Stanford University

Politics, Child Mortality, and Health System Development in Tanzania and Uganda

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Kevin Croke recently defended his PhD dissertation in the International Development program at Johns Hopkins-SAIS.  His dissertation, "Foreign Aid, Child Survival and Health System Strengthening in Tanzania and Uganda, 1996-2009," is based on fieldwork conducted in Tanzania and Uganda in 2009 and 2010.  He has previously worked with the World Bank, PEPFAR, Management Sciences for Health, Results for Development, and the East African NGO Twaweza.  He is currently working with the World Bank and Twaweza to develop a mobile phone survey platform for high frequency public service delivery monitoring in Tanzania.  At SAIS, Kevin has taught Introduction to Development and Comparative National Systems.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Kevin Croke Doctoral student Speaker SAIS - The John Hopkins University
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Collecting, Protecting, and Analyzing Human Rights Data

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Abstract 
There will be a discussion of two different examples of liberation technology, one used to collect and protect human rights data, and the other used to analyze it. Martus is a software program that encrypts and remotely backs up data, designed for and used widely by human rights monitors and advocates to protect witness reports and other sensitive human rights data. the focus will be on the security design of Martus and how we addressed the inevitable tradeoffs with usability, as well as the reasons for and consequences of our choice to make Martus free and open source. The legitimacy of human rights advocates is based on their claim to speak truth about a human rights situation, but our ability to know the truth of what is happening on the ground is often severely limited. Founding conclusions on anecdotes or observable events alone can misinterpret both trends over time and the relative distribution of violence with respect to regions, ethnicity or perpetrators. Through the careful application of rigorous statistical methods, the limitations of incomplete data can sometimes be overcome, enabling scientifically-based claims about the total extent and patterns of human rights violations. Also discussed will be how this kind of analysis is enabled by technology, including computational statistical methods, and tools like R and version control to make the analysis auditable and replicable.

Jeff Klingner is a computer scientist with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group at Benetech, where he codes and runs data analysis addressing a variety of human rights questions, including command responsibility of high-level officials in Chad and Guatemala, and mortality estimation in several countries, including India, Sierra Leone, and Guatemala. His technical focus is on data deduplication, machine learning, data visualization, and analysis auditability and replicability. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Wallenberg Theater

Jeff Klingner Computer Science Consultant Speaker Benetech
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Fourth Wave or False Start? Democracy After the Arab Spring

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The decades-long political winter in the Arab world seemed to be thawing early this year as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and it appeared that one Arab dictatorship after another might fall during the so-called Arab Spring. Analogies were quickly conjured to the collapse of dictatorships in Europe and Latin America in the 1970s; Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines in the 1980s; and Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s—the transformative “third wave” of global democratization. Many scholars and activists reasonably imagined that a “fourth wave” had begun.  At this momentous inflection point, which may well define the future shape of the Arab world, the United States has never faced a more urgent set of opportunities and challenges there. Diamond will discuss the prospects for democratic development that exist alongside the very real risks of Islamist ascension, political chaos, and humanitarian disaster, and suggest principles and long-term strategic thinking the U.S. might employ to increase its legitimacy in the region.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he also directs the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond is co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior consultant to the National Endowment for Democracy. Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and as an advisor to the Iraq Study Group.  Diamond, author of the Spirit of Democracy and several other works on democratic development, has also edited or co-edited some 36 books on democracy. A renowned teacher and mentor, Diamond, who teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, was named “Teacher of the Year” by the Associated Students of Stanford University and received the prestigious Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education in 2007.

The Chicago Club
81 East Van Buren Street
Chicago, IL 60605

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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Eric Kramon

Encina Hall, C139
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow 2013-2014, CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow 2011-2013
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Eric Kramon received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2013 and is a 2013-14 Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow.  He will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University starting in Summer 2014.  While at CDDRL, he is working on a book project on vote buying and clientelism in Africa, as well as additional projects on the impact of election observation on electoral fraud and electoral quality, ethnicity and the politics of public goods provision in Africa, and the political determinants of good governance reforms.

Mobile-for-Development Meets Human-Centered Design: Field Experiments in Kenya

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*******NOTE CHANGE OF LOCATION*******

Abstract
The proliferation of information and communication technology in even the lowest-income communities has created space for innovative ICT-based approaches to global poverty. However, projects of this kind are often ineffective because they focus excessively on technological solutions and are inattentive to user needs, preferences, and capacities. This seminar will present four projects that attempt to overcome these limitations in Kenya using "human-centered design" -- an approach to design that is anchored in ethnographic engagement with end-users.

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building,
Koret Taube Conference Room, 366 Galvez
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Nan Zhang Speaker Stanford University
Jess Auerbach Speaker Stanford University
Eric Ruth Speaker Stanford University
Sunny Jeon Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

The Last Mile: Grassroots Development and Technology in Africa

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ABSTRACT:

A system is only as strong as its weakest connections.  The most fragile and easily disrupted links of international development and foreign aid structures are unfortunately the most important:  those connecting community stakeholders with one another and with the larger system designed to support them.  Grassroots civil society organizations are essential to sustain growth in developing regions.  Across Africa, these groups do the hands-on, local development work that changes lives, but the overwhelming majority operate in isolation, unable to collaborate, to plan new interventions, share best practices, or communicate directly with funders and supporters.

Joshua Stern will discuss some of the systemic obstacles facing grassroots civil society organizations, and the impact that web technology is having in developing communities across East Africa.  Stern co-founded Envaya whose mission is to build and deploy a software platform that provides “the last mile” of connection between grassroots activists and the larger development sector.  Built to be easy-to-use and optimized to work in challenging, developing-world environments, Envaya's online and mobile tools empower community organizations to stake out an online presence, connect and coordinate with each other, and directly engage the international development sector.  The tools encourage collaboration and transparency, inspire activism and civil society engagement, and increase the efficiency of established programs. In just over one year, the Envaya platform has become the largest online network of civil society organizations in East Africa.

Joshua Stern (Stanford '06) is the Executive Director of Envaya. After graduating, Joshua served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania. He founded Envaya in 2010 with Jesse Young (Stanford '06, MS '07) and Tanzanian civil society leader Radhina Kipozi. Joshua splits his time between Africa and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wallenberg Theater

Joshua Stern Co-Founder and Executive Director Speaker Envaya
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Adama Gaye

CDDRL
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Scholar 2011-12
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Adama Gaye, author, political commentator, and scholar, from Senegal, has joined Stanford University this Academic year as a Visiting Scholar both at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and at the African Studies Center...He is working on the increasing economic and political relations between China and Africa. China has recently become Africa's number one economic partner ahead of the traditional Western nations States of Europe and the United States of America.

Gaye, the first author to have published a book, in 2006, on this newly growing China-Africa connections under the title: Chine-Afrique -Le dragon et l'autruche (Ed. L'Harmattan, Paris), has been monitoring this relationship since then, notably as a Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University (Washington Dc) and at China's premier University, Peiking University.

A well-known African journalist, Gaye has been a regular commentator on African Affairs for Cnn, AlJazeera, France 24, Radio France Internationale, NPR, The Bbc, CCTV. He has written extensively on African Affairs for Newsweek, Jeune Afrique, Beijing Review; he is a former Editor of the London-based newsweekly, West Africa Magazine, Africa's oldest magazine.

Adama Gaye holds various university degrees, including post-graduate degrees from University Paris 2 and The Pantheon-Sorbonne. He obtained the coveted Oxford Diplomatic Studies Certificate and holds the China Senior Executive Management Certificate jointly delivered by Tsinghua University, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Harvard Business School.

Gaye studied journalism at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (Bachelor), in Senegal.

He intends to publish a new book on China-Africa while pursuing his other research interests during his tenure at Stanford. In addition to Africa's international relations, mainly with China, these include the unsteady democratic evolution of Africa and the renewed interests generated by Oil and Gas resources in the continent.

Landry Signé

Not in Residence

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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).

Use of Climate Information in International Negotiation for Adaptation Resources

Adaptation of vulnerable areas to climate change is---and will continue to be---an important subject of negotiations taking place in several international forums, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Major Economies negotiations; and the G-8 talks. Ideally, adaptation assistance to any given nation would be commensurate with the social and economic impacts of future climate change and the cost of the required adaptation measures. Instead, neither is known.

Peasants into Democrats: Evaluating the Impact of Information on Local Governance in Mali

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Recent research suggests that enhancing voter information holds promise for increasing government accountability in new democracies. This project undertakes a field experiment in Mali, a model of an underperforming new democracy, to test the theory that information that sufficiently raises citizen voter expectations of government performance can have an important effect on governance. it will examine the impact of an intervention that provides citizens with a civics course on voter and government behavior.

Walter P. Falcon Lounge

James D. Fearon

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-1314
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Professor of Political Science
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James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a Senior Fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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James D. Fearon Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences; professor of political science, Stanford University Speaker
Jessica Gottlieb PhD student, political science, Stanford University Speaker
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