The Boris Nemtsov Foundation will hold a workshop in partnership with Stanford University

12.07.2022

The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom invites you to apply for the workshop “Promoting Behavior Change”. The instructors are Francis Fukuyama (Stanford University), Anat Gofen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and R. Kent Weaver (Georgetown University). 

Call for Participants

Leadership Academy for Development

“PROMOTING BEHAVIOR CHANGE”

Vilnius, Lithuania
September 11 – September 15, 2022

Introduction

The Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) is an executive-level training program for mid-level government officials, business entrepreneurs, and civil society leaders from developing and transitional countries. The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom invites you to apply for a 5-day policy workshop “Promoting Behavior Change”. This LAD program is offered to participants from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine in partnership with Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the European Humanity University, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, and the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.

Overview of Program

Why do people begin to smoke, even in countries where there are well-organized anti-smoking programs, including ghastly pictures on cigarette packages prominently displaying the ill effects of smoking? Why do parents sometimes resist child immunization and other public health campaigns? Why was mask mandate adherence during the Covid 19 pandemic higher in some regions than others? Why is corruption a bigger problem in Belarus than Finland? Why are violations of labor and environmental standards much higher in some countries than others? Why is the informal sector of the economy so large in many developing countries? Why do commercial sex workers and their clients frequently fail to use condoms, even though the risks of unprotected sex are so high?

What all of these questions have in common is that they concern why citizens and businesses fail to comply with requests or demands made (though frequently not enforced) by government for specific behaviors and/or act in ways that seem contrary to their self-interest. This workshop course draws upon insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, law, political science and anthropology to understand barriers to behavior change. We also investigate strategies that policy designers and implementers can use to change behavior and increase compliance, including social marketing campaigns, incentive approaches, choice architecture, efforts to address resource barriers to compliance, and stepped up monitoring and enforcement. Political constraints on the choice of strategies are also addressed. The course relies heavily on case materials to address compliance problems in a variety of policy sectors and countries, with cases tailored to the country and region where the course takes place.

Learn more about the course here

Instructors

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Director of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy. He is also a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science. From 2015 to 2021, he served as the Mosbacher Director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, was published in Sept. 2018 and his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in the spring of 2022.

Anat Gofen is an Associate Professor at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Governance, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the role of outliers in the evolvement, formation and implications of public policy, with emphasis on the interrelationships between citizens and government during implementation. Her research demonstrates mechanisms, influences and contributions of outliers to public life in various policy domains, including education, health and welfare, through concepts such as family capitalentrepreneurial exitstreet-level divergencestreet-level managementnegotiated compliance and policy dissonance. Gofen received her B.Sc. in computer science and Ph.D. in public policy from Hebrew University. She serves as co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis and as a co-chair of the Public Policy study group of the European Group of Public Administration. 

R. Kent Weaver is Professor of Public Policy and Government at Georgetown University. His teaching interests focus on Comparative Public Policy, Strategic Management of Policy Reform, and Promoting Behavior Change. Weaver’s major fields of research interest are comparative social policy, behavior change and policy implementation. Weaver is the author and co-author of many books including Ending Welfare As We Know It, The Politics of Industrial Change, Automatic Government: The Politics of Indexation, and Policy Feedbacks. He received his M.A. and PhD in political science from Harvard University.

Participant Selection

All interested candidates from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine should fill out the following application.
We are looking for 30 participants who are mid-career professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, determined to reform their countries in the future. English language proficiency is required.

Deadline: August 8st, 2022 at 6:00 pm EEDT

Finalists may be required to participate in a short phone or zoom interview. Applicant interviews will be conducted on an as needed basis, and participants will be notified of their selection by August 18, 2022.

Participants will be selected based on the following criteria:
experience in the field of political science, economics, social science, or international economic relations;
applicants should be mid-career practitioners, with at least five years or more of working experience;
in their present capacity, applicants should play important and influential roles in their country’s political, economic, and social development: аpplicants can be working as leaders of civil society organizations (such as representatives of trade unions, nongovernmental organizations, the media, business and professional associations) or business sector leaders/entrepreneurs; good command of English; strong analytical skills; ability to work in teams.

Dates of Program:
September 11-15, 2022

Language of Instruction:
English

Participant Costs:
This program has been fully-funded with generous support from our partners.

Contact
If you have any further questions, please, do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected]