Our understanding of what motivates helping behavior toward refugees is incomplete, and much literature on migrants focuses on economic concerns over job competition and perceived cultural threat. We explore the determinants of refugee assistance from a nationally-representative survey of 2,500 Poles, whom we asked whether they have helped Syrian and Ukrainian refugees and are willing to assist them in the future. To get around social desirability biases we implement a conjoint experiment on refugee characteristics that elicits true preferences toward different types of refugees. We find that empathy is the primary driver of helping behavior. Importantly, the same set of factors determine the willingness to help both Syrians and Ukrainians. Cultural distance is among these, which is why Ukrainians, who are perceived as more proximate culturally, are, on average, more likely to be helped. Through a survey experiment we try to increase empathy by activating the memory of family suffering. This intervention fails, suggesting that it is difficult to manipulate empathy and, through it, helping behavior. 

Dr. Leonid Peisakhin's research examines how political identities and persistent patterns of political behavior are created and manipulated by the state. He studies the longue-durée legacy of state-sponsored violence, and, as its corollary, the dynamics of post-conflict reconciliation, and the cultural legacies of historical political institutions.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by November 2, 2023.

As part of Democracy Day events around campus, The Europe Center will host a discussion of the recent elections in Poland and in Slovakia. Both featured prominent populist politicians and parties who have eroded democracy, stoked nationalism and xenophobia, and violated informal norms of democracy. What do these elections mean for the future of democracy in the region? This panel brings together Anna Grzymala-Busse (director of The Europe Center) and Piotr Zagórski (Margarita Salas Fellow at the Autonomous University of Madrid). 

Anna Grzymała-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, director of The Europe Center, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Grzymala-Busse's research focuses on state development and transformation, religion and politics, political parties, and post-communist politics. Her other areas of research interest include populism, democratic erosion, and informal institutions.

Piotr Zagórski is a Margarita Salas Fellow at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he earned his PhD in Political Science. Currently he is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Euroasian Studies at UC Berkeley. He is a member of the Polish National Election Study at the SWPS University in Warsaw. His research interests include electoral behavior, historical legacies, and populist parties. He has published in Political Behavior, West European Politics, and East European Politics and Societies, and his research has been featured, among others, in El País, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Polityka.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by October 26, 2023.

Co-sponsored by Stanford Democracy Day

How is digital technology reshaping our relationships with the past? This presentation will elucidate how digital technology redefines our fundamental understanding of time, history, and memory, thus giving rise to a new concept known as "digital historicity."

Having spread extensively throughout the world in just a few decades, digital technology has significantly reshaped our relations to the past. This presentation argues that digital technology serves a purpose beyond being a new tool for historical research, commonly referred to as digital history. It also profoundly influences our fundamental relationship with time, history, and memory, thereby giving rise to a novel concept known as "digital historicity." This digital historicity is distinguished by several key aspects, notably datafication, algorithmization, virtualization, and gamification of our perception of the past.

This shift towards digital historicity moves us away from traditional inquiries into historical representation and towards a focus on sensory immersion, which redefines history as a real-time experience of the virtually recreated past. In our contemporary digital condition, the past is constantly being remixed, reimagined, and repurposed in unexpected ways, particularly evident in the digital gaming industry, which will be a central focus of this paper.

Marek Tamm is professor of cultural history in Tallinn University. He is also Head of Tallinn University Centre of Excellence in Intercultural Studies and member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. His primary research fields are cultural history of medieval Europe, historical theory, digital history, and cultural memory studies. His most recent book is The Fabric of Historical Time, co-written with Zoltán Boldizsár Simon (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by October 19, 2023.

Six years after the people of Catalonia exercised their right to self-determination, the Catalan challenge still keeps the Spanish institutions in a gridlock, posing a major challenge to the democratic principles of the European Union.

It has been six years since the people of Catalonia exercised their right to self-determination in a referendum of independence, despite Spain’s attempt at stopping it with riot police. Spain has so far blocked the implementation of the democratic decision of Catalans by means of a combination of human rights abuse and political manipulation, and thanks to the complicit approval of the EU institutions. Nevertheless, Catalan self-determination remains the main hurdle that chokes Spanish institutions, and hence poses a major challenge to the democratic principles and practices of the European Union. I will provide background and review the recent political developments and possible future developments of the Catalan case, contextualizing it in the discussions regarding the principle and practices of self-determination. 

Clara Ponsatí is a Member of the European Parliament since February 2020, where she serves in the Industry Technology Reserach and Energy and Economics and Monetary Affairs Committees. From July 2017 until November 2017 she served as Minister of Education in the Catalan Government under President Carles Puigdemont. Prior to entering politics, Ponsatí was an economics professor. She was Chair of Economics at the School of Economics and Finance at the University of St Andrews, where she served as head of the school from 2015 to 2017. Before joining St Andrews she was Research Professor at the Institute for Economic Analysis (CSIC) where she served as director from 2006 to 2012. 

Previously, Ponsatí taught at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She has had visiting appointments at Georgetown University, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Toronto. Professor Ponsatí is a specialist in Game Theory and Public Economics, with interest in negotiations, bargaining, and voting. She has worked extensively on strategy, collective decisions, taxes and redistribution, with a distinguished publication record. She has worked on fiscal federalism and has advised the Catalan government on budgetary and tax affairs. Her research explores the links between group formation and majoritarian institutions, to understand the causes and effects of meritocracy and egalitarianism in the performance and stability of democratic organizations.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by October 26, 2023.

Organized by Professor Joan Ramon Resina, Director of the Iberian Studies Program at The Europe Center.

Just how bad is the current danger of democratic backsliding in the US and around the world?

Influential voices contend that democracy is in decline worldwide and threatened in the US. Using a variety of measures, I show that the global proportion of democracies is, in fact, at or near an all-time high. The current rate of backsliding is not historically unusual and is well-explained by the income levels of existing democracies. Historical data yield extremely low estimated hazards of democratic breakdown in the US—considerably lower than in any democracy that has failed. Western governments are seen as threatened by a supposed decline in popular support for democracy and an erosion of elite norms. But the evidence for these claims is sparse. While deteriorating democratic quality in some countries is indeed a cause for concern, available evidence suggests that alarm about a global slide into autocracy is exaggerated.

Daniel Treisman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles and Interim Director of UCLA’s Center for European and Russian Studies. A graduate of Oxford and Harvard, he has published six books and many articles in leading political science and economics journals, as well as numerous commentaries in public affairs journals and the press. His research focuses on Russian politics and economics as well as comparative political economy, including the analysis of democratization, the politics of authoritarian states, political decentralization, and corruption. 

A former co-editor of The American Political Science Review, he is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and has consulted for the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and USAID. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), and he is currently an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. In 2023, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book, co-authored with Sergei Guriev, "Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century" (Princeton University Press, 2022), has been translated into 13 languages and won the Prix Guido et Maruccia Zerilli-Marimo of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in Paris.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by November 23, 2023.

Given the rise of Euroscepticism, illiberalism, and economic nationalism expressed by populist leaders in Eastern Europe over the past decade, did the EU and NATO enlargement support or detract from establishing and sustaining a commitment to liberalism? How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shape the trajectory of liberalism in the region?

EU and NATO accession gave momentum to Eastern Europe’s democratic and capitalist development, despite the many domestic political challenges associated with this dual transition. Given the subsequent rise of Euroscepticism, illiberalism, and economic nationalism expressed by populist leaders over the past decade, and given violations of democratic norms, did the specific process of enlargement support or detract from establishing and sustaining a commitment to liberalism and so-called European values? Moreover, how does the Ukraine war fit into a trajectory of liberal development in Eastern Europe? These are the questions addressed in this presentation.

Hilary Appel is Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. Professor Appel has published numerous books and articles on the politics of economic reform in Russia and Eastern Europe in leading scholarly journals like World Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Review of International Political Economy, Post-Soviet Affairs, East European Politics and Societies, and others.

Her co-authored book with Mitchell A. Orenstein, From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2018), won the Silver Medal Laura Shannon Prize for Best Book in European Studies 2018-2019. Prof. Appel has received national fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, and the Institute for the Study of World Politics.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by October 5, 2023.