This talk will examine how technology can amplify deliberative democracy to foster a more informed and engaged society. Drawing on findings from two nationally representative online Deliberative Polls called America in One Room, the talk will demonstrate how online deliberation is alleviating polarization and producing lasting effects with hopes for a more deliberative society. The talk will also explore how the AI-assisted Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, which has logged over 100,000 deliberation hours in over 35 countries and 25 languages, has been used to facilitate high-quality, structured discussions on complex issues, including democratic reform and the implications of generative AI and metaverse governance. By integrating insights from research and practice, the session will demonstrate how deliberation can empower voters, improve decision-making, and counteract the polarization threatening democracy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alice Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.

Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.

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

I argue that central banks attempt to build public trust in money and monetary governance through the strategic use of what I call a stability narrative, asserting that they can maintain the value of money, can maintain the security of money, represent the nation, and have grown increasingly professional and sophisticated over time. The talk explores the stability narrative by studying its expression in central bank museums. Museums tell stories; they distill, teach, and privilege the beliefs of their creators. As such, museums represent an excellent vehicle for understanding the ways in which central banks describe and promote their ability to govern money. The research is based on interviews and site visits at over 35 central bank museums and an original database that gathers and systematizes publicly available information on central bank museums worldwide.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Juliet Johnson‘s research focuses on the politics of money and identity. She is Professor of Political Science at McGill University, an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and former President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She is the author of the award-winning Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World (Cornell 2016) and A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Cornell 2000), co-editor of Developments in Russian Politics 10 (Bloomsbury 2024) and Religion and Identity in Modern Russia: The Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam (Routledge 2005), and author of numerous scholarly and policy-oriented articles. She has been Lead Editor of Review of International Political Economy, Network Director of the Jean Monnet network Between the EU and Russia (BEAR), Advisory Council member at the Kennan Institute, Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She received McGill University’s President’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the David Thomson Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching, the Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Faculty of Arts Award for Distinction in Research. She earned her PhD in Politics from Princeton University and her AB in International Relations from Stanford University.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Willliam J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Andrew Johnson. Richard Nixon. Donald Trump. These three presidents were often compared on the basis of their character and confrontations with the Constitutional limitations of the presidency. Yet they also shared a different, less frequently explored, feature: they each followed racially transformative presidencies. Abraham Lincoln’s presidency guided the nation through the Civil War and ended decades of political stalemate over the slavery issue. Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights legislation that, similarly, marked the end of decades of impasse and reinvigorated the promise of multi-racial democracy in the United States. Barack Obama, as the nation’s first African American president, changed the symbolism associated with the presidency and challenged the implied whiteness of the office. This talk, based on a forthcoming book with Princeton, will examine how the dynamics of each of these presidencies unsettled political norms and long-term compromises, creating political opportunities for populist successors. Each of the impeachment crises — the Tenure of Office Act, Watergate, and both Trump impeachments — can be traced to the racial politics ignited by their predecessors.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Julia Azari is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. An active public-facing scholar, she has published commentary on presidential and party politics in FiveThirtyEight, Politico, Vox, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Guardian. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as The Forum, Perspectives on Politics, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Foreign Affairs, and Social Science History. She has contributed invited chapters to books published by the University Press of Kansas, University of Pennsylvania Press, Cambridge University Press, and University of Edinburgh Press. Azari is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate (Cornell, 2014), coeditor of The Presidential Leadership Dilemma (SUNY, 2013), and co-editor of The Trump Legacy (under contract, University Press of Kansas).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

The conquest of the Americas produced a radical transformation of pre-colonial Empires and City States. Europeans established a new institution, the Encomienda, which “entrusted” indigenous communities to individual conquistadores, which resulted in the dismemberment and fragmentation of prior political authority. Using a simple model of temporal horizons and rent extraction, I explore demographic change and epidemic disease after the conquest of Mexico. Data is drawn from the legal and census records of Tepetlaoztoc, a polity within the Acolhua Kingdom, one of the three parts of the Aztec Empire. This rich dataset allows for the reconstruction of demographic change and the calculation of individual and household level epidemiological models. The analysis suggests that the dramatic demographic decline of the 16th century in Mexico, rather than an inevitable result of exposure to unknown pathogens or epidemic diseases beyond human control, was a consequence of colonial rent extraction and the loss of political autonomy and sovereignty.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C., in Mexico from 1997-1999. His work has focused on federalism, poverty, and violence in Latin America and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted in 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Willliam J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Professor Federico Fabbrini will discuss his new book, which examines the EU’s responses to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. From a legal perspective, Fabbrini evaluates how the EU has addressed the conflict and identifies options for improving the EU’s constitutional set-up amidst growing geopolitical challenges and risks.

In his book, Fabbrini analyses the EU’s response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, particularly focusing on how the EU (a peacetime organization) has adapted to the challenges posed by war. From a legal perspective, it examines EU action across five policy areas: 

• Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

• Fiscal and Economic Policy Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ)

• Energy and Industrial Policy

• EU Enlargement and Reform 

The author argues that the EU’s constitutional framework proved flexible enough to enable unprecedented institutional responses to the conflict. However, the book also addresses how structural shortcomings in the EU’s constitution have, in some cases, hampered the EU’s response, while in others, they have occasionally failed to sufficiently constrain EU action. 

The book concludes by exploring potential reforms to the EU’s constitutional set-up, emphasizing the need for improvement in a time of ever-greater geopolitical risks.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law, and the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors from any university department who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL). 

Join CDDRL faculty and current honors students on Wednesday, January 22, at 12:00 pm, to discuss the program and answer questions.

The application period opens on January 6, 2025, and runs through February 14, 2025.

For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.

This past summer, Venezuela's presidential election was overshadowed by Nicolás Maduro's attempt at large-scale electoral fraud. Despite these efforts, the Venezuelan democratic movement successfully provided evidence showing that their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, had won with nearly 70% of the vote. In response, the Maduro regime has escalated its repression of opposition leaders and advocates of democratic reforms, deepening political tensions and raising serious concerns about the country's democratic future.

On Monday, November 18, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is honored to host María Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan pro-democracy movement and the main architect of the July 28 electoral victory, for a video address to the Stanford community sharing her experiences and perspectives on sustaining democratic resilience in the face of authoritarianism. The conversation will be moderated by Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Together, they will explore Venezuela’s current political challenges, the critical role of civic engagement, and strategies for fostering democratic transitions in restrictive environments.

The event will conclude with an interactive Q&A session, allowing students, faculty, and the greater Stanford community to engage directly with Ms. Machado and gain deeper insights into her experiences.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law.