In what ways have the new forms of international linkages developed by authoritarian regimes over the last few decades changed the calculus of autocratic power? Contributors to the Spring 2022 issue of the "Democracy and Autocracy" newsletter will address this and discuss topics ranging from financial flows, the global marketplace for surveillance and private intelligence, and foreign funded kleptocracy.

Panelists: Ronald J. Deibert, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab, University of Toronto; Jody LaPorte, Gonticas Tutorial Fellow in Politics and International Relations at Lincoln College, University of Oxford; Adeel Malik, Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies and Associate Professor at St. Peter's College, University of Oxford; Anne Pitcher, Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies and Political Science, U-M; Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Moderator: Dan Slater, WCED Director.

Ronald Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Random House, 2013), and RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (House of Anansi, 2020) as part of the CBC Massey Lecture series. Under his directorship, The Citizen Lab undertakes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of global security, ICTs, and human rights. The research outputs of the Citizen Lab are routinely covered in global media, including dozens of reports receiving front page coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and other media over the last decade.

Jody LaPorte researches formal and informal politics in non-democratic regimes, with a regional focus in post-Soviet Eurasia. Her current research focuses on the political effects of corruption in Central Asia and the Caucasus. She also publishes on qualitative methods, including the development of new tools for qualitative and case study research. Her articles have been published in Comparative Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, Sociological Methods and Research, Political Research Quarterly, Slavic Review, and PS: Political Science and Politics.

Adeel Malik is a development macroeconomist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. His research engages with questions of long-run development, political economy and economic history, with a special focus on Muslim societies. His work combines quantitative and qualitative research methods. Apart from engaging with cross-country empirics on development, he is trying to develop a broader research lens on the political economy of the Middle East. He co-directs the ERF Project on the Political Economy of Private Sector Dynamism in the Middle East, and serves as an associate editor of the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Middle East Economics and Finance).

Anne Pitcher's research comparatively examines the political economy of urban residential development, the distribution of goods under authoritarianism, and the role of regulatory agencies in Africa. She has undertaken extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, and Zambia. In addition, she has built a dataset on the characteristics of privatization agencies in 29 African countries and is also currently geo-coding all the residential projects that have been completed in Luanda, Angola.

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira serves as an Official Fellow of St Peter's College and a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin. He is co-editor of African Affairs, the journal of the Royal African Society, and co-director of the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on African Governance. He has conducted extensive fieldwork with a focus on the international political economy of African states, especially in regard to the extractive industries, the financial sector, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction, and African-Asian relations.

Registration for this webinar is required at http://myumi.ch/z1Xmd

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at weisercenter@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.