The Web of Power: How Elite Networks Shaped War and China

Scholars have argued that powerful individuals can influence the path of a nation's development. Yet, the process through which individuals affect macro-level political economy outcomes remains unclear.  This study uses the deadliest civil war in history, the Taiping Rebellion (1850--1864), to elucidate how one individual---Zeng Guofan---employed his personal elite networks to organize an army that suppressed the rebellion, and how these networks consequently affected the power distribution of the nation. Two findings stand out: (i) counties with more elites in Zeng's pre-war networks experienced more soldier deaths after he took power; and (ii) the post-war political power shifted significantly toward the home counties of these very elites, which created a less-balanced national-level power distribution.  Our findings highlight the role of elite networks that propagate individual-level influences to shape national politics and the distribution of power in a society. 

---

About the Speaker

Ruixue Jia is a Visiting Senior Fellow at London School of Economics and an Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego. She is interested in the interplay of economics, history and politics. One stream of her research focuses on understanding elite formation and elite influence, in both historical and modern contexts. A second focus of her work is the deep historical roots of economic development. More recently, she started following the ongoing transformation of the manufacturing sector in China and expanded her interest to labor and technology issues. For more information, please visit her personal site.

---

This event will be held in-person at Stanford University, however, the lecture will be recorded. If you are interested in viewing the recording, please contact Debbie Aube.

Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

---

 

While the number of women in political office around the world is on the rise, men continue to outnumber women at high rates in top leadership positions. There are many reasons why it remains difficult for women to reach, and keep, powerful positions within politics that cover a myriad of electoral, institutional, and individual conditions. Women often become leaders of organizations precisely when leadership conditions are most difficult, and therefore less attractive to powerful men (i.e. the glass cliff). Under these conditions, we might expect women to face greater challenges during their leadership, potentially affecting how long they are able to maintain their leadership roles. Thus, it is impossible to investigate how gender impacts leadership without accounting for selection conditions that place leaders in power. In this paper we take a holistic approach to examining the gendered nature of leadership survival. We investigate how the conditions under which party leaders are chosen, coupled with party performance while in office, impact how long men and women serve as party leaders. In order to do so, we construct a two-stage model that accounts for the endogeneity of the selection process alongside the impact of party performance on the survival of leaders. Using data from 212 leadership terms in eleven industrialized democracies between 1979 and 2018, we find that while women leaders are selected under similar conditions to men, their leadership tenure is more vulnerable to shifts in vote share. Vote share appears to be the main driver of women’s replacement. Men are less susceptible to changes in votes share than women but are also punished for poor poll performance and government loss.

 

Andrea S. Aldrich is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Yale University and her research interests are focused on political representation, gender, and comparative political institutions. Her work examines the relationship between internal political party dynamics and legislative representation. She is particularly interested in investigating the influence of internal party organization on gender equality in elections and party leadership, and her research has recently been published in JCMS: the Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, and Politics & Gender. Before arriving at Yale, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Houston with the Political Parties Database under the direction of Dr. Susan Scarrow, a visiting scholar at Texas A&M University, and Fulbright Scholar at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by April 21, 2022.

 

Co-sponsored by:

CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program trains students from any academic department at Stanford to prepare them to write a policy-relevant research thesis with global impact on a subject touching on democracy, development, and the rule of law. For our final Spring 2022 seminar, please join us to hear our Honors Program award winners present their research.

Adrian Scheibler, Firestone Medal winner
 

Major: International Relations
Thesis Advisor: Christophe Crombez

Thesis Title: Challenging the State: Western European Regionalism in the Era of Financial Crisis

Abstract: The Global Financial Crisis and its aftershocks have substantially altered the Western European political landscape. But while the literature has extensively focused on the impacts of the economic hardship on traditional party competition, it has often failed to consider the center-periphery dimension. My thesis addresses both the demand for and supply of regionalist ideologies during the crisis. Using an original dataset containing 8 countries, 35 regions, and 128 regionalist parties, it finds that voters did not increase their support for regionalist parties during the crisis and may have even turned their backs on these political actors. In addition, I consider the reactions of regionalist parties in three Spanish autonomous communities - Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia - to the crisis. I find evidence of regionalist mobilization on the issue and even some indications of radicalization of regionalist demands. Taken together, these findings raise interesting implications for the impacts of the financial crisis and the interaction between economic indicators, party competition, and voting patterns.

