After a distinguished career in law, public policy, and broadcasting in her native Toronto, Vivian Bercovici served as Canada's Ambassador to Israel from 2014 to 2016. She then made Aliyah, becoming an Israeli citizen and settling in Tel-Aviv. Over the past decade, Bercovici has become a leading commentator on Israeli society and politics, foreign policy, and Israel-Diaspora relations. In February 2023, she founded the State of Tel-Aviv podcast and newsletter. After the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack, Vivian Bercovici moved to Kibbutz Ruchama in the south of Israel, renaming her podcast State of Tel-Aviv and Beyond. Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Vivian Bercovici.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vivian Bercovici served as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel from 2014-16 and, in a short time, established herself as a strong, articulate, and forceful commentator and leader on Israeli politics, foreign policy relationships, and the business environment. Prior to her appointment by former PM Stephen Harper as Ambassador, Vivian practiced law in Toronto for 24 years. She was actively involved in the dynamic Jewish community in Toronto, wrote a column on Israel-related issues in The Toronto Star, and taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She currently resides in Israel and is engaged in private business ventures as well as public speaking on issues related to the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel. 

Virtual Event Only.

This research introduces the concept of police-led armed groups (PLAGs) to better capture the institutional distinctiveness of armed formations organized by active-duty police officers. Unlike traditional non-state armed groups, PLAGs benefit from insider access to state infrastructure, impunity networks, and coercive training — blurring the boundaries between extralegal and illicit violence. The paper distinguishes PLAGs from both autonomous non-state actors and state-aligned militias, offering a conceptual framework based on group composition, organizational autonomy, and the strategic use of police authority. To demonstrate the utility of this framework, I reclassify the armed groups documented in the 2008 CPI das Milícias (Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on Milícias) in Rio de Janeiro. This reclassification reveals that a substantial number of groups previously treated as PLAGs are more accurately understood as non-state armed criminal groups. This conceptual innovation has implications for theories of state violence, criminal governance, and security sector reform in high-violence democracies.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ana Paula Pellegrino is the Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and will join the School of Government at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile as an Assistant Professor in July 2026. Her research examines criminal and political violence in Latin America, with a particular focus on armed actors — including police and armed groups — their attitudes, and their behaviors. Her book project investigates why police form armed groups. Pellegrino received her Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University in 2025, specializing in Comparative Government. Her work has been supported by Georgetown University, Fundação Estudar’s Leaders program, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation’s Emerging Scholars initiative.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Why do opposition parties so often struggle to challenge aspiring autocrats in elections? I argue that elite economic coercion—the credible threat of economic retaliation against opposition-aligned elites—is a core, overlooked authoritarian strategy that erodes opposition candidate quality and electoral appeal. Incumbents leverage control over state institutions and resources to punish candidates and their families through firings, blacklisting, tax audits, and contract denials. This deters state-dependents from political entry, shrinking opposition parties’ talent pool. I use original data from Hungary’s autocratization episode. New panel data on the performance of candidate-connected firms documents widespread economic retaliation upon opposition political entry. A survey experiment with opposition elites demonstrates its negative effect on political ambition, while data on candidate backgrounds indicate a decline in opposition quality, particularly the share of candidates in high-quality state-dependent occupations. The findings highlight the key role of coercive economic retaliation in preventing successful opposition challenge during democratic decline.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hanna Folsz is a 6th-year PhD Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her research examines the electoral challenges and opportunities in countering democratic decline. Her dissertation develops a theory of “opposition traps” to explain why opposition parties often struggle to challenge authoritarian dominant parties in autocratizing regimes, and why electoral turnover frequently emerges from new opposition formations. She brings evidence from Hungary’s autocratization since 2010 using a multi-method approach that combines original large-N datasets, text data, elite and mass surveys, and qualitative research.

Folsz grew up in Budapest, Hungary, and completed a B.A. in Economics and Politics at Durham University and an MSc in Political Science and Political Economy at the London School of Economics. In addition to English and Hungarian, she speaks Polish, Spanish, French, and German. She co-organizes the East European Politics Graduate Workshop (EEPGW) and is a member of the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (PovGov) and the Democracy and Polarization Lab (DPL) at Stanford.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

This seminar will present research featured in Killian Clarke's recently published book, Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed. Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? This talk answers these questions, marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution. It will lay out the book's movement-centric argument, which emphasizes the strategies revolutionary leaders embrace both during their opposition campaigns and after they seize power. Movements that wage violent resistance and espouse radical ideologies establish regimes that are very difficult to overthrow. By contrast, democratic revolutions like Egypt's are more vulnerable, though the talk will also lay out a path by which they too can avoid counterrevolution. In an era of resurgent authoritarianism worldwide, this talk will shed light on one particularly violent form of reactionary politics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Killian Clarke is an Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His research focuses on protest, revolution, authoritarianism, and democratization, with a regional focus on the Middle East. He is the author of Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge University Press), as well as peer-reviewed articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and World Politics. He received his PhD in Politics from Princeton University.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to the William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

