Stanford University

History

Indonesian campaign poster symbolism and political identity

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Riding around on the back of a motorcycle in 2009, Jeremy Menchik snapped photos of hundreds of Indonesian campaign posters. That number has now grown to over 5000 images, which Menchik and Colm Fox have painstakingly coded and analyzed to better understand the politics of identity in Indonesia. The initial results of their research reveal similarities between the United States and Indonesia, and shed light on the transitional democracies of the Arab Spring.

Menchik is a 2011–12 Shorenstein Fellow at Stanford University, and will take up a position as an assistant professor in international relations at Boston University in 2013.

Fox is a doctoral student at the George Washington University’s Department of Political Science.

How important is political identity in Indonesia? Why?

Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, and one of the most diverse. But what we found was that rather than being unique, Indonesian politicians behave remarkably similar to American politicians in using a variety of regional, religious, and ethnic identity symbols to court voters.

For example, just recently on NPR, I heard Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich using broken Spanish to appeal to Latino voters in Florida. That is no different than candidates for mayor in northern Sumatra, who often print one poster with them wearing Islamic clothing for one neighborhood, and another poster with them wearing Batak clothing for a different neighborhood. And a third where they are draped in the Indonesian flag.

Our research suggests that despite the obvious differences between a developed, Western country like the United States, and a developing, Muslim-majority country like Indonesia, politicians often act similarly when they are trying to win elections.

What is an important factor in determining a candidate’s use of identity symbols?

What we found is that the election rules matter, a lot. Candidates are far more likely to use religious and ethnic symbols in a plurality (“winner-take-all”) system like the United States than in a proportional representation system (PR) like Indonesia. This is an important finding, because tinkering with election rules is one of the tools that international relations practitioners can use to reduce ethnic and sectarian violence. And what we are saying is that it works. Changing election rules can change the types and levels of identities that are politicized. And that is an important lesson for conflict resolution.

What are some of the most surprising results to come out of your research?

The first is how badly the dominant explanations for identity politics—modernization theory and secularization theory—fared when they were tested on a large dataset. We are at an interesting juncture in time, where our theories of religion and politics have not caught up with the way the world works.

A second surprising finding is how much electoral rules shape the use of identity symbols. Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country, but you would not know it in many of the PR elections. Having strong party backing is so crucial to winning seats in the legislature that it overrides candidates’ religious identity. This points to a similarity between a developed, consolidated Western democracy like the United States, and a developing, unconsolidated Muslim-majority country like Indonesia. The rules are really important for understanding "how politics works" in the Muslim world.

Finally, it was interesting to see the continued importance of history for understanding contemporary political behavior. Regional rebellions that happened in the 1950s continue to echo in politics today. There are certainly ways that changing electoral rules and economic development can result in a shift in political identity, but without understanding the specific Indonesian context, a lot of our results do not make sense. That is an important lesson that for understanding how people in a Muslim country vote; the regionally specific history of that country is very important.      

During last year’s Arab Spring, the ideal of democracy was celebrated throughout the world. How might your research shed light on understanding the complexities of these transitioning democracies?

Well this research has clear implications for the Arab Spring, particularly for understanding the future of Egypt. Just because religious parties like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafist Nour party come into office does not mean that democracy is doomed, or that religious minorities are going to suffer. As long as secular Muslims, Christians, liberals, and other groups have a stake in elections, we are likely to see cross-ethnic and cross-religious coalitions emerge. This is a very good thing. One obvious difference, however, is that we did not see a lot of overt military participation in politics in Indonesia after 1999. The military was largely absent. And that is one way that Egypt is very different from Indonesia. If there is a big threat to democracy in Egypt, it is not coming from the politicization of identity—it is coming from the suppression of the people's voice by the military.

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Indonesian election posters often contain a complex mix of religious, ethnic, and political party symbolism.
Courtesy Jeremy Menchik
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Migration and State Formation in the Aftermath of the Ottoman Empire

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* Please note that this event has been moved from Feb. 22nd to Feb. 15th

 The Ottoman Empire started and ended in migration. While the movements of people that shaped the empire and its boundaries in the early part of its history were, to a large extent, voluntary, those that marked the end of the Ottoman Empire were compulsory. Multi-ethnic and multi-religious communities of the empire all around the empire were torn apart and almost the entire non-Muslim population of the empire were deported, killed, or marginalized as minorities. This presentation compares the early and later types of migration, explains the forces that brought the shift from the first to the second, and describes how these developments affected the status of  the Greek population of Anatolia
in the early decades of the 20th century.

