Ruby Gropas is a lecturer in international relations at the law faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini) and research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Gropas was in residence at CDDRL in 2011 as a visiting scholar. In this seminar she will discuss the ongoing Greek economic and political crisis, and what it means for the future of the European Union and monetary system. Is the crisis in Greece ‘internal’ or is it symptomatic of a wider European failure? Is the Greek crisis the result of failed modernity, or rather a precursor of things to come? Why has Greece become so important and why has it dominated global politics and world news for the past two years?  Are its malignancies purely domestic or are they representative of a wider malaise within Europe and possibly beyond? The collapse and orderly default of a eurozone country at the heart of the Western financial system arguably marks the end of an era. It has brought with it the deepest social and political crisis that modern Greecehas faced since the restoration of democracy and it has also led to Europe's deepest existential crisis. With the EU struggling to effectively managing the eurozone crisis and the burst of recent movements opposing neo-liberal orthodoxy and the “Occupy” movements – what does this mean for Europe? And what is next?

Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to announce that undergraduate senior honors student, Anna Barrett Schickele, received the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. This university award is given to the top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science, and engineering.

Schickele's thesis entitled, "One Drop At A Time," examines the factors that inform farmers' decisions to use modern irrigation systems in the Lurín Valley of Peru, where she spent several months conducting fieldwork with a Lima-based NGO. Schickele — a public policy major —was able to collect primary data through interviews with farmers and fieldworkers to inform her research study that includes policy recommendations to the NGO community and government officials.

Anna Schickele (center) with Francis Fukuyama (left) and Larry Diamond (right).

Martin Carnoy, the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, served as Schickele's thesis advisor together with Rosamond L. Naylor, the director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at FSI.

"Ana's thesis is an important contribution to our understanding of the barriers and openings for stimulating agricultural development among subsistence farmers," said Carnoy. "Her original insights make the thesis particularly valuable for those addressing development issues in the world’s poorest regions."

In August, Schickele will begin a research position at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CDDRL's best thesis award was given to Kabir Sawhney, a management science and engineering major, who wrote his thesis on the effect of regime type and the propensity to default on sovereign debt. Advised by Professor of Political Science Gary Cox, Swahney cited the cases of Romania in the 1980s and more recently of Greece to conclude that the quality of government — rather than regime type alone — determines whether a country chooses to default. 

After graduation. Sawhney will join the consulting firm Accenture as an analyst in their San Francisco office.  

Three honors students' received fellowships from Stanford's Haas Center of Public Service to pursue public service-related work after graduation. Keith Calix and Imani Franklin both received the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy and will be working in New York for grant-making foundations, and Lina Hidalgo received the Omidyar Network Postgraduate Fellowship to work with an international organization.     

The CDDRL Undergraduate Senior Honors Program is an interdisciplinary honors program led by Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI. The program recruits a diverse group of talented students interested in writing original theses on topics impacting the field of democracy, development, and the rule of law. During the year-long program, students write their thesis in consultation with a CDDRL faculty member, participate in research workshops, and travel to Washington, D.C. for "honors college."

The nine members of the graduating class of 2013 CDDRL undergraduate honors students include:

Resilient citizens in times of crisis

Resilience involves the capacity to deal with change and to recover. It is the potential of  a system, of organisations or individuals to adapt to changing circumstances in the face of risk and adversity. Just as importantly, it is the ability to recover after a disaster or a crisis. As such, it is both about resisting shocks and using such events to trigger renewal, innovation and address the ensuing challenges and difficulties through creative solutions. 

It has been increasingly evident over the past couple of years that Europe is undergoing its deepest existentialist crisis since the project of European integration kicked off in the early 1950s. The crisis is deep and does not only concern Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy or Ireland. It goes well beyond the confines of the Eurozone and presents a resilience challenge that has to be addressed well and truly at the European level. It is just as important however that this resilience challenge is also met at the local, societal level.

Crises are transformative; along with the risk of deterioration and disintegration, they also offer an opportunity for growth. The challenge that is therefore posed by the current crisis is not only how much we can expect the European system to be able to absorb before it transforms into something fundamentally different, but also who will be the driving force of change or the game changer in these conditions? Identifying the factors that will be able to drive change and demonstrate resilience to the crisis is necessary for the EU and it is even more fundamental for Greece.