When, how, and to what ends do opposition parties look beyond their borders for support? In authoritarian and hybrid regimes, oppositions face formidable obstacles to winning power and ensuring fair elections. International engagement can provide resources to help overcome these barriers, but it also carries risks, from repression to charges of “foreign interference.” In his book project, Samet develops the concept of opposition diplomacy: efforts by opposition politicians to encourage international pressure on regimes through lobbying, international networks, and diaspora allies. Drawing on cross-national data and interviews across Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States, he shows that oppositions often turn abroad when domestic pathways are blocked, and that such strategies can shape foreign policy decisions like sanctions. Yet these dynamics frequently concentrate international pressure on the most entrenched regimes, unintentionally limiting prospects for reform. The project highlights both the global influence of opposition actors and the limits of democracy promotion.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Oren Samet is the Einstein-Moos Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His research examines the international dimensions of authoritarian politics and democratization, with a focus on opposition politics and a regional emphasis on Southeast Asia. His work explores opposition competition in authoritarian elections, processes of autocratization, and the challenges of democracy promotion and governance aid. His academic research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Political Communication, and he has also written for Foreign Policy, Slate, and World Politics Review. Before academia, he was based in Bangkok, Thailand, as Research and Advocacy Director of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, working with politicians and civil society across Southeast Asia. He also served as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He will join Rice University as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2026.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

When and how do autocrats use violence to win elections? Why don't they always use violence? This talk uses the past 25 years of elections in Zimbabwe to argue that autocrats try to avoid election violence and often use it as a last resort because it carries the risk of both backfire from citizens and holdup by organized agents of violence. Citizens’ reactions to repression are high variance and difficult for autocrats to predict because they depend in part on internal psychological characteristics that shape emotional reactions to violence. When electoral repression is used as a last resort, it has implications for how and where it can be organized. However, autocrats cannot always scale back election violence, particularly when it is perpetrated by state security forces. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Lauren Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UC Davis. She is a member of Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) and a Steering Committee member of the Future of Democracy Initiative at the UC IGCC. She co-runs the UC Davis Contentious Politics Lab with Juan Tellez.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Climate change is among the most contentious issues of the 21st century. Without a shared understanding of its consequences, securing support for climate policies remains difficult. We hypothesize that exposure to tailored opportunities to trade in financial markets, particularly in energy stocks that are central to the green transition, can induce experiential learning and greater policy support for climate mitigation efforts. We test our hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial. We find that randomly assigned exposure to trade in green and brown energy stocks leads treated individuals to express stronger agreement with the view that climate change is driven by human activity, that it will affect quality of life in the U.S., and that the U.S. government and U.S. companies should do more to reduce emissions. Treated respondents also exhibit a greater tendency to donate to climate causes and factor climate change into personal decisions regarding where to live, work, and invest. These attitudinal changes are particularly pronounced among individuals identifying as Republicans, who are more likely to be skeptical of climate change at baseline. In line with our primary theoretical argument, our findings suggest exposure to financial markets incentivizes learning, which in turn shapes climate-related beliefs, preferences, and behaviors.

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Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and a professor of economics and of political science by courtesy. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, in the Freeman-Spogli Institute, and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Prior to joining the GSB, Saumitra was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. He has been a fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in political economy from the American Political Science Association for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO and the World Bank. He holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to the William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Although much work examines foreign aid’s impact on development outcomes, its effect on bureaucracies — institutions that are key to development and profoundly influenced by aid interventions—remains understudied. I argue that project-based aid alters financial and social aspects of work over which bureaucrats hold salient preferences, generating tradeoffs that drive bureaucrats to redirect effort from routine functions toward donor-funded initiatives. Drawing on interviews, surveys, and survey experiments with more than 600 Ugandan bureaucrats, I find that, despite preferring government funding and autonomy, bureaucrats are drawn to better-paid aid projects, thus diverting effort away from regular duties. They also prefer departments with substantial donor funding, although it undermines the equity and teamwork they value. These findings reveal why aid can weaken bureaucracies: the same incentives that boost performance on donor projects divert effort from government programming and erode the organizational cohesion needed for lasting bureaucratic capacity.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Maria Nagawa is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Maria earned her PhD in Public Policy and Political Science from Duke University and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Maria studies state building and development in the Global South, with a substantive focus on the consequences of foreign interventions, the resilience of civil society, and the organization of state authority. Her book project investigates how foreign aid reshapes bureaucracies in developing countries. Prior to starting her PhD, Maria was a Research Associate at the Economic Policy Research Centre and a Lecturer at Makerere University Business School in Kampala, Uganda. In addition, Maria was a Visiting Researcher at the BRICS Policy Research Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Affairs in Denver, Colorado.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Conference Room E-008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.