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.

Safadi-Stanford Initiative convenes Washington policymakers

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On December 6, the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Safadi Foundation USA inaugurated the Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation (SSIPI) at a conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and supported by the Center for International Private Enterprise. This gathering convened an upwards of 100 guests to explore the conference's theme of economic reform and development in the Arab world.  

The keynote addresses were delivered by IMF Head Christine Lagarde who commented on the economic landscape in the region and suggested methods to stimulate growth for emerging Arab economics, and Lebanese Finance Minister Mohammad Safadi who stressed the importance of institution building and transparent accountable governance practices for development in the region, particularly in relation to how Arab governments handle international aid.

Safadi Scholar of the Year Katarina Uherova Hasbani presented the findings of a research study she authored on electricity sector reform in Lebanon while in residence at CDDRL this fall. The SSIPI research partnership was initiated to promote policy-relevant research on Lebanon and supported Hasbani's visiting fellowship at Stanford. Hasbani, an energy policy expert, presented her findings to the policy- making community, arguing that reliable and stable electricity supplies are a pre-condition for economic development. Hasbani cautioned that the failing electricity sector in Lebanon threatens the country's progress diverting resources from social development and education.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Wittes and Mara Rudman, Assistant Administrator for the bureau for Middle East at USAID, both commented on the development challenges and opportunities that lie in the wake of the Arab Spring. "What is happening in the region is about the people writing their own story," said Wittes. "The United States has to approach this with a sense of humility but we have a role to play because we are a major presence in the region." Rudman added that USAID is reaching out to new audience and partners in Egypt, many of whom are outside Cairo, to engage new actors after the January 25 revolution.

Miriam Allam, an economist with the OECD and Safadi Scholar first runner-up stressed the importance of public consultation and good regulation as best practices for cultivating active and democratic citizenship. Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert D. Hormats, underscored the fact that economic reform must match social and political change in the region to create diverse economies that support growth, investment, and trade.

Inger Anderson, Vice-President for MENA at the World Bank, commented on the funding shortages from European countries that are resulting in decreased investment in the Arab world, when they need it the most. Both Anderson and Lagarde advocated for the reform of government subsidies, according to Lagarde, "governments need sustainable fiscal policies, including better targeted subsidies to help low-income groups."

Lagarde added that a key way forward is encouraging private sector investment to spur job creation but stressed that this requires predictability, a stable legal and tax environment, absence of corruption, and the elimination of regulatory loopholes.

Through this conference and ongoing research, the Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation seeks to offer new approaches and recommendations to advance development and governance practices in the region.

Transcript and video of event:

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-middle-the-storm-development-and-governance-the-arab-world

Speech by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde:

http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2011/120611.htm

 

 

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Lagarde Logo David Hawxhurst: Wilson Center
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How Democratic Development is Curbed in Angola

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Abstract:

Since the very beginning of the state formation, Angolan political elites of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) agreed that liberal democracy would be the form of government. However, in 1975 MPLA inaugurated a formal authoritarian regime that lasted until 1991. From 1991 to 2010, Angola had a democratic interim constitution and in 1992 had the first national multiparty elections as well as presidential ones of its history. In 2008, Angola held its second legislative elections and in 2010 a new and definite constitution was approved. Nevertheless, democratic development did not lead to the end of a successful democratic transition process started in 1991 or to the consolidation of democracy. The answer can probably be found in the politics of curbing democratic development, which constitutes the aim of this presentation by Professor Fernando Macedo of the Lusíada University of Angola.

Speaker Bio:

Fernando Macedo teaches political science and constitutional law at Law Faculty since 2007 and Angolan constitutional law and human rights in the department of international relations since 2006 at Lusíada University of Angola. He is currently the coordinator of the department of international relations of Lusíada University of Angola.

Fernando Macedo has co-authored with Pedro Franco Romão a book named Anotações à Lei da Prisão Preventiva em Angola, printed by Livraria Almedina of Portugal. He wrote three articles, the first one, Human Rights and Global Security, was published in Revista Brasileira de Estudos Constitucionais in 2008. The second, Civil Society and Political Power, in Sociedade Civil e Política em Angola, organized by Nuno Vidal and Justino Pinto de Andrade in 2008; and the third one, Advocacy and Citizenship, in Encontros, by the Angolan Bar Association in 2011.

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Fernando Macedo Professor, Political Science Speaker Luanda, Angola
Seminars

The Transition to Afghan Sovereignty: Assessing Progress and Identifying Challenges

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Ten years into the war in Afghanistan, Payne Distinguished Lecturer Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and the former Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces there, set out to examine the transition to Afghan sovereignty.   Eikenberry laid out  three broad sets of questions: How well are we doing in the campaign in Afghanistan, what are the significant challenges we’ll face in achieving our goals and objectives, and what are the implications for American power and influence in the 21st century.

Watch the video below.

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Karl Eikenberry Payne Distinguished Lecturer; Retired United States Army Lieutenant General; Former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan Speaker
Lectures

The Commitment to Public Services in India

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Abstract:

There is a wide diversity in the provision of public services in India. In some states one can go for miles without seeing a functional school or public health centre, where roads are poorly maintained, and electricity has not yet been introduced. In other places, governments tend to function remarkably in extending basic public services to all, with tremendous consequences to human lives. In this talk, Vivek Srinivasen will explore why some parts of India have developed an impressive social commitment to such services unlike others. In this context, he will also discuss the remarkable changes in Bihar and other parts of North India in the recent years.

 Speaker Bio: 

Vivek Srinivasen joined the Liberation Technology Program as the manager in February 2011 after completing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, Srinivasen worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences he has written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).

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Vivek Srinivasen Program Manager Speaker Program on Liberation Technology, Stanford University
Seminars

India's Multiple Revolutions

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Abstract: 

India has been in the throes of four major transformations since the 1980s. They are in the arenas of foreign policy, economic development strategies, the process of social mobilization and the growing challenges to Indian secularism. Exogenous shocks, in considerable measure, explain the dramatic and closely linked changes in the realms of foreign and security policies. The spurt in social mobilization, however, stemmed from mostly domestic sources and specifically the deepening of adult franchise.  It represents one important facet of the maturation of India’s democracy. Finally, the very success of social mobilization, in part, accounts for the assault on Indian secularism. The first two, of course represent conscious policy choices. The second two, however, can be traced to a complex interplay of various social forces. The evolution of these four features of India’s democracy will, in large measure, shape the future of the country in this new century.

Speaker Bio: 

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations 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.  Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Security, Asian Survey, Current History, the Journal of Democracy, International Security and Security Studies. 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 books are India Since 1980 (with Rahul Mukherji), published by Cambridge University Press and Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation and Limitations on Two-Level Games (with William Thompson) published by Stanford University Press. He is currently at work on a new book, Deadly Impasse: India-Pakistan Relations at the Dawn of a New Century for Cambridge University Press.

His article on corruption in India was just published in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and he is currently writing a new book with Bill Thompson entitled The State of India (for Columbia University Press) which seeks to assess India's prospects and limitations of emerging as a great power.

CISAC Conference Room

Sumit Ganguly Professor of Political Science Speaker Indiana University, Bloomington
Seminars

Making the Resource Curse Disappear: A re-examination of Haber and Menaldo’s “Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism"

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Abstract:  

Haber and Menaldo (2011) claim there is little evidence that oil is harmful to democracy, and that previous studies to the contrary were corrupted by omitted variable bias. