Stanford University

Democracy

Bits and pieces: Liberal democracy in the digital era

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The event is a joint sponsorship between CISAC, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the European Security Initiative (in The Europe Center) and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES).

About the Event: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow, FSI, Visiting Scholar at CISAC, and former President of Republic of Estonia (2006 - 2016), will be interviewed by Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), FSI Senior Fellow, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Science. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. 

About the Guest Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chaired The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

 

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Republic of Estonia, Stanford University
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Taiwan's Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years

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Larry Diamond and Kharis Templeman talk about their latest book on Taiwan: "Taiwan's Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years."

At the end of Chen Shui-bian’s two terms as the president of Taiwan, his tenure was widely viewed as a disappointment, if not an outright failure. Today, the Chen years (2000-2008) are remembered mostly for relentless partisan fighting over cross-Strait relations and national identity questions, prolonged political gridlock, and damaging corruption scandals—as an era that challenged, rather than helped consolidate, Taiwan’s young democracy and squandered most of the promise with which it began. Yet as Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years documents, this conventional narrative obscures a more complex and more positive story.

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Are Americans Fully Committed to Democracy?

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Among the many different forms of government, democracies are unique in the extent to which their stability depends on legitimacy—a belief on the part of the public that the system of government in the country has what Seymour Martin Lipset called “a moral title to rule.”  
Moral assessments of political authority are always to some extent relative. People may not love their system of government, but it is important that they at least see it as better than any alternative they can imagine. Social scientists thus have increasingly been inclined to measure political legitimacy with Winston Churchill’s famous declaration in mind: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” writes Larry Diamond in Beggruen Insights. Read the article here.
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On the future of South Korea’s politics

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South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld a parliamentary decision to impeach President Park Geun-hye on Friday. She becomes the country’s first democratically elected leader to be forcibly removed from power, following allegations of corruption that have incited widespread protests for months.
 
Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, answers some questions about the impact of Park’s impeachment and path ahead for South Korea.
 
What happens next?
 
The ruling declares that President Park is no longer president and that she must vacate Blue House, the official residence of the South Korean head of state. Indeed, she returned to the residence where she had lived before assuming the presidency. A presidential election will be held within 60 days, most likely on May 9. In the meantime, South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who was appointed as acting president, will continue in that role until the election. 
 
The decision made by the court was only one part of the investigation into Park’s political scandals and alleged corruption. The verdict delivered on March 10 states that Park committed a grave violation of constitutional law. Park could still face charges for corruption and cronyism, as a separate legal process is ongoing, and she could be put into jail.
 
How are people in South Korea responding to the ruling so far?
 
Most people are accepting the ruling. The decision to confirm Park’s impeachment was largely expected. One noteworthy aspect of the ruling, though, was its unanimity – all eight judges on the court voted to confirm her impeachment. This collective stance aimed to message an agreement that ‘it’s time to move on’ and to minimize the potential for discord in government and society.
 
Following months of protests in Seoul, the reactions on the streets have been fairly restrained. However, there is a contingent that supported Park throughout the trial and they still refuse to accept the ruling. Park herself also expressed defiance, rather than accepting the verdict, reportedly saying, “It will take time, but the truth will eventually be revealed.” Political tensions will continue, perhaps even after the upcoming election.
 
What motivated the protests and impeachment process, and what does it represent?
 
Beyond the political scandals, the protests are more broadly an expression of popular discontent over a range of issues. Following two decades of rapid modernization, South Koreans are experiencing growing inequality, high youth unemployment, and fatigue over two presidential terms by conservative parties. Civic participation was a main driver behind the protests. The protests were large scale and prolonged but certainly not unusual for South Korea. Historically speaking, South Korea has a pattern of a strong state setting itself against a contentious civil society. As was evident in 2016-17, political parties, instead of addressing the issues and public opinion, were being led by the movements themselves.
 
The impeachment trial and civic activism represent neither a crisis of politics nor a crisis of democracy for South Korea. Rather, it shows that Korean democracy has progressed since it accelerated its democratic transition in the late 1980s. Throughout Park’s case, democratic procedures were followed by the National Assembly, special prosecutor and the Constitutional Court – and that’s a good sign. Nonetheless the real test for Korean democracy may yet have to come, as some supporters of Park and perhaps she herself have indicated that the verdict is unfair and unconstitutional. Going forward, I am still optimistic that these events will encourage the government to be more careful with exercise of power and more attentive to societal issues.
 
What are the main issues that the government now faces?
 
National unity and stability will be the main priorities of the next president of South Korea. He or she will have to find a way to bridge the deep divide between progressives and conservatives, and work on the issues that have motivated such wide unrest across the country. An orderly presidential election and transfer of power from the Park administration to the next are equally essential. The next president faces a unique circumstance, however, in that the new administration will begin its work the day following the election, without the typical transition period.
 
