Mr. Randall Schriver is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. Mr. Schriver was appointed as Assistant Secretary of Defense by President Donald Trump on 8 January 2018. Prior to his confirmation, Mr. Schriver was one of five founding partners of Armitage International LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in international business development and strategies. He was also CEO and President of the Project 2049 Institute, a non-profit research organization dedicated to the study of security trend lines in Asia.
Previously, Mr. Schriver served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was responsible for China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. From 2001 to 2003, he served as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of State. From 1994 to 1998, he worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including as the senior official responsible for the day-to-day management of U.S. bilateral relations with the People's Liberation Army and the bilateral security and military relationships with Taiwan.
Prior to his civilian service, he served as an active duty Navy Intelligence Officer from 1989 to 1991, including a deployment in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. After active duty, he served in the Navy Reserves for nine years, including as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an attaché at U.S. Embassy Beijing and U.S. Embassy Ulaanbaatar.
Mr. Schriver has won numerous military and civilian awards from the U.S. government and was presented while at the State Department with the Order of the Propitious Clouds by the President of Taiwan for service promoting U.S.-Taiwan relations. Mr. Schriver received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Williams College and a Master of Arts degree from Harvard University.
Oksenberg Conference Room 616 Serra Mall Encina Hall, 3rd Floor, Central S350 Stanford, CA 94305
Randall Schriver
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs
To listen to the audio recording of this talk, please visit our multimedia page.
Daniel Ziblatt will describe current dangers facing democracies around the world, including Europe and the United States and ways of preventing democracy's breakdown. He will draw lessons from the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies and from ways citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past.
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Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and Acting Director of Harvard's Center for European Studies. Ziblatt's scholarship on democratization, democratic breakdown, and state-building include New York Times bestseller, How Democracies Die (2018), co-authored with Steven Levitsky; Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (2017), winner of the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs; and Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (2006).
Oksenberg Conference Room
Encina Hall -3rd floor
616 Serra Street, Stanford, California 94305
Daniel Ziblatt
Eaton Professor of the Science of Government
Speaker
Harvard University
Most studies that look at whether democracy improves global health rely on measurements of life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rates. Yet those measures disproportionately reflect progress on infectious diseases — such as malaria, diarrheal illnesses and pneumonia — which relies heavily on foreign aid.
A new study led by Stanford Health Policy's Tara Templin and the Council on Foreign Relations suggests that a better way to measure the role of democracy in public health is to examine the causes of adult mortality, such as noncommunicable diseases, HIV, cardiovascular disease and transportation injuries. Little international assistance targets these noncommunicable diseases.
When the researchers measured improvements in those particular areas of public health, the results proved dramatic.
“The results of this study suggest that elections and the health of the people are increasingly inseparable,” the authors wrote.
“Democratic institutions and processes, and particularly free and fair elections, can be an important catalyst for improving population health, with the largest health gains possible for cardiovascular and other noncommunicable diseases,” the authors wrote.
Templin said the study brings new data to the question of how governance and health inform global health policy debates, particularly as global health funding stagnates.
“As more cases of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancers occur in low- and middle-income countries, there will be a need for greater health-care infrastructure and resources to provide chronic care that weren’t as critical in providing childhood vaccines or acute care,” Templin said.
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Free and fair elections for better health
In 2016, the four mortality causes most ameliorated by democracy — cardiovascular disease, tuberculosis, transportation injuries and other noncommunicable diseases — were responsible for 25 percent of total death and disability in people younger than 70 in low- and middle-income countries. That same year, cardiovascular diseases accounted for 14 million deaths in those countries, 42 percent of which occurred in individuals younger than 70.
Over the past 20 years, the increase in democratic experience reduced mortality in these countries from cardiovascular disease, other noncommunicable diseases and tuberculosis between 8-10 percent, the authors wrote.
“Free and fair elections appear important for improving adult health and noncommunicable disease outcomes, most likely by increasing government accountability and responsiveness,” the study said.
What Templin and her co-authors found was democracy was associated with better noncommunicable disease outcomes. They hypothesize that democracies may give higher priority to health-care investments.
HIV-free life expectancy at age 15, for example, improved significantly — on average by 3 percent every 10 years during the study period — after countries transitioned to democracy. Democratic experience also explains significant improvements in mortality from cardiovascular disease, tuberculosis, transportation injuries, cancers, cirrhosis and other noncommunicable diseases, the study said.
Watch: Some of the authors of the study discuss the significant their findings:
What Templin and her co-authors found was democracy was associated with better noncommunicable disease outcomes. They hypothesize that democracies may give higher priority to health-care investments.
