Increasingly, disinformation, a type of fake news with malicious or manipulative intentions, has become common in elections worldwide. However, a few survey-based studies have been conducted to understand how disinformation influences voter attitudes. We address this question in the case of the 2022 Philippine presidential election, where disinformation was rampant during the campaign. Allegedly, various types of disinformation contributed to the victory of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (hereafter BBM). In this project, we focused on the disinformation about BBM’s father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and conducted two survey-based studies. Study 1 examined the association between BBM support and belief in disinformation about Marcos Sr., and we found they were highly correlated. Study 2 tested the direction of causality by an experimental survey. Contrary to our expectations, those exposed to disinformation reduced support for BBM. At the same time, Study 2 showed that fact checks help correct respondents’ evaluation of disinformation. We conclude that although disinformation played a role in the 2022 presidential election, more research is needed to understand how exactly voter behavior and disinformation are related.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yuko Kasuya is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include regime transition, political institutions, measurement of democracy, Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines), and East Asia (especially Japan). She is the author and/or editor of Decolonization and Regime Change in Asia: Historical Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship (Hakusuisha, in Japanese, 2022), Comparative Politics (Minerva Publishing, in Japanese, 2014) and Presidential Bandwagon: Parties and Party Systems in the Philippines (Anvil, 2008). Her articles can be found in journals such as Electoral Studies, The Pacific Affairs, and Party Politics, among others. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, an M.A. from the Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands), and a B.A. from Keio University. She was a visiting scholar at CDDRL from 2009 to 2010 and Vice President of the International Political Science Association from 2018 to 2021. She currently serves as President of the Japan Association of Comparative Politics and Director of the V-Dem East Asia Regional Center.

 

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

Infrastructure development requires democracies to balance multiple, competing governance priorities. The representativeness of the decision-making process must be balanced against the benefits of impartial technical assessments by the civil service, and both must be balanced against the efficiency of infrastructure development and government actions. Using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as a case study, we will argue that California has become a “vetocracy” in which decisions in favor of collective action have become extremely difficult to arrive at. This presentation is based in part on CDDRL’s recent research on California governance, in collaboration with the California 100 Initiative. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Francis Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, was published in September 2018. His latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in the spring of 2022.

Dr. Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School. He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at the Center for Global Development. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and the Volcker Alliance. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
 

Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at CDDRL for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan and Thailand.
 

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

While initial supply shortages delayed access to the COVID-19 vaccine for many low and middle income countries, most now have an abundance of doses. Yet only a quarter of African citizens have completed their COVID-19 vaccination primary series. Exploring effective modes of vaccine delivery is necessary to increase uptake. In collaboration with the Kenyan government, we conducted a field experiment to examine whether ease of access and requests from authority figures influence COVID-19 vaccination rates. By comparing rates between facility and community based vaccination activities, we are able to calculate the cost effectiveness of these policies, offering insights that are useful now and for future pandemics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Leah Rosenzweig is Director and Lead Researcher at the Development Innovation Lab (DIL) at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the micro-foundations of political and social behavior to gain leverage on macro policy-relevant questions. Her current work in the political economy of development explores the existence and consequences of social norms of voting in semi-authoritarian states, government accountability in low- and middle-income countries, and inter-group relations. She also works on designing and evaluating optimal policies to combat the spread of online misinformation and increase vaccination, as well as applied research methods. Prior to joining DIL, Leah held positions at Stanford University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, and was a consultant for the Nigerian government. Leah received her PhD in Political Science from MIT.

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

The medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Existing accounts focus on early modern warfare or contracts between the rulers and the ruled. Yet the Catholic church both competed with medieval monarchs and provided critical templates for governing institutions, the rule of law, and parliaments. The Catholic Church was the most powerful, wealthiest, and best-organized political actor in the Middle Ages. Starting in the 11th century, the papacy fought for the autonomy of the church, challenging European rulers and then claiming authority over people, territory, and monarchs alike. Conflicts with the papacy fragmented territorial authority in Europe for centuries to come, propagating urban autonomy and ideas of sovereignty. Thanks to its organizational advantages and human capital, the church also developed the institutional precedents adopted by rulers across Europe—from chanceries and taxation to courts and councils. Church innovations made possible both the rule of law and parliamentary representation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anna Grzymala-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

This seminar is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

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

Taiwan lies at the heart of the growing confrontation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and it remains the only issue that could plausibly trigger a war between the two countries. Taiwan is claimed by the PRC as Chinese territory, and its government is unrecognized by all but a handful of states today. But it is also a prosperous liberal democracy of more than 23 million people, a major trading partner of both the U.S. and the PRC, and the source of more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips.

This talk will cover how the US-PRC-Taiwan relationship got to this point, what each side’s foremost interests and long-term strategies are, and how those have changed in recent years with Xi Jinping’s centralization of power and the shifting balance of economic and military power in the region. It will also touch on the current debates in Washington over Taiwan policy and how best to ensure that peace can be maintained across the Taiwan Strait for the indefinite future. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kharis Templeman is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. His areas of expertise include democratic transitions and consolidations, comparative parties and elections, and the politics of Taiwan. He is the editor (with Larry Diamond and Yun-han Chu) of two books on Taiwan politics, and (with Netina Tan) a forthcoming volume on electoral malpractice in Asia. His other peer-reviewed research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Ethnopolitics, Journal of Democracy, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, and Taiwan Journal of Democracy, along with several book chapters. He has also written on Taiwan policy issues for many outlets, including the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Foreign Affairs, Taiwan Insight, War on the Rocks, and The Diplomat. 

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

According to U.N. projections, 86% of global population growth over the next two decades will occur in cities of low and middle-income countries. While social science scholarship typically focuses on megacities, most population growth will occur in small- and medium-sized urban centers. Meanwhile, many countries have decentralized significant policy responsibilities to municipal governments over the last three decades. Expectations derived from the literature on fiscal federalism suggest that this is a cause for concern, as larger cities are thought to deliver public goods more effectively than smaller ones owing to economics of scale. This book project examines the relationship between city size and the types of political demands citizens make of local governments, the ways in which local elected officials respond to these demands, and public service access and quality. Analysis focuses on four large, highly decentralized democracies: Argentina, Brazil, India, and Indonesia. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alison Post is Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines urban politics and policy and other political economy themes, including environmental politics and policy, regulation, and business-government relations. She works principally in Latin America, and recently in India and the United States as well. Post is the author of Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and numerous articles. She is a former President of the Urban and Local Politics section of the American Political Science Association, former Co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, and currently Chair of the Steering Committee for the Red de Economía Política de America Latina.

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

In this talk, Hesham Sallam will discuss his recent book, Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022). The book offers a counterintuitive account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of "more identity, less class." It examines why Islamist movements have gained support at the expense of the left, even amid conflicts over the costs of economic reforms.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hesham Sallam is a Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, where he serves as the Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is the author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).

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