Abstract:

Scholars and policymakers maintain that economic growth requires strong legal institutions that can ensure competitive markets. Developing countries are therefore encouraged to create efficient judiciaries that protect property rights, enforce contracts, settle disputes, and provide antitrust and bankruptcy regulation. Although this market-enhancing model for development is widely accepted, several of the fastest growing economies have not pursued such legal reforms, instead allowing certain actors to dominate their legal institutions and markets. To understand why theory and reality diverge, we examine legal changes in India, a country that experienced slow growth in its early decades yet is currently one of the fastest growing economies in the world. We find that India’s growth miracle is at least partly attributable to weak legal institutions and uncompetitive markets. As the Indian economy matures, however, we suspect market-enhancing legal reforms will be required to sustain growth. More generally, market-enhancing legal reforms need to be designed and pursued carefully, taking into account the structure and size of the economy.

Speaker(s) Bio:

Image

Image

Abstract: Russia’s challenge to the West includes information operations (e.g., disinformation, political propaganda, and other forms of online manipulation) aimed at destabilizing the common ground that democratic societies in Europe and the United States need in order to govern themselves.  Kate Starbird will describe two case studies of online information operations connected to Russia’s media/intelligence apparatus:  interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the campaign against the “White Helmets” in Syria.  She argues that defending against Russian online information operations will require a more nuanced understanding of the problem, in particular, moving beyond focusing on “bots” and “trolls” to looking at the collaborative nature of disinformation campaigns that target, infiltrate, shape, and leverage online communities—communities which may not recognize their role in these campaigns. 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/lF4M11FkEKY

Speaker's Biography:

Image

Speaker Bio:

Image

Co-author Renée DiResta

Abstract:

When protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad began in 2011, Russia made good on its decades-long alliance with Syria, providing Assad with diplomatic and military support. The Kremlin also doubled down on its propaganda efforts, pushing their anti-Western, anti-rebel, and pro-Assad narratives across Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Quora, and Reddit. In this paper we undertake a comprehensive assessment of the reach of these narratives. With “news” articles in broken English on dubious websites, and low engagement rates on propaganda social media accounts, the reach of these narratives may seem limited. In this paper, we leverage datasets from a variety of social media platforms and Russian-attributed media outlets to more fully assess how far these narratives traveled. We use often-ignored measures of reach and engagement: secondary domains where propaganda is re-posted, and incoming links and engagement data from public and private social media accounts. With case studies of particular narratives and individual sock puppet identities, we describe how traditional narrative laundering, biased media properties and created personas are complemented by social media-enabled peer-to-peer persuasion methods.

Speaker Bio:

Image

WE HAVE REACHED VENUE CAPACITY AND ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING RSVPS

NOTE: THIS EVENT IS CLOSED TO THE MEDIA 

UPDATE: We will provide a live video stream of the conference on this link: https://youtu.be/5D5QSZi6u2w  Please check back at 2:25 PM on October 2 for the livestream.

RSVP required for admission.  No walk-ins.  Only one registration permitted per person. 
Stanford or government-issued photo ID must be presented for admission. 
No cameras, audio, video recording or flash photography will be permitted. 
No signs, flyer distribution, banners or posters will be allowed inside the venue.  
Please arrive 30 minutes early to check-in.  There will be no late seating.  

Sponsored by Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford China Program, and Center for East Asian Studies.

Prompted by the government’s introduction of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019, Hong Kong has been rocked by intense unrest, its most volatile since the handover in 1997. Millions have taken to the streets and violence has escalated on both sides. Beijing has likened Hong Kong’s demonstrations to the “color revolutions,” and has also condemned the disruptions as “near-terrorist acts.”

In this critical time, our conference will explore questions such as: What are the root causes of Hong Kong’s unremitting protests? Why has this extradition bill generated such intense and widespread reactions? Facing massive governance challenges, what will be the future of Hong Kong? Is there a viable future for “one country, two systems”? How should the U.S. and the international community best respond?

