The Puzzle of Slovenia and Estonia in the Post-Communist Era: How Deliberated Nationalism Explains Reform and Consensus-Driven Transition
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Praised by international organizations, Slovenia and Estonia constitute the most successful post-communist economies. These two states are likewise success stories when it comes to democratic consolidation and state-building. Slovenia has opted for gradual market reforms guided by social justice while Estonia quickly reformed its Soviet economy into one of the most liberal in the world. Still, I argue that their roots of success coincide. Crucial opportunities of civil initiatives were never repressed in Slovenia and Estonia during the Communist period as in several other Yugoslav and Soviet republics. Distinct national identities continued to form and re-form during these decades and became deliberated rather than repressed, later strengthening reform capacities in decisive areas. In Estonia, national identities were further emphasized by ethically dubious processes that locked large Russian-speaking minorities out of citizenship.
Li Bennich-Björkman is Johan Skytte professor in political science at University of Uppsala, Sweden. She has published on the organisation of creativity, Organising Innovative Research, (Elsevier/Pergamon Press, 1997), on educational policies, integration and political culture. A dominant theme in her present research on Eastern Europe and post-Soviet States has been how historical and cultural legacies relate to the divergent post-communist trajectories. A particular focus has been on the three Baltic States. Within this framework, Ukraine has been included. Recent research activities have concerned the impact of the European Union on elite values and political culture in Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. Her latest publication is a monograph published with Palgrave/Macmillan, Political Culture under Institutional Pressure. How Institutions Transform Early Socialization, (2007), dealing mainly with the Estonian Diaspora. Articles have appeared in the Journal of Baltic Studies (2006), East European Politics and Societies (2007) and Nationalities Papers (2007) as well as Higher Education Quarterly (2007). Comparative state-building in Estonia and Latvia was addressed in a recently published volume on Building Democracy East of the Elbe (Routledge/Sage:2006).
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Li Bennich-Bjorkman
Johan Skytte Professor of Elocution and Political Science
Speaker
Uppsala University
Seminars
National Academies Press releases book on democracy assistance, Weinstein co-author
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The National Research Council at the National Academies has released a new, book-length report from its Committee on the Evaluation of USAID Democracy Assistance Programs. CDDRL/CISAC faculty member Jeremy M. Weinstein was a member of the committee and co-author of the report, Improving Democracy Assistance: Building Knowledge Through Evaluations and Research, which is available for PDF download and will be published in hard copy Dec. 2008.
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Future of Democracy in Egypt
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Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian American sociologist and human rights activist who was imprisoned in 2000 under suspicion of espionage and corruption. His defense team countered that the real motives behind the government's persecution of Ibrahim and his assistants was his blatant criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his government. He received a seven-year sentence, but was later released, some claim, because of external political pressure. Ibrahim is a contentious person who gained the respect and admiration of Egypt's human rights and civil society organization in the early the late 1980s for championing the cause of democracy in the Arab world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ibrahim is credited for playing a leading role in the revival of Egypt's contemporary research-based civil society movement. He is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. Ibrahim also teaches at the American University in Cairo.
Bechtel Conference Center
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Egyptian American Sociologist and Human Rights Activist
Speaker
Conferences
The Transatlantic Link: Repairing EU-USA Relations
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As President 1999-2007, Dr. Vike-Freiberga has been instrumental in achieving Latvia's
membership in the European Union and NATO. She is active in
international politics, was named Special Envoy to the Secretary General on
United Nations reform
and was official candidate for UN Secretary General in 2006.
Born 1937 in Riga, Latvia,
Vaira Vike and her family fled the country in 1945 to escape the Soviet
occupation and became refugees in Germany
and Morocco.
After arriving in Canada in
1954, she obtained a B.A. and M.A. from the University
of Toronto and her Ph.D. in
experimental psychology in 1965 from McGill
University in Montreal. She speaks Latvian, English,
French, German and Spanish.
Dr. Vike-Freiberga has been Professor of psychology at the University of
Montreal, president of various Canadian professional and scholarly
associations, incl. Académie I of the Royal Society of Canada, Vice-Chairman,
Science Council of Canada, Chair, Human Factors Panel, NATO Science Program. She
is member of the Council of Women World Leaders.
She has published
ten books and numerous articles, essays and book chapters in addition to her
extensive speaking engagements. Dr. Vike-Freiberga has received many
highest Orders of Merit, medals and awards including the 2005 Hannah Arendt
Prize for political thought for her advocacy of social issues, moral values,
European historical dialogue and democracy, and the 2006 Walter-Hallstein Prize
for discourse on the identity and future of the EU.
