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Introducing CDDRL's incoming pre- and postdoctoral fellows

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Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce our four incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2016-2017 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community. 

The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research, while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL. 

Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.

Topics of the incoming cohort include electoral fraud in Russia, how the elite class impacts state power in China, the role of emotions in support for democracy in Zimbabwe, and market institutions in Nigeria. 

Learn more in the Q&A below.

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Natalia Forrat

CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow

Hometown: Tomsk, Russia

Academic Institution: Northwestern University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Sociology, April 2017

Research Interests: authoritarianism, state capacity, social policy, civil society, trust, Russia and post-communist countries

Dissertation Title: The State that Betrays the Trust: Infrastructural State Power, Public Sector Organizations, and Authoritarian Resilience in Putin's Russia

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? I study the connection between state capacity and political regimes - the topic that is at the core of many research initiatives at CDDRL. Learning more about this work and receiving feedback for my dissertation will enrich and sharpen my analysis, while helping me to place it into a comparative context. I am looking forward to discussing my work with the faculty who study the post-Soviet region. I also will explore policy implications of my work with the help of policy experts at CDDRL.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? Besides finishing writing my dissertation, I will workshop three working papers to prepare them for publication. The first one argues that Putin's regime used the school system to administer a large-scale electoral fraud in 2012 presidential elections; the second one shows how the networks of social organizations were used by subnational autocrats to strengthen the regime; and the third one will look at the factors that make the abuse of such organizations more difficult in some regions. In addition to these papers I will continue developing my post-graduation research project exploring the relationship between social trust and distrust, institutions, political competition, and democratization.

Fun fact: I have spent 25 years of my life in Siberia, and I can tell you: Chicago winters are worse!

 
 

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Shelby Grossman

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Reading, MA

Academic Institution: Harvard University

Discipline & Graduation Date:  Government, Summer 2016

Research interests: political economy of development, private governance, market institutions, Sub-Saharan Africa, survey methods

Dissertation Title: The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: Evidence from Lagos

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? I was attracted to CDDRL largely for its community of scholars. Affiliated faculty work on the political economy of development and medieval and modern market institutions, topics that are tied to my own interests.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? I plan to prepare a book manuscript based on my dissertation, a project that explains variation in the provision of pro-trade institutions in private market organizations through the study of physical marketplaces in Nigeria. In addition, I will continue to remotely manage an on-going project in Nigeria (with Meredith Startz) investigating whether reputation alleviates contracting frictions. I also plan to work on submitting to journals a few working papers, including one on the politics of non-compliance with polio vaccination in Nigeria (with Jonathan Phillips and Leah Rosenzweig). 

Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, not all cheese is vegetarian. I have a website to help people determine if a cheese is vegetarian or not: IsThisCheeseVegetarian.com. 

 
 

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Daniel Mattingly

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Oakland, California

Academic Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science, Summer 2016

Research Interests: Governance, rule of law, state building, authoritarian politics, Chinese politics

Dissertation Title: The Social Origins of State Power: Democratic Institutions and Local Elites in China

What attracted you to CDDRL?  The Center has a fantastic community of scholars and practitioners who work on the areas that I'm interested in, including governance and the rule of law. I'm excited to learn from the CDDRL community and participate in the Center's events. The fellowship also provides me with valuable time to finish my book manuscript before I start teaching.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? While at CDDRL, I plan to prepare my book manuscript and to work on some related projects on local elites and state power in China and elsewhere. 

Fun fact: I grew up on an organic farm in Vermont.

 
 

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Lauren E. Young

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Saratoga, CA

Academic Institution: Columbia University 

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science (Comparative Politics, Methods), May 2016 (defense), Oct 2016 (degree conferral)

Research Interests: political violence, political economy of development, autocratic persistence, democratization, protest, electoral violence

Dissertation Title: The Psychology of Repression and Dissent in Autocracy

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? As a graduate of the CISAC honors program when I was an undergraduate at Stanford, I have seen first-hand how intellectually stimulating, collaborative, and plugged into policy CDDRL is. While at the center I will be revising my dissertation work on the political psychology of participation in pro-democracy movements in Zimbabwe for submission as a book manuscript, and moving forward new projects that similarly seek to understand how different forms of violence by non-state actors affects citizens' preferences and decision-making. Because of its deep bench of experts on autocracy, narco-trafficking, and insurgency, CDDRL will add enormous value to these projects.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL?  During my fellowship year, my primary goal is to revise my research on Zimbabwe into a book manuscript. I defended my dissertation as three stand-alone articles, including two experiments showing that emotions influence whether opposition supporters in Zimbabwe express their pro-democracy preferences and a descriptive paper showing that repression has a larger effect on the behavior of the poor. To prepare the book manuscript during my fellowship, I will bring in additional quantitative and qualitative descriptive evidence and tie the three papers together into a cohesive argument about how opposition supporters make decisions about participation in protest, why emotions have such a large effect on these decisions, and how this affects variation across individuals and the strategic choices of autocrats and activists.

