Extreme weather in the wake of climate change, causing wildfires, drought, and flooding, threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation — a “Great American Desert” as early U.S. explorers once mislabeled it. Bruce Cain suggests that the unique complex of politics, technology, and logistics that once won the West must be rethought and reconfigured to win it anew in the face of these accelerating threats. These challenges are complicated by the region’s history, the deliberate fractiousness of the American political system, and the idiosyncrasies of human behavior.

Cain analyzes how, in spite of coastal flooding and spreading wildfires, people continue to move into, and even rebuild in, risky areas, how local communities are slow to take protective measures, and how individual beliefs, past adaptation practices and infrastructure, and complex governing arrangements across jurisdictions combine to flout real progress. Driving this analysis is Cain’s conviction that understanding the habits and politics that lead to procrastination and obstruction is critical to finding solutions and making necessary adaptations to the changing climate. In his new book, Under Fire and Under Water, Cain offers a detailed look at the rising stakes and urgency of the various interconnected issues. Join us in-person to hear Cain lay out the rethinking and reengineering that will allow people to live sustainably in the American West — even under the conditions caused by future global warming.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Bruce Cain is an expert in U.S. politics, particularly the politics of California and the American West. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting, he is a prominent scholar of elections, political regulation, and the relationships between lobbyists and elected officials. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Cain was director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and executive director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech, 1988 and UC Berkeley, 2003), and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

As we navigate the complexities of global security in the 21st century, it is essential to confront the broader implications of Russia's actions in Ukraine for the world at large. The conflict serves as a stark reminder of the challenges posed by authoritarian aggression and the erosion of international norms and institutions. In this panel, Ms. Oleksandra Matviichuk will explore the interconnectedness of global security dynamics, examining how Russia's human rights violations in Ukraine reverberate across borders. Join us for a timely and thought-provoking conversation that transcends borders as we collectively strive to confront the challenges of the 21st century and build a more secure and resilient world for all.

The S.T. Lee Lectureship is named for Seng Tee Lee, a business executive and noted philanthropist. Dr. Lee is the director of the Lee group of companies in Singapore and of the Lee Foundation.

Dr. Lee endowed the annual lectureship at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation. The S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader in international political, economic, social, and health issues and strategic policy-making concerns.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties, is a human rights lawyer focused on issues within Ukraine and the OSCE region. She leads initiatives aimed at fostering democracy and safeguarding human rights. The organization supports legislative reforms, monitors law enforcement and judiciary, conducts wide education programs, and leads international solidarity efforts. In response to the full-scale war, Matviichuk co-founded the "Tribunal for Putin" initiative, documenting war crimes across affected Ukrainian regions. Recognized for her unwavering commitment, she received the Democracy Defender Award and participated in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at Stanford University.

In 2022, she earned the prestigious Right Livelihood Award and was named one of the Financial Times' 25 Most Influential Women, while the Center for Civil Liberties received the Nobel Peace Prize under her leadership.

Despite the policy failures that enabled and even encouraged the buildup of risk in the banking system and ultimately led to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, “reformed” rules remain poorly designed, the system remains much too fragile and dangerous, and bailouts persist. In resisting beneficial reforms, bank lobbies make false, misleading, and self-serving arguments. The weak rules and poor enforcement reflect the symbiosis of bankers with politicians, the media, lawyers, and economists. They encourage and enable a culture of recklessness, rule infringements, and even criminal behavior, with impunity. The power of bankers to distort rules and political discourse threatens our democracies. This talk will be based on the new and expanded edition of Anat Admati's The Bankers' New Clothes: What is Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2024), coauthored with Martin Hellwig, and other writings.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anat Admati is the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and faculty director of the Corporations and Society Initiative. Her interests lie in the interaction of business, law, and policy, with a focus on governance and accountability issues. Since 2010, Admati has been engaged in policy discussions related to financial regulations. In 2014, she was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and by Foreign Policy magazine as among 100 global thinkers. Admati has written on information dissemination in financial markets, financial contracting, corporate governance, and banking. She is the co-author, with Martin Hellwig, of The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press 2013, expanded edition 2024).

Admati holds BSc from the Hebrew University, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a past board member of the American Finance Association, and a former member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee and the CFTC’s Market Risk Advisory Committee.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Control over patronage appointments is believed to confer an electoral advantage on the incumbent. We study the effects of the introduction of merit civil service legislation between 1900 and 2016 on reelection rates of individual legislators serving across lower houses of U.S. state legislatures. Using recently-developed statistical methods appropriate for the staggered introduction of reform legislation, results show that reelection rates significantly increase following abolition of patronage appointments to the state bureaucracy. To explain this surprising result, we study changes in the pool of politicians and document a selection effect: post-reform states see faster replacement of politicians than their unreformed counterparts. To understand this more fully, we bring in partial data on rerunning and legislator occupational backgrounds. Neither of these shows significant changes with reform. Overall, our results suggest that once rotation between elected and appointed offices was restricted by reform, more ambitious and professional legislators entered elected office. However, these traits appear unobservable.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Miriam Golden holds the Peter Mair Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute. She uses multiple research methods to investigate the political economy of governance, political representation, and corruption in countries around the world. Golden is currently engaged in a large-scale cross-national and historical study of how and when politicians secure reelection and has recently published The Puzzle of Clientelism: Political Discretion and Elections Around the World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) with Eugenia Nazrullaeva. Her articles have been published in The American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Annual Review of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences and a recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

This talk centers around the forthcoming book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, to be published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. Collisions provides historical context for the war that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It weaves together the origins of this war in Russian, Ukrainian, European, and U.S. politics and policy. With an eye to global context, it assesses the many forms of disruption and instability that the war has caused. Two years after the start of this war, Collisions offers a way of taking stock and trying to understand the big-picture implications of this war.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael C. Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a senior non-resident associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Harvard University Press, 2009), and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (Basic Books, 2020). From 2014 to 2016, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. He writes regularly on international affairs for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Infrastructure is at the heart of contemporary development strategies. Yet short time horizons are thought to impede infrastructure provision in democracies. Why do elected politicians invest in infrastructure projects that will not be completed during their time in office? The answer depends on understanding what infrastructure is and does in politics.

I argue that the political rewards from infrastructure projects come from the associated contracts. Like many goods and services, infrastructure investments are neither fully privatized, in the sense of transferring ownership to the private sector, nor fully public, in that the state directly builds projects. Governments instead contract out to the private sector. Politicians use their discretion in the contracting process to secure campaign donations, as well as personal rents. They also manipulate contracts — and particularly the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) — to hide project costs, shift liabilities to future administrations, and move project decisions away from legislatures. Detailed evidence from 1,000 large infrastructure contracts, judicial investigations, leaked financial documents, and qualitative interviews with politicians and bureaucrats in Latin America demonstrate why politicians invest in infrastructure and why projects often fail to produce the economic development and social welfare gains promised.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alisha Holland is an Associate Professor in the Government Department at Harvard University. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she was an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her first book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics), looks at the politics of enforcement against property law violations by the poor. She is writing a new book on large infrastructure projects in Latin America.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.