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About the Speaker:

Sheri Berman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests focus on issues of comparative political development, European politics and history, globalization, social theory, and history of the Left. Some of her recent publications include: "The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Ideological Dynamics of the Twentieth Century" (2006, Cambridge University Press); "Violence, Conflict, and Civil Society," Mittelweg, Spring 2006 (academic paper); "Islamism, Revolution, and Civil Society," Perspectives on Politics, 1, 2, June 2003 (academic paper). Berman received her B.A. (1987) from Yale, and M.A. (1990) and PhD. (1994) from Harvard.

About the Event:

The best way to understand how stable, well-functioning democracies develop is to analyze the political trajectories such countries have actually taken. For the most part, this means looking at Western Europe and North America. When we look carefully at these cases we see that the political backstory of most democracies is one of struggle, conflict and even violence. Problems and even failures did not mean that democracy would be impossible to achieve some day; in fact, they can in retrospect often be seen to be integral parts of the long-term processes through which non-democratic institutions, elites, and cultures were delegitimized and eventually eliminated, and their democratic successors forged. An important reason many do not seem to realize this is because of a lack of historical perspective: contemporary analysts often ignore or misread the often messy and unattractive manner in which the current crop of stable democracies actually developed. Understanding past cases better is thus a crucial step toward putting today's democratization and democracy promotion discussions into proper intellectual and historical context.

CISAC Conference Room

Sheri Berman Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker Barnard College, Columbia University
Seminars
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Rajko Grlic was born 1947 in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated a feature film directing from the FAMU Film Academy in Prague, Czech Republic. He has directed and cowritten ten theatrical feature films, including Border Post in 2006 and Josephine in 2002.

His films have been distributed all around the world and shown in competition at many major film festivals. They have received more than fifty international awards, including the Tokyo International Film Festival Grand Prix and Best Director.

He has written nine produced feature screenplays and two television serials. He has received numerous awards for writing, including a UNESCO award, FIPRESCI award, and Peter Kastner award. He has produced four theatrical feature films and five short films. He has also directed three television documentary serials and a dozen short films.

Grlic is Ohio Eminent Scholar in Film at Ohio University, Athens, OH and Artistic Director of Motovun Film Festival, Croatia.

Sponsored by the Mediterranean Forum, the Film and Media Studies Program, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CREES, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Film Studies Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

Rajko Grlic Filmmaker Speaker
Seminars
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Rajko Grlic was born 1947 in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated a feature film directing from the FAMU Film Academy in Prague, Czech Republic. He has directed and cowritten ten theatrical feature films, including Border Post in 2006 and Josephine in 2002.

His films have been distributed all around the world and shown in competition at many major film festivals. They have received more than fifty international awards, including the Tokyo International Film Festival Grand Prix and Best Director.

He has written nine produced feature screenplays and two television serials. He has received numerous awards for writing, including a UNESCO award, FIPRESCI award, and Peter Kastner award. He has produced four theatrical feature films and five short films. He has also directed three television documentary serials and a dozen short films.

Grlic is Ohio Eminent Scholar in Film at Ohio University, Athens, OH and Artistic Director of Motovun Film Festival, Croatia.

Sponsored by the Mediterranean Forum, the Film and Media Studies Program, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CREES, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Cubberley Auditorium
485 Lasuen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Rajko Grlic Filmmaker Speaker
Conferences
Authors
Roland Hsu
News Type
News
Date
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The Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) is proud to announce a new program to advance relations between the United States and Austria and Central Europe. In collaboration with the University of Vienna, the Austrian & Central European Program will bring together students and faculty from Stanford University and the University of Vienna to broaden understanding and research. The Austrian & Central European Program currently hosts an Austrian visiting professor at Stanford to teach a course in his/her specialty for a one-year term while also working closely with FCE to promote specific research topics pertaining to Austria and Central Europe. In addition, two fellowships will be awarded each year for one Stanford student and one University of Vienna student for a study exchange. The program will also initiate annual workshops in which faculty from one host university will travel overseas to work with their colleagues. These workshops will switch venues each year to give both universities the opportunity to host the event. The Austrian & Central European Program was formally inaugurated on October 11 with the visit of the Austrian ambassador to the United States, Dr. Eva Nowotny.

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Luis Moreno-Ocampo was unanimously elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on April 21, 2003. Between 1984 and 1992, as a prosecutor in Argentina, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was involved in precedent-setting prosecutions of top military commanders for mass killings and other large scale human rights abuses.

He was assistant prosecutor in the "Military Junta" trial against Army commanders accused of masterminding the "dirty war," and other cases of human rights violations by the Argentine military. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was the prosecutor in charge of the extradition from investigation and prosecution of guerrilla leaders and of those responsible for two military rebellions in Argentina. He also took part in the case against Army commanders accused of malpractice during the Malvinas/Falklands war, as well as in dozens of major cases of corruption.

In 1992, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo resigned as Chief Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires, and established a private law firm, Moreno-Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specializes in corruption control programs for large firms and organizations, criminal and human rights law. Until his election as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo worked as lawyer and as Private Inspector General for large companies. He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists' protection and freedom of expression.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also worked with various local, regional, and international NGO's. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean. The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also served as member of the Advisory Board of the "Project on Justice in Times of Transition" and "New Tactics on Human Rights."

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo has been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

Faculty Lounge
Stanford Law School
Stanford University
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305

Luis Moreno-Ocampo Chief Prosecutor Speaker the International Criminal Court, the Hague
Lectures
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Eleonora Pasotti is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Cruz and Postdoctoral Fellow at CDDRL. Her work has been concerned with the relationship between democracy, personal power and electoral law. Pasotti's research at CDDRL is directed toward three aspects of this relationship: how proportional and majoritarian electoral systems interact with clientelistic networks; how institutions shape the cost structure of political mobilization; and how institutions of vote mobilization, from clientelism to mass campaigning, distort the normative goal of democracy. Her previous work has been based largely on the politics of Naples, Italy, but has broad comparative implications for the study of clientelism, patronage politics and populism in the developing world as well. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Cruz, Eleonora completed a PhD in Political Science at Columbia University under the direction of Charles Tilly, Jon Elster, and Ira Katznelson. She also holds an MSc in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

UC Santa Cruz

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CDDRL Post-doctoral Fellow 2006 - 2007
eleonora_website.jpg PhD

Eleonora comes to CDDRL all the way from UC Santa Cruz. Her work to date has been concerned with the relationship between democracy, personal power and electoral law. Her research at CDDRL will be directed toward three aspects of this relationship - how proportional and majoritarian electoral systems interact with clientelistic networks; how institutions shape the cost structure of political mobilization; and how institutions of vote mobilization, from clientelism to mass campaigning, distort the normative goal of democracy. Her previous work has been based largely on the politics of Naples, Italy, but has broad comparative implications for the study of clientelism, patronage politics and populism in the developing world as well. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Cruz, Eleonora completed a PhD in Political Science at Columbia University under the direction of Charles Tilly Jon Elster and Ira Katznelson. She also holds an MSc in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Eleonora Pasotti Post-doctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL
Seminars
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Professor Roland examines party politics, particularly in the context of the European parliament. Using key research throughout, he examines where loyalties lie, what affects these loyalties, and what the makeup is of the European parliament. Prof. Roland also takes a brief look at how this compares to national politics in different countries.

Synopsis

Prof. Roland explains that roll call analysis has long been an obsolete method of estimating politicians’ true values. This is mainly due to party politics. Legislative behavior, which is what Prof. Roland explores primarily in this talk, is offered a very rich platform for study in the European parliament, which consists of representative parties from 27 countries which also form into European parties. Prof. Roland explains that loyalties can lie with one’s national party, European party, and country. However, there is no reason for them to overlap. Because the European parliament plays very little role in elections in the nations of Europe, Prof. Roland argues that parties vote almost purely for legislative decision-making purposes. Prof. Roland also cites that voting for the EU parliament is not like a parliamentary democracy because nobody is put into power. In addition, he notes that the European Parliament has had a shifting role as time has passed, going from a consultative position to a probable vetoing power, as Prof. Roland predicts.

These numerous aspects of the European parliament raise several questions for Prof. Roland. He explores the strength of party cohesion within the parliament and methods used to enhance it such as disciplining those who vote against the party of contentious issues or giving signals of unification. Prof. Roland also examines what he explains as the ‘agreement index’ to investigate where members vote; for their national party, their European party, or their country. This rating, which has continually lowered, indicates that more vote for their national parties than member states or European parties. Prof. Roland is also interested in whether members’ votes are influenced more by their personal values or the party discipline effect.

Prof. Roland comes to a variety of interesting conclusions. He sees that there is overlap when members of the European parliament place themselves on the left-right scale. However, no such overlap is present in their voting patterns, showing clear evidence of the effect of party discipline. Prof. Roland finds that bigger parties, because they are more pivotal, are more cohesive as there is more at stake in their unity. On the other hand, national fractionalization has a negative effect of cohesion while ideological diversity plays almost no role in determining the extent of party cohesiveness in the European parliament. Employing a variety of statistics, Prof. Roland shows that the increase in the parliament’s power has also increased party cohesiveness. Therefore, Prof. Roland believes that while disagreement has increased in the European parliament, party cohesion has increased but not for ideological reasons. He ends by explaining that the role of ideology is in forming party coalitions in a parliament whose dimensions consist mainly of left and right.

About the Speaker

Gerard Roland is professor of economics and political science at University of California, Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1988. He is the author of five books, including Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets and Firms, published by MIT Press in 2000.

Sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Graduate School of Business.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Gerard Roland Professor of Economics and Political Science Speaker UC Berkeley
Seminars
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