Delivering Justice to the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia
Abstract:
CDDRL post-doctoral fellow Bilal Siddiqi will address the question of whether progressive, statutory legal reform can meaningfully affect the lives of the poor, using observational and experimental evidence from Liberia in a new study co-authored with Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development. The authors develop a simple model of forum choice and test it using new survey data on over 4,500 legal disputes taken to a range of customary and formal legal institutions in rural Liberia. Their results suggest that the poor would benefit most from access to low-cost, remedial justice that incorporates the progressive features of the formal law. They then present the results of a randomized controlled trial of a legal empowerment intervention in Liberia providing pro bono mediation and advocacy services, using community paralegals trained in the formal law. The authors find strong and robust impacts on justice outcomes, as well as significant downstream welfare benefits—including increases in household and child food security of 0.24 and 0.38 standard deviations, respectively. They interpret these results as preliminary evidence that there are large socioeconomic gains to be had from improving access to justice, not by bringing the rural poor into the formal domain of magistrates’ courts, government offices, and police stations, but by bringing the formal law into the organizational forms of the custom through third-party mediation and advocacy.
About the Speaker:
Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone.
Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Bilal Siddiqi
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone.
Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.
Electoral Integrity, Violence and Vote-Buying
This two day workshop will bring together scholars whose research actively engages problems of electoral irregularities. Irregularities range from high levels of pre-election violence to electoral fraud to vote-buying and patronage. All these tactics potentially affect the outcomes of elections and all disempower citizens in their attempts to have their voices heard in the polity. On the whole, scholars who have concentrated on understanding patronage and clientelism have not interacted with those working on electoral fraud, and neither group has talked at great length to those expert in electoral violence. This workshop will bring together scholars with specific expertise in each of these topics in order to establish a new dialogue across expertise.
Agenda (subject to change):
Day One: April 12, 2013
8:30-9:00 am Breakfast
9:00-9:10 am—Welcoming Remarks Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University; Miriam Golden, UCLA
9:10-10:30 am—Panel 1: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (1)
- Karen Ferree, UCSD: “Violating the Secret Ballot: The Political Logic of Fraud in Ghana’s 2008 Elections”
- James Long, Harvard University: “Scalable Information and Communications Technology Reduces Electoral Fraud in Fragile Democracies”
- Discussant: Miriam Golden, UCLA
10:30-10:45 am Break
10:45-12:10 pm—Panel 2: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (2)
- Isabela Mares, Columbia University: “The supply of electoral intimidation: Evidence from Imperial Germany”
- Eric Kramon and Miriam Golden: “Electoral Violence and Fraud in the 2012 Ghanaian Elections: Polling Station Results”
- Discussant: James Fearon, Stanford University
12:10-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00-3:25 pm—Panel 3: Electoral Fraud, Integrity, and Violence (3)
- George Ofosu, UCLA: “Transitional Multiparty Elections: Do Military Regimes Perform Better at Promoting Fair Elections?”
- Joseph Asunka, UCLA: “Electoral investment through formal institutions”
- Discussant: Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University
3:25-3:40 pm Break
3:40-5:00 pm—Panel 4: Clientelism
- Mike Callen, UCSD, and Saad Gulzar, NYU: “Clientelism and Health Worker Absence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Pakistan”
- Nahomi Ichino, Harvard: “Crossing the Line: Local Ethnic Geography and Voting in Ghana”
- Discussant: Barbara Geddes
Day Two: April 13, 2013
9:00-9:30 am Breakfast
9:30-11:00 am—Panel 5: Clientelism and Vote Buying
- Sarah Brierley, UCLA: “Buying votes or buying time? Gift giving as an extension of the political party network in Ghana”
- Simeon Nichter, UCSD: “Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism”
- Discussant: Fred Finan, University of California, Berkeley
11:00-11:15 am Break
11:15-11:45 am—Concluding Session and Discussion
CISAC Conference Room
Beatriz Magaloni
Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA
Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.
She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.
Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.
Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.
Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.
She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb
About the Topic: The history of Pakistan's nuclear program is the history of Pakistan. With unique insider perspective, Brig. Feroz Khan unveils the fascinating interplay that took place and reveals how international opposition to the program only made it an even more significant national issue. Written by a 30-year professional in the Pakistani Army who played a senior role formulating and advocating Pakistan's security policy on nuclear and conventional arms control, 'Eating Grass' is a seminal study that tells the fascinating story of how and why Pakistan's government, scientists, and military, persevered to develop nuclear weapons capability in the face of international resistance, domestic political upheavals and regional military crises.
About the Speaker: Brig (Ret.) Feroz Hassan Khan is a lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He last served as director of arms control and disarmament affairs, in the Strategic Plans Division of the Joint Services Headquarters in Pakistan. In that position, he was a key contributor in formulating Pakistan’s security policies on nuclear and conventional arms control and strategic stability in South Asia. He produced recommendations for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and represented Pakistan in several multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations. He is the author of recently published book Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb.