Professor Kasaba will be signing copies of his book, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees starting at 4:45pm.  This will be immediately be followed by his lecture at 5:15pm.


Reşat Kasaba is Stanley D. Golub Professor of International Studies and Director of Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His research on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey has covered economic history, state-society relations, migration, ethnicity and nationalism, and urban history with a focus on Izmir. He has also published several books and articles that shed light on different aspects of the transformation of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Co-sponsored with the Mediterranean Studies Forum

CISAC Conference Room

Reşat Kasaba Professor of International Studies and Director of Jackson School of International Studies Speaker University of Washington
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An opportunity to engage: US public diplomacy and the rise of Islamist parties

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One year after the Arab Spring, American public diplomacy is still facing the now-established conundrum of linking words and actions. The rise of Islamist political parties as the new leaders in the Arab world is the latest challenge for U.S. public diplomacy, but it is also an opportunity.

Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has been matching its military activity in the Middle East with outreach to Muslim and Arab communities. By and large, this outreach has not been successful. As several public diplomacy experts have been arguing for a number of years now, the limited impact of this outreach is due to the negative perception of U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East by citizens in the region. When actions and words do not match, words are perceived with a hefty dose of suspicion.

When the Egyptian revolution began on January 25, 2011, U.S. foreign policy took some time to catch up with sentiment on the Egyptian street. To make matters worse, the “Made in USA” tear gas canisters that protesters in Tahrir Square angrily displayed to the cameras of the international media were a further reminder of the United States’ cozy relationship with the Mubarak regime.

Since then, the U.S. has improved its words and actions by declaring both rhetorical and policy support for the Arab world’s revolutionaries (albeit in varying degrees), and as a result, public opinion about the U.S. in the region has improved. The 2011 Arab Public Opinion Pollshows a significant increase in favorability towards the U.S., compared with the 2010 poll, from 10% to 26%. The U.S. must continue to enhance this record.

Back in 2006, after much hype by the U.S. about the importance of free and fair elections in Palestine, the U.S. backtracked when Hamas swept the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in Gaza,withdrawing aid and boycotting the elected Gaza government. As Islamist parties sweep free and fair elections in one country after another in the region—starting with Tunisia, then Egypt—it is fairly safe to declare that in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Arab world will be led by Islamists. So far, the U.S. has not repeated the mistake of 2006 with Hamas’ election in Gaza, accepting the results of the elections as democratic and as representing the will of the people.

But this is not enough. Of course, the United States currently has an easier task, since none of the groups that have been elected to-date in the Arab region are on the U.S.’s “terrorist” list. However, merely accepting election results will not cause a significant change in the perception of the U.S. on the Arab street.

The U.S. recognizes the current period as one of opportunity: it is the time to reinvigorate U.S. assistance with civil society, economic aid, and cultural outreach in the Arab world. But the most important “action” of all remains how foreign policy will play out. The Islamist groups that have assumed leadership positions in Tunisia and Egypt, namely Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood, have one very old dream: to be recognized as statesmen nationally and internationally. If U.S. foreign policy in this new era is going to be successful, it must be based on treating those leaders as such.

This is not just important on the traditional diplomatic level; it is also important for the success of U.S. public diplomacy. The Islamist leaders now assuming positions as Prime Ministers or House Speakers (and who knows, perhaps also presidents in the near future) reached power through having been elected by their constituents. The U.S. cannot reach out to those constituents while treating their leaders differently. In the past, U.S. public diplomacy towards Egypt appeared insincere because the U.S. attempted to engage the Egyptian people while taking a soft stance towards the Mubarak regime, which had been jailing, harassing, and—as in the case of Khaled Said—killing those same people.

For the first time in the Arab world’s history, there is a real opportunity for the U.S. to match its words and actions towards the region, and to have foreign policy become the basis upon which to formulate a truly engaging public diplomacy.

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Japan's Geological Factors

In this lecture, Professor Okimoto discusses how Japan’s geography and geological factors have influenced its economics, society, and culture. In addition, he explores issues pertaining to the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 

Daniel I. Okimoto Speaker
Lectures

Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain

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This talk presents an unconventional look at the creation of a deadly barrier between East and West Germany.  It reveals how the Iron Curtain was not simply imposed by communism, but had been emerging haphazardly in both East and West long before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.  From the end of the Third Reich, ad hoc enforcement of the tenuous border between the two Germanys led to the creation of difference where there was no difference, institutionalization of violence among neighbors, popular participation in a system that was deeply unpopular--and people normalizing a monstrosity in their midst.

