Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is it War?

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Allen S. Weiner examines to what degree the global "war on terror" that has erupted since September 11, 2001 fits the "just war" doctrine of international relations or even whether it can properly be considered a war at all in terms of positive international law. Whether or not these labels apply is not merely a matter of academic debate, Weiner notes, but has broader implications for the international legal responsibilities of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of the "war on terror."

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Polygyny, Fertility, and Savings

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Sub-Saharan Africa has a high incidence of polygyny. Countries in this region are also characterized by large age gaps between husbands and wives, high fertility, and the payment of a brideprice at marriage. In monogamous countries, on the other hand, the bride's parents traditionally give a dowry (negative brideprice) at marriage. Sub-Saharan Africa is also the poorest region of the world. In this paper I ask whether banning polygyny could play any role for development in Sub-saharan Africa.

Since this experiment does not exist in the data, I address the question using a formal model of polygyny and analyze the effects of enforcing monogamy within the model. I find that enforcing monogamy lowers fertility, shrinks the spousal age gap, and reverses the direction of marriage payments. The capital- output ratio and GDP per capita increase. The reason is that when polygyny is allowed, high brideprices are needed to ration women. This makes buying wives and selling daughters a good investment strategy that crowds out investment in physical assets. I show that these effects can be large quantitatively. For reasonable parameter values, I find that banning polygyny decreases fertility by 40%, increases the savings rate by 35% and increases output per capita by 140%.

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Policy Coherence and Incoherence: The Domestic Politics of American Democracy Promotion

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This paper argues that it is difficult to understand the effects of American democracy promotion abroad without examining the bureaucratic context from which the policy emerges at home. Which actors within the U.S. government are involved in promoting political and economic change abroad? What strategies and conceptual models guide them? What tools and resources do they bring to bear? How does the interaction of American bureaucratic politics affect the impact of American democracy promotion? Articulating this mix of goals, strategies, and resources helps explain incoherent patterns of outcomes on the ground.

This paper explore these questions by reference to the U.S. government's most ambitious democracy promotion efforts of the past decade: the effort to rebuild its former Soviet enemies into a democratic allies in the 1990s. Yet the patterns of American bureaucratic politics are not unique to this democracy promotion effort. While American democracy promotion has changed in tone and substance under the watch of George W. Bush, American domestic politics has powerfully shaped American democracy promotion in similar ways in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

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American Efforts at Promoting Regime Change in the Soviet Union and then Russia: Lessons Learned

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In this decade, fostering democratic regime change in Iraq is the great challenge (or folly) before American foreign policymakers. In the previous decade, fostering democratic regime change in Russia was the great challenge (or folly) before American foreign policymakers. For much longer and with much greater capacity than Saddam Hussein's regime, the Soviet regime threatened the United States. The destruction of the Soviet regime and the construction of a pro-Western, democratic regime in its place, therefore, was a major objective of America foreign policy. Some presidents pursued this goal more vigorously than others: Nixon cared less, Reagan more.

Almost twenty years after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and soon thereafter began the process of political change inside the USSR, it is still not clear what kind of regime will eventually consolidate in Russia. To date, however, the influence of the United States in fostering regime change inside the Soviet and then Russia has been limited. This paper explores the causes and consequences of US efforts at regime change in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.

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Michael A. McFaul

The World Is Not Flat: Globalization is Disequalizing

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Nancy Birdsall is the founding president of the Center for Global Development. Prior to launching the center, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as on the reform of the international financial institutions. From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was Executive Vice-President of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks, where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, Birdsall spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank, most recently as Director of the Policy Research Department.

Ms. Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and monographs. She has also written more than 75 articles for books and scholarly journals published in English and Spanish. Shorter pieces of her writing have appeared in dozens of U.S. and Latin American newspapers and periodicals.

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Nancy Birdsall Speaker President, Center for Global Development
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Is Taiwan Chinese?: Comparing the Experiences of Taiwanese and Chinese

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Many people in China and the US assume that the new Taiwanese national identity is a political ploy which originated with Taiwan's government. Based on ethnographic research in both Taiwan and China, Melissa Brown argues that Taiwanese identity -- in both its ethnic and national forms -- are based on social experience. Because the people of Taiwan and China have had such different social experiences since 1895, Taiwanese identity as distinct from Chinese identity is real. The reality of Taiwanese identity poses challenges for resolving the debate over Taiwan's future relations with China, particularly in nationalistic responses due to lack of Chinese experience with Taiwanese society.