CISAC Conference Room
Stephen P. Luby
Y2E2
473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305
Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, for five years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death. Immediately prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He was also the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.
During his over 25 years of public health work in low-income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work within the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) connects him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.
Managing the Risk of Pandemic Influenza Amidst Weak Government Institutions
Dr. Luby comes to us from the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B) after serving as the research director there for the past eight years in a shared position with CDC. Prior to this position, he taught at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. He will be leading our research efforts within CIGH and we are looking forward to his start in September 2012.
CISAC Conference Room
Stephen P. Luby
Y2E2
473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305
Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, for five years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death. Immediately prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He was also the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.
During his over 25 years of public health work in low-income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work within the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) connects him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.
Democracy and Discontent in Sri Lanka
Abstract:
The sanguinary Sri Lankan civil war was brought to a close in May 2009. The means adopted to bring an end to this conflict have come under considerable external criticism on the grounds of the indiscriminate use of force. Regardless of how the conflict was terminated, its end should have enabled the regime in Sri Lanka to reassure the minority Tamil community that their interests would not be overlooked in its wake. Instead the country has witnessed waves of ethnic triumphalism and dissenters have faced intimidation. Unless these trends are reversed, despite the existence of the formal trappings of democracy, the future of Sri Lanka as a viable democratic state could well be in jeopardy.
Speaker Bio:
Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has previously taught at James Madison College of Michigan State University, Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Ganguly has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a Guest Scholar at the Center for Cooperative Monitoring in Albuquerque and a Visiting Scholar at the German Institute for International and Area Studies in Hamburg.
He was also the holder of the Ngee Ann Chair in International Politics at the Rajaratnam School for International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in the spring term of 2010. Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Security, Asian Survey, Current History, the Journal of Democracy, International Security and Security Studies. A specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 20 books on the region.
His most recent books are India Since 1980 (with Rahul Mukherji), published by Cambridge University Press and Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation and Limitations on Two-Level Games (with William Thompson) published by Stanford University Press. He is currently at work on a new book, Deadly Impasse: India-Pakistan Relations at the Dawn of a New Century for Cambridge University Press.
His article on corruption in India was just published in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and he is currently writing a new book with Bill Thompson entitled The State of India (for Columbia University Press) which seeks to assess India's prospects and limitations of emerging as a great power
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Challenges of Private Sector Development in the Middle East and North Africa
Abstract:
The roots of the revolts known as the Arab Spring lie in many sources but one of the leading causes was the high rates of unemployment, low skill levels, and the growth of the youth populations. Now Arab governments are faced with the dual challenges of creating new political and economic systems that can meet the needs and demands of the peoples of their countries. This presentation will focus on the role of the private sector and the need to build an entrepreneurial eco-system that can foster rapid economic growth. Practical examples of reform programs will be emphasized drawing from the work of the Center for International Private Enterprise.
Speaker Bio:
John D. Sullivan is the executive director of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce. As associate director of the Democracy Program, Sullivan helped to establish both CIPE and the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. After serving as CIPE program director, he became executive director in 1991. Under his leadership CIPE developed a number of innovative approaches that link democratic development to market reforms: combating corruption, promoting corporate governance, building business associations, supporting the informal sector, and programs to assist women and youth entrepreneurs. Today, CIPE has more than 90 full-time staff with offices in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.
Sullivan began his career in Los Angeles’ inner city neighborhoods, helping to develop minority business programs with the Institute for Economic Research and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. In 1976 he joined the President Ford Election Committee in the research department on campaign strategy, polling, and market research. Sullivan joined the public affairs department of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1977 as a specialist in business and economic education.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Dealing with Kazakhstan’s Soviet nuclear legacy
When the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991, the independent Republic of Kazakhstan was left with the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal and a huge nuclear infrastructure, including lots of fissile materials, several nuclear reactors, the Ulba Metallurgical Plant, and the enormous Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. The return of the nuclear weapons to Russia (thanks to former Secretary of Defense William Perry), the transport of vulnerable highly-enriched uranium to the U.S. (Project Sapphire), the disposition of the fast reactor fuel, and upgrading of security and safeguards at its research reactors have been the subject of numerous reports. The story of what has been done with what the Soviets left behind at the test site and the dangers it presented will be the main topic of my presentation. It is a great story of how scientists from three countries worked together effectively among themselves and with their governments to deal with one of the greatest nuclear dangers in the post-Cold War era.
About the speaker: Siegfried S. Hecker is co-director of the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor (Research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He also served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997. Dr. Hecker’s research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 20 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, the nuclear aspirations of Iran and the peaceful spread of nuclear energy in Central Asia and South Korea. Dr. Hecker has visited North Korea seven times since 2004, reporting back to U.S. government officials on North Korea’s nuclear progress and testifying in front of the U.S. Congress. He is a fellow of numerous professional societies and received the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award.
CISAC Conference Room
Siegfried S. Hecker
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.
Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.
Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.
Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.
Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.
Bilal Siddiqi
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone.
Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.