Edith Sheffer is assistant professor of Modern European History at Stanford. Edith Sheffer came to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008 and joined the History Department faculty in 2010.  She recently completed Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, and was the winner of the 2011 Fraenkel Prize, awarded by the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, London. 

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center (TEC), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the Department of German Studies

 

Event Summary

Professor Sheffer's presentation includes a social history of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. She examines the process by which culturally homogenous populations internalized ideas of difference, and erected arbitrary physical and mental borders accordingly. She argues that the Iron Curtain was a "wall of the mind" reinforced not only by Communist authorities but by the everyday actions of ordinary Germans. 

Professor Sheffer first outlines her recent book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain. Drawing on archives, news stories, and personal interviews with people from East and West Germany, she argues that the Berlin Wall was simply a visible manifestation of an existing rift within the country that had been building for 16 years.  She examines the process of institutionalization of difference, by which people living in a once-cohesive community with no stark religious or cultural differences began to view those on the opposite side of an arbitrary border as "other." Professor Sheffer offers several explanations for why Germans largely accepted the divide, including the gradual internalization by individual citizens, on both sides of the wall, of what Sheffer describes as "the living wall" and a "wall in the head formed by a wall on the ground."  The fact that the wall was a structural response to a social set of conflicts can explain why it both went up and came down so quickly, as the result of many small steps and individual actions.

CISAC Conference Room

Edith Sheffer

Department of History 200-120

(650) 724-0074
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Former Assistant Professor of Modern European History
Former Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies
edith_sheffer_-_1.jpg PhD

Edith Sheffer joined the History Department faculty in 2010, having come to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008.  Her first book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford University Press, 2011), challenges the moral myth of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War’s central symbol. It reveals how the barrier between East and West did not simply arise overnight from communism in Berlin in 1961, but that a longer, lethal 1,393 kilometer fence had been developing haphazardly between the two Germanys since 1945.

Her current book, Soulless Children of the Reich: Hans Asperger and the Nazi Origins of Autism, investigates Hans Asperger’s creation of the autism diagnosis in Nazi Vienna, examining Nazi psychiatry's emphasis on social spirit and Asperger's involvement in the euthanasia program that murdered disabled children. A related project through Stanford's Spatial History Lab, "Forming Selves: The Creation of Child Psychiatry from Red Vienna to the Third Reich and Abroad," maps the transnational development of child psychiatry as a discipline, tracing linkages among its pioneers in Vienna in the 1930s through their emigration from the Third Reich and establishment of different practices in the 1940s in England and the United States. Sheffer's next book project, Hidden Front: Switzerland and World War Two, tells an in-depth history of a nation whose pivotal role remains unexposed--yet was decisive in the course of the Second World War.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Edith Sheffer Speaker

Norman M. Naimark

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C235
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-6927 (650) 725-0597
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Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Robert & Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies
Professor of History
Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
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Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, a Professor of History and (by courtesy) of German Studies, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and (by courtesy) of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. Norman formerly served as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division, the Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, the Convener of the European Forum (predecessor to The Europe Center), Chair of the History Department, and the Director of Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Norman earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1972 and before returning to join the faculty in 1988, he was a professor of history at Boston University and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He also held the visiting Catherine Wasserman Davis Chair of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1996), the Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding faculty volunteer service (1995), and the Dean's Teaching Award from Stanford University for 1991-92 and 2002-3.

Norman is interested in modern Eastern European and Russian history and his research focuses on Soviet policies and actions in Europe after World War II and on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. His published monographs on these topics include The History of the "Proletariat": The Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 1870–1887 (1979, Columbia University Press), Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (1983, Harvard University Press), The Russians in Germany: The History of The Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (1995, Harvard University Press), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (1998, Westview Press), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe (2001, Harvard University Press), Stalin's Genocides (2010, Princeton University Press), and Genocide: A World History (2016, Oxford University Press). Naimark’s latest book, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty (Harvard 2019), explores seven case studies that illuminate Soviet policy in Europe and European attempts to build new, independent countries after World War II.

 

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Regional Conflict and Cooperation

Screening of RFK in the Land of Apartheid

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A screening of RFK IN THE LAND OF APARTHEID.  A high point of the film is Kennedy's meeting with one of the unknown giants of African history - the banned President of the African National Congress, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chief Albert Lutuli - living under house arrest in a remote rural area.  The film travels with Robert Kennedy to Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, where he meets thousands of people and gives voice to Chief Lutuli's silenced call for a free South Africa.  