Melissa J. Brown is Assistant Professor of Anthropological Sciences and Research Affiliate at Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. She has been researching changing identities in Taiwan and China since 1991. Her books include Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan (University of California, Institute for East Asian Studies, 1996) and Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities (University of California Press, 2004).

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Melissa J. Brown Speaker Stanford University
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A Dynamic Model of the Demand for the Rule of Law in Post-Communist Economies

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We investigate the demand for the rule of law in post-Communist economies after privatization under the assumption that theft is possible, that those who have "stolen" assets cannot be fully protected under a change in the legal regime towards "rule of law," and that the number of agents with control rights over assets is large. A demand for broadly beneficial legal reform may not emerge because the expectation of a legal vacuum increases the expected relative return to asset-stripping, and strippers may gain from a weak, corrupt state. The outcome can be inefficient even from the narrow perspective of the asset-strippers.

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Karla Hoff Speaker The World Bank
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Integrated Circuit Development in Globalization - a China Experience

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In today's global economy, access to resources around the world has never been easier. The high tech industry has always been in the forefront of globalization in lowering costs, acquiring talent as well as serving markets. For instance, Asian countries have long been known for their vast manufacturing bases for western high tech industry.

In recent years, thanks to Y2K, India has become the leader in software outsourcing. China, given its expanding economy as well as its open market direction, has rapidly become the emerging location for multi-national semiconductor companies to outsource their product development amidst China's own burgeoning integrated circuit (IC) industry. Mr. Lee has first-hand experience in building and managing an IC product development center in Shanghai, China. He will discuss the challenges of operating a R&D organization in an environment of different languages and cultures. He will also share his vision of the future of the IC industry in China.

Mr. Lee is Group Vice President and general manager of Timing Solutions Products at Integrated Device Technology, Inc.(IDT), a public semiconductor company of $650 million annual sales, focusing on valued-added solutions for communication, consumer and computing markets. He has been with IDT for the last 22 years and has served various management roles. In 2001, he architected the acquisition of Newave Semiconductor Corporation in China and established the Shanghai Product Development Center for IDT. Before joining IDT in 1984, Mr. Lee spent 5 years at Intel Corporation as a technologist for the early development of flash memory technology. Mr. Lee earned his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1975 and M.S. degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1979.

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Jimmy Lee Group Vice President & General Manager of Timing Solutions Products Speaker Integrated Device Technology, Inc.
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Middle East Peace Processes - The Israeli Disengagement from Gaza and Beyond

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Dr. Shavit Matias is Deputy Attorney General of Israel, in charge of international issues. In that capacity she is involved, among other things, in shaping Israel's policy on Middle East, Palestinian, and international issues, and works closely with the Israeli National Security Council and the Israeli Cabinet Ministers on those issues. Dr. Matias, and others in her department, participate in the negotiations and discussions with the Palestinians and the International Community, most currently with respect to issues relating to the Disengagement from Gaza process and its aftermath. Prior to being nominated Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Matias was a partner at the leading Israeli law firm of Yigal Arnon, where she was involved in international business transactions, had practiced with the law firm of Shearman and Sterling, and was an adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law. Dr. Matias received her LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University, her LL.M. from Georgetown University and her Doctorate in international law from George Washington University. Dr. Matias represents the State of Israel in various international committees and international institutions, and has published on international law and policy issues. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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Shavit Matias Deputy Attorney General of Israel/ Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution Speaker
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From California Dreaming to Silicon Success: The Rise of China's Semiconductor Industry

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For years policymakers in China have advocated creating "Silicon Valleys" in China, but only recently has China's semiconductor industry taken off. Rather than the state leading the way, economic globalization has created the large flow of capital and knowledge to the developing world that has spurred China's technological development in recent years.

However, not all firms in China benefit equally from these inflows of financial and human capital. Presenting both industry-wide data and case studies of individual firms, Dr. Fuller will explain how the politics of finance in China shape which Chinese chip firms become fast learners able to compete in world markets and which ones remain technological laggards.

Douglas Fuller has spent over ten years researching technological development in East Asia. Most recently, he completed a doctorate at MIT in political economy. The topic of his thesis was technological development in China's IT industry. For this and previous research, he has interviewed IT firms in Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China and the US. He has published articles in Industry and Innovation and other peer-reviewed journals.

Part of SPRIE's Greater China and the Globalization of R&D seminar series.

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Doug Fuller SPRIE Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker
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