow and a former senior diplomat from Korea, will give a historical review of Korea-Vietnam bilateral relations, including the effects of Korea's participation in the Vietnam War; bilateral relations today including diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges; and prospects for future developments and cooperation for East Asian integration.

As a career diplomat, Ambassador Park served in numerous key posts, including those of Ambassador to the European Union and to Singapore and Presidential Advisor on Foreign Affairs. Park worked closely for over 20 years with Ban Ki-moon, the former Korean diplomat who is now the United Nations Secretary-General.

This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.

Abstract: 

Vote buying is widespread during multiparty elections in many African countries.  Despite its prevalence, vote buying's secretive and sensitive nature poses a challenge to empirical research on the subject.  In this talk, CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow Eric Kramon will present evidence from experiments conducted in Kenya that shed light on the extent to which vote buying influences vote choice, why it is effective, how it relates to ethnic voting, and what its implications are for government responsiveness and accountability to poor voters.

Speaker Bio:

Eric Kramon is a 2011-12 pre-doctoral fellow at CDDRL and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. In his dissertation, he investigates vote buying during African elections. Using a set of field experiments and surveys conducted in Kenya, the project explains why vote buying persists and is effective, and examines its implications for democratic accountability and the political representation of the poor. Eric is also working on several projects about the impact of ethnic favoritism by politicians on public goods provision and general health and welfare in multiple African countries. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the Journal of Democracy.

This colloquium will discuss the state of evidence, challenges, and research agenda regarding the growth of private hospitals and public-private hospital partnerships in developing Asia.

Dominic Montagu is an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and lead of the Health Systems Initiative at the Global Health Group of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His work is focused on private delivery of health services in developing countries and on market function for health services and health commodities. He has active field research projects ongoing in Nigeria and Myanmar. Montagu holds masters degrees in business administration and public health, as well as a doctorate in public health, from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He has worked extensively in Africa and Asia, and teaches on the private sector in developing countries, and on the regulation of private hospitals and public-private-partnerships at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and on behalf of the World Bank Institute.

Since 2006, more than 40,000 people in Mexico have died in drug-related homicides, and recent figures indicate that the pace and severity of drug-related violence is increasing. Experiencing a significant breakdown of its rule of law, the population of Ciudad Juárez alone suffered more than 3,000 homicides in 2010, making it the most dangerous city anywhere in the world. Dr. Poiré Romero will address the characteristics of the security situation in Mexico, the historical events and situations that made it what it is now, and the current strategy that the Federal Government is implementing to achieve security. Dr. Poiré’s talk will be completely off-the-record, and is by invitation only.

Speaker biography:

On September 9, 2011, Dr. Alejandro Poiré Romero was appointed as Director of Mexico´s National Security Agency by President Felipe Calderón. Prior to that, Dr. Poiré served as Secretary of the National Security Council and Cabinet, and has held a variety of cabinet-level positions since 2007. He also worked as an adviser to the National Institute of Statistics on the creation of the first National Survey on Political Culture and Citizenship Practices. He has published several academic pieces analyzing public opinion, campaign dynamics and voting behavior in Mexico, in addition to two books on Mexico’s democratic process, Towards Mexico’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections, and Public Opinion and Mexico's Pivotal Democratic Election.

Dr. Poiré holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, and a Bachelor’s degree in the same field from Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), where he has been a professor and the Political Science Department Chair. He has also been a visiting researcher and lecturer at several institutions in the USA, including MIT, and Latin America.