At independence, African states inherited liberal constitutions enshrining multiparty democracy. However, within a decade, many collapsed into military dictatorships and one party-regimes and elections lost their significance. The democratization process of the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the drafting of ‘new’ constitutions that reinstated competitive elections. The reintroduction of multiparty democracy entailed that elections were going to be genuinely contested between several candidates, with the possibility that opposition leaders could wrestle power from the incumbent leaders. Many constitutions or electoral laws adopted following this wind of change provide for the possibility of aggrieved individuals and/or entities to seek legal redress in courts of law or other quasi-judicial bodies, usually on specified grounds. This phenomenon is now compounded by the increased use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the electoral process. Almost all presidential election disputes in the last ten years in Africa have revolved around failure or alleged tampering with the ICT facilities in the electoral process. It would, therefore, seem that ICTs, although helpful in increasing efficiency in the electoral process, provide possible new and cleaner ways of stealing elections. This new development presents new challenges to courts as often ICTs are adopted by Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) without appropriate changes to the electoral laws to enhance transparency and accountability. This paper analyses how the courts are facing the challenge of increased use of technology in elections and explores the way forward in terms of progressive interpretation and proactive adjudication of election matters.

Dr. O’Brien Kaaba, Lecturer, Department of Public Law, and Assistant Dean of Research, University of Zambia

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In the mid-nineteenth century, decades after independence in Latin America, borderlands presented existential challenges to consolidating nation-states. This talk examines how and why these spaces became challenging to governments and what their meaningfulness is for our understanding of the development of a global world by examining one of those spaces: the Trans-Andean, an Argentine-Chilean borderland connected by the Andes mountains and centered on the Argentine region of Cuyo. It answers these questions by interweaving three narratives: Chilean migration to western Argentina; mountain-crossing Argentine rebels; and the formation of plans for railroads to cross the mountains.

Out of these narratives emerges a twofold argument that, on the one hand, locates the causes and stakes of foundational national conflicts in Argentina in a Pacific-facing Trans-Andean and, on the other hand, sees the Trans-Andean as part of mid-nineteenth-century globalization, thus connecting national conflicts, non-national geographies, and globalization. As a result, this history challenges dominant narratives about social and political conflicts at this formative moment in Argentine and Latin American history while opening up discussion on the methodologies and meaningfulness of transnational, borderlands, and global histories.

Kyle E. Harvey is an Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University. He is a social historian whose current research focuses on spatial histories of Argentina and Chile. His research engages with broad questions of historical geography, human mobility, capitalism, technology and expertise, and materialist interpretations of history. He received his BA in History from the University of Michigan and his MA and PhD from Cornell University. His research has been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies and Historia Crítica. His book, In Place of Mobility: Railroads, Rebels, and Migrants in an Argentine-Chilean Borderland, was published in 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press as part of its David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History.

“Exile,” wrote Edward Said, “is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home.”

Join Oleksandra Shtepenko, an exiled Ukrainian scholar, Cornell virtual scholar under threat, and visiting professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland, for a roundtable discussion of her first-hand experiences as the war in her homeland continues. Along with her NCU collaborators Anna Skubaczewska-Pniewska and Iwona Rzepnikowska, she will address these and other crucial questions: How can we rebuild lives, both in the flesh and of the mind, when war rips open new, unhealable borders? Can intellectual work be reimagined under these circumstances, together with institutions and communities that challenge existing paradigms?

The roundtable will be moderated by Anindita Banerjee (Comparative Literature), Shtepenko's Cornell host and virtual collaborator.

Respondents will include Cristina Florea (History, Cornell) and Zenon Wasyliw (History, Ithaca College).

About the Speakers

Oleksandra Shtepenko is an Institute of International Education scholar, Cornell Virtual Scholar Under Threat, and visiting professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland. Iwona Rzepnikowska is an associate professor of literary studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland.Anna Skubaczewska-Pniewska is an associate professor of literary studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Poland.

Hosts and Sponsors

This event is hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature and Global Cornell.

A Book Talk with Anna Schwenck

Flexible Authoritarianism challenges the notion that authoritarianism's transnational rise constitutes a backlash against economic globalization. Describing a governmental approach that simultaneously incentivizes a can-do spirit and suppresses dissent, the book points out resonances between authoritarian and neoliberal ideologies in today's comeback of strongman rule. Drawing on field observations, in-depth interviews, and analyses of video clips, it conveys the look and feel of flexible authoritarianism in Russia through the eyes of up-and-coming youth. The author analyzes ways in which the insignia of cool start-up capitalism and familiar cultural forms such as the summer camp help stabilize the regime, while also showing how up-and-coming youth both embrace and contest loyalty to the government.

Anna Schwenck’s research lies at the intersection of cultural and political sociology. She is particularly interested in how cultural understandings, be they transnational or locally specific, shape political behaviour. She studied the resonances between authoritarianism and neoliberalism in Russia, pandemic and science skepticism in German-speaking countries, and processes of re-traditionalization in popular music cultures. Her recent work investigates the role of liberation songs and narratives in conventional and contentious politics in South Africa.

Anna is employed at the University of Siegen’s department of social sciences and the Siegen-based collaborative research centre “Transformations of the Popular” (SFB 1472). She is also a visiting researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s Anthropology Department in South Africa.
She earned a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin, as well as a BA in Cultural Studies from Viadrina European University, Frankfurt (Oder). She was a visiting student/scholar at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Sociology Department at the University of California (Berkeley), and the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow).

This lecture examines how the concept of vulnerability is “translated” from legal bureaucratic discourses into actual policy and practice in the refugee resettlement context. In particular, we trace how the integration potential of refugees continues to be weighed against their vulnerabilities in the process. While resettlement is a voluntary commitment and not legally binding, states that have signed the 1951 Geneva Convention have agreed to share the responsibility of providing protection and solutions for refugees who cannot return to their country of origin. Through a comparative discussion of refugee resettlement in Canada and Norway, we shed light on some mechanisms through which the humanitarian focus on prioritizing the most vulnerable comes under pressure from competing political considerations and rationales. By examining instances of what we call the political or ‘tactical’ uses of resettlement, we aim not only to highlight its partisan and domestic political dynamics but also to open up questions of who is ultimately left behind and considered ‘too vulnerable’ for resettlement.

Dagmar Soennecken is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy & Administration at York University (Toronto, Canada). She is also cross-appointed to the Law & Society Program there. Her research focuses on comparative public policy in the EU and North America. She is particularly interested in questions concerning law and the courts as well as citizenship and migration, including refugees. In 2019, she became the Editor-in-Chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. Her work has been published in Comparative Migration Studies, Law & Policy, Droit et Société, Politics and Governance among others. She was one of the three Canadian co-investigators on the recently concluded VULNER project team.

Hosted by the Institute for European Studies and cosponsored by the Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and funded by the Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative.

Join us October 3–5, 2024 for a three-day conference featuring distinguished Cornell faculty and prominent economists and scholars from around the world.

View and download the conference program.

The World at a Turning Point: Cornell Conference on Development Economics and Law will be an important stocktaking of the state of the global economy, with a special focus on the changing nature of labor markets, technological progress, inequality, climate change, and related laws and regulations. Speakers will highlight both empirical and theoretical research.

Cornell faculty, students, and staff are welcome to attend sessions of interest. Registration is not required for this in-person conference.

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About the Event

A collaboration between CRADLE, a research group in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, CRADLE's annual conference offers a multifaceted perspective that spans economics, law, politics, and policy.