These events also underscore the limitations of the current single five-year term presidential system in South Korea. While the Korean presidency is still powerful, the current system has proved to be ineffective as the president becomes a 'lame duck' after 3 or 4 years into office, making it difficult to pursue any long-term policy agenda. Korea needs constitutional reform to enact a greater balance of power and policy continuity.

Read more about this topic in a paper featured in the academic journal Asian Survey and an analysis piece in The Diplomat by Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie J. Moon, or watch a video featuring a panel discussion from earlier this year.

 

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Activists of all ages gather in Seoul city center for a candlelight rally on Dec. 10, 2016.
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South Korea in 2016: Political Leadership in Crisis

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye faced a leadership crisis after revelations that she relied on a confidant with no official position for key decision-making in state affairs. Heavy industry met with serious financial difficulties, and a strong anti-corruption law was enacted. North Korea tested more nuclear weapons and missiles. Controversy over the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense strained South Korea’s relations with China.

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Taiwan's Democratic Development: Reflections on the Ma Ying-jeou Era

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Ma Ying-jeou KMT

The eight-year presidency of Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016) in Taiwan left a complex legacy of political achievements, confrontations, and disappointments that defies easy characterization. It began with President Ma and the Kuomintang’s (KMT) commanding electoral victories in the 2008 elections, and ended with the KMT’s overwhelming loss to the resurgent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its leader Tsai Ing-wen in 2016.

It featured rapid conclusions to a broad set of agreements on cross-Strait cooperation with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). But worries about closer ties with the PRC also triggered a popular backlash against growing mainland Chinese influence in Taiwan’s economy and culminated in a student-led occupation of the Legislative Yuan.

It coincided with contradictory trends in public opinion, including both the consolidation of a separate Taiwanese identity and support for the status quo in cross-Strait relations, as well as the increasing salience of divisions over social and environmental issues such as same-sex marriage and green energy at the same time as rising concerns about economic inequality.

It also marked a return to unified government after the acrimonious partisan fights of the Chen Shui-bian years, but long-standing intra-KMT divisions and the decentralized organization of the legislature continued to frustrate the administration, especially in President Ma’s second term.        

Finally, the Ma era produced no consensus about how to move beyond Taiwan’s developmental state legacies. Plans for domestic economic liberalization and greater integration into the global economy were only partially carried out, and the Ma administration ignored or struggled to address rising inequality, stagnant wages, increasing economic dependence on the PRC market, and a skewed tax system favoring investors and corporations over salaried workers.

 

Conference Agenda

The 11th Annual Conference on Taiwan Democracy will bring together scholars from Taiwan, the US, and Europe to consider these political achievements, confrontations, and disappointments in depth, and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan’s democracy at the end of the Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency. Conference participants will discuss trends in public opinion, party politics and elections, cross-Strait relations, governance and media, and the performance of political institutions. The conference papers will be revised and included in an edited volume covering democratic practice during the Ma Ying-jeou era in Taiwan.

The conference is free and open to the public. Those interested in attending are requested to RSVP at the link above. This event is organized by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

 

Thursday, March 9

9:15-10:45. Panel I. Public Opinion and Elections

  • Min-hua Huang, "Why Young Voters Abandoned the KMT"
  • Ching-hsin Yu, "Trends in National Identity, Partisanship, and Attitudes toward Cross-Strait Relations"
  • Yun-han Chu, discussant

11:00-12:45. Panel II. Party Politics

  • Austin Wang, "Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP: The Path Out of the Political Wilderness"
  • Nathan Batto, "The KMT as a Presidentialized Party: Party Leaders and Shifts in China Discourse"
  • Kharis Templeman, "The Disruption that Wasn't: How 2016 Changed the Taiwanese Party System"
  • Ching-hsin Yu, discussant

12:45-1:45. Lunch

1:45-3:30. Panel III. Economics, Security, and Cross-Strait Relations

  • Szu-yin Ho, "Ma Ying-jeou's Cross-Strait Policy: Ambitions, Constraints, Results" 
  • Lang Kao, "Cross-Strait Agreements and Taiwan's Executive-Legislative Relationship, 2008-2016"
  • Dean Chen, "In the Shadow of Great Power Rivalry: The KMT Administration's Relations with America, China, and Japan, 2008-2016"
  • Larry Diamond, discussant

 

 

Friday, March 10

9:15-10:45. Panel IV. Governance, Media, and Civil Society

  • Eric Yu, "The Changing Media Environment and Public Opinion"
  • Yun-han Chu and Yu-tzung Chang, "The Challenge of Governability in Taiwan"
  • Kharis Templeman, discussant

11:00-12:30. Panel V. Political Institutions

  • Shih-hao Huang, w/ Shing-yuan Sheng, "Decentralized Legislative Organization and Its Consequences for Policy-making in the Ma Ying-jeou Era"
  • Christian Goebel, "Special Prosecutors, Courts, and Other Accountability Institutions under Ma YIng-jeou"
  • TJ Pempel, discussant

12:30-1:30. Lunch

 

 

 

Oksenberg Room, 3rd Floor, Encina Hall Central

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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The Future of Globalization

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The populist backlash against globalization is being felt acutely across Europe as well as here in the US. And yet whether you look at it from an economic, political or military perspective, transnational cooperation has become an integral part of our global landscape. Hear CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama on the future of globalization for World Affairs. 

