Stanford University

Policy Analysis

The Tortuous Trajectories of Democracy and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in Africa

-

Abstract:  

The "spirit of democracy" has recently been undermined in several African countries as authoritarian methods have been the preferred approach. In countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger and Gabon political change has come through the following means; military interventions ousting former presidents clinging to power after their terms; violently repressed popular unrests leading to power-sharing solutions, or former presidents being replaced by their sons. In few countries such as Guinea, free elections were organized after several decades of dictatorship.   

In this seminar, CDDRL Post-Doctoral Fellow Landry Signé will examine what makes certain countries adopt and consolidate liberal or electoral democracies when others stay authoritarian - whether competitive, hegemonic or politically closed. Signé will analyze the transformations of political regimes and democratization in the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over the two last decades contrasting various political trajectories, comparing results between successful and failed countries, and exploring the conditions that create, maintain and sustain democracies. 

Speaker Bio:  

Landry Signé is a recipient of the 2011-2013 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is working on a project entitled “The Efficiency of the Political Responses to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis in Africa: Does the Political Regime and Economic Structure Matter?”. He completed his PhD in Political Science (2010), with the Award of Excellence, at the University of Montreal, and has been bestowed the Award for Best International PhD Dissertation of 2011 by the Center for International Studies and Research (CÉRIUM). His dissertation is entitled “Political Innovation: The Role of the International, Regional and National Actors in the Economic Development of Africa”. 

Prior to joining the CDDRL, Dr. Signé was a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on African Studies, lecturer on Emerging African Markets: Strategies, Investments and Government Affairs at the Stanford Continuing Studies, founding president of a Canadian corporation specialized in public affairs and business development, part-time professor and lecturer in political science at Ottawa University and the University of Montreal, administrator at the United Nations Association of Canada-Greater Montréal, and president of the Political Commission of Montreal-CJ. He has worked or interned at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, the Senate of France, the National Assembly of Cameroon, and the French Distributor, Casino Group. He studied Political Science, International Relations, Communication and Business at the University of Montreal, Lyon 3 University, Sciences Po Paris, Sandar Institute, Stanford Continuing Studies, and McGill University.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Landry Signé

Not in Residence

0
Visiting Scholar 2013; Postdoctoral Scholar 2011-2013
Landry Signé PhD

Professor Landry Signé is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Center for African Studies, founding chairman of the award-winning Global Network for Africa’s Prosperity, special adviser to world leaders on international and African affairs, full professor and senior adviser on international affairs to the chancellor and provost at UAA, and partner and chief strategist at a small African-focused emerging markets strategic management, investment, and government affairs firm. He has been recognized as a World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, Andrew Carnegie fellow as one of the “most creative thinkers,” Woodrow Wilson Public Policy fellow, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons in the World, Private Investors for Africa Fellow, and Tutu Fellow who “drives the transformation of Africa,” among others. Previously, Landry was founding president of a business strategy and development firm based in Montreal and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. He has also served on the board of organizations such as AMPION Catalyst for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa, Citizens Governance Initiative, and the United Nations Association of Canada–Montreal, and was appointed by a United Nations Under-Secretary-General to serve on the Global Network on Digital Technologies for Sustainable Urbanization. He is the author of numerous key academic and policy publications on African and global affairs, with a special interest in the political economy of growth, development and governance; the politics of economic reform, foreign aid, and regional integration; entrepreneurship, non-market and business strategies in emerging and frontier countries; institutional change, political regimes, and post-conflict reconstruction; state capacity and policy implementation. Professor Signé received the fastest tenure and promotion to the highest rank of full professor of political science in the history of United States universities, for a scholar who started at an entry-level position in the discipline. He is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and presenter at conferences worldwide, engaging a broad variety of business, policy, academic, and civil society audiences. He has won more than 60 prestigious awards and distinctions from four continents and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Harvard International Review. Professor Signé was educated in Cameroon (with honors and distinction), in France (valedictorian and salutatorian), earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Montreal (Award of Excellence and Award for the Best International PhD Dissertation), and completed his Postdoctoral Studies at Stanford University (Banting fellowship for best and brightest researchers). He has also completed executive leadership programs at the University of Oxford Said School of Business (Tutu fellowship) and Harvard Kennedy School (World Economic Forum fellowship).

Landry Signé Postdoctoral Scholar 2011-2013 Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Public Goods Provision and the Efficacy of Governance

  • -
  • -
  • -
  • -
  • -

On May 18-19, the Program on Poverty and Governance will host a two-day conference on the provision of public goods and good governance throughout the world. This conference, co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, will bring together an interdisciplinary group of economists, political scientists, policymakers, and public health researchers examining these questions. Public goods—goods and services such as education, healthcare, sanitation, potable water, and other benefits provided by the government—are intrinsically tied to issues of governance, which we broadly define as the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs. More specifically, factors such how political leaders get elected, the way in which government projects get funded, whether the community participates in decision-making, and the extent to which the distribution of government benefits is done through clientelistic networks, among others, play an important role in the quality and coverage of public goods that governments provide. Additionally, a critical question in large parts of the developing world relates to the role of international players and foreign aid in the provision of public goods –does external provision of public goods enable or hinder governmental capacity to deliver public services in poor communities? Through two days of presentations and panel discussions, the conference will explore how various facets of governance affect the provision of public goods and services throughout the world.

The conference will be held in Encina Hall at Stanford University May 18th and 19th, 2012. Guests are encouraged to RSVP by May 16th. Any questions may be addressed to the Program on Poverty and Governance program associate Elena Cryst.

Click Here for Papers

CISAC Conference Room

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Beatriz Magaloni Host
Conferences
CDDRL Conferences
Date Label

Students learn through assignments based on real global events

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Imagine you are on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) and a naval dispute breaks out on the Korean Peninsula while you are at home celebrating Thanksgiving. You have just three hours to prepare a detailed memorandum summarizing the situation and offering recommendations for how the United States should respond.

This is a major responsibility with a large number of interrelated issues that must be taken into account—how would you proceed?

Stanford students in the winter quarter course U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia (IPS 244) had the opportunity to step into the challenging role of the NSC senior director for Asia and consider such a security situation. They wrote and presented memoranda on this and an East Asia trade crisis scenario in class, as well as a final memorandum to the president proposing a China policy for his second term. The assignments required students to consider a wide range of global, regional, and domestic factors—many pulled directly from current global events.

Each member of the team of Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) Asia experts teaching the course drew on decades of related expertise to write the scenarios.

  • Michael H. Armacost, the Center’s Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, previously served on the NSC, in the Defense Department, as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Japan, and as undersecretary of state for political affairs.
  • Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider, an Asia history expert, spent over 30 years as a journalist reporting on international affairs and security issues, including working as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Korea, India, and Russia.
  • David Straub, associate director of Stanford’s Korean Studies Program, is a former State Department official with long-time expertise in U.S.-Korea relations and North Korea, including participation in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.
  • Thomas Fingar, FSI’s Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, is a China expert and has previously held numerous key U.S. intelligence posts, most recently as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He also served as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

In the first assignment, students read about a proposed China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement (FTA). Navigating through a web of regional and domestic issues, they advised on how the United States should respond to an appeal from Japan for certain trade concessions in exchange for its backing out of the FTA. The assignment described complex economic and political conditions in May 2013 after elections in the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and a leadership transition in China. The U.S.-Japan alliance was one of many key factors students took into account.

“It was my great pleasure to participate in this class—it truly broadened my views of U.S. foreign policy toward Northeast Asia. The substantive knowledge presented by both instructors and students during the class will undoubtedly contribute to a much safer, more peaceful, and unified world.”
-Heeyoung Kwon, Visiting Scholar, Korea Foundation


The next memorandum assignment described an inter-Korean naval dispute falling in the crucial weeks between the 2012 U.S. and South Korean presidential elections. It narrated the economic and political situation of each country in precise detail, and set the stage for the dispute with real-life events like the 2010 sinking of the South Korean navy ship the Cheonan. Students were asked to consider the possible role China could play in mediating with North Korea, and how U.S. tensions with Iran could limit its involvement in negotiations.

“In IPS 244…no conversation is irrelevant to current events in Northeast Asia…The memo assignments…are so detailed, so current, and so realistic, that even a seasoned diplomat would be challenged by them—I know this because there are seasoned diplomats taking the class.”
-Jeffrey Stern, MA Student, International Studies Program


Shorenstein APARC offers U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia each winter quarter. The diverse mix of students, combined with the “in-the-field” expertise of the instructors, creates a lively and challenging class environment. IPS 244 goes beyond a traditional academic course to create assignments based on real-life events and global conditions, and place students in the position of thinking like a government official. For the many of them that will go on to pursue government careers, the course serves as an important first-step in training for “scenarios” very similar to those they address in class.

