Addressing issues of democracy, dictatorship, corruption and poverty, our scholars and practitioners produce expert research and train civil society activists around the world.
Research Spotlight
Let the Public Govern AI
By using the tools of deliberative democracy, Alice Siu says everyday users, not just industry moguls, can and should contribute meaningfully to important decisions about technology governance.
Fabricated Justice: How Due Process Reform Enables Evidence Manipulation
Using evidence from Mexico, Beatriz Magaloni and Esteban Salmón examine when and how abusive criminal justice practices persist under democracy, even after significant institutional reform.
Political Parties Are Essential Democratic Institutions
Didi Kuo explains why — despite their shortcomings — strong political parties with roots in society are essential to long-term democratic stability and economic growth.
Report prepared by the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University, housed within the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
We study the effect of a victimization narrative on national identity and public opinion in China experimentally. Previous research has suggested that governments can shape public opinion by guiding citizens’ collective memories of historical events, but few studies have established a clear causal link. By conducting an online survey experiment among 1890 urban Chinese citizens, we examine the causal impact of historical narratives on political attitudes. We find that, compared to control conditions, a narrative focusing on China’s humiliating past in the late Qing significantly reinforces respondents’ attachment to the victim side of the Chinese national identity, raises suspicion of the intention of foreign governments in international disputes, stimulates preference for more hawkish foreign policies, and strengthens support for China’s current political system. These effects are particularly strong among respondents without a college degree.
In Strategy in the Contemporary World, edited by John Baylis, James J. Wirtz, and Jeannie L. Johnson, Oriana Skylar Mastro examines the evolution of Chinese grand strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, its drivers, and its implications.
The Project on Middle East Political Science partnered with Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and its Global Digital Policy Incubator for an innovative two week online seminar to explore the issues surrounding digital activism and authoritarianism. This workshop was built upon more than a decade of our collaboration on issues related to the internet and politics in the Middle East, beginning in 2011 with a series of workshops in the “Blogs and Bullets” project supported by the United States Institute for Peace and the PeaceTech Lab. This new collaboration brought together more than a dozen scholars and practitioners with deep experience in digital policy and activism, some focused on the Middle East and others offering a global and comparative perspective. POMEPS STUDIES 43 collects essays from that workshop, shaped by two weeks of public and private discussion.
