Efforts are underway in South Africa to turn around a decade of governance reversal. But progress in addressing an underlying cause of the reversals remains very limited – extreme, racially-tinged inequality, with missing ladders of opportunity into the middle class. In this seminar, Brian Levy will explore some interactions between shortfalls in inclusion and institutional pressures, including an in-depth focus on one key challenge – improving the learning outcomes of South Africa’s poorly performing system of basic education. The findings from his recent co-authored book, The Politics and Governance of Basic Education: A Tale of Two South African Provinces suggest that a narrow focus on ‘fixing the bureaucracy’ can only go so far. Re-balancing focus away from narrowly top-down approaches towards the evocation of agency offers a variety of added possibilities for creative and constructive action.
Speaker Bio:
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Brian Levy is Professor of the Practice of International Development, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; and Academic Director, Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town. He worked at the World Bank from 1989 to 2012, including as head of the secretariat responsible for the design and implementation of the World Bank Group's governance and anti-corruption strategy. He has published widely on the interactions among institutions, political economy and development policy, including Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies (Oxford U Press, 2014; info at www.workingwiththegrain.com) and, as lead editor and author, The Governance and Politics of Basic Education: A Tale of Two South African Provinces (Oxford U Press, 2018). He completed his Ph.D in economics at Harvard University in 1983.
Goldman conference room Encina Hall East, 4th floor Room E409
Brian Levy
Professor of the Practice of International Development, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
How do memory and forgetting shape politics in autocracies? We combine the logic of collective action with a theory of informational politics, in which autocrats have three instruments: propaganda, threats of violence embedded within propaganda, and censorship. For citizens, we argue that historical memory drives the calendar of protest. In turn, the likelihood of historical forgetting drives the informational strategy of repressive governments. We test our theory in the context of China. The most powerful focal points for protest, we find, are anniversaries of the regime's crimes against citizens. Those most likely to be forgotten -- those that occurred decades ago -- are subject to censorship, while those too fresh to be forgotten are subject to propaganda as well. Explicit threats of violence are reserved for China's ethnic minorities, and coincide with anniversaries of failed separatist movements. We conclude with evidence that propaganda-based threats of violence generate a short-term reduction in protest.
Speaker(s) Bio:
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Erin Baggott Carter is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. She received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and was previously a fellow at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and propaganda. She recently completed a book manuscript on autocratic propaganda in global perspective and is currently working on another on how the United States and China attempt to shape each other’s domestic politics.
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Brett Carter is Assistant Professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, where he was a Graduate Fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was previously a fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, as well as the Hoover Institution. He recently finished a book about propaganda in the world’s autocracies and is currently working on another book project about autocratic survival in Central Africa.
Reuben Hills Conference room, E207
Erin Baggott Carter
Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California
Brett Carter
Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California
Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self rule. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump marked a decisive turning point for many. What kind of president calls the news media the “enemy of the American people,” or sees a moral equivalence between violent neo-Nazi protesters in paramilitary formation and residents of a college town defending the racial and ethnic diversity of their homes? Yet, whatever our concerns about the current president, we can be assured that the Constitution offers safeguards to protect against lasting damage—or can we? How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to be complacent. Constitutional rules can either hinder or hasten the decline of democratic institutions. The checks and balances of the federal government, a robust civil society and media, and individual rights—such as those enshrined in the First Amendment—do not necessarily succeed as bulwarks against democratic decline. Rather, the sobering reality for the United States is that, to a much greater extent than is commonly realized, the Constitution’s design makes democratic erosion more, not less, likely. But we—and the rest of the world—can do better. The authors conclude by laying out practical steps for how laws and constitutional design can play a more positive role in managing the risk of democratic decline.
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Tom Ginsburg is Leo Spitz Professor of Law, University of Chicago, and a professor of political science. He is also director of the Comparative Constitutions Project He focuses on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective. He holds BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (2014); and Law and Development in Middle-Income Countries (2014)..
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Aziz Huq is is the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. His scholarship focuses on how institutional design influences individual rights and liberties. He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before teaching, he led the Brennan Center’s project on Liberty and National Security and was a senior consultant analyst for the International Crisis Group.
Encina Hall, 4th floor East Wing
Goldman conference room (E409)
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science
Aziz Huq
Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, Mark Claster Mamolen Teaching Scholar
The recent surge in nationalism and tribalism brings renewed salience to questions of identity within and across borders. Notably, it exposes the tension between bounded social identities, on the one hand, and universalist yearnings and commitments, on the other. Liberal democracy—and the ostensible universalism on which it is based—is struggling to resolve this tension. I turn instead to the cosmopolitan tradition. I argue that cosmopolitanism—and a genuinely cosmopolitan (i.e., unbounded) social identity, in particular—represents not just an extension of scope from the national to the global, but a qualitative shift that permeates all identities, and serves to fundamentally protect and liberate particularist attachments from their otherwise inherent instabilities and contradictions. On this view, the promise of cosmopolitanism does not rest exclusively in what it can deliver beyond our borders, but also in its potential to fundamentally recast social identities within boundaries, resolving crises of identity at all levels of society.
Speaker Bio:
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Shahrzad Sabet's research spans politics, economics, psychology, and philosophy. She is a Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Bahá’í Chair for World Peace Program. Previously, she was a Senior Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, where she recently received her PhD in Government. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Shahrzad Sabet
Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Bahá’í Chair for World Peace Program
Venezuela finds itself mired in an unprecedented economic and political crisis. The economy has contracted nearly 50% since President Maduro took office in 2013, oil production has declined to levels below those last seen in 1950, and inflation has reached an estimated annual rate of over 1.3 million percent. Millions have fled abroad in search of a better life, making Venezuela’s migration crisis the second worst in the world after Syria’s. In 2019, the ruling Maduro regime faces new challenges at home from an opposition that has declared it illegitimate, and from abroad due to diplomatic non-recognition by over 50 governments and the imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry. This talk will examine the apparently intractable political and economic crisis facing Venezuela, the role of the military in keeping the present government in power, and the impact of the latest domestic and international pressures on the Maduro regime
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Harold Trinkunas is the Deputy Director of and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Trinkunas served as the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on issues related to foreign policy, governance, and security, particularly in Latin America. Trinkunas has written on emerging powers and the international order, ungoverned spaces, terrorism financing, borders, democratic civil-military relations, drug policy and Internet governance. He received his doctorate in political science from Stanford University in 1999. He was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Harold Trinkunas
Deputy Director of and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University
This talk develops a framework to analyze how strategic politicians make tradeoffs and prioritize among six objectives (winning and staying in office, “good policy”, institutional power, career advancement, personal gain, and historical legacy) in particular situations. It focuses on the nature of the political vehicles (notably parties) within which politicians operate and broader political opportunity structures as determinants of how objectives are prioritized and strategic choices are made. While drawing evidence from a variety of political systems, the empirical focus will be on social policy choices in advanced industrial countries.
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R. Kent Weaver is Professor of Public Policy and Government at Georgetown University and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University in winter and spring 2019. His research focuses on the strategic behavior of politicians, political institutions, and comparative social policy.
Professor of Public Policy and Government at Georgetown University and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University
The most violent places in the world today are not at war. Brazil has had more violent death than Syria for the last three years. More people have died in Mexico in the last decade than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The world's worst violence is rooted in highly unequal, highly polarized democracies that are buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places--from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia--have been able to recover.
A Savage Order uncovers what makes these locales so bloody - including the U.S., which includes four of the world's fifty most violent cities. It then charts how they can get better. Based on years of research and field work around the world, A Savage Order overturns much conventional wisdom about the causes of bloodshed, and how the most violent places in the world can recover.
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Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld advises governments, philanthropists, and activists on how democracies make major social change. As a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, she particularly focuses on countries facing violence, corruption, and other problems of poor governance.
In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the top 40 political leaders under 40 in America for her decade of work as the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project, which assisted scores of national, state, and local political campaigns, advocated for legislation, and fostered a new generation of military veterans and national security leaders to advance policies that would enhance global security, democracy, and human dignity. In 2011, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton appointed Kleinfeld to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advises the secretary of state quarterly, a role she served through 2014. In 2015, she was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
Kleinfeld is the author of three books, including A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security (Knopf, 2018). Her previous book, Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform (Carnegie, 2012), was chosen by Foreign Affairs magazine as one of the best foreign policy books of 2012. She appears frequently in the media, from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, to the BBC, Fox & Friends, and radio and television in the U.S. and overseas.
Kleinfeld received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar. She lives with her husband and two daughters in New Mexico and works in Washington, D,C., but hearkens often to the log house on a dirt road where she was raised in her beloved Fairbanks, Alaska
Ground Floor Conference room (E008)
Rachel Kleinfeld
Senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Watch Francis Fukuyama's lecture he gave in Vienna in March, 2019 on Identity and the Nation State’s Future as part of The ERSTE Foundation Tipping Point Talks 2019. Full video here.
A group of 20 faculty and fellows participate in an orientation visit to Indo-Pacific Command headquarters, Honolulu, Hawaii, February 21–22, 2019, organized and sponsored by the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative. Photo courtesy of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative
On February 21–22, faculty and fellows from Stanford University traveled to Oahu, Hawaii for an orientation visit at the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), the U.S. military command responsible for the conduct of the U.S. military’s missions throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and Asia.
The visit brought together scholars and researchers from Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Macquarie University, Australia. Organized by the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative (USASI) and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the visit included meetings with the commanders and staffs of INDOPACOM and five of its subordinate commands (U.S. Army Pacific, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Air Forces Pacific, U.S. Marine Forces Pacific, and U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific), and a tour of Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-52).
The visitors also interacted with the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division’s leadership and the unit’s Jungle Training Center. The busy itinerary provided the group a superb opportunity to learn about INDOPACOM’s and its subordinate units’ threat assessments, capabilities, doctrine, regional partnerships, and readiness challenges.
These trips offer great access to America’s armed forces to those whose research focuses on or relates to national security issues, says Karl Eikenberry.
Karl Eikenberry, Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative (USASI), a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and himself a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general said: “USASI has over the past five years organized annual trips to U.S. military commands for Stanford FSI faculty and fellows. These trips offer great access to America’s armed forces to those whose research focuses on or relates to national security issues. The insights gained inform analysis, while the host organizations gain fresh perspectives different from those found within their commands.”
Photo courtesy of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative
Discussions began on February 21st at Camp H.M. Smith, the Headquarters of INDOPACOM. Brigadier General Jonathan Braga, U.S. Army, SOCPAC Commander and his staff discussed his command’s unique capabilities and roles in both conventional and counterterrorist/counterinsurgency warfare operations. Major General Michael Minihan, U.S. Air Force, INDOPACOM Chief of Staff, then hosted a wide-ranging session on his organization’s implementation of the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy at a time of dynamic change within the region.
Photo courtesy of Timothy R. Mungie
This was followed by a working lunch at the INDOPACOM Flag Mess with key staff members of MARFORPAC who explained U.S. Marine force posture and contingency missions throughout the Pacific Region. The Stanford group then proceeded to Hickam Field and met with General Charles Brown, Commander, PACAF, and his Deputy Commander, Major General Russell Mack. General Brown detailed the critical role played by airlift and airpower in the vast Indo-Pacific region, and the development of new concepts for the employment of U.S. Air Force capabilities in joint (inter-service) and combined (inter-allied) operations.
Photo courtesy of Timothy R. Mungie
The visiting faculty and fellows then transited to Pearl Harbor for a tour of USS John Paul Jones led by Commanding Officer, Commander Jesse Mink, United States Navy, and Executive Officer, Commander Robert Watts, USN. Noteworthy was the destroyer’s sophisticated integrated air, surface, and underseas warfare systems, and the emphasis placed on resilience in high-end combat situations. Following the ship tour, the group attended a PACFLT command briefing chaired by the Commander, Admiral John Aquilino.
The dialogue made clear PACFLT’s emphasis on a holistic approach to deterrence and decisive operations, with an eye on future requirements. The first day of the trip ended with a working reception at the historic “Nimitz House” hosted by Admiral Aquilino, offering the attendees a chance to engage in conversations with the Commander and his staff.
The second day of the trip began with an introduction to the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), followed by expert presentations and breakout sessions on select topics including the Chinese One Belt One Road plan, the security of Taiwan, pandemic threats in the Indo-Pacific region, and cyber operations. The Stanford team then traveled to Fort Shafter for a meeting with Brigadier General Pete Andrysiak, U.S. Army and Chief of Staff, USARPAC. BG Andrysiak and the USARPAC staff elaborated on the evolving U.S. Army’s regional doctrine and extensive partnership activities.
A highlight of the group’s time in Oahu came with a visit to the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, and the 25th ID Jungle Training center via UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters. There Brigadier General J.B. Vowell, Assistant Division Commander, 25th Infantry Division and U.S. Army Hawaii (himself a former FSI Senior Military Fellow), discussed the division’s extensive missions throughout the region, including in the Korean Peninsula.
Photo courtesy of Francis Fukuyama
Faculty and fellows were also able to “get their boots (or at least tennis shoes) muddy” in the U.S. Army’s rugged training area in northern Oahu, with highly skilled soldiers demonstrating jungle warfare tactics and techniques. The trip ended with the participants hosting a reception at the Hale Koa Hotel Warriors Lounge for their many hosts over the past two days.
The trip to INDOPACOM Headquarters provided a rare opportunity for participants to talk directly with senior U.S. military leaders in the most important region of the world and to gain a better understanding of their perspectives and the many challenges that they are addressing. Faculty and fellows interacted with junior leaders at the tactical level, helping them gain an appreciation of the ethos of those serving at the cutting edge. The hosts all commented on the benefit of learning the views of scholars, many of whom have spent their academic careers writing about national security issues.
The trip provided fascinating insights into how the U.S. military views the rapidly evolving national security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, says Larry Diamond.
“The trip provided fascinating insights into how the U.S. military views the rapidly evolving national security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, and how it is organized to defend against the threats. You can read about much of this in the media and the journals, but there is just no substitute for being there, seeing our facilities on the ground, and engaging directly with the remarkable men and women (and one thing that struck me is that there are quite a number of women) who are responsible for our defense,” said Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Center on Democracy, Development & the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at FSI.
FSI scholars particularly valued the opportunity to connect one-on-one.
“It was invaluable to meet and hear directly from the individuals and organizations who are working so hard to ensure our security,” said Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Senior Research Scholar Megan Palmer. For CISAC Pre-doctoral Fellow Erik Lin-Greenberg, “the opportunity to interact with decision-makers from tactical to strategic levels was incredibly valuable and helped inform my own research.”
Please join Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) on Tuesday, February 19, 2019 for a conversation with Larry Summers on US-China relations. Summers will be joined in coversation with Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL.
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Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He directs the University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Summers was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan Waterman Award for scientific achievement and, in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most outstanding economist under 40 in the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He has published more than 150 papers in scholarly journals.
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research 366 Galvez Street Stanford, CA 94305
Lawrence H. Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
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f.fukuyama@stanford.edu
Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
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. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
Global Populisms
A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