Hero Image
Trilateral2009 NEWSFEED
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (left), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and Japanese former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the 2009 East Asia Trilateral Summit.
Flickr/Korea.net
All News button
1

Ukraine’s Foreign Policy: Losing its Balance

-

This talk will address a primary foreign policy challenge for independent Ukraine which has been to strike a proper balance between its relations with the West and those with Russia.  Today, democratic backsliding is upsetting the balance, which will undermine President Yanukovych’s ability to achieve his professed foreign policy aims.


Steven Pifer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative.  He focuses on nuclear arms control, Russia and Ukraine.  He has offered commentary on these issues on CNN, Fox News, BBC, National Public Radio and VOA, and his articles have run in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post and Moscow Times, among others.

A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues.  He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997).

His publications include “Ukraine’s Perilous Balancing Act,” Current History (March 2012), “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” Brookings Arms Control Series (July 2011); “The Next Round:  The United States and Nuclear Arms Reductions After New START,” Brookings Arms Control Series (November 2010); “Ukraine’s Geopolitical Choice, 2009,” Eurasian Geography and Economics (July 2009); and “Reversing the Decline:  An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009,” Brookings Foreign Policy Paper (January 2009).

Ambassador Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 


Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Steve Pifer Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and Director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative Speaker
Seminars

Launch of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship

-

Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, invites you to celebrate the launch of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship (PSE) and the arrival of the first cohort of Social Entrepreneurs-in Residence.

 

Bechtel Conference Center

Taida Horozovic Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Panelist
Steve Williams Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Panelist
Ramzi Jaber Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Panelist
Zawadi Nyong'o Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Panelist
Kavita N. Ramdas Executive Director, PSE Moderator CDDRL

Kathryn Stoner

FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-1820 (650) 724-2996
0
Satre Family Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
kathryn_stoner_1_2022_v2.jpg MA, PhD

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Program on International Relations, and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton, she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship, awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective, written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World, co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006); After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997); and Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ilia State University in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia.

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

Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Stanford University
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution
CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Kathryn Stoner-Weiss Faculty Co-director, PSE Host CDDRL
Deborah Rhode Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law Host Stanford Law School

Larry Diamond

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

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
0
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
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Larry Diamond Director Host CDDRL
Panel Discussions

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Rule of Law

-

Abstract:

We present a new framework for conceptualizing and assessing the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law in practice. This framework constitutes the backbone of the WJP Rule of Law Index® and is organized around nine basic concepts or factors: limited government powers; absence of corruption; order and security; fundamental rights; open government; effective regulatory enforcement; access to civil justice; effective criminal justice; and informal justice. These factors are further disaggregated into 52 sub-factors. We estimate numerical scores of these factors and sub-factors for a group of 66 countries and jurisdictions. These estimates are built from two novel data sources in each country: (1) a general population poll; and (2) qualified respondents’ questionnaires. All in all, the data contain more than 400 variables drawn from the assessments of over 66,000 people and 2,000 local experts. Our presentation will conclude with an overview of some highlights from Index data findings, as well as examples of ways in which the data have been applied in different contexts.

The World Justice Project (WJP) is an independent, non-profit organization that works to advance the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity worldwide. The WJP’s multinational and multidisciplinary efforts are aimed at: government reforms; development of practical programs on the ground in support of the rule of law; and increased awareness about the concept and impact of the rule of law. The Project has three complementary programs: Research and Scholarship, the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, and mainstreaming practical on-the-ground programs to strengthen the rule of law.

Speaker Bio: 

Dr. Alejandro Ponce joined The World Justice Project as Senior Economist in 2009. He is a co-author of the WJP Rule of Law Index. Dr. Ponce has extensive experience in the development of cross-country indicators. Before joining the World Justice Project, he served as an Economist at the World Bank collaborating in the design of surveys to measure financial inclusion around the world. Earlier in his career, he worked as a consultant in the design of the index of judicial efficiency and regulation of dispute resolution as part of the Doing Business Indicators of the World Bank and served as Deputy Director for the Mexican Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV). Dr. Ponce has also conducted research on behavioral economics, financial inclusion and on the linkage between economic development and the rule of law. He holds a B.A. in Economics from ITAM inMexico, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

Speaker Bio: 

Mr. Juan Carlos Botero is The World Justice Project's Interim Executive Director and Director of the Rule of Law Index, where he has led the development of an innovative quantitative tool to measure countries’ adherence to the rule of law worldwide. Mr. Botero’s previous experience includes service as Chief International Legal Counsel of the Colombian Ministry of Commerce; Deputy-Chief Negotiator of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement; Consultant for the World Bank; Associate Researcher atYaleUniversity; and Judicial Clerk at theColombian Constitutional Court. He has taught legal theory and comparative law at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and Universidad Privada Boliviana in Bolivia. His academic publications focus on the areas of rule of law, access to justice, labor regulation, and child labor. Mr. Botero is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Rule of Law 2011. A national of Colombia, Mr. Botero holds a law degree from Universidad de los Andes and a Master of Laws from Harvard University. He is also a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) candidate at the Georgetown University Law Center.