Speakers

Image

The Honorable Anson Chan retired as the Chief Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Government in 2001, after nearly forty years of service.  As Chief Secretary, she headed the 190,000-strong civil service.  She was the first woman and the first Chinese to hold the second-highest governmental position in Hong Kong.  During her career in the public service, she was responsible, amongst other things, for development of Hong Kong's economic infrastructure including the planning and construction of Hong Kong's new international airport, which opened in July 1998; port expansion and deregulation of the telecommunications market. Mrs. Chan is Convenor of Hong Kong 2020 - a think tank concerned with transparent and accountable Government, universal suffrage and protection of rights and freedoms enshrined in the "one country, two systems" concept that applies to Hong Kong.

Honors & Awards: 
-  Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1992) 
-  Grand Bauhinia Medal (1999): the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s highest honor 
-  Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) conferred by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain (2002) 
-  Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Tufts University (2005) 
-  Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion d’Honneur conferred by the President of France (2008) 
-  American Chamber’s Women of Influence Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) 
-  O’Connor Justice Prize Honoree (2018) 
-  Justice of the Peace

Image

Harry Harding is University Professor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he was the founding dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.  He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Professor Harding has previously held appointments at Swarthmore College, Stanford University, The Brookings Institution, as Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Hong Kong.  A specialist on U.S.-China relations, his major publications on that topic include “Has U.S. China Policy Failed?” and A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972. He is now writing a sequel, A Fraught Relationship: The United States and China from Partners to Competitors.

Image

David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and Research Scholar at FSI and affiliated with Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).  He also is the Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Emeritus.  Professor Lampton's current book project is focused on the development of high-speed railways from southern China to Singapore.  He is the author of a dozen books and monographs, including Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping  (University of California Press, 2014, and second edition 2019) and The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (University of California Press, 2008).  He has testified at multiple congressional and commission sessions and published numerous articles, essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces in many venues, popular and academic, in both the western world and in Chinese-speaking societies, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. 

 

Image

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.  She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in FSI and is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.  Professor Oi has published extensively on political economy and the process of reform in China.  Recent books include Zouping Revisited:  Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (2018); and Challenges in the Process of China's Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017).  Professor Oi also has an edited volume with Tom Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China's Future, Stanford University Press, forthcoming.  Recent articles include "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies (2018); and “Reflections on Forty Years of Rural Reform,” in Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, eds., To Get Rich is Glorious: Challenges Facing China’s Economic Reform and Opening at Forty, Brookings, 2019.  Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Image

Ming Sing is associate professor, Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  His research interests include the comparative study of democracy and democratization, political culture, civil society, quality of life, and Hong Kong politics. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford University in sociology and has been the author or editor of four books and over thirty articles. His refereed publications can be found in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Democracy, Democratization, Government and Opposition, and Social Indicators Research, among others. He has been working on a book comparing Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement.  He has also been an active commentator on Hong Kong politics, whose comments have been solicited by local and international media including BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship for visiting the University of California, San Diego in 2007, and the POSCO Visiting Fellowship by the East-West Center, University of Hawaii in 2010.

Attendees should enter the campus via Galvez Street and park at the Galvez Lot or other designated, paid visitor parking. See also Stanford’s parking map. No parking at the Stanford Oval is allowed.

For a summary, video, audio, photos and transcripts of the event, please see the following webpage:

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/news/hong-kong-turmoil-former-chief-secretary-and-scholars-discuss-causes-implications-and-potential

Speaker Bio:

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).  He is also a professor by courtesy in the Department of Political Science. He was previously at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book is Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and a twice a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Seminar recording: https://youtu.be/fYUK-ALGqAE

Abstract:  Russian influence operations during the 2016 US elections, and the investigations that followed, revealed the broad scope of Russian political warfare against Western democracies. Since then, Russian operations have targeted the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, and others. Other state and non-state actors, motivated by politics or profit, have also learned and adapted the Kremlin’s tool-kit. With the 2020 elections a year away, what have we learned about foreign information operations? How has the transatlantic community responded and what are the threats we are likely to face?  Drawing on extensive research on transatlantic relations, disinformation, and Russian foreign policy, Dr. Polyakova will discuss the state of policy options to address disinformation, analyze Russian intentions, and highlight emerging threats.

Speaker’s Biography:

Image