2021 Symposium

2021 Symposium

Crisis of Capitalism and Democracy

This year the International Politics and Economics Symposium featured guest talks by Pippa Norris (Harvard University), Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth College), and Stephan Haggard (UCSD) followed by small group discussions with the speakers and students.

1:00–2:00 p.m. “The two faces of trust (aka the cautionary fable of the frog and the scorpion)”

Pippa Norris, Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard University

2:15–3:15 p.m. “Facts and myths about (mis)information exposure and belief”

Brendan Nyhan, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Department of Government at Dartmouth College

3:30–4:30 p.m. “Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World”

Stephan Haggard, Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies; Director, Korea-Pacific Program at UC San Diego

4:45–5:15 p.m. Small group discussions with speakers

Speakers

Pippa Norris, the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at HKS, and faculty affiliate in the Department of Government, has taught at Harvard for three decades. A comparative political scientist, her work focuses on democracy, public opinion, and elections, political communications, and gender politics worldwide. Google Scholar ranks her fourth worldwide in political science citations, with an H index of 108; the SSRN ranks her second in political science; and Ioannidis et al (2019) rank her as the most cited political scientist in the world.

Major honors include the Johan Skytte prize (known informally as the Nobel prize in political science), the Karl Deutsch prize, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate, the Sir Isaiah Berlin Lifetime Achievement Award, fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Murray Edelman Lifetime Achievement award, the Samuel Eldersfeld Lifetime Career Achievement Award, the Charles E. Merriam Award, the George Hallet Award, the Brown Medal for Democracy, the Doris Graber Award, and honorary doctorates from Edinburgh, Bergen, Leuphena, and Warwick universities, amongst others.

She has published around 50 books (many subsequently translated into dozens of languages). These include Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Populist Authoritarianism (2019, with Inglehart, book of the year by the Global Policy Institute), Strengthening Electoral Integrity (2017), Why Elections Fail (2015), and Why Electoral Integrity Matters (2014).

She established the Electoral Integrity Project in 2012 and served (while on sabbatical leave) as the director of Democratic Governance at the United Nations Development Program in New York and on the executive boards of APSA (also vice president), IPSA, and the PSA, and as a consultant to the UN, OSCE, IDEA, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, NED, UN Women, and UNDP.

Brendan Nyhan is the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. His research, which focuses on misperceptions about politics and health care, has been published in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Nature Human Behaviour, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Pediatrics, and Vaccine. He has been named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2018–2019) and a Belfer Fellow by the Anti-Defamation League (2019–2020) and was given the Emerging Scholar Award for the top scholar in the field within 10 years of their PhD by the American Political Science Association’s section on Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior (2017). He is a cofounder of Bright Line Watch, a watchdog group that monitors the status of American democracy, and a contributor to the Upshot at the New York Times. Brendan coauthored All the President’s Spin, a New York Times bestseller that Amazon named one of the best political books of 2004.

Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies, and serves as director of the Korea-Pacific Program at UC San Diego. He teaches courses on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific at GPS, covering political economy as well as security issues. He has done extensive research on North Korea in particular. In addition, he has a long-standing interest in transitions to and from democratic rule and the current phenomenon of democratic backsliding.

His most recent books include Developmental States (2018) on the rapid growth of East Asia. His work on North Korea includes three books with Marcus Noland: Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform (2007), Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011) and Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements and the Case of North Korea (2017). His work on transitions to and from democratic rule includes Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change (2016) and Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World (2020).

He has provided commentary for major news outlets, such as CNN International, and currently writes for the Korea Economic Institute’s Peninsula blog. He is editor of the Journal of East Asian Studies.

Sponsors

• Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs
• Office of the Dean of Faculty
• Department of Political Science
• Department of Economics
• International Politics and Economics Program

Organizers and Contacts

• Sebnem Gumuscu, Assistant Professor of Political Science
• Amanda Gregg, Assistant Professor of Economics
• Peter Hans Matthews, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics