Dear CDDRL community,

As we begin the new year and I reflect on the Center's activities and accomplishments in 2024, I am filled with gratitude and pride for the incredible work we have accomplished together.

CDDRL continues to make significant strides in our core areas of research.

Our faculty and researchers have published dozens of articles, books, and policy papers that have advanced our understanding of democratic resilience and breakdown, autocracy, corruption, rule of law, corruption, poverty, inequality, and governance around the world. Notably, the Center launched three new programs and research initiatives this past year: the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice, the Program on Capitalism and Democracy, and the program on Climate Change and Democracy.

Our two policy labs on Deliberative Democracy (DDL) and on Poverty, Violence, and Governance (PovGov) are continuing to advance timely and innovative research. Last summer, in partnership with colleagues from across the country, DDL organized a national sample of first-time voters in Washington, D.C., to assess the political attitudes of young voters ahead of the presidential election in the latest edition of America in One Room. PovGov director and CDDRL Senior Fellow Beatriz Magaloni, the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, was recently awarded the Boris Mints Institute Prize for her work on autocracy.

Anna Grzymala-Busse, Senior Fellow and director of The Europe Center, won the American Political Science Association's J. David Greenstone Award for best book in politics and history published in 2023 for Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State. Her paper, "Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation,” also won the Best Article Prize from the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association, and most recently, she was named co-winner of the Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award by the Social Science History Association. And, Francis Fukuyama was honored this year with the Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in Public Administration. This is just to name but a few of the many ways in which our faculty have been recognized for their outstanding work.

Visitors and Events

In the last twelve months, CDDRL played host (with our sister center at FSI, the Center for International Security and Cooperation) to Ambassador Susan Rice as our spring 2024 Liautaud Fellow, and with FSI’s Europe Center co-hosted former Slovak President Zusana Capitová in the fall quarter.

Other 2024 programming highlights included the Center’s Program on Arab Reform and Development hosting Salam Fayyad, former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. Fayyad, along with visiting Israeli professor Alon Tal, also participated in a constructive discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian future that was moderated by Larry Diamond with H&S Dean Debra Satz and Paul Brest. In front of a packed auditorium, they modeled “agreeable disagreement,” and we hope to continue this kind of dialogue in the future.

Additionally, this past year, the Center hosted the S.T. Lee Lecture with Oleksandra Matviichuk and the Payne Distinguished Visitor Lecture presented by Kumi Naidoo. In the run-up to the American Congressional and Presidential elections in November, CDDRL partnered with the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and the Hoover Institution's Center for Revitalizing American Institutions in bringing together leading Stanford experts in a series called America Votes 2024. Our year ended with inspirational talks by leading members of the Russian and Venezuelan opposition movements. Vladimir Kara-Murza spoke about the ongoing fight for democracy in Russia, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado spoke virtually to a huge Stanford crowd of students and faculty about how Venezuelans continue to defy autocracy.

Training Programs

Finally, in our outreach and training programs, we welcomed our 2024 class of Fisher Family Summer Fellows and look forward to welcoming our 20th class in July 2025, along with a fresh cohort of Ukrainian civic and political leaders in our Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program. Applications for both programs are open until January 16, and we have already received a record number of inquiries.

This past year, our Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) program led courses in Georgia, Bogota, Dehli, and Tokyo. Heading into 2025, the program is also embarking on a new partnership with the International Finance Corporation to educate senior leaders on infrastructure policy, governance, and public-private partnerships.

Education

Our undergraduate programming has grown increasingly active and popular, with about 140 students registering for the Center’s flagship class, PS/IR 114D, Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law taught every autumn quarter. I am thrilled to report that it is the biggest elective class on development politics at Stanford. We graduated a small but mighty cohort of 9 incredible students in the Fisher Family Undergraduate Honors program last June, and the current class of 13 students is working hard on their theses in anticipation of their project presentations this May. Congratulations are due already, however, to Kate Tully of our class of 2025, who was one of four Stanford students awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in the autumn of 2024! 

We have a lot of important work and much to look forward to in 2025.

We have a great lineup of talks at our weekly seminar series, beginning Thursday, January 9, with our very own Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, who will be presenting an innovative paper on epidemiological shocks and demographic change in Mexico.

This year, we will continue showcasing new cutting-edge research addressing the state of democracy around the globe. On Friday, January 10, Dublin City University Professor of Law and Government Federico Fabbrini will speak about his book, The EU Constitution in a Time of War. The book examines the EU’s responses to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

I want to specially note that we will celebrate the publication of CDDRL Center Fellow Didi Kuo’s new book, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, in a special seminar on Wednesday, February 19, at 4:00 pm. As always, you can view our full line-up of winter seminars and other special events on our website at cddrl.stanford.edu/events.

We will also welcome some new visitors to the Center this month. Alon Tal, a scholar of public policy and sustainability, joins us as a Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies for the Winter and Spring quarters. A former member of Knesset, Professor Tal will teach classes that offer students valuable insight into the intersection of climate change issues and politics in the Middle East. Weitseng Chen, Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law and Deputy Director at the NUS Center for Asian Legal Studies, will also join us for the Winter quarter. Professor Chen was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Center during the 2007-08 academic year, and it is wonderful to welcome him back to CDDRL.

The foregoing is only some of what we have accomplished in 2024 and can anticipate at CDDRL in 2025. 

Through interdisciplinary research, training, and policy practice, CDDRL seeks to advance healthy democracies, improve human development, and strengthen fair and responsible governance around the world. I hope you will explore our website and the links above to see how we pursue these crucial tasks.

All best,

Kathryn Stoner
Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies