Abstract:

Systemic corruption undermines state capacity, imperils socio-economic development, and diminishes democracy. In his Nairobi speech as a U.S. senator in August 2006, Barack Obama described the struggle to reduce corruption as "the fight of our time". An international conference in Lagos, Nigeria, in September 2011 was devoted to Richard Joseph's influential 1987 book, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic.Transforming prebendalist systems must be at the center of strategies to strengthen democracy and achieve poverty-reducing economic growth in Africa and other regions.

 Speaker Bio: 

Richard Joseph is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University and Non resident Senior Fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution. As a Fellow of The Carter Center, he participated in democracy and peace initiatives in Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Liberiaand Sudan. He has written extensively on issues of democracy, governance and political economy. His books include Radical Nationalism in Cameroun (1977), Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987) and edited books, Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978), State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (1999), and (with Alexandra Gillies), Smart Aid for African Development (2009). He served as Principal Investigator of the Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS (REACH), a collaborative program in Nigeria, 2006–2011. His current writing and policy projects concern growth, democracy and security. To address these issues, he is designing a collaborative project, AfricaPlus (http://africaplus.wordpress.com/), whose first focus country is Nigeria.

Here is the link to Richard Joseph remarks and the PowerPoint for the talk.

http://africaplus.wordpress.com/author/africaplus/

Abstract:

One of Taiwan's leading political scientists and most widely quoted authorities on Taiwan politics and cross-Strait relations, Professor Chu will address five issues in his talk:

   First, how should we interpret the outcome of the January election and the nature and extent of President Ma's renewed mandate?

   Second, to what extent has the 2012 election enhanced the overall quality of Taiwan's democracy?

   Third, what can we expect in terms of President Ma's domestic agenda for the next four years?

   Fourth, how much further and faster can the warming of cross-Strait relations proceed during President Ma's second term?

   Fifth, what are the challenges and opportunities for the US-Taiwan relationship in the coming year?

 Speaker Bio:

Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He also serves concurrently as President of Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Professor Chu joined the faculty of National Taiwan University in 1987. He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University in 1990-1991 and has held a visiting professorship at Peking University since 2007. Professor Chu specializes in politics of Greater China, East Asian political economy, international political economy, and democratization. He is the Coordinator of Asian Barometer Survey, a regional network of survey on democracy, governance and development covering more than seventeen Asian countries. He currently serves on the editorial board of Pacific Affairs, International Studies Perspective, China Review, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of East Asian Studies and Journal of Democracy. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of thirteen books. Among his recent English publications are Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), China Under Jiang Zemin (Lynne Reinner, 2000), The New Chinese Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities after the 16th Party Congress (Cambridge University Press 2004) and How East Asians View Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2008).