Following the screening, Professor James Campbell, History Dept., will moderate a
discussion with producer and co-director Larry Shore (Professor, Hunter College, CUNY)
 
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Bechtel Conference Center

Larry Shore Professor Speaker Hunter College (CUNY)
James Campbell Professor Speaker History Department, Stanford University

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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Stanford scholars reflect on Arab Spring

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A year has passed since the Egyptian uprising, one of the defining moments of the democratic wave that surged across the Arab world. Since Jan. 25, 2011, three long-standing Arab dictatorships have toppled and citizen movements continue to challenge entrenched autocratic regimes. Reflecting on this pivotal moment, five scholars at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law talk about how these events changed the course of democracy – if at all – and what they mean for the region as a whole.

What are the prospects for democracy in the Arab world today?

Larry Diamond: The near-term prospects for democracy are mixed and uncertain – but far better than they were a year ago. Within the space of a single year, Tunisia has become an electoral democracy – the first in the Arab world since Lebanon fell apart in the mid-1970s. This is an astonishing achievement, and Tunisia’s prospects to build democracy are quite good. Egypt has a chance to turn the corner politically, but it depends on whether the Muslim Brotherhood will evolve in a truly democratic and tolerant direction, and whether the military will step back from power. Libya must still disarm its militias and build democratic institutions and a viable state. Syria and Yemen remain much more deeply troubled, with a risk of civil war.

In examining the arc of history, was the Arab Spring inevitable? Should we have been surprised by what happened?

Francis Fukuyama: Economic growth and technological change foster the rise of a middle class that fosters demands for political participation. This is the social basis for democratic revolutions around the world. Some people argued that cultural factors – Islam, Arab passivity –would prevent this from unfolding in the Middle East, but this has clearly been proven wrong. These structural shifts do not imply inevitability, since it is human agents who must translate social demands into political action. This is why the general phenomenon of a revolt may have been predictable, but the timing absolutely uncertain.

Have living conditions improved in the Arab world, or are they worse for the average citizen?

Lina Khatib: The Arab Spring has brought immense change in the lives of Arab citizens. Political taboos have been broken, and the wall of fear that used to govern their everyday lives has crashed down. The Arab world still has some way to go before it can be called democratic in the full sense. While the economy in particular has taken a hit in the current period of transition and uncertainty – making conditions worse for many in the short term – the average Arab citizen today can actually look forward to seeing freedom of expression, human rights, and political and economic reform. These are no longer unrealizable dreams.

What are some of the lessons U.S. policymakers have learned from the Arab Spring?

Jeremy M. Weinstein: A number of fundamental ideas that underpinned 30 years of U.S. policy in the Middle East were upended by the events of 2011. The idea that Arabs do not care about democracy, are politically apathetic, and are too frightened to resist oppressive regimes has been disproved. The notion of authoritarian stability is now questioned, and it is no longer taken for granted that “the autocrats we know” are the safest bet to secure U.S. interests. And the fear of Islamists is slowly receding among policymakers as they confront the electoral success of Islamist parties and begin to directly engage a new cadre of leaders.

How did Arab monarchies weather the storm and avoid the experiences of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia?

Ahmed Benchemsi: Except in Bahrain, where security forces opened fire on unarmed crowds, Arab monarchies generally managed to outflank their respective protesters in a peaceful way. They did so either by implementing illusory reforms while in fact playing for time (in Morocco and Jordan) or by buying off the opposition with huge social spending (in the Gulf). As this last tactic may remain effective for some time, non-oil monarchies’ victories are more likely to prove short-lived. New rounds of popular anger could be spawned sooner rather than later by, if anything, growing economic difficulties. These will be harder to quell by subterfuges.

Looking forward, are you hopeful that democracy will prosper in the Arab world?

Diamond: Yes, I am quite hopeful that democracy will develop in the Arab world, but I think there will be wide variation among Arab countries in the near term, and much will depend on whether there emerges an instance of clear democratic success that inspires other countries. This is why I think we should bet heavily now on Tunisia, while also intensively engaging Egypt, the largest Arab country.

Fukuyama: In the long run yes, in the short run, no – a safe answer.

Khatib: Even if democracy takes decades to materialize, the Arab world has finally taken the first steps in what – as history has taught us – is always a long and difficult journey, and that’s an important milestone.

Weinstein: All of us know that the road to democracy is uncertain and filled with obstacles. But I take comfort in the fact that no one could have predicted a 2011 in which Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gadhafi, and Saleh would leave the stage. Something profound has changed in the region, and I am confident that – having lost their fear – citizens will make their voices heard as the struggle for democracy continues.

Benchemsi: For democracy to have a real chance in the Arab World, liberals must build grassroots organizations – ones that would be large and strong enough to challenge both autocratic regimes and Islamist groups. When this is done, I will have reason for optimism.

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