Taiwan’s special municipality elections have been viewed by many as the “mid-term” for the Ma Ying-jeou presidency, bearing important political significance for the 2012 presidential election. In this special seminar, Professor Yun-han Chu, one of the leading political scientists in Taiwan and also President of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, will analyze the recent special municipality elections and their implications for Taiwan’s future political trends. Professor Chu will provide firsthand information about these recent election campaigns and what they reveal about the state of democracy in Taiwan. In analyzing the election results, he will also shed light on how the race for the presidency in 2012 is shaping up.

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 serves concurrently as president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Professor Chu received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and joined the faculty of National Taiwan University in 1987. He specializes in politics of Greater China, East Asian political economy and democratization. He is a three-time recipient of the Outstanding Research Award from Taiwan’s National Science Council. He currently serves on the editorial board of International Studies Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, 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 eleven books. Among his recent English publications are Crafting Democracy in Taiwan (Institute for National Policy Research, 1992), Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), China Under Jiang Zemin (Lynne Reinner, 2000), and The New Chinese Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2004). His works have also appeared in some leading journals including World Politics, International Organization, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, and Asian Survey.

Abstract

Drawing on data from summer 2008, I will compare top U.S. political blogs on the left and right. The comparison shows significant cross-ideological variations. Sites on the left adopt different, and more participatory technical platforms; comprise significantly fewer sole-authored sites; include user blogs; maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content; include longer narrative and discussion posts; and (among the top half of the blogs in our sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization. The news producer/consumer relationship is more attenuated  on the left wing of the political blogosphere than the right. The practices of the left are more consistent with the prediction that the networked public sphere offers new pathways for discursive participation by a wider array of individuals; meanwhile, the practices of the right suggest that a small group of elites may retain more exclusive agenda-setting authority online. The cross-ideological divergence indicates that the Internet can equally be adopted to undermine or to replicate the traditional distinction between the production and consumption of political information. Moreover, the findings imply that the prevailing techniques of domain-based link analysis used to study the political blogosphere are misleading. These findings have significant implications for the study of prosumption and for the mechanisms by which the networked public sphere may or may not alter democratic participation relative to the mass mediated public sphere. 

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School, he was Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications. In the 1990s he played a role in characterizing the centrality of information commons to innovation, information production, and freedom in both its autonomy and democracy senses. In the 2000s, he worked more on the sources and economic and political significance of radically decentralized individual action and collaboration in the production of information, knowledge and culture. His work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors, and is taught in a variety of professional schools and academic departments. In real world applications, his work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society.

Information and communication technology platforms have transformed many aspects of modern life for many individuals around the world. They have revolutionized the realms of commerce, sociability, and even production. The realm of politics and governance, however, is more resistant to ICT revolutions. In this paper, we argue that there are fundamental dis-analogies between politics and these other realms that make the pace of innovation, and to the incidence of transformative ICT platforms, much lower. Instead of looking for "the next big thing," those who wish to understand the positive contribution of ICT to political problems such as public accountability and public deliberation should focus on incremental rather than revolutionary dynamics. We examine these incremental dynamics at work in six important ICT-enabled political accountability efforts from low and middle-income countries (Kenya, Brazil, Chile, India, Slovakia).

Archon Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research examines the impacts of civic participation, public deliberation, and transparency upon governance. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). Current projects examine democratic reform initiatives in regulation, public accountability, urban planning, and public services. He has authored five books, three edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in journals including American Political Science Review, Public Administration Review, Political Theory, Journal of Political Philosophy, Politics and Society, Governance, Journal of Policy and Management, Environmental Management, American Behavioral Scientist, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Boston Review.

Nobody cheered reunification in 1990, and most tried to stop it. Wouldn’t Germany – again the mightiest nation in Europe – threaten the peace once more? All the historical analogies have proven false. The Berlin Republic is neither Weimar nor “Fourth Reich,” but a model democracy and an exemplary citizen of the world. In this luncheon seminar, Josef Joffe will try to explain why the new German story has such a happy end.

"Teaching Human Rights" is a series of events beginning at Stanford during the 2010-11 academic year. The series is organized by the Program on Human Rights of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and supported by the Center for Teaching and Learning.

The series will:

• Complement the growing attention to human rights across academic disciplines and professional schools with a practical, multidisciplinary discussion focused on the classroom.
• Help Stanford-affiliated graduate students and teaching assistants/fellows prepare to teach human rights topics during their graduate career and beyond. For example, the series will address the issue of balancing the tremendous breadth of conceptual and historical material a human rights course could potentially cover with opportunities for active learning and students' reflections on their own values.
• Provide Stanford faculty with pedagogical support for incorporating human rights themes into courses in various disciplines, and encourage a classroom-centered dialogue between the disciplines and schools.