SAIS students and democratic development

Many of our readers will recognize this acronym: CCSDD.

We've had two posts already on the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development. In one,  CCSDD Director Justin Frosini discussed the work of this partnership between SAIS Bologna and the University of Bologna Law School.

Another post examined a two-day seminar on Islam and Europe.

Today at SAIS Bologna, the CCSDD hosted a day-long workshop on electoral management in transitional countries. Here is a program.

We highlight this workshop for two reasons.

First, it drew experts in democratic transitions. Second, it involved SAIS Bologna students in the preparation of the workshop and in case studies on Georgia, South Ossetia, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and Poland.

In the video below, you will see Prof. Erik Jones and Prof. Forsini introduce the workshop. Then I speak with Elizabeth Hegedus-Berthold and Ryan Miller about their work at the CCSDD. Both Elizabeth and Ryan are paid interns at the Center.

We get lots of questions about internships in Bologna. Elizabeth and Ryan are examples of two students who are involved in internships that expand their intellectual horizons and earn them money.



Nelson Graves

Islam and Europe: a seminar

This week SAIS Bologna is hosting a two-day conference entitled, "Islam and Europe: Religion, Law, Identity".

The conference brings together leading academics from Europe, the United States and Iran. It is sponsored jointly by SAIS Bologna, the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (CCSDD) and The Protection Project of SAIS Washington.

We highlight this conference as an example of the kind of learning that goes on outside the confines of the classroom at SAIS. It is cutting-edge intellectual dialog, very much open to our students and faculty.

Below you'll see a copy of the seminar program and, below that, a video with CCSDD Director Justin Frosini, whom readers of this blog met last month.

Nelson Graves

From post-war Bosnia to democratic transition in Chile

Meet Justin Frosini, who heads the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development in Bologna.

In his post below and then an embedded interview, Justin explains what the Center does, how it is associated with SAIS Bologna and why it is relevant to SAIS students.

The Bologna Center is proud of its ties to the CCSDD, which is working in areas of keen interest to many SAIS students.

The CCSDD was jointly founded by the University of Bologna's Faculty of Law and the SAIS Bologna Center. The Center runs research projects, seminars, study trips and summer programs that all mainly focus on countries undergoing a process of democratic and constitutional transition. Every year about 10 SAIS students intern at the CCSDD.

It has been an intense fortnight for the CCSDD. During the first week of February, a group of students went on the tenth study trip to Sarajevo during which they met, among others, the US and Italian Ambassadors to BiH and SAIS alumnus Marco Mantovanelli, now head of mission of the World Bank in BiH.

A CCSDD seminar
at SAIS Bologna

This year students got a poignant reminder of the tragic events of the war when they visited the town of Srebrenica, where the worst atrocity in post World War Two Europe took place.

There they had the chance to meet with Snaga Zene, an association founded by Branka Antic Stauber who courageously keeps the memory of what happened alive by witnessing the story of the women of Srebrenica. Local and international institutions based in Sarajevo also opened their doors to SAIS students, as for example the Constitutional Court of BiH and OSCE.

With no time to recover from such an intense experience in the Balkans, the CCSDD offered a new chance for students to go from transition “in the books” to transition “in action” by inviting Javier Couso, a Chilean professor of Political Science and Constitutional Law, who witnessed, first, Chile’s move to authoritarianism in ‘70s and ‘80s and then the transition to democracy of the 90s. This represented a unique opportunity for students to listen to a first-hand account of what is one of the most important events in Latin American history.

Justin Frosini

Here are some photographs submitted by Francesco Biagi, who coordinated the Sarajevo Study Trip:

Nelson Graves