The 2020 U.S. Election: Stress Test for American Democracy

Time

January 14th (8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Beijing Time) 

January 13th (4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time)

Language

The language of the event will be English.

Attention

Recording (audiotaping or videotaping) during the event is not allowed.

Sponsored by the Stanford Center at Peking University and the iGCU at Peking University.

Despite a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest number of voters in 120 years turned out for the U.S. presidential election in November. After all the mail-in ballots were counted, former Vice President Joseph Biden was declared the winner of the popular vote and the Electoral College vote by a wide margin. However, Donald Trump has yet to concede defeat and has mounted a series of court challenges to fight the results, including taking his claims to the Supreme Court.

To help us understand the U.S. election results – an election that some have described as “a referendum on Trump” -- and its aftermath that some have called the “stress test for American democracy,” we convene a roundtable discussion with leading specialists from Stanford University and Peking University. 

Speakers

David BRADY holds the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and held the Morris M. Doyle Centennial Chair in Public Policy (emeritus).  He is Deputy Director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and has published eight books and over 100 papers in journals and books.  Among his more recent publications are Leadership and Growth (World Bank Publications, 2010) coedited with Michael Spence, Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Carter to Bush II (Westview Press, 2006), and Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics with Pietro Nivola (Brookings Institution Press, 2007).  His study on the “electoral basis of gridlock” is forthcoming.  

Brady has also published essays in the American Interest, Commentary, Policy Review, and National Affairs as well as numerous articles in Real Clear Politics, Project Syndicate and the Wall Street Journal.  He has twice been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Sciences Po in Paris, and The Libera Università Internazionale Degli Studi Sociali "Guido Carli" (Luiss) in Rome.  He has also been a distinguished lecturer at the American Academy in Berlin and a distinguished professor at Yonsei University in Korea.  Brady was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. 

Bruce E. CAIN is an expert in U.S. politics, and particularly the politics of California and the American West. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting in the United States, he is a prominent scholar of U.S. elections, political regulation, and the relationships between American lobbyists and elected officials. 

Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Cain was Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California (U.C.), Berkeley from 1990-2007 and Executive Director of the U.C. Washington Center from 2005-2012.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech 1988 and UC Berkeley 2003) and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000).  He is currently working on state regulatory processes and stakeholder involvement in the areas of water, energy, and the environment.

 

PAN Wei obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is now a Professor in the School of International Studies at Peking University and frequently lectures on world political theory, Chinese politics, comparative politics, and the history of American social development, etc. At present, PAN serves as the Director of the Center for Chinese and Global Affairs of Peking University. His research interests include comparative political theory, comparative politics, political methodology, and Chinese society and government.

 

 

WANG Yong holds a Ph.D. in Law from Peking University. Wang serves as the Director of the Center for International Political Economy and as a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of International Relations, all at Peking University (PKU). He is an Academic Committee Member of the Center for International Strategic Research, a Professor at the CPC Party School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, the Leading Professor of a PKU training program for senior civil servants in Hong Kong SAR, and a Professor of a PKU training program for African diplomats held by the Ministry of Commerce of China. He is also a Consultant for the Asian Development Bank, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (UK), and a member of the Global Agenda Committee of the Global Trade System of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. His research areas include Sino-US relations, Sino-US economic relations, trade politics, regional cooperation, international economic relations, international political economics, etc. In 2008, he was selected into the "Program for New Century Excellent Talents" by the Ministry of Education of China.

Moderators

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Oi has published extensively on China’s reforms. Recent books include Fateful Decisions:  Choices that will Shape China’s Future, coedited with Thomas Fingar (Stanford University Press, 2020), Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, coedited with Steven Goldstein (Stanford University Press, 2018), and Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, coedited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017). Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

 

Wang Dong is the Deputy Director of the Office for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Executive Director of the Institute for Global    Cooperation and Understanding, all at Peking University. He also serves as Member of the Steering Committee of the East Asia Security Forum, Chinese Overseas Educated Scholars Association, International Advisory Committee Member of the Shanghai Academy of Area Studies and Global Governance, Advisory Committee Member for the Carter Center-Global Times US-China Young Scholars Forum, and Secretary-General of the Pangoal Institution, a leading China-based public policy think tank.   

Wang Dong received his bachelor in law from Peking University and M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  Wang has written extensively on international relations and China’s foreign policy. He is the author and/or editor of such English-language publications as Re-globalization: When China Meets the World Again (Routledge, 2020, forthcoming); and Avoiding the Thucydides Trap: US-China Relations in Strategic Domains, coedited with Travis Tanner (Routledge, 2020, forthcoming). Wang was named a “Munich Young Leader” in 2016 (the only awardee from China); and was selected by the inaugural program of “Preeminent Young Scientists” of Beijing in 2018, one of the most prestigious awards ever given in China.

ABSTRACT 

This talk is based on the speakers’ recently published edited volume The Unfinished Arab Spring: Micro-Dynamics of Revolts between Change and Continuity. Adopting an original analytical approach in explaining various dynamics at work behind the Arab revolts and giving voice to local dynamics and legacies rather than concentrating on debates about paradigms, we highlight micro-perspectives of change and resistance as well as of contentious politics that are often marginalized and left unexplored in favor of macro-analyses. First, we re-examine the stories of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Algeria through diverse and novel perspectives, looking at factors that have not yet been sufficiently underlined but carry explanatory power for what has occurred. Second, rather than focusing on macro-comparative regional trends – however useful they might be – we focus on the particularities of each country, highlighting distinctive micro-dynamics of change and continuity. ​

SPEAKERS BIO

Fatima el Issawi is a Reader in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on the intersection between media, politics and conflicts in transitional contexts to democracy in North Africa. She is the Principal Investigator for the research project “Media and Transitions to Democracy: Journalistic Practices in Communicating Conflicts- the Arab Spring” funded by the British Academy Sustainable Development Programme, looking at media’s impact on communicating political conflicts in post uprisings in North Africa. Since 2012, el Issawi has been leading empirical comparative research projects on the interplay between media and political change, funded by Open Society Foundation and the Middle East Centre/LSE, covering Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Algeria. El Issawi’s expertise crosses journalism, public communication, policy and academia. She has over fifteen years of experience as international correspondent in conflict zones in the MENA region. She is the author of “Arab National Media and Political Change” investigating the complex intersections between traditional journalists and politics in uncertain times of transitions to democracy.

Francesco Cavatorta is full professor of political science and director of the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur l’Afrique et le Moyen Orient (CIRAM) at Laval University, Quebec, Canada. His research focuses on the dynamics of authoritarianism and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. His current research projects deal with party politics and the role of political parties in the region. He has published numerous journal articles and books.

Why do some parties live fast and die young, but other endure? And why are some party systems more stable than others? Based on a blend of data derived from both qualitative and quantitative sources, in their recently released book Haughton and Deegan-Krause provide new tools for mapping and measuring party systems, and develop conceptual frameworks to analyse the dynamics of party politics, particularly the birth and death of parties. In addition to highlighting the importance of agency and choice in explaining the fate of parties, The New Party Challenge  underlines the salience of the clean versus corrupt dimension of politics, charts the flow of voters in the new party subsystem, and emphasizes the dimension of time and its role in shaping developments. Not only do the authors examine party politics in Central Europe in the three decades since the 1989 revolutions, charting and explaining the patterns of politics in that region, they also highlight that similar processes are at play on a far wider geographical canvas. Their talk will conclude by reflecting on what the dynamics of party politics, especially the emergence of so many new parties, means for the health and quality of democracy, and what could and should be done.

 

Tim Haughton is a Senior Associate Professor of European Politics at the University of Birmingham, where he served as Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies (2016-18) and the Director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (2012-14). Dr Haughton was educated at the London School of Economics and University College London. He has held Visiting Fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Institute of International Relations in Prague, Colorado College and was an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Dr Haughton has good links with the policymaking community, having briefed inter alia five British Ambassadors to Slovakia before they took up their posts, and given several presentations on Central European politics at the Foreign Office in London and at the State Department in Washington DC.

Tim’s research interests encompass electoral and party politics, electoral campaigning, the role of the past in the politics of the present, the domestic politics of Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic and Brexit. He is the co-author with Kevin Deegan-Krause of The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2020), the author of Constraints and Opportunities of Leadership in Post-Communist Europe (Ashgate 2005), the editor of Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Does EU Membership Matter? (Routledge, 2011) and served as the co-editor with Nathaniel Copsey of the Journal of Common Market Studies’ Annual Review of the European Union for nine years (2008-16).

Kevin Deegan-Krause is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wayne State University. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Georgetown University in 1990 and his doctorate in Government from the University of Notre Dame in 2000. He has spent more than two decades studying how political parties compete against one another, and how that competition shapes what happens in a democracy.  He has published what he learned from research on European political parties in several books book (Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic published by Stanford University Press in 2006 and The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond, published by Oxford University Press in 2020) and many articles in political science journals and he has been the editor of several other books and the European Journal of Political Research Political Data Yearbook (politicaldatayearbook.com) which provides an annual summary of political developments in European, North American and Asian democracies. His ongoing research focuses on the emergence of new political parties and the transformation of existing ones.

Together with his wife Bridget and his children Elena and Peter, Kevin is also engaged in his local community of Ferndale, Michigan, and in broader public concerns.  He received a Truman Scholarship for public service in 1988, and his commitment to public service has included work with the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Commission, election observation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as service on Ferndale's elected Library Board and School Board.  He has also worked with many other local voluntary organizations and nonpartisan advocacy groups including promoting fair district boundaries with Voters Not Politicians and encouraging ranked-choice voting with RankMIVote.  His commitment to voter turnout and other forms of civic engagement is also part of his classroom teaching, including his introductory courses on the city of Detroit and engaged citizenship for students in Wayne State University's Honors College.

 

Co-sponsored by the Global Populisms Project

 

Populist radical right parties are more successful in some areas than others. However, when trying to explain geographical patterns of support for the populist radical right, similar outcomes in otherwise different contexts and different outcomes in otherwise similar contexts can be observed. In this paper, we show that this paradox can be understood when we examine how citizens are affected differently by the context in which they live. Using a unique dataset containing geocoded survey data and contextual data from four countries (DE, FR, NL and UK), we demonstrate that mediating and moderating variables, such a perceptions of local decline and education level shape the relationship between contextual development such as the increasing presence of immigrants, on the one hand, and populist and nativism attitudes and PRR support, on the other hand.
 

A draft copy of this research paper may be downloaded by using the link provided below under "Event Materials".

Sarah L. de Lange is Professor by special appointment at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, where she holds the Dr. J.M. Den Uyl chair. Her research interests include societal cleavages, political parties, and extremism, populism, and radicalism. Her recent research projects focus on the emergence of new political oppositions in Europe on that basis of, amongst others, geographical, generational, and educational divides. She has recently concluded the collaborative international project Sub-National Context and Radical Right Support in Europe (supported by an ORA grant) and is currently co-directing the research project Generational Differences in Determinants of Party Choice (supported by an NWO grant). Her co-edited volume Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream?, which appeared with Routledge in 2016, analyses the extent to which radical right-wing populist parties have become part of mainstream politics, as well as the factors and conditions which facilitate this trend.

 

Co-Sponsored by the Global Populisms Project.