Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

When All Else Fails: International Adjudication of Human Rights Abuse Claims, 1976-1999

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Although interest among sociologists in the consolidation and expansion of an international human rights regime has grown in recent years, little attention is accorded the formal procedures that allow individuals aggrieved by states to appeal directly to an international audience. Using data for 82 countries between 1976 and 1999, this article examines the political and cultural factors that affect the number and rate of individual human rights abuse claims filed with Human Rights Committee. Negative binomial and event history analyses indicate that a country's favorable human rights practices, political democracy, and membership in most non-Western civilizations significantly reduce the number and rate of claims emanating from a country. Conversely, extensive participation in international non-governmental organizations, membership in Western civilization, and intra-state diffusion processes increase the number and rate of claims filed against a country. Other factors, including post-communist regime changes, state participation in international governmental organizations, the World Human Rights Conference, and GDP per capita, have no impact. Results suggest that claims alleging state abuse of human rights

  1. increase as a country's human rights practices worsen;
  2. decline as effective means of recourse become available domestically; and
  3. increase with the cultural empowerment of individuals.
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CDDRL Working Papers
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Perspective Paper on Financial Instability

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A unique publication exploring the opportunities for addressing ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: Climate Change, Communicable Diseases, Conflicts, Education, Financial Instability, Corruption, Migration, Malnutrition and Hunger, Trade Barriers, Access to Water. In a world fraught with problems and challenges, we need to gauge how to achieve the greatest good with our money. Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a rich set of arguments and data for prioritising our response most effectively. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert defining the scale of the problem and describing the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. Each challenge is evaluated by economists from North America, Europe and China who attempt a ranking of the most promising options. Whether you agree or disagree with the analysis or conclusions, Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious, yet accessible, springboard for debate and discussion.

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Cambridge University Press, in "Global Crises, Global Solutions"
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Peter Blair Henry

Nigeria's Struggle for Democracy and Good Governance: A Festschrift for Oyeleye Oyediran

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Why does Nigeria have a history of failed republics, failed governance as well as false starts and dead-ends on the path to economic development, social coherence, and peace? Is the Fourth Republic condemned to the fate of previous ones, or can it rise above the heavy weight ofthe past and chart a different path for itself? In this volume of 26 chapters, put together to honour one of Nigeria's foremost political scientists, four generations of political scientists, economists, political economists, sociologists, psychologists, international relations experts, lawyers, historians and specialists in literature from Africa and North America provide fresh and succinct insights on these and other posers in original essays that range from the theoretical to the analytical, from those that are historical and comparative to those that focus on the current situation in that important African country.

The essays focus on. four cardinal points that sin post Nigeria's perennial struggle for democracy and good governance as cause, effect and terrain. These are the structure, history, processes and dynamics of the country's putative federal system; governance issues; the formation and transformation of identities; and the global contexts of the production and reproduction of the Nigerian state, economy and society.

The book will be of great value to Nigerians, friends of Nigeria, and all those interested in understanding the path that has led Nigeria to its present, state and in finding alternative pathways to a future that is more democratic, better governed, and more developed.

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Ibadan University Press
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Larry Diamond

Promoting Real Reform in Africa

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After more than a decade of reform efforts in Africa, much of the optimism over the continent's prospects has been replaced by widespread "Afropessimism." But to what extent is either view well founded? Democratic Reform in Africa plumbs the key issues in the contemporary African experience - including intrastate conflict, corruption, and the development of civil society - highlighting the challenges and evaluating the progress of political and economic change.

Case studies of Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa complement the thematic chapters, exploring the complex interactions between democracy and development.

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Lynne Rienner Publishers in "Democratic Reform in Africa: The Quality of Progress", E. Gyimah-Boadi, ed.
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Larry Diamond

David Brady

Hoover Memorial Bldg, Room 350
Stanford, California, 94305-6010

(650) 723-9702 (650) 723-1687
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Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor in Public Policy, Bowen H. & Janice Arthur McCoy Professor in Leadership Values, Professor of Political Science
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David Brady is deputy director and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Ethics in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the university.

Brady is an expert on the U.S. Congress and congressional decision making. His current research focuses on the political history of the U.S. Congress, the history of U.S. election results, and public policy processes in general.

His recent publications include, with John Cogan, "Out of Step, Out of Office," American Political Science Review, March 2001; with John Cogan and Morris Fiorina, Change and Continuity in House Elections (Stanford University Press, 2000); Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Carter to Clinton (Westview Press, 1999); with John Cogan and Doug Rivers, How the Republicans Captured the House: An Assessment of the 1994 Midterm Elections (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995); and The 1996 House Elections: Reaffirming the Conservative Trend (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1997). Brady is also author of Congressional Voting in a Partisan Era (University of Kansas Press, 1973) and Critical Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives (Stanford University Press, 1988).

Brady has been on continuing appointment at Stanford University since 1987. He was associate dean from 1997 to 2001 at Stanford University; a fellow at the center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1985 to 1986 and again in 2001-2; the Autrey Professor at Rice University, 1980-87; and an associate professor and professor at the University of Houston, 1972-79.