CISAC Conference Room

Alejandro Ponce Senior Economist Speaker The World Justice Project
Juan Botero Rule of Law Index Director Speaker The World Justice Project
Seminars

Education Under Fire event

-

Please join the Stanford Baha'i Club, in collaboration with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; the Center on Philanthrophy and Civil Society, Stanford Amnesty International, Stanford Six Degrees in defending Article 26 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on

Friday, April 6 from 7:00-9:00pm

We will be screening Education Under Fire, a moving documentary about this issue. Following the screening, we will be having a panel discussion.

Imagine you are sitting in class at Stanford University when armed guards come into the classroom and arrest everyone in your class. Your professor is sentenced to five years in prison; you are expelled not only from Stanford, but from any institution of higher education in the country. Your crime? Gaining a higher education. Your professor’s crime? Providing higher education. Fortunately, this is not happening today at Stanford, but it is happening right now to many young people in Iran.

Since its inception, the Baha’i community of Iran has been suffering different forms of human rights violations, from intense persecution to being denied employment, the ability to bury their dead, access to higher education. Their crime? Being a Baha’i. The Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was founded in 1987 in response to the Iranian government's continuing campaign to deny Iranian Bahá'ís access to higher education. The need to create a new university for those who were denied access to higher education captivated the talents and minds of exceptional faculty and staff from within Iran and abroad. For twenty years they have dedicated their efforts to building an exemplary institution and cultivating a student body prepared for fulfilling careers, future study, and social responsibility. But this has come with constant struggles and limited resources. In May 2011, the government launched a coordinated attack against the BIHE–raiding dozens of homes, confiscating computers and materials and detaining eighteen professors and administrators. Seven of those arrested received four or five-year prison terms. Their only crime: educating the youth in their community.

We also have a facebook event here - http://www.facebook.com/events/291432670928509/

  
Download pdf

CEMEX AUDITORIUM, Stanford

Conferences

Institution-building in Hard Places: Challenges, Contexts, Pathways

-

Abstract: 

This talk draws on case study evidence from Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies to reflect on some current theories about building accountable government.  The focus is on settings where geography, insecurity, and limited resources render conventional management strategies unworkable.

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer Widner is professor of politics and international affairs and director of the Mamdouha S.Bobst Center for Peace & Justice at Princeton University. She runs a research program on institution building and institutional reform called Innovations for Successful Societies, a joint initiative of the Bobst Center and  the Woodrow Wilson School. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2004-5, she taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan.  Her current research focuses on the political economy of institutional reform, government accountability, and service delivery.  She also remains interested in constitution writing, constitutional design, and fair dealing—topics of earlier research. She is author of Building the Rule of Law (W. W. Norton), a study of courts and law in Africa, and she has published articles on a variety of topics in Democratization, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Development Studies, The William & Mary Law Review, Daedalus, the American Journal of International Law, and other publications.  She is completing work on a book about making government work in challenging settings, drawing on experiences in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America. 

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jennifer Widner Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School Speaker Princeton University
Seminars

Eikenberry receives George F. Kennan Award

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Karl Eikenberry, the 2012 Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute, has received the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP).

The award honors Americans who served the country in an exemplary fashion and have made seminal contributions to defining, illuminating, and promoting the country’s national interest.

Eikenberry was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011.  He served in the Army for 35 years, retiring in April 2009 as a lieutenant general. He was the commander of the American-led coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and has also served as deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels.

In a statement issued by the NCAFP, the organization praised Eikenberry for his accomplishments.

“We are particularly impressed by his widely respected and exemplary leadership in conceptualizing, designing, and articulating American military and foreign policy strategy and tactics involving and harmonizing both hard and soft power,” the statement said.

Other recipients of the Kennan Award include former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, CIA Director David Petraeus, and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Hero Image
Eikenberry highres logo
All News button
1
Subscribe to Policy Analysis