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Seasoned journalist analyzes US-China relations under Trump

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The future of relations between China and the United States depends on the readiness of both governments to focus on resolving shared challenges, longtime journalist John Pomfret said at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) last Wednesday.
 
“The reality of the U.S.-China relationship is collaboration and competition,” said Pomfret, who served for 15 years as a foreign correspondent, describing the nature of interaction between the two countries that began to normalize relations in 1972.
 
Pomfret's remarks were delivered at a colloquium entitled, “The United States and China in the Era of Donald Trump,” which explored the unorthodox approach Donald Trump took during his campaign on a range of issues related to China, and implications for the bilateral relationship now that Trump has assumed the U.S. presidency.
 
Pomfret over the course of his journalism career spent seven years covering China, including during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and from 1998 through 2003 as the bureau chief for the Washington Post in Beijing, and recently authored the book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, which examines U.S.-China relations from 1776 to the present. He won the 2007 Shorenstein Journalism Award, an annual honor conferred to a journalist who produces outstanding reporting on Asia.
 
“It’s clear that a new type of reciprocity is needed to right the balance in the U.S.-China relationship, but just whether Trump and his team have the wherewithal to do it…is very much an open question,” he said.
 
Trump continues to promise to restore manufacturing jobs in the United States, but fulfillment of that promise could come in conflict with its trade relationship with China, where much manufacturing of U.S. products takes place, he said.
 
Equally important in the U.S.-China relationship is how to address North Korea and its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program, which remains an “extremely complicated” and pressing situation, he said.
 
Pomfret expressed uncertainty about the Trump administration’s capacity to change China’s position from the status quo, which has long supported the North Korean regime by way of trade and relaxed implementation of U.N. sanctions despite repeated provocations.
 
Yet, amidst the vague foreign policy positions projected by Trump toward China, “there is one positive, and that is that he has the Chinese off-balance,” Pomfret admitted.
 
For Pomfret, his appearance at Stanford was a bit of a homecoming; he spoke to an audience of 200 faculty, students and community members at the colloquium sponsored by the China Program and Center for East Asian Studies, the center from which he received his master’s degree in 1984.
 
Asked about the future of China and its governance, he noted that today’s China is markedly different than when he was there in the 1980s studying as a student, and later, working as a journalist. The generational changes are stark, said Pomfret, relaying a sense of optimism that the country would become more democratic over time.
 
“The amount of personal freedoms that the average Chinese person has has expanded exponentially. I think the desire of Chinese people to have more agency over their lives will continue to grow – that’s clear.”
 
Innovation will be a determinant of China’s future growth, said Pomfret, coupling the idea that societies that have knowledge-driven economies typically demand more freedoms. Without innovation, China will fall into the middle-income trap, he said, “I don’t think they want to be there; they are an incredibly proud nation.”
 
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#Republic: Divided Democracy in an Age of Social Media

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#Republic
As the Internet grows more sophisticated, it is creating new threats to democracy. In #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Cass Sunstein examines the ways that the internet fuels political fragmentation and even extremism. He shows how the internet and social media create "cybercascades," assist "polarization entrepreneurs," and exploit confirmation bias. #Republic proposes ways to make the internet friendly to democratic deliberation, and to increase interactions with new ideas and people.

Larry Kramer of the Hewlett Foundation, Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law School, and Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University will join a conversation with Cass Sunstein about the perils and promise of digital technology on democracy. 

 

 

SPEAKER BIO

 

Cass Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. His many books include the New York Times bestsellers Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler) and The World According to Star Wars. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Larry Kramer became President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, in September 2012. Before joining the foundation, Larry served from 2004 to 2012 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. His teaching and scholarly interests include American legal history, constitutional law, federalism, separation of powers, the federal courts, conflict of laws, and civil procedure. Larry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute.

 

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He focuses on the law of democracy, addressing issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance and redistricting. A sought-after nonpartisan voice in voting rights, he has served as a court-appointed expert to draw legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland and New York and as special master for the redistricting of Connecticut’s congressional districts. Most recently, he also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan commission created by the President to deal with the long lines at the polling place and other administrative problems witnessed in the 2012 election.    

 

Shanto Iyengar is the Chandler Chair in Communication at Stanford University where he is also Director of the Political Communication Laboratory. Iyengar’s areas of expertise include the role of mass media in democratic societies, public opinion, and political psychology. He is the recipient of the Philip Converse Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in the field of public opinion, the Murray Edelman Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University.  Iyengar is author or co-author of several books, including News That Matters (University of Chicago Press, 1987), Going Negative (Free Press, 1995), and Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide (Norton, 2011).

Cass Sunstein Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University
Larry Kramer President, Hewlett Foundation
Nathaniel Persily James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Shanto Iyengar Chandler Chair in Communication, Stanford University
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