Since July 1960, Dr. Vike-Freiberga has been
married to Imants Freibergs, Professor of Informatics at the University of
Quebec in Montreal and since 2001 President of the Latvian Information and
Communication Technologies Association.
This seminar is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
CISAC Conference Room
Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga
President (former), Latvia
Speaker
Seminars
Hicham Benabdallah writes about Arab democracy in age of terrorism
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For the last 20 years authoritarian regimes have refashioned themselves in order to stay in power, writes CDDRL visiting scholar Hicham Ben Abdallah in Le Monde Diplomatique. As the middle class under these regimes becomes increasingly disengaged from local politics, many social groups see the hope for their future outside the national context.
Since the first Gulf War, most authoritarian régimes in the Arab world have been able to maintain the well-worn structures of governance that have persisted since the end of World War II and the process of decolonization. Hoped-for agents of change have been unable to mount effective political challenges and régimes that often seemed to be on the edge of international and domestic credibility have been able to refashion themselves in the ways necessary to maintain power and control.
New movements and agents of change have appeared, but they have not been had the transformative results hoped for, and régimes were able to accommodate any challenges they represented. The results of the last 20 years in the region and the world---in the socioeconomic, political, ideological, and international dimensions—have ended up disappointing expectations. Neo-liberal economic policies have failed to transform the economies of the region. New middle classes have not achieved the political independence necessary to overcome clientilist structures and challenge regimes. The middle class has, rather, become disengaged from local politics; many social groups see the hope for their future outside the national context. Furthermore, the divergent perspectives of different social classes, as well as secular and Islamic elements regarding democracy, makes a forceful challenge to authoritarianism more difficult.
In fact, regimes have adapted to the demands of different actors, and played off the tensions among different social actors, to reconstruct the apparatus of authoritarianism. Regimes have been able to pose as protectors of moderation against extremism and to adopt limited reforms that absorb some of the demands for democratization. In this way, regimes have been able to construct simulacra of civil society and upgrade the accoutrements of authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, behind the quasi-mythological narrative of nationalism and unity, currents of social and ideological tension persist, now embedded in an international context of fear and crisis. New challenges to the possibility of democratization arise from the international context of violence and intervention, from Iraq to Pakistan. The distortions imposed by the “war on terror,” including the internationalization of l’état sécuritaire and the parallel internationalization of jihadi militancy—end up providing another alibi for authoritarian regimes.
Finally, social and political tensions remain, and there is no perfect mechanism of accommodation or cooptation. There remains the possibility of change from lateral as opposed to frontal actions, and from surprising new actors. For any kind of democratization to occur, it is crucial that we “re-indigenize” a message of progressive change in the countries of the regions—creating a renewed sense of shared purpose that includes the nation and Islam, but is not confined by them, that speaks to people’s local concerns while it connects them to wider projects of peace and democracy in the region and the world.
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2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Lecture 2)
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Muslim Politics in Southeast Asia: Democratic Islam Hijacked? Or Re-invigorated?
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Civil Islam - Beyond the Headlines
A lecture and three seminars by Robert W. Hefner, 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC and Professor of Anthropology, Boston University
April 28 - May 1, 2008
Media coverage of Islam and Muslims, especially since 9/11, has featured violence and the threat of violence. In his opening lecture and three seminars to follow, Prof. Hefner will explore a different reality "beyond the headlines." Is there a "civil Islam"? Are Islam and democracy compatible? Is "Islamism" always radical, or can it be democratic? How does Muslim schooling affect the answers to these questions? Prof. Hefner will also look beyond the media's focus on the Middle East to examine the interactions between Islam, Muslims, and democracy in Southeast Asia.
This is the third and final seminar in this series scheduled with Dr. Hefner.
Robert W. Hefner's latest books include Schooling Islam (co-ed., 2007); Remaking Muslim Politics (ed., 2005); and Civil Islam (2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800. He directs the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991.
All four events are co-sponsored by the the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Southeast Asia Forum in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.
The Board Room
Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Robert W. Hefner
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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rhefner@bu.edu
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Robert William Hefner, professor of anthropology and associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, is the inaugural Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia.
Professor Hefner has been associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, where he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past thirty years, and has authored or edited a fourteen books, as well as several major policy reports for private and public foundations. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton 2005), ed., and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton 2000). Hefner is also the invited editor for the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.
Hefner is currently writing a book on Islamic education, democratization, and political violence in Indonesia. The research and writing locate the Indonesian example in the culture and politics of the broader Muslim world. His book also revisits the the question of the role of religious and secular knowledge in modernity.
Hefner will divide his time between Boston University, the National University of Singapore, and Stanford, where he will teach a seminar during the spring quarter.
Conferences