HIV-free life expectancy at age 15, for example, improved significantly — on average by 3 percent every 10 years during the study period — after countries transitioned to democracy. Democratic experience also explains significant improvements in mortality from cardiovascular disease, tuberculosis, transportation injuries, cancers, cirrhosis and other noncommunicable diseases, the study said.
Foreign aid often misdirected
And yet, this connection between fair elections and global health is little understood.
“Democratic government has not been a driving force in global health,” the researchers wrote. “Many of the countries that have had the greatest improvements in life expectancy and child mortality over the past 15 years are electoral autocracies that achieved their health successes with the heavy contribution of foreign aid.”
They note that Ethiopia, Myanmar, Rwanda and Uganda all extended their life expectancy by 10 years or more between 1996 and 2016. The governments of these countries were elected, however, in multiparty elections designed so the opposition could only lose, making them among the least democratic nations in the world.
Yet these nations were among the top two-dozen recipients of foreign assistance for health.
Only 2 percent of the total development assistance for health in 2016 was devoted to noncommunicable diseases, which was the cause of 58 percent of the death and disability in low-income and middle-income countries that same year, the researchers found.
“Although many bilateral aid agencies emphasize the importance of democratic governance in their policy statements,” the authors wrote, “most studies of development assistance have found no correlation between foreign aid and democratic governance and, in some instance, a negative correlation.”
Autocracies such as Cuba and China, known for providing good health care at low cost, have not always been as successful when their populations’ health needs shifted to treating and preventing noncommunicable diseases. A 2017 assessment, for example, found that true life expectancy in China was lower than its expected life expectancy at birth from 1980 to 2000 and has only improved over the past decade with increased government health spending. In Cuba, the degree to which its observed life expectancy has exceeded expectations has decreased, from four-to-seven years higher than expected in 1970 to three-to-five years higher than expected in 2016.
“There is good reason to believe that the role that democracy plays in child health and infectious diseases may not be generalizable to the diseases that disproportionately affect adults,” Bollyky said. Cardiovascular diseases, cancers and other noncommunicable diseases, according to Bollyky, are largely chronic, costlier to treat than most infectious diseases, and require more health care infrastructure and skilled medical personnel.
The researchers hypothesize that democracy improves population health because:
When enforced through regular, free and fair elections, democracies should have a greater incentive than autocracies to provide health-promoting resources and services to a larger proportion of the population;
Democracies are more open to feedback from a broader range of interest groups, more protective of media freedom and might be more willing to use that feedback to improve their public health programs;
Autocracies reduce political competition and access to information, which might deter constituent feedback and responsive governance.
Various studies have concluded that democratic rule is better for population health, but almost all of them have focused on infant and child mortality or life expectancy at birth.
Over the past 20 years, the average country’s increase in democracy reduced mortality from cardiovascular disease by roughly 10 percent, the authors wrote. They estimate that more than 16 million cardiovascular deaths may have been averted due to an increase in democracy globally from 1995 to 2015. They also found improvements in other health burdens in the countries where democracy has taken hold: an 8.9 percent reduction in deaths from tuberculosis, a 9.5 percent drop in deaths from transportation injuries and a 9.1 percent mortality reduction in other noncommunicable disease, such as congenital heart disease and congenital birth defects.
“This study suggests that democratic governance and its promotion, along with other government accountability measures, might further enhance efforts to improve population health,” the study said. “Pretending otherwise is akin to believing that the solution to a nation’s crumbling roads and infrastructure is just a technical schematic and cheaper materials.”
The other researchers who contributed to the study are Matthew Cohen, Diana Schoder, Joseph Dieleman and Simon Wigley, from CFR, the University of Washington-Seattle and Bilkent University in Turkey, respectively.
Funding for the research came from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Stanford’s Department of Health Research and Policy also supported the work.
Abstract: Existing international relations scholarship on human rights focuses on international law and transnational advocacy to the exclusion of "human rights diplomacy" (HRD)---efforts by government officials to engage publicly and privately with their foreign counterparts---because diplomacy is often not publicly observable. We exploit an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of HRD: a campaign coordinated by the U.S. government to free twenty female political prisoners called #Freethe20. Our analysis of release outcomes for #Freethe20 women compared to two control groups (a longer list of women considered by the State Department for the campaign and a list of women imprisoned simultaneously in the same target countries) suggests the campaign was highly effective. While #Freethe20 was public-facing, we find little evidence that "naming and shaming" alone drove releases. Drawing on in-depth interviews with U.S. officials, we argue that foreign governments were most responsive when public pressure was matched with private, coercive diplomacy.
Speaker Bio: Jeremy M. Weinstein is a Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review.
