Abstract:

Speaker Bio:

 

Image

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the strategies authoritarian regimes employ to perpetuate their rule, including censorship, redistribution, and responsiveness, and how technology facilitates and hinders these strategies. Her work focuses primarily on China, and uses computational and experimental methods to measure and examine different components of these strategies.

Abstract:

Designing peace agreements that can be signed and sustained can be difficult in civil conflict. A recent transformation in successful settlement design has produced many cases that include electoral or other political participation provisions. In this paper, we examine popular support for the transformation from bullets to ballots, testing whether individuals object to providing former rebels with the protections and legitimacy of electoral participation. Using a survey experiment in the context of Colombia’s current peace process between the Government and the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), we find that the latter is a highly controversial actor in the country—indeed, invoking the specific group diminishes support for the peace process, particularly accords that would allow for increased representation in municipalities more affected by conflict. These findings are important to understanding how to design settlements, providing policy implications for the peace process with the FARC in Colombia but also in other civil conflicts that negotiators may seek to end through electoral participation by the former rebels, a proposal that has become common in many cases, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Speaker Bio:

Image

Abstract:

Ongoing crises of urban insecurity in Central America have spurred novel forms of state engagement in high-risk neighbourhoods. In 2012, the Guatemalan government deployed new urban security task forces in some of the capital’s most notorious ‘red zones’, the poor neighbourhoods where gangs, violence, and delinquency are seen to be concentrated. While officials trumpeted their success in pacifying these sectors, their gangs (maras) continued to operate much as they previously had under the new military occupations.

Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in one red zone neighbourhood, this paper examines both gang violence and state power from the perspective of residents struggling to secure a measure of order in a dangerous and volatile environment. I argue that situations of chronic urban insecurity can create opportunities for the state to tighten its relationship with marginal communities, but that they do so in a way that may raise further impediments to substantively improving democratic governance.

Speaker Bio:

Image

About the Topic: Despite massive research and public policy efforts aimed at diversification, gender segregation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics remains extreme in affluent democracies. More surprising is evidence that women’s representation in many “STEM” fields is weaker in advanced industrial societies than in poorer, reputably gender traditional ones. The most obvious explanation is that broad-based existential security frees more women to realize aspirations for (less lucrative) non-STEM pursuits. I will discuss another piece of the puzzle by focusing on the aspirations themselves and how these vary with societal affluence. Over-time data on eighth-grade boys and girls in 32 countries provide strong evidence that the gender gap in aspirations for mathematically-related jobs increases with societal affluence, controlling for traits of individual students (parental education, affinity for school, mathematics test scores). This affluence effect is not attributable to cross-national differences in the gender-labeling of science, Internet access, or women’s educational or economic integration. Results are consistent with arguments suggesting that gender beliefs more strongly influence career aspirations in affluent, “postmaterialist” societies.

About the Speaker:  Maria Charles is Professor and Chair of Sociology, Area Director for Sex and Gender Research, and an Affiliate Professor of Feminist Studies at U.S. Santa Barbara. She specializes in the international comparative study of social inequalities, particularly cross-national differences in women's economic, educational, and family roles. She has published extensively on gender segregation, most recently on the ideological and organizational factors that contribute to woman's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM") fields around the world. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University, and Bachelor’s degrees from UCSB in Environmental Studies and Political Science.

Abstract:

The recent rise in mass popular protests – many with regional spillover effects and some with far-reaching consequences for international peace and security –  has raised the question of how the international community should respond to these events, and to what end. For the United Nations, the question becomes acute in protest situations in which there is a tangible risk of large-scale violence and human rights violations. Yet mounting a rapid and effective response is a particular challenge in these contexts.  Drawing on case studies, practitioner interviews, and the author’s UN experience, this presentation will examine five variables that are critical to success: timing, access, leverage, the ability to propose solutions for non-violent change, and finding the right mix of principle and pragmatism. It will argue that these variables are not static, but dynamic and inter-independent. Getting them ‘right’ in an unfolding crisis is difficult, but it is possible to draw some preliminary lessons from the cases reviewed.

Speaker Bio:

Image

Abstract:

Do cleaner elections lead to more responsive politicians? In many developing countries, domestic and international organizations take various initiatives to make elections cleaner. These efforts are anchored in the hope that cleaner elections will strengthen the control that citizens have over their elected representatives and ensure that politicians are responsive to their constituents’ desires. Scholars are, however, yet to show empirically that election quality positively affects the behavior of politicians. I provide a novel experimental approach to test the impact of cleaner elections on the responsiveness of Members of Parliament (MPs) in Ghana, a consolidating democracy in West Africa. Preliminary results show that MPs elected in cleaner elections provide more local public goods and constituency services but do not perform any better in their parliamentary attendance.

Speaker Bio:

Image

Debate surrounding democratization in Muslim-majority countries has centered on the potential for the political process to strengthen or constrain radical Islamist forces. Virtually absent from this discourse is empirical evidence linking the passage of Islamist policies to subsequent electoral outcomes at the local level. Aiming to fill this gap, Dr. Buehler will present and analyze an original dataset of shari’a regulations passed by local governments across Indonesia. He will examine the content and timing of newly-passed shari’a regulations in relation to geopolitical history, the electoral cycle, and electoral outcomes. Such regulations are strongly concentrated in areas with a history of political Islam. They map on to the electoral cycle in ways that suggest that those passing them are motivated less by religious doctrine than by the quest for electoral advantage. However, those passing shari’a regulations do not excel in subsequent elections. In Indonesia, profane political agendas appear to trump Islamist agendas.

Image

Michael’s scholarly career has included teaching positions and research fellowships at Columbia University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. His doctorate is from The London School of Economics and Political Science.