Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.
Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.
We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.
But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.
Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.
President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.
But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.
Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.
Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.
Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.
The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.
Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.
The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.
The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.
With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.
Pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally, yet deeply rooted in local culture. The newly published book Prescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policy in the Asia-Pacific, edited by Karen Eggleston, examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific.
In this colloquium, contributors to Prescribing Cultures discuss how the book analyzes pharmaceutical policy in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India, focusing on two cross-cutting themes: differences in “prescribing cultures” and physician dispensing; and the challenge of balancing access to drugs with incentives for innovation.
As Michael Reich of Harvard University says in his Forward to Prescribing Cultures,
“The pharmaceutical sector…promises great benefits and also poses enormous risks.… Conflicts abound over public policies, industry strategies, payment mechanisms, professional associations, and dispensing practices—to name just a few of the regional controversies covered in this excellent book.
The tension between emphasizing innovation versus access -- a topic of hot debate on today’s global health policy agenda -- is examined in several chapters…
This book makes a special contribution to our understanding of the pharmaceutical sector in China… Globalization is galloping forward, with Chinese producers pushing the pace at breakneck speed. More and more, our safety depends on China’s ability to get its regulatory act together…”
The colloquium features presentations by Naoko Tomita (Keio University), Anita Wagner (Harvard University), and Karen Eggleston (Stanford FSI Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center). They will give specific examples of how pharmaceutical policy serves as a window into the economic tradeoffs, political compromises, and historical trajectories that shape health systems, as well as how cultural legacies shape and are shaped by the forces of globalization.
Oksenberg Conference Room
Landau Economics Bldg.
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6015
Nicholas Hope is the Director of the Stanford Center for International Development (SCID). He also directs SCID's China research program. His current research is private enterprise development in China and progress of reforms in China, especially in the financial sector. His interests are in East Asian economies, especially China and Indonesia, and his teaching interests are in development of Asian economies, role and effectiveness of international financial institutions, and thesis supervision of students working in those areas.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Dr. Hope worked at the World Bank as Country Director for China and Mongolia, and Director of the Resident Staff in Indonesia. He is the co-editor, with Dennis Tao Yang and Mu Yang Li, of How Far Across the River?: Chinese Policy Reform at the Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2003). He also co-edited, with Belton M. Fleisher, Anita Alves Pena, and Dennis Tao Yang, Policy Reform and Chinese Markets (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008).
Dr. Hope received his Ph. D. from Princeton University, and his undergraduate degrees from Oxford University and the University of Tasmania. He was awarded the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship and a research fellowship from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Peter B. Henry, the Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and an affiliated faculty member with the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), has been appointed by President Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, the White House has announced. This distinguished and diverse group of 28 accomplished Americans is responsible for recommending an exceptional group of men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows, America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service.
“The men and women of this commission embody what makes the White House Fellows program so special,” said President Obama in making the June 17 announcement. “These leaders are diverse, non-partisan, and committed to mentoring our next generation of public servants. I am confident that they will select a class of White House Fellows that demonstrate extraordinary leadership, strong character, and a deep commitment to serving their country.”
“Peter Henry is a superb scholar, teacher, leader, and mentor,” said CDDRL Director and FSI and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond. “This recognition is richly deserved and will give Peter a national venue to continue developing a new generation of leaders, scholars, and policy practitioners.”
Alumni of the White House Fellows Program include former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Henry is also the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s business school. He is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Among the numerous awards and honors Henry has received are a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award, a National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and the National Economic Association Dissertation Prize. He has published several articles in journals and books, including “Capital Account Liberalization, the Cost of Capital, and Economic Growth” in the American Economic Review and “Perspective Paper on Financial Instability” in Bjorn Lomborg’s Global Crises, Global Solutions.
Dr. Henry received his BA in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a BA in Mathematics. He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology.
Professor Henry is also part of the distinguished Stanford faculty group that teaches in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program each summer at Stanford. From some 800 applicants, this program selects 25 to 30 rising leaders from important countries in transition – such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe—and brings them to Stanford to examine and help foster linkages among democracy, development, human rights, and the rule of law in their countries. Other Stanford faculty teaching the Draper Hills Summer Fellows include Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, FSI Deputy Director Stephen Krasner, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy, Avner Greif from economics, and Erik Jensen from Stanford Law School.
This distinguished and diverse group of 28 accomplished Americans is responsible for recommending an exceptional group of men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows, America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service.
Herbert Hoover Memorial Building room 234
434 Galvez Mall, Stanford, CA 94035
Šumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus and the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has previously taught at James Madison College of Michigan State University, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin.
Professor Ganguly has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a Guest Scholar at the Center for Cooperative Monitoring in Albuquerque and a Visiting Scholar at the German Institute for International and Area Studies in Hamburg. He was also the holder of the Ngee Ann Chair in International Politics at the Rajaratnam School for International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in the spring term of 2010. In 2018 and 2019 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Professor Ganguly is member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves on the editorial boards of Asian Security, Current History, Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy Analysis, The Nonproliferation Review, Pacific Affairs, International Security and Small Wars and Insurgencies. A specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 20 books on the region. His most recent book (edited with Eswaran Sridharan) is the Oxford Handbook of Indian Politics.
As democracy has spread over the past three decades to a majority of the world's states, analytic attention has turned increasingly from explaining regime transitions to evaluating and explaining the character of democratic regimes. Much of the democracy literature of the 1990s was concerned with the consolidation of democratic regimes. In recent years, social scientists as well as democracy practitioners and aid agencies have sought to develop means of framing and assessing the quality of democracy.
The symposium will bring together scholars and current and former government officials from Taiwan, China, and US to take stock of cross-strait relations over the past decade. It will also assess the future development of cross-strait interactions from different angles including economic, political, and security perspectives.
Friday, May 29, 2009 |
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8:15 am to 8:45 am |
Registration & Reception |
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8:45 am to 9:00 am |
Introduction by Larry Diamond, Director of CDDRL; Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution and FSI, Stanford University |
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9:00 am to 10:30 am |
Session I: Cross-Strait Relations under the DPP Administration Moderator: Larry Diamond, Director of CDDRL; Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution and FSI, Stanford University Speakers:
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10:30 am to 10:50 am |
Break |
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10:50 am to 12:15 pm |
Session II: Recent Development under the KMT Administration Moderator: Ramon Myers, Senior Fellow Emeritus of Hoover Institution, Stanford University Speakers:
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12:15 pm to 1:30 pm |
Lunch |
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1:30 pm to 3:00 pm |
Session III: Economic Dimension of Cross-Strait Relations Moderator: Henry Rowen, Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution; Emeritus Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University Speakers:
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3:00 pm to 3:20 pm |
Break |
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3:20 pm to 4:45 pm |
Session IV: Taiwan's Domestic Politics and Cross-Strait Relations Moderator: Eric Yu, Research Fellow & Program Manager, CDDRL, Stanford University Speakers:
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Saturday, May 30, 2009 |
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| 8:30 am to 9:00 am | Continental Breakfast |
| 9:00 am to 10:30 am |
Session V: Taiwan's Security and Cross-Strait Relations Moderator: Larry Diamond, Director of CDDRL; Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution and FSI, Stanford University Speakers:
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| 10:30 am to 10:50 am | Break |
| 10:50 am to 12:30 pm |
Session VI: Impact of Cross-Strait Exchanges on Mainland China Moderator: TJ Cheng, Class of 1935 Professor of Political Science, College of William and Mary Speakers:
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| 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm | Roundtable Conclusion |
Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center