 

Michal Skreta, CDDRL Outstanding Thesis winner
 

 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Register: https://bit.ly/3Ncvj7B

AHPP “Aligning incentives” series final webinar: May 12th 6pm PDT, May 13th 9am in Hong Kong and Singapore

How has Myanmar’s health system dealt with the devastation caused by the coup and the pandemic, and what are the current opportunities and challenges for response and recovery? In this panel of two experts, Dr. Thin Zaw will first discuss how Myanmar’s health system and health workforce are endeavoring to respond to the syndemic crisis, a deadly combination of the global pandemic, the military coup, and post-coup civil conflicts. She will also discuss how stakeholders are working together to try to mitigate the crisis, and how a federal health system could be built up to align incentives for effective collaboration among ethnic health organizations. Second, Dr. Tun will provide a grassroots medical humanitarian perspective on what is happening in Myanmar. He will present results of a mixed-methods survey conducted in non-military-controlled areas from October to December 2021, discussing how Myanmar professionals including healthcare workers are spearheading the Civil Disobedience Movement, helping internally displaced people, and trying to address the healthcare needs of populations in conflict areas.

Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw (MBBS, MPP, PhD), who is a Burmese national, is a medical doctor, epidemiologist and health systems researcher currently working as a Lecturer in the School of Public Health in the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Science in Exile initiative, which brings together at-risk, displaced and refugee scientists along with like-minded organizations who work together to strengthen systems that support, protect and integrate such affected scientists. Phyu Phyu’s research interests are equity, health and education policies, Southeast Asia health systems and policies, sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, poverty eradication, and human rights issues. Dr. Thin Zaw is also a public health and policy consultant giving technical advice to think tanks and non-governmental organizations.

Nay-Lin Tun (MD, MPP) is a medical doctor by training, and recently earned a Master in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore. He works as a program manager for a local organization that focuses on social cohesion and pluralism among diverse communities. In this role, he manages programs that help vulnerable communities in remote, hard-to-reach, and conflict-affected areas of Myanmar to get access to health services and provide financial assistance to injured civilians who need emergency referrals to private hospitals. Dr. Tun experienced a turning point in his career in 2017 when he went to the conflict-riven northern Rakhine areas. Witnessing people’s suffering and discrimination firsthand compelled him to initiate mobile health clinics and speak out in the media about health care challenges. On a voluntary basis, he is coordinating international donations and grants to field medical teams in conflict-affected areas of the country.

Register: bit.ly/3tymltK

Gender and socioeconomic differences affect a country's ability to support its older adult population. Specifically, the longevity risk associated with females' longer life expectancy entails different needs between genders in old age. In the first project, we aimed to quantify gender differences in the aging experience of OECD countries. Our second project compares differences in projections of disability and chronic diseases among future cohorts of older adults, including disparities by educational attainment. The model projected future chronic diseases and disability trends in Singapore and South Korea from 2020 to 2050. This presentation focuses on gender and socioeconomic differences in aging.

Register: bit.ly/3wpm8uB

Most studies on China’s relations with Southeast Asian states focus on China’s power and how such power has been used to achieve influence in the region. The emphasis is on intention and causation: how China willingly uses its power to coerce, coopt, or persuade others to behave in a certain way. Professor Han will acknowledge but go beyond this conventional approach to explore the unintended outcomes and ripple effects that are also associated with China’s presence in Southeast Asia. His talk will feature a typology for use in thinking about China’s regional presence and the various everyday forms that it takes. He will argue that we need to understand such nuance and complexity if we are to make sense of China’s relations with Southeast Asia and what they imply.

Enze Han is APARC's 2021-2022 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia for the spring quarter of 2022. Dr. Han is also an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's Department of Politics and Public Administration. His research interests include ethnic politics in China, Southeast Asia’s relations with China, and the politics of state formation in the borderland area shared by China, Myanmar, and Thailand. His many publications include “Non-State Chinese Actors and Their Impact on Relations between China and Mainland Southeast Asia,” ISEAS Trends in Southeast Asia (2021); Asymmetrical Neighbours: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia (2019); and Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China (2013). Positions and affiliations prior to his professorship at UHK include the University of London (SOAS), Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the East Asia Institute (Seoul).  His 2010 doctorate in Political Science is from George Washington University.

Stanford students are invited to a question-and-answer session with Professor Michael McFaul about the current war in Ukraine. Professor McFaul is a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. This event is a chance to hear from him directly about Russia's attack on Ukraine, and for students to hear and connect with each other during this urgent crisis.

The central banks are at the center of any financial system.

This talk discusses the changing features of public policy and administration in Turkey, comparing central banking under the presidential and parliamentary systems. It argues that the deinstitutionalization of conventional central banking norms and practices is the mirror image of new presidential public policymaking and administration. Not only did this process erode the policy capacity of the Central Bank but also that of the Turkish state. Therefore, one should not be surprised by current policy design and implementation failures, poor policy outcomes, and increased socioeconomic costs as these tendencies are not reversed.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Caner Bakır is a Visiting Fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a professor of Political Science at Koc University, and the Director of the Research Centre for Globalisation, Peace and Democratic Governance (GLODEM). His research in political economy and public policy focuses on comparative institutional analysis and policy change and has appeared in leading journals such as Policy Sciences, Governance, Public Administration, and Policy and Society. He is the Associate Editor of Policy Sciences and the Journal Comparative Policy Analysis, editorial board member of the Journal of Economic Policy Research, and the International Journal of Emerging Markets. In addition, he has authored and co-edited nine books. He is the recipient of The Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Turkey (TUBITAK) 2010 Incentive Award and 2008 Early Career Researcher Award.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Globalization, Peace, and Democratic Governance at Koc University.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world.

In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.

Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.

Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Daniel Treisman is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2021-2). His research focuses on Russian politics and economics as well as comparative political economy, including the analysis of democratization, the politics of authoritarian states, political decentralization, and corruption. A former lead editor of The American Political Science Review, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford) and the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), as well as receiving fellowships from the German Marshall Fund of the US and the Smith Richardson Foundation. His book, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (The Free Press 2011) was one of the Financial Times’ “Best Political Books of 2011”. He is the editor of The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia (Brookings Institution Press 2018), and co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press 2022).

 

At this time, in-person attendance is limited to Stanford affiliates only. We continue to welcome our greater community to join virtually via Zoom.

For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

                                                                                           

About the Event: Existing literature posits that the main challenge for nuclear security guarantees lies in making the promise of protection sufficiently credible. If allies do not believe their guarantor will actually come to their aid, they may seek alternate means of protection, including by investing in nuclear infrastructure. Credible security guarantees, on the other hand, are thought to reassure allies. In contrast to this approach, Dr. Sukin argues that credible nuclear guarantees can backfire. These guarantees can cause clients to fear that their guarantors will drag them into a precipitous nuclear conflict. Fears of nuclear escalation by their guarantor can drive clients to distance themselves from their alliance or seek stronger independent nuclear capabilities. Using survey experiments and case studies of U.S. alliances in East Asia and Europe, this project explores the risks of credible U.S. nuclear security guarantees.

About the Speaker: Dr. Lauren Sukin is currently a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. In September 2022, she will join the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science as an Assistant Professor of International Relations. Dr. Sukin holds a Ph.D. (2021) and M.A. (2020) from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She also holds A.B.s from the Departments of Political Science and Literary Arts at Brown University (2016). Dr. Sukin’s research examines issues of international security, focusing on the role of nuclear weapons in international politics.