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.

Human Trafficking in ASEAN: National Coordination and Regional Action Plans

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SPEAKERS BIOS

chaw chaw
Ms. Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw is the Country Program Coordinator of the Australian-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons (AAPTIP) for Myanmar (Burma). Prior to this, she was the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking’s Myanmar National Coordinator. She is responsible for the overall coordination and management of AAPTIP Myanmar Country Program, which is currently the largest of six country programs in the Australian $50 million five-year AAPTIP program. She liaises closely with whole-of-government partners on issues relevant to criminal justice sector capacity building, coordination, and law and policy harmonization, and other initiatives focusing on anti-trafficking in persons at the national level and regional level especially, ASEAN Trafficking in Persons Working Group’s initiatives.

 

mark taylor
Mr. Mark Taylor is the Team Leader for the Australia–Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons (AAPTIP). The AAPTIP project was started in June 2013, and is a continuation of the Australian AID-funded Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons (ARTIP) Project. AAPTIP operates at both regional and national level and provides support to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and individual partner countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Prior to this, Mr. Taylor spent 10 years working for the US State Department in Washington DC as a Senior Coordinator for Reports and Political Affairs. He spent two years based at the US Embassy in Nigeria where he opened the US State Department’s Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Program in Lagos and Abuja, after years of aid embargo on Abacha ruled Nigeria. Mr. Taylor was in charge of developing and implementing over $12 million in projects over a range of eight issues including drug control, people smuggling, human trafficking, financial fraud, corruption, police reform and money laundering. Mr. Taylor also spent time in Yangon, Myanmar where he was responsible for reporting on the dynamic narco-insurgency landscape in the Shan State, and following the July 1995 release from house arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi -- the political and human rights situation in the country, including coverage of NLD speeches, policy statements, and the party's leadership. He has a degree in Political Science and Government from Gordon College.

This seminar will also feature special discussant, Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Program at Shorenstein APARC. 

The panel will be moderated by Helen Stacy, director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL.

 

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CISAC Central Conference Room
2nd Floor, Encina Hall
616 Serra St.
Stanford, CA

Mark Taylor Australia-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons
Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw Australia-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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The Politics of Polarization: Taiwan in Comparative Perspective

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Over the past year and more, Taiwan’s political elite has been deadlocked over the question of deepening economic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This controversial issue has led to a standoff between the executive and legislative branches, sparked a frenzy of social activism and a student occupation of the legislature, and contributed to President Ma Ying-jeou’s deep unpopularity.

On October 17-18, the Taiwan Democracy Project at CDDRL, with the generous support of the Taipei Economic and Culture Office, will host its annual conference at Stanford University to examine the politics of polarization in Taiwan.

This conference will bring together specialists from Taiwan, the U.S., and elsewhere in Asia to examine the sources and implications of this political polarization in comparative perspective. It will include a special case study of the Trade in Services Agreement with China that triggered this past year’s protests, as well as a more general overview of the politics of trade liberalization in Taiwan, prospects for Taiwan’s integration into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional trade agreements, and a consideration of the implications for Taiwan’s long-term democratic future.

Conference speakers will include: Chung-shu Wu, the president of the Chung-hwa Institute of Economic Research (CIER) in Taipei; Steve Chan of the University of Colorado; Roselyn Hsueh of Temple University; Yun-han Chu, the president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; and Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Panels will examine the following questions:

1. What are the sources and implications of political polarization in Taiwan, and how have these changed in recent years?

2. How does Taiwan’s recent experience compare to political polarization in other countries in Asia (e.g. South Korea, Thailand) and elsewhere (the US)?

3. To what extent does the latest political deadlock in Taiwan reflect concern over the specific issue of trade with the People’s Republic of China, versus a deeper, systemic set of problems with Taiwan’s democracy?

4. How are globalization and trade liberalization reshaping Taiwan’s domestic political economy, and what are the prospects for forging a stronger pro-trade coalition in Taiwan that transcends the current partisan divide?

The conference will take place October 17-18 in the Bechtel Conference Room in Encina Hall at Stanford University. It is free and open to the public. 

 

Conference Resources

 

Agenda

Speaker Bios

Presentations

Conference Report

Conference Flyer

 

Conference Papers

 

How Cross-Strait Trade and Investment Is Affecting Income and Wealth Inequality in Taiwan by Chien-Fu Lin, National Taiwan University

 

Generational Differences in Attitudes towards Cross-Straits Trade by Ping-Yin Kuan, Department of Sociology & International Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, National Chengchi University

 

Change and the Unchanged of Polarized Politics in Taiwan by Min-Hua Huang, National Taiwan University; Center for East Asia Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution

 

Social Media, Social Movements and the Challenge of Democratic Governability by Boyu Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University, Institute of Political Science 

 

Coping with the Challenge of Democratic Governance under Ma Ying-jeou by Yun-han Chu, National Taiwan University

 

Taiwan’s Bid for TPP Membership and the Potential Impact on Taiwan-U.S. Relations by Kwei-Bo Huang, National Chengchi University, Department of Diplomacy

 

In the Wake of the Sunflower Movement: Exploring the Political Consequences of Cross-Strait Integration by Pei-shan Lee, National Chung Cheng University, Political Science Department 

 

The Roots of Thailand’s Political Polarization in Comparative Perspective by Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University; The Institute of Security and International Studies

 

The Role of the United States in Cross-Strait Economic Integration by Chen-Dong Tso, National Taiwan University

 

The China Factor and the Generational Shift over National Identity by Mark Weatherall, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

 

Taiwan’s Strategy for Regional Economic Integration by Chung-Shu Wu, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research

 

Polarized Electorates in South Korea and Taiwan: The Role of Political Trust under Conservative Governments by Hyunji Lee, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

 

Polarization in Taiwan Politics by Steve Chan, University of Colorado, Boulder

 

Agenda
Conference Biographies
Taiwan Polarization Conference Flyer
Politics of Polarization in Taiwan: Conference Report
Conferences

Brett Carter

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brett_carter_2025.jpg

Brett Carter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a Faculty Affiliate at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

Carter studies politics in the world's autocracies. His first book, Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief (Cambridge University Press), draws on the largest archive of state propaganda ever assembled — encompassing over eight million newspaper articles in six languages from nearly 60 countries around the world — to show how political institutions shape the propaganda strategies of repressive governments. It received the William Riker Prize for the Best Book in Political Economy, the International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award, Honorable Mention for the Gregory Luebbert Award for the Best Book in Comparative Politics, and Honorable Mention for the APSA Democracy & Autocracy Section's Best Book Award.

His second book, in progress, shows how politics in Africa’s autocracies changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and how a new era of geopolitical competition — marked by the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia — is changing them again.

Carter’s other work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs, among others. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The Economist, The National Interest, and NPR’s Radiolab.

Hoover Fellow
CDDRL Affiliated Scholar
CDDRL Visiting Scholar, 2020-2021
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