March 14, 2009—This conference will address concepts surrounding legitimacy—the belief that authorities, institutions, and social arrangements are appropriate, proper, and just, which then leads to a sense of individual obligation to defer to and comply with those authorities, institutions, and social arrangements. As Weber famously observed, there are different bases for legitimacy, which poses a significant challenge for comparative research. This conference approaches this challenge and the issue of legitimacy through questions such as: What must a government do to obtain legitimacy and what different forms might that legitimacy take? How do citizens come to form their views of whether government is legitimate or not? What strategies are there for empirical research on legitimacy? We expect the workshop to take place over the course of a day with opportunities for informal discussions on the evening before and the evening of the workshop. Participants will be asked to circulate and read relevant papers before the workshop.
May 8–9, 2009—Non-state actors are increasingly important and visible in the provision of social welfare in both developed and developing countries. At the same time, international donor institutions such as the World Bank advocate an enhanced role for non-governmental organizations, community groups and private interests in the provision of public goods and basic welfare, at a minimum in the form of public-private partnerships. The justifications for expanding non-state welfare provision generally emphasize technical or efficiency considerations, such as the capacity of firms or non-governmental organizations to identify and cater to local-level needs or the inability of state institutions to meet basic welfare needs. But little research focuses on the politics of non-state social welfare provision.
The proposed conference aims to address core questions about the origins, nature and consequences of social welfare by non-state providers (NSPs). What is a NSP and what are its distinct sub-types? Are different political contexts conducive to the rise or predominance of distinct types of NSPs? What factors-and particularly political factors-have encouraged the emergence and consolidation of non-state welfare providers? Do different types of NSPs operate in distinct places? What are the political consequences of non-state welfare provision?
This conference will advance an emerging research area by bringing together a diversity of academic scholars and practitioners who analyze these questions from different perspectives around the developing world
Co-sponsors: Kirk Radke, principal funder of the Clinton Global Initiative at Boston University, and The Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University
Organizers: John Gerring, professor of political science, Boston University; Macartan Humphreys, assistant professor of political science, Columbia University; Devra Moehler, assistant professor of government, Cornell University; Jeremy Weinstein, assistant professor of political science, Stanford University
September 29, 2007—This conference considered recent and potential applications of randomized interventions to understanding institutional outcomes, especially concerning institutions important to governance in the developing world. What studies to date of this nature have been conducted? How successful have they been? What are the prospects for future or ongoing studies? More generally, what is the potential of this mode of analysis? Among the questions addressed by the conference were: How can governance, which tends to be holistic and all-encompassing, be operationalized in such a way that it becomes amenable to scientific study? Where randomization is not possible, is there a good or acceptable alternative? The conference represented an important step in understanding the practical obstacles to the use of experimental methods for program evaluation in the developing world. This one-day conference included twenty-four participants from eleven universities, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, the Hewlett Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Chair: Tahirih V. Lee, associate professor, Florida State University College of Law
September 21, 2007—Using examples from the major regions of the world, this conference questioned whether or not there exists an optimal level of control over the use of land at the national, subnational, or local levels. Each conference panel employed the wealth of research being conducted on land and property rights in the variety of disciplines represented by members of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (political science, law, economics, history, anthropology and sociology) to focus the question more narrowly: Is standardization good or bad for local autonomy or individual rights? Should national programs open up land control in certain areas to outsiders in order to create local diversity? Is such opening and diversity good or bad for economic growth?
Organizer: Julian Go
April 20, 2007—“Empires” are large, analytically unwieldy, and complex transnational entities. But empire is realized, constituted and reconstituted in specific spaces; it is manifest in diverse forms of colonial rules and projects; it is exercised through multiple strategies in diverse cultural contexts; and its long-standing legacies are felt in both metropole and colony. It follows that the study of empire demands multifaceted lenses, covering different countries and different regions from diverse disciplinary perspectives. The purpose of “Empires, Colonialisms, and Contexts” is to yield stimulating cross-regional and interdisciplinary discussions, thereby bringing context-specific insights to the high abstractions of contemporary “empire talk.”
For further information on these events, please contact Laurence H. Winnie at lwinnie@wcfia.harvard.edu.