Fun fact: During my fieldwork I took an overnight train from Victoria Falls to a southern city in Zimbabwe and hitch-hiked into a national park. It got a little nerve-wracking when night started to fall, but ended with  an invitation to a barbecue! 

 

 
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How the United States views Japan's election results

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party won by a landslide in the national election for the upper house of parliament on July 10. Writing for Toyo Keizai, Shorenstein APARC Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider said American policymakers hope the Prime Minister will use the fresh mandate to kick-start stalled economic reforms and to move ahead on implementation of Japan’s new security legislation. Read the article here.

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Japanese Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party leader Shinzo Abe places a red paper rosette on an LDP candidate's name to indicate an election victory at the party's headquarters, Tokyo, July 10, 2016.
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**Cancelled** Brexit, Trump and the politics of fear: is populism here to stay?

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**This event has been cancelled**

 
With the backdrop of the Brexit vote in the UK, Nick Clegg will explore the factors behind the rise of the politics of identity, populism and nationalism in the UK, the US and around the world. Drawing on his personal experiences in politics and government, and unique insights on the European debate, he asks how liberals and those who believe in the politics of reason and moderation can rise to the new economic and social challenges of the 21st century.
 
 

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Nick Clegg led his party into Government for the first time in its modern history in a coalition with the Conservatives. As Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg occupied the second highest office in the country at a time when the United Kingdom was recovering from a deep recession following the banking crisis of 2008. Despite the hugely controversial decisions needed to restore stability to the public finances, Nick Clegg successfully maintained his party’s support for a full five-year term of office.

During that time, he was at the heart of decisions surrounding the conflict in Libya, new anti-terrorism measures, the referenda on electoral reform and Scottish independence, and extensive reforms to the education, health and pensions systems. He was particularly associated with landmark changes to the funding of schools, early years education and the treatment of mental health within the NHS. During the coalition years he also established himself as the highest profile pro-European voice in British politics and is well known and respected in capitals across the continent.

He remains an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and centre ground politics, of radical measures to boost social mobility, and of an internationalist approach to world affairs. Following the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016, Nick has returned to the Liberal Democrat front bench as the party’s European Union spokesperson in order to hold the Government to account over its plans for Brexit.

 
Nick Clegg, Member of Parliament and Former Deputy Prime Minister of the UK Speaker
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European Governance

Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime

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Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan presents a compelling case study on change in political regimes through its exploration of Japan's transition to democracy. Within a broad-ranging examination of Japan's "semi-democratic" political system from 1918 to 1932, when political parties tended to dominate the government, the book analyzes in detail why this system collapsed in 1932 and discusses the implications of the failure.

By reference to comparable cases—prewar Argentina, prewar Germany, postwar Brazil, and 1980s Thailand—Harukata Takenaka reveals that the factors responsible for the breakdown of the Taisho democracy in Japan replicated those that precipitated the collapse of democracy in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere in Asia.

While most literature on these transitions focuses on successful cases, Takenaka explores democratic failure to answer questions about how and why political parties and their leaders can behave in ways that undermine the democratic institutions that serve as the basis for their formal authority.

This book is part of the Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center series at Stanford University Press.

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Harukata Takanaka

Donald Trump’s Claims About Radical Jihadists Are Very Wrong

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CISAC senior fellow Martha Crenshaw challenges statements from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that “thousands upon thousands of people” are entering the United States, “many of whom have the same thought process” as the Orlando shooter, and his assertions that they are forming “large pockets” of people who want to “slaughter us” in an OpEd for The Washington Post.

You can read Crenshaw's full article here.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters on June 16, 2016 at Gilley's in Dallas, Texas.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters on June 16, 2016 at Gilley's in Dallas, Texas. | Ron Jenkins/Getty Images
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American Political Decay or Renewal?

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Francis Fukuyama
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In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher director of CDDRL, analyzes the rising tide of populism as represented by the current candidates for the US Presidential elections. According to Fukuyama, the real story of the election is that American democracy is finally responding to the rise of inequality and economic stagnation experienced by most of the population. 

Click here to read the full article. 

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the crowd at a Pearl Harbor Day Rally at the U.S.S. Yorktown December 7, 2015 in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. | Sean Rayford / Stringer - Getty Images
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Britain wiser to remain in European Union, Stanford scholar says

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A British exit from the European Union would slow economic growth, reduce Europe's impact in world politics, and strengthen regimes such as Russia's that prefer a weaker, less united Europe, Stanford expert Christophe Crombez says.

The United Kingdom would lose more than it would gain if it left the European Union, a Stanford scholar said.

So would other European nations, and the real winners would be countries that seek to divide European unity, said Christophe Crombez, a consulting professor in Stanford’s Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Britain is holding a referendum on June 23 to decide whether the country should leave or remain in the European Union.

“It would bring but an illusion of sovereignty,” said Crombez, who studies European Union politics, parliamentary systems, political economy and economic analysis of political institutions. He is an economist from Belgium.

The Stanford News Service recently interviewed Crombez on the upcoming vote, known as “Brexit.”

What is Brexit?

The term Brexit refers to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union allows member states to withdraw.

What are the arguments for and against Brexit?

The campaign for the UK to leave the EU uses the following main arguments: leaving would save UK taxpayers money, since the UK is a net contributor to the EU budget; the UK would no longer have to comply with EU laws it does not want, whereas currently it can be outvoted in EU institutions and forced to adopt laws it opposes; and it would allow the UK to better control migration, whereas EU citizens are currently free to move and work throughout the EU.

These three arguments can easily be refuted, however. The UK does indeed contribute to the EU budget, but the benefits it derives from being part of the EU market far outweigh the budgetary contributions. Moreover, (if Britain were to withdraw) the EU would require the UK to pay into its budget, if it wants to remain part of the EU’s internal market, as it has done with Switzerland and Norway.

Also, about half of UK exports are destined for the EU. If the UK were to leave, it would no doubt want to continue to trade with the EU. UK products would have to conform to EU rules for them to be sold in the EU. UK companies that want to export to the EU would thus continue to comply with EU rules. The difference would be that the UK would no longer be involved in setting those EU rules. Post-Brexit, the rules would thus be less to the UK’s liking than prior to it, and UK companies would comply to these less advantageous rules.

Finally, the EU would impose requirements on immigration and free movement of people on the UK in exchange for free trade with the EU, as it has with other countries in similar situations, such as Norway and Switzerland. Moreover, member states may no longer feel inclined to stop refugees from moving on to the UK if the UK were to leave, which may lead to higher rather than lower immigration.

In addition to these arguments, the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign (which supports the UK remaining in the EU) argues that Britain carries more weight in world politics as part of the EU than on its own, in trade negotiations as well as on security issues, and that a united Europe is better at dealing with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and other authoritarian rulers, terrorist threats and international crime.

What do you think is the best decision for the United Kingdom to make on this vote?

I see no advantages to leaving the EU. It would bring but an illusion of sovereignty – consider the points above. The vote would have a negative impact on growth in the UK and the rest of the EU and, in fact, the world, and it would weaken the UK, the EU and the West in world politics.

What happens economically to Britain if the country leaves the European Union?

Trade and hence gross domestic product would be negatively affected, especially in the short term. Uncertainty would reduce investment and trade. The UK and the EU would be consumed with the negotiations on the break-up for years. This would prevent both the UK and EU from tackling more important economic and security issues. In the long term, the economy would readjust, but the result would be suboptimal.

What happens to the EU if Britain leaves?

The EU is less dependent on trade with the UK than vice versa. There would be an economic impact, but it would be less substantial. The effect would be more significant for a few countries that trade more with the UK, such as Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Brexit would, however, deliver a major blow to the idea of European unification. It would weaken the EU impact in world politics and strengthen such rulers as Putin and (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan in their dealings with the EU.

Could a British exit open up a Pandora’s Box of other EU countries exiting or spark other regional independence movements, like  Catalonia?

That is quite possible. A number of other countries may want to hold referendums on the EU. Moreover, Brexit is likely to lead to a break-up of the UK. Scotland would likely hold another referendum and decide to leave the UK in order to stay in the EU. The same may be true for Northern Ireland in the long run. Scottish secession may then give other EU regions, such as Catalonia, further incentives to secede.

 
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A New Era in the Hong Kong Democracy Movement: Front Line Perspectives from Two Student Leaders

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Abstract

Two student leaders and activists will discuss the new era of Hong Kong's democracy movement with prospects for the future of Hong Kong after 2047.

 

Speaker Bios 

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Joshua Chi-fung Wong (left), 19, founded the Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism,  and is best known for his leadership role among fellow high school students in the Sept-Dec 2014 pro-democracy  Umbrella Movement, a massive protest that demanded genuine universal suffrage for China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Wong first attained popular fame in the highly successful mid-2012 "anti-Brain Washing" campaign against the HKSAR government's introduction of a mandatory "national education" course to all local schools to promote pro-PRC/CCP patriotism. He was named one of TIME Magazine's “Most influential Teens of 2014” and was nominated for TIME's 2014 “Person of The Year”.

Nathan Kwun-chung Law, 22, Is a well-known student leader and organizer in Hong Kong. He is Secretary General of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, having been a Standing Committee member from 2014-15. He participated in the only negotiation session with the Hong Kong SAR government during the Umbrella Movement.

This event is sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. It is free and open to the public. 

 

Video of event

Post-event interview with Joshua Wong and Nathan Law

CISAC Conference Room

Encina Hall, 2nd Floor

616 Serra Street, Stanford, CA 94305

 

Joshua Wong Speaker
Nathan Law Speajer
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