In 1995 and 2000 he received the Congressional Quarterly Prize for the "best paper on a legislative topic." In 1992 he received the Dinkelspiel Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Stanford University, and in 1993 he received the Phi Beta Kappa Award for best teacher at Stanford University.

Brady taught previously at Rice University, where he was honored with the George Brown Award for Superior Teaching. He also received the Richard F. Fenno Award of the American Political Science Association for the "best book on legislative studies" published in 1988-89.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Brady received a B.S. degree from Western Illinois University and an M.A. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of Iowa. He was a C.I.C. scholar at the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1965.

Enforcing the Peace: There Aren't Enough Canadians

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Kimberly Marten is a tenured associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and also teaches at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1991, and held both pre-doc and post-doc fellowships at CISAC. She has written three books: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Columbia Univ. Press, 2004), Weapons, Culture, and Self-Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton University Press, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. Her numerous book chapters and journal articles include a Washington Quarterly piece in Winter 2002-3, "Defending against Anarchy: From War to Peacekeeping in Afghanistan," as well as op-eds in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

In May 2004 she was embedded for a week with the Canadian Forces then leading the ISAF peace mission in Kabul. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS). Her current research asks whether warlords and gangs can be changed from potential spoilers to stakeholders in state-building processes.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207, Encina Hall

Kimberly Marten Associate Professor of Political Science Barnard College
Seminars

Forms of Property Rights: Oligarchic Versus Democratic Societies

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Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Economic Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He is also affiliated with the National Bureau Economic Research, Center for Economic Performance, and Center for Economic Policy Research.

His work has been published in leading scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal Economics and Review of Economic Studies to name a few. Daron Acemoglu's research covers a wide range of areas within economics, including political economy, economic development and growth, human capital theory, growth theory, technical change, and search theory. Acemoglu is also the editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, and associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth.

Abstract of paper presented in this research seminar

This paper develops a model where there is a trade-off between the enforcement of the property rights of different groups. An "oligarchic" society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights, but also tends to erect significant entry barriers, violating the property rights of future producers. Democracy, where political power is more widely diffused, imposes redistributive taxes on the producers, but tends to avoid entry barriers. When taxes in democracy are high and the distortions caused by entry barriers are low, an oligarchic society achieves greater efficiency. Nevertheless, because comparative advantage in entrepreneurship shifts away from the incumbents, the inefficiency created by entry barriers in oligarchy deteriorates over time. The typical pattern is therefore one of the rise and decline of oligarchic societies: of two otherwise identical societies, the one with an oligarchic organization will first become richer, but later fall behind the democratic society. I also discuss how democratic societies may be better able to take advantage of new technologies, how an oligarchic society might transition to democracy because of within-elite conflict, and how the unequal distribution of income in oligarchy supports the oligarchic institutions and may keep them in place even when they become significantly costly to society.

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Encina Basement Conference Room

Daron Acemoglu Professor of Economics MIT
Seminars

The Natural State and the Political-Economy of Non-Development.

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Barry Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He served as chair of the Political Science Department from 1996 to 2001. He is also a professor of economics, by courtesy, at Stanford.Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. Weingast authored (with Robert Bates, Avner Grief, Margaret Levi, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal) Analytic Narratives, published in 1998. Weingast is editor, with Kenneth A. Shepsle, of Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions (University of Michigan Press, 1995). His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy.

Douglass C. North was the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is currently the Hoover Institution's Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow. His 1990 Cambridge University Press Book, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, is a staple in graduate courses in political economy around the world. North's current research activities include research on property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, a theory of the state, the free rider problem, ideology, growth of government, economic and social change, and a theory of institutional change.

John Wallis is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of American Economic Growth and Standards of Living Before the Civil War, with Robert Gallman, NBER, University of Chicago Press, 1992, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on American economic history.

Encina Hall Basement Conference Room

Barry Weingast Professor of Political Science Stanford University
Douglass North Hoover Senior Fellow Stanford University
John Wallis Professor of Economics University of Maryland
Seminars

Post Conflict Reconstruction Strategies: The NGO Perspective

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Liz McBride, Director of the Post-Conflict Development Initiative at the London-based Internatinal Rescue Committee will discuss state reconstruction challenges following violent conflict in the developing world. McBride is a visiting researcher in the spring quarter at CDDRL. She has worked in humanitarian relief and post-conflict reconstruction in Tanzania and Rwanda. McBride's responsibilities at the International Rescue Committee include creating and ensuring implementation of new institutional program frameworks in response to the changing nature of humanitarian aid; overseeing technical areas of community driven reconstruction, good governance, civil society, local capacity development, conflict resolution and economic development; and supporting service delivery technical units in defining post-conflict strategies and priorities (i.e. health, education). She also works intensively with the International Rescue Committee's primary target post-conflict countries: Sudan and South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Liberia.

Encina Basement Conference Room

Liz McBride Director, Post-Conflict Development Initiative International Rescue Committee
Seminars

Politics and Identity on Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations

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Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, eco-nomic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a num-ber of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.

Co-hosted with the Hoover Institution.

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Philippines Conference Room

Richard C. Bush Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies The Brookings Institution
Seminars
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