Stanford University

Constraining Dictatorship

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event: This book examines the creation and consequences of executive constraints in authoritarian regimes. How do some dictatorships become institutionalized ruled-based systems, while others remain heavily personalist? Once implemented, do executive constraints actually play an effective role in promoting autocratic stability? To understand patterns of regime institutionalization, I study the emergence of constitutional term limits and succession procedures, as well as elite power-sharing within presidential cabinets. This project employs a wide range of evidence, including an original time-series dataset of 46 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2010, formal theory, and case studies. Altogether this book paints a picture of how some dictatorships evolve from personalist strongman rule to institutionalized regimes. 

 

Anne Meng
About the Speaker: Anne Meng is an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia. Her research centers on authoritarian politics, institutions, and elite powersharing. Her new book, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes, examines how executive constraints become established in dictatorships, particularly within constitutions and presidential cabinets. Her new work focuses on autocratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement in non-democracies. She has also published articles on authoritarian ruling parties, term limit evasion, and leadership succession. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. 

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Anne Meng Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia
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Strength in Numbers: How Women's Groups Close India's Political Gender Gap

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About this Event: In India there persists a striking gender gap in political participation. Women's political participation is important both on normative grounds of inclusion and because when women do participate, politics changes. I develop a theoretical model of political behavior arguing that women's lack of political participation is the result of the structure of women's political networks in patriarchal societies. I then evaluate the effect of expanding women's networks by leveraging a natural experiment that created as-if random variation in access to women-only credit groups. Participation in these groups had a significant and substantial impact on women's political participation - women's attendance at public meetings doubled. I provide suggestive evidence of three mechanisms underlying this effect: (1) larger networks, (2) increased capacity for collective action within networks, and (3) development of civic skills. These findings contribute to our understanding of how networks affect political behavior and underlie gendered inequalities in political participation.

 

Soledad Prillaman
About the Speaker: Soledad Artiz Prillaman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research lies at the intersections of comparative political economy, development, and gender, with a focus in South Asia. Specifically, her research addresses questions such as: What are the political consequences of development and development policies, particularly for women’s political behavior? How are minorities, specifically women, democratically represented and where do inequalities in political engagement persist and how are voter demands translated into policy and governance? In answering these questions, she utilizes mixed methods, including field experiments, surveys, and in-depth qualitative fieldwork. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2017 and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Texas A&M University in 2011.

 

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Soledad Prillaman Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University
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How to Save Democracy From Technology

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Full article appears in the January/February 2021 issue of Foreign Affairs

Among the many transformations taking place in the U.S. economy, none is more salient than the growth of gigantic Internet platforms. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, already powerful before the COVID-19 pandemic, have become even more so during it, as so much of everyday life moves online. As convenient as their technology is, the emergence of such dominant corporations should ring alarm bells—not just because they hold so much economic power but also because they wield so much control over political communication. These behemoths now dominate the dissemination of information and the coordination of political mobilization. That poses unique threats to a well-functioning democracy. 

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Francis Fukuyama
Ashish Goel
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Research in Progress: Doug Owens

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Douglas K. Owens

Encina Commons, Room 201 
615 Crothers Way Stanford, CA 94305-6006 

Executive Assistant: Soomin Li, soominli@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 725-9911

(650) 723-0933 (650) 723-1919
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Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor
Professor, Health Policy
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, Management Science & Engineering (by courtesy)
doug-headshot_tight.jpeg MD, MS

Douglas K. Owens is the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor, Chair of the Department of Health Policy in the Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Health Policy (CHP) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He is a general internist, a Professor of Management Science and Engineering (by courtesy), at Stanford University; and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Owens' research includes the application of decision theory to clinical and health policy problems; clinical decision making; methods for developing clinical guidelines; decision support; comparative effectiveness; modeling substance use and infectious diseases; cardiovascular disease; patient-centered decision making; assessing the value of health care services, including cost-effectiveness analysis; quality of care; and evidence synthesis.

Owens chaired the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians for four years. The guideline committee develops clinical guidelines that are used widely and are published regularly in the Annals of Internal Medicine. He was a member and then Vice-Chair and Chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops national guidelines on preventive care, including guidelines for screening for breast, colorectal, prostate, and lung cancer. He has helped lead the development of more than 50 national guidelines on treatment and prevention. He also was a member of the Second Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, which developed guidelines for the conduct of cost-effectiveness analyses.

Owens also directed the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-based Practice Center. He co-directs the Stanford Health Services Research Program, and previously directed the VA Physician Fellowship in Health Services Research, and the VA Postdoctoral Informatics Fellowship Program.

Owens received a BS and an MS from Stanford University, and an MD from the University of California-San Francisco. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellowship in health research and policy at Stanford. Owens is a past-President of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He received the VA Undersecretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Health Services Research, and the Eisenberg Award for Leadership in Medical Decision Making from the Society for Medical Decision Making. Owens also received a MERIT award from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse to study HIV, HCV, and the opioid epidemic. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP.)

Chair, Department of Health Policy, School of Medicine
Director, Center for Health Policy, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Research in Progress: Steven Goodman - Academic Scientists in Court: Pros or Cons?

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Title: Academic Scientists in Court: Pros or Cons? 

Steven Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD is Associate Dean of Clinical and Translational Research and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, and Medicine. He is co-founder and co-director of the Meta-research innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), a group dedicated to examining and improving the reproducibility and efficiency of biomedical research.

