This event is being live-streamed on Zoom. Registration is required: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PTnI4nwGRLCERCHdP-cogw

On August 9, 2020, Belarus held a presidential election, which Alexander Lukashenko — Belarus' president of 26 years — claimed to have won with 80 percent of the vote. Exit polling, however, demonstrated that the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, actually garnered wide popular support. Since the election, Belarusians have taken to the streets to demand a new election and/or that Lukashenko step down. But the regime appears intent on remaining in power and has used force against peaceful protesters. Workers in key factories have since gone on strike, and widespread protests continue. 

Join us for a special zoom seminar on Wednesday, August 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. PDT with Michael A. McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and former US Ambassador to Russia; Anna Grzymala-Busse, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center; and Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program at FSI in a session on the events in Belarus that will be moderated by Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on August 26th, at 10 a.m. pacific time, for a look how governments around the world are pushing to ban strong encryption. The talk will feature speakers Sam Woolley, Riana Pfefferkorn and Mathew Baum as they explore the different policy issues being used by governments to justify their agendas. This event is open to the public, but registration is required.

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Matthew A. Baum (Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2000) is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government. His research focuses on delineating the effects of domestic politics on international conflict and cooperation in general and American foreign policy in particular, as well as on the role of the mass media and public opinion in contemporary American politics. His research has appeared in over a dozen leading scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. His books include Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (2003, Princeton University Press), War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (2009, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Tim Groeling), and War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (2015, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Phil Potter). He has also contributed op-ed articles to a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blog sites in the United States and abroad. Before coming to Harvard, Baum was an associate professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA. 

Riana Pfefferkorn is the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Her work focuses on investigating and analyzing the U.S. government's policy and practices for forcing decryption and/or influencing crypto-related design of online platforms and services, devices, and products, both via technical means and through the courts and legislatures. Riana also researches the benefits and detriments of strong encryption on free expression, political engagement, economic development, and other public interests.

Dr. Samuel Woolley is a writer and researcher. He is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and in the School of Information (by courtesy) at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the program director of propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at UT. Woolley's work focuses on the ways in which emerging technology are leveraged for both democracy and control. He is the author of the book "The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth" (PublicAffairs), an exploration of how tools from artificial intelligence to virtual reality are being used in efforts to manipulate public opinion and discusses what society can do to respond. He is the co-editor (with Dr. Philip N. Howard), of the book "Computational Propaganda" (Oxford University Press), a series of country-based case studies on social media and digital information operations. 

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event: How does the widespread frustration that often accompanies democratic transitions shape the political cleavages underlying the party systems that emerge from them? Nine years after the 2010–11 uprising, Tunisia’s 2019 elections took place against a backdrop of widespread frustration with the party system that emerged during the ensuing transition. The elections presented opportunities to a diverse set of outsiders, many of whom brandished antiparty system messages, including unapologetic boosters of the former ruling party, a would-be plutocrat jailed on charges of corruption, and a broad set of antiparty independents. Drawing upon campaign materials and a nationally representative postelection survey, this presentation will describe the differences in the antiparty system messages and the ways that nostalgia underlies them. Through this analysis, I will consider a set of theoretical propositions arising from the literature on the dynamics of political cleavages in party systems in new democracies. 

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

Can intergroup contact build social cohesion after war? I randomly assigned Iraqi Christians displaced by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to an all-Christian soccer team or to a team mixed with Muslims. The intervention improved behaviors toward Muslim peers: Christians with Muslim teammates were more likely to vote for a Muslim (not on their team) to receive a sportsmanship award, register for a mixed team next season, and train with Muslims 6 months after the intervention. The intervention did not substantially affect behaviors in other social contexts, such as patronizing a restaurant in Muslim-dominated Mosul or attending a mixed social event, nor did it yield consistent effects on intergroup attitudes. Although contact can build tolerant behaviors toward peers within an intervention, building broader social cohesion outside of it is more challenging.

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**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

What are the costs of the Chinese regime's fixation on quelling dissent in the name of political order, or “stability”? Using novel datasets and a variety of methodologies, Welfare for Autocrats shows how China has reshaped its major social assistance program, Dibao, around this preoccupation, turning an effort to alleviate poverty into a tool of surveillance and repression. This distortion of Dibao damages perceptions of government competence and legitimacy and can trigger unrest among those denied benefits. Welfare for Autocrats traces how China's approach to enforcing order transformed at the turn of the 21st century and identifies the phenomenon of seepage whereby one policy—in this case, quelling dissent—alters the allocation of resources and goals of unrelated areas of government. These findings challenge the view that concessions and repression are distinct strategies in authoritarian regimes and departs from the assumption that all tools of repression were originally designed as such.

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