Weinstein received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award in 2013. The award is given to a scholar younger than 40 or within 10 years of earning a Ph.D. who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007.
He has also worked at the highest levels of government on major foreign policy and national security challenges, engaging in both global diplomacy and national policy-making. Between 2013 and 2015, Weinstein served as the Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and before that as the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. As Deputy, Weinstein was a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee – the sub-cabinet policy committee with primary responsibility for advising the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and the President on the full range of foreign policy issues, including global counterterrorism, nonproliferation, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the strategic rebalance to Asia, cyber threats, among a wide variety of other issues.
During President Obama’s first term, he served as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.
Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on a number of non-profit boards and advisory groups.
Jeremy Weinstein
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Professor of Political Science
Stanford University
The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Accidental Presidents looks at eight men who came to the office without being elected to it. It demonstrates how the character of the man in that powerful seat affects the nation and world.
Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected.
John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam.
Accidental Presidents adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.
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Jared Cohen is the founder and CEO of Jigsaw at Alphabet Inc. He also serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to Alphabet, he was Google’s first Director of Ideas and chief advisor to Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010 he served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
Cohen is the New York Times bestselling author of four books, including "Children of Jihad", "One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide", and "The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Business, and our Lives", which he co-authored with Eric Schmidt. His new book, "The Accidental Presidents" examines the eight instances in American history when a president has died in office. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, LA Times, Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and Foreign Policy. He has been named to the “TIME 100” list, Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and Vanity Fair’s “Next Establishment.” Cohen received his B.A. from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Oksenberg Conference Room
616 Serra Mall
Encina Hall, 3rd floor, Central
Jared Cohen
<i>Founder and CEO of Jigsaw at Alphabet Inc. </i>
STANFORD, CA, March 11, 2019 — The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education, and engagement on contemporary Asia and the sponsor of the Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific, is pleased to introduce an all-new selection committee for the award, comprising diverse journalistic and Asia expertise. APARC now welcomes nominations for the 2019 award. The deadline for nomination submissions is 5pm Pacific time on Friday, March 29, 2019.
An annual tradition since 2002, the Shorenstein Journalism Award carries a cash prize of US $10,000 and recognizes outstanding veteran journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world interpret the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. It honors the legacy of APARC’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. “With this award we are committed to advancing journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced U.S.-Asia dialogue,” said APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin.
Over the course of its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and help advance mutual understanding between audiences in the United States and their Asian counterparts. Recent honorees include Anna Fifield, Caixin Media, Ian Johnson, Jacob Schlesinger, Siddharth Varadarajan, and Aung Zaw. The award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been published through American news media and recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through news media in one or more parts of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2019 award will recognize a recipient from the latter category, which oftentimes includes candidates who work at the forefront of the battle for press freedom.
APARC has recently assembled a new selection committee for the award that presides over the judging of nominees and is responsible for the selection of honorees. “I am delighted to welcome our new committee members who have all distinguished themselves in their careers and bring expertise across journalism, policy, and Asia research and reporting,” noted Director Shin.
The selection committee for the Shorenstein Journalism Award includes Wendy Cutler, Vice President and Managing Director, Washington, D.C. Office, Asia Society Policy Institute; James Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication, and Director of the Stanford Journalism Program, Stanford University; Raju Narisetti, Director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Journalism School; Philip Pan, Asia Editor, The New York Times; and Prashanth Parameswaran, Senior Editor, The Diplomat.
For the Shorenstein award, the Asia-Pacific region is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Both individual journalists with considerable body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in traditional forms of print or broadcast journalism and/or in new forms of multimedia journalism. APARC is seeking 2019 award nomination submissions from editors, publishers, scholars, journalism-related associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region. The award will be presented by APARC at Stanford in the Autumn quarter of 2019.
For complete details about the award, nominations and procedures, and past winners, please visit the Shorenstein Journalism Award page. Submissions are accepted electronically through 5pm Pacific time on Friday, March 29, 2019, via an online form.
About the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) addresses critical issues affecting the countries of Asia, their regional and global affairs, and U.S.-Asia relations. As Stanford University’s hub for the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Asia, APARC produces policy-relevant research, provides education and training to students, scholars, and practitioners, and strengthens dialogue and cooperation between counterparts in the Asia-Pacific and the United States. Founded in 1983, APARC today is home to a scholar community of distinguished academics and practitioners in government, business, and civil society, who specialize in trends that cut across the entire Asia-Pacific region. For more information, visit https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu.
Congress’s annual worldwide-threat hearings are usually scary affairs, during which intelligence-agency leaders run down all the dangers confronting the United States. This year’s January assessment was especially worrisome, because the minds of American citizens were listed as key battlegrounds for geopolitical conflict for the first time. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways,” wrote Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats went on to suggest that Russia’s 2016 election interference is only the beginning, with new tactics and deep fakes probably coming soon, and the bad guys learning from experience.
Deception, of course, has a long history in statecraft and warfare. The Greeks used it to win at the Battle of Salamis in the fifth century b.c. The Allies won the Second World War in Europe with a surprise landing at Normandy—which hinged on an elaborate plan to convince Hitler that the invasion would be elsewhere. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets engaged in extensive “active measure” operations, using front organizations, propaganda, and forged American documents to peddle half-truths, distortions, and outright lies in the hope of swaying opinion abroad.
But what makes people susceptible to deception? A colleague and I recently launched the two-year Information Warfare Working Group at Stanford. Our first assignment was to read up on psychology research, which drove home how vulnerable we all are to wishful thinking and manipulation.
Stanford's Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab is hosting a two day conference that seeks to advance understanding of the causes and consequences of human rights violations in both dictatorships and democracies. It brings together researchers studying repression – including illegal detention, police killings, and censorship – to better understand the conditions under which states violate human rights, and how this affects the relationship between the state and its citizens. CLICK HERE FOR THE CONFERENCE PAGE.
Keynote Speaker: Tamara Taraciuk Broner (Human Rights Watch)
Participants:
Risa Kitagawa (Department of Political Science, Northeastern)
Consuelo Amat (Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Stanford)
Harold Trinkunas (Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford)
Christian Davenport (Department of Political Science, University of Michigan)
Martin Dimitrov (Department of Political Science, Tulane)
Jane Esberg (Department of Political Science, Stanford)
Omar Garcia Ponce (Department of Political Science, UC Davis)
Beatriz Magaloni (Department of Political Science, Stanford)
Elizabeth Nugent (Department of Political Science, Yale)
Jennifer Pan (Department of Communication, Stanford)
Luis Alberto Rodriguez (Department of Political Science, Stanford)
Arturas Rozenas (Department of Politics, NYU)
Scott Williamson (Department of Political Science, Stanford)
Lauren Young (Department of Political Science, UC Davis)
Keynote Speaker Bio
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Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Senior Americas Researcher, joined Human Rights Watch as a fellow in September 2005. After a year, she became HRW’s Mexico researcher (2006-2009), and is currently a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Americas Division, covering several countries in the region. She previously was a junior scholar at the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she coordinated a project on citizen security in Latin America, and worked at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS). Taraciuk was born in Venezuela, and grew up in Argentina, where she studied law at Torcuato Di Tella University. She holds a post-graduate diploma on human rights and transitional justice from the University of Chile, and a Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from Columbia Law School.
Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.
She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.
Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.
Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review,American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.
Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.
She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
Misconduct by those in high places is always dangerous to reveal. Whistleblowers thus face a paradox: by challenging and exposing transgressions by the powerful, they perform a vital public service; yet they always suffer for it. Comparing whistleblower protection in Europe and the United States brings into fuller relief the vital role truth-telling can play in sustaining civil discourse and democracy.
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Allison Stanger is the Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics and founding director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College. She is the author of One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy and Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump, both with Yale University Press. She is working on a new book tentatively titled Consumers vs. Citizens: Justice and Democracy’s Public Square in a Big Data World. Stanger’s writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and the Washington Post, and she has testified before the Commission on Wartime Contracting, the Senate Budget Committee, the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Senate HELP Committee, and the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. Stanger is currently a Scholar in Residence in the Cybersecurity Initiative at New America and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Co-sponsored by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
Allison Stanger
Professor of International Politics and Economics, Middlebury College
Speaker
Middlebury College
My research centers on topics in comparative politics and the political economy of development. I focus on the micro-foundations of political behavior to gain leverage on macro-political questions. How do autocrats survive? How can citizen-state relations be improved and government accountability strengthened? Can shared identities mitigate out-group animosity? Adopting a multi-method approach, I use lab-in-the-field and online experiments, surveys, and in-depth field research to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa and the US. My current book project reexamines the role of elections in authoritarian endurance and explains why citizens vote in elections with foregone conclusions in Tanzania and Uganda. Moving beyond conventional paradigms, my theory describes how a social norm of voting and accompanying social sanctions from peers contribute to high turnout in semi-authoritarian elections. In other ongoing projects, I study how national and pan-African identification stimulated through national sports games influence attitudes toward refugees, the relationship between identity, emotions, and belief in fake news, and how researchers can use Facebook as a tool for social science research.