Abstract:  Most of what academics say are public. However, expert testimony they provide in court is often impossible to access. Thus, even though decisions they affect often have profound importance for public health or health policy, such experts are typically not accountable to the scientific community. This talk will review some high-profile examples, some from personal involvement,  of court testimony from leading health scientists that embrace questionable scientific principles or causes contrary to their public positions or values. Solutions to this problem will be discussed. 

 

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Steven Goodman

Research in Progress: Maya Rossin-Slater - "Trauma at School: The Impacts of Shootings on Students' Human Capital and Economic Outcomes"

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Maya Rossin-Slater, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
SIEPR Faculty Fellow 
NBER Faculty Research Fellow 
IZA Faculty Affiliate 

Title:
"Trauma at School: The Impacts of Shootings on Students' Human Capital and Economic Outcomes"

Abstract:
 We examine how shootings at schools---an increasingly common form of gun violence in the United States---impact the educational and economic trajectories of students. Using linked schooling and labor market data in Texas from 1992--2018, we compare within-student and across-cohort changes in outcomes following a shooting to those experienced by students at matched control schools. We find that school shootings increase absenteeism and grade repetition; reduce high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion; and reduce employment and earnings at ages 24--26. These effects span student characteristics, suggesting that the economic costs of school shootings are universal.

Zoom Meeting

 

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Maya Rossin-Slater

Encina Commons,
615 Crothers Way Room 184,
Stanford, CA 94305-6006

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Associate Professor, Health Policy
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Associate Professor, Economics (by courtesy)
rossin-slater_ar21_12_f-cr_compressed.jpg PhD

Maya Rossin-Slater is an Associate Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic and Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). She received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University in 2013, and was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2013 to 2017, prior to coming to Stanford. Rossin-Slater’s research includes work in health, public, and labor economics. She focuses on issues in maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries.

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Making Hong Kong China

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:  How can one of the world’s most free-wheeling cities transition from a vibrant global center of culture and finance into a subject of authoritarian control? As Beijing's anxious interference has grown, the “one country, two systems” model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the years since he 1997 handover. As “one country” seemed set to gobble up “two systems," the people of Hong Kong riveted the world’s attention in 2019 by defiantly demanding the autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms they were promised. In 2020, the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing aimed to snuff out such resistance. Will the Hong Kong so deeply held in the people’s identity and the world’s imagination be lost? Professor Michael Davis, who has taught human rights and constitutional law in this city for over three decades, and has been one of its closest observers, takes us on this constitutional journey. 

 

Michael Davis
About the Speaker:  Professor Michael C. Davis is in the Fall of 2020 a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong where he teaches core courses on international human rights. He is also currently a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University and a Professor of Law and International Affairs at O.P. Jindal Global University in India (where he is in residence each spring).  A professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Hong Kong until late 2016, he has held a number of distinguished visiting professorships, including the J. Landis Martin Visiting Professor of Human Rights Law at Northwestern University (2005-6), the Robert and Marion Short Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame (2004-5) and the Frederick K. Cox Visiting Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University (2000).  As a public intellectual his media writing won him a 2014 Human Rights Press Award for commentary. 

 

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Michael C.Davis Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong
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Notes on Culture and Counterinsurgency

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

 

About the Event: Following the Allied invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. government and military officials revived counterinsurgency doctrine and practice—widely employed, though not invented, during the era of decolonization—in service of the nation’s ongoing War on Terror. This revival was dramatized during a widely publicized screening at the Pentagon of Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic film The Battle of Algiers (1966). What insights into (Algerian) insurgency and (French) counterinsurgency did U.S. officials hope to glean from Pontecorvo’s film? And how would these insights be mobilized, if at all, for the occupation of Iraq and other insurgent geographies? 

This talk revisits this historical moment and the questions it raises about the relationship between U.S. militarism and the uses of literature and film in the management of insurgency in Africa and Western Asia.

 

Vaughn Rasberry
About the Speaker: Vaughn Rasberry is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Academic Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. He is the author of Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics and the Black Literary Imagination (Harvard UP, 2016), winner of the Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. 

 

 

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Vaughn Rasberry Associate Professor in the Department of English and Academic Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford
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Report of the Working Group on Platform Scale

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The internet economy has produced digital platforms of enormous economic and social significance. These platforms—specifically, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple—now play central roles in how millions of Americans obtain information, spend their money, communicate with fellow citizens, and earn their livelihoods. Their reach is also felt globally, extending to many countries around the world. They have amassed the economic, social, and political influence that very few private entities have ever obtained previously. Accordingly, they demand careful consideration from American policymakers, who should soberly assess whether the nation’s current laws and regulatory institutions are adequately equipped to protect Americans against potential abuses by platform companies.

The Program on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University convened a working group in January 2020 to consider the scale, scope, and power exhibited by the digital platforms, study the potential harms they cause, and, if appropriate, recommend remedial policies. The group included a diverse and interdisciplinary group of scholars, some of whom had spent many years dealing with antitrust and technology issues.

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Francis Fukuyama
Ashish Goel
Marietje Schaake
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Secondary - Community College

Election 2020: Election Results, the Aftermath, and Tech Agendas

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THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF ELECTION DAY 2020 offers lessons about the state of American democracy as well as technology’s influence on voters, the voting process, and democratic institutions. Whatever the outcome of an election, and despite a polarized society, it is clear that all Americans share a common stake in protecting the integrity and independence of the administration of elections, the declaration of winners and losers, and a peaceful transition of power. Yet other questions persist: How have disinformation campaigns, whether domestic or foreign, affected the electoral process? And what does the future hold in terms of a tech agenda?

  

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Marietje Schaake
Rob Reich
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