As the crisis has been unraveling in Greece, the focus has been on the negative effects it has been having on citizens’ life, on the country’s public services, on the welfare state, on the political system and on expectations for the future. Without a shadow of a doubt, these negative effects have been tragic and painful. In a country of approximately 10.1 million people, 350,000 jobs have been lost in the past year alone. Unemployment has risen over 23% in the general population, while youth unemployment in particular has soared to over 52%. GDP has declined by 20%, and austerity measures have wrung the middle class dry. In Athens, there was up to 60% fall in revenue for businesses directly associated with the Indignados sit–ins and the consecutive riots during 2011-2012; the commercial centre of Athens has become increasingly derelict, shops are closing, buildings on main streets are no longer repairing their facades from the damages incurred in weekly demonstrations. Suicide rates have increased, along with violent criminality and homelessness, while soup kitchens have made their appearance again - and the lines are growing longer every day. Public hospitals are lacking in many cases even the most basic supplies while public schools and universities are preparing for a tough academic year ahead expecting to have even less of a possibility to afford the heating bills than they did last year.

There exists a sense of pervasive breakdown. There is a feeling of disorientation and lost identity that comes with the collapse of the assumptions people lived by until just a couple of years ago and the expectations they had for their future. The grim picture does not end here. Young Greeks are emigrating in increasing numbers as this crisis’ harshest toll has been on their dreams of a better tomorrow in their home country that until recently appeared consolidated within what the EU jargon referred to as ‘core Europe’. Greece’s democratic institutions are being systematically undermined: the media are more often than not mouthpieces of the political parties; the judiciary is distrusted and degraded; the Parliament and the party system are discredited.

Yet in all this, encouraging signs must be sought out, emphasized and supported. They are necessary if the resilience challenge is to be met.

The Greek state with all its failures, weaknesses and mishaps is retreating, and as it retreats it is leaving a number of voids. Rather than see this as a zero-sum game, it can be seized as an opportunity by new forms of civil society. Greek civil society has traditionally been significantly under-developed, poorly organized with limited influence and even more limited independence. Yet it is maybe this sector that has the widest scope for independent action at present. As the state and private sectors are being hammered by the economic and political crises the country is undergoing, the non-governmental and not-for-profit sectors that have been long under-performing, have perhaps the best opportunity to be creative and offer novel solutions and be a true agent of change in the present conjuncture of circumstances.

As economic conditions have severely deteriorated, there has been an unprecedented mushrooming of initiatives and efforts to cater to the needs of society’s most vulnerable groups. Radio stations have paired up with supermarket chains and civil society organizations to collect donations and contributions in kind; medical networks such as ‘Medecins du Monde’ and ‘Medecins Sans Frontiers’ have dynamically responded to the health needs of migrant minorities and homeless citizens particularly in downtown Athens; voluntarism has bounced back (the Athens 2004 Olympic Games had constituted a unique eruption of voluntarism that fizzled out shortly after the games ended) and is becoming the last level of support that many humanitarian and philanthropic NGOs can count on given that the state has not only frozen all funding to NGOs but has also cut back on basic social services. New networks bringing together young Greeks rely on the internet and social media platforms to mobilize citizens in environmental protection initiatives. Similarly, media outlets and artists are mobilized to support events aimed at promoting human rights, tolerance, and respect for cultural and religious diversity in a vibrant effort to fight back against the electoral rise of the neo-nazi Golden Dawn party.

Tuesday, July 24th marked the 38th anniversary of the restoration of democracy in Greece after a seven-year military dictatorship (1967-1974). If this anniversary constitutes an opportunity to reflect on why the post-dictatorship era, known as the metapolitefsi, is ending in such socio-political anxiety and anger, it should also be approached as a milestone from which to spark a fundamental shift in public mentality in Greece and for citizens to express their democratic resilience.

As has been often argued, social innovation tends to thrive in the most challenging, unsettled times and seemingly restrictive conditions. In effect, in times of crises, the ability of citizens to develop resilience is fundamental for their country’s democratic life. This social activism may become the platform upon which Greek civil society can develop and strengthen its credibility as a socially responsible sector that will seize this momentum to contribute dynamically and creatively to addressing the weaknesses that characterize democracy in Greece. The scope for action is wide: multiculturalism, religious diversity, racism and xenophobia, gender equality, anti-discrimination, protection of the most vulnerable and marginalized sections of society, protection of the environment, governmental accountability are but a few of the core sectors that urgently need to be addressed.

Eleven talented Stanford seniors have completed the Undergraduate Senior Honors Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) to graduate with honors in democracy, development, and the rule of law. Completing their theses on issues of global importance ranging from the impact of technology on government openness to the effectiveness of democratic governance projects, CDDRL honors students have contributed original research and analysis to policy-relevant topics. They will graduate from Stanford University on June 17.

Over the course of the year-long program, students worked in consultation with CDDRL affiliated faculty members and attended honors research workshops to develop their thesis project. Many traveled abroad to collect data, conduct interviews, and to spend time in the country they were researching. Collectively, their topics documented some of the most pressing issues impacting democracy today in China, Sudan, Greece, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Latin America, and beyond.  

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After graduation, several honors students will leave Stanford to pursue careers at McKinsey & Company consulting group, serve as war crime monitors in Cambodia, work at a brand and marketing consultancy in San Francisco, conduct data analysis at a Palo Alto-based technology firm, work at a Boston-based international development finance startup using targeted investment for poverty alleviation, and conduct research in the political science field. The rest will be pursuing advanced and co-terminal degrees at Columbia Journalism School, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University.

A list of the 2012 graduating class of CDDRL Undergraduate Honors students, their theses advisors, and a link to their theses can be found here:

Greece's recent elections failed to produce a parliamentary majority, leaving the political system fragmented and the economy on the brink of collapse. A fresh round of voting is scheduled for June 17 amidst skepticism that Greece may withdraw from the eurozone and default on its debt. Like French voters who elected a new president this month, Greeks are railing against harsh austerity measures and the European model of economic liberalism.

CDDRL Visiting Scholar Ruby Gropas is now in Athens as a lecturer at the Democritus University of Thrace and research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy where she researches trends of protest and opposition to Europe. During this pivotal moment in European history, Gropas interprets the election results and what they mean for the future of Greece and the EU.

Was the outcome of the Greek election a surprise to you?

It was not a surprise, but an unpleasant acknowledgement of a grim reality. The messages and trends had been clear for awhile. It is only the intensity of the results that shocked political analysts, politicians and even citizens both in Greece and the world over.

How has the Greek political system and society been affected by this election?

The political system has imploded. The two main governing parties are severely weakened, beaten, punished, defied and delegitimized, leaving the political scene more fragmented than ever. The election plunged the country into even further political and economic uncertainty as 50 percent of the votes cast were in support of parties from both the left and right that reject the terms of the bailout and denounce the associated austerity policies.

Politics and society have become polarized once more along a new political cleavage that is formulated as pro or anti-bailout positions. Severe austerity policies against a background of poor governance, corruption scandals, economic mismanagement, and growing economic insecurity have pushed the electorate to vote for the extremes.

What can we expect from the run-off elections?

Given that all attempts at creating a coalition government of one form or another failed, two very different dilemmas are put to the electorate. The centrist parties are declaring that the conditions of the bailout cannot be denounced. But they are suggesting that that there is room for adjustment through negotiation with our European partners.

The parties opposing the conditions of the ‘Solidarity Pact’ refute this, arguing that the choice put to voters next month is about ending austerity. Regardless of what position one takes, forthcoming elections are essentially a referendum for or against Greece’s European future.

What do the election results in Greece and France mean for Europe and the future of the eurozone?

In Greece, the vote was a call for anti-austerity agendas and programs aimed towards Brussels, Berlin, and Frankfurt (the European Central Bank seat), just as much as its own politicians. The election results have led to an outburst of declarations and scenarios claiming that Greece’s exit from the eurozone is now inevitable and even more claims that a ‘Grexit’ is by no means an option. Continued instability and uncertainty – combined with volatile markets – are sending ripples across the entire eurozone, testing the limits of European solidarity and most likely the endurance of the euro.

French President François Hollande’s victory has given hope to those wishing to revisit the 'Merkozy' austerity program and envision a new role for the European Central Bank.

Do you think these developments will incentivize political change in the EU?

They already have. Yet much more is needed. What is clear now is that the current state of Europe and the eurozone's political integration are neither sustainable nor a viable pattern for the future. There has long been a disconnect between Europe’s political elites and its citizens and for too long the academic and public debate has stressed the need to bridge this disconnect. It is now imperative to organize politics in Europe and give the eurozone a political framework to generate the policy consensus that it needs to address current and future challenges.

What is the message the European voter is sending through the ballot box?

The core messages are “Yes to Europe," but "No to this kind of Europe.” These election results have shown that severe austerity politics are not working and that citizens are calling – in some cases demanding – for a change of politics. More strikingly, they have also highlighted that discontented citizens who feel marginalized, ignored and insecure turn to extreme right-wing nationalist and xenophobic forces. These are the same forces that the entire project of European integration aimed at eradicating over half a century ago.

Is there a silver lining to recent events in Europe?

European citizens have returned to politics and are driven by a desire to provoke change in the EU. The eurozone crisis has transformed the political debate in more EU member states on ‘European’ matters and on what sort of politics and policies need to be pursued at the EU level. This is crucial for the development of a long-aspired transnational political space within and across the EU, and a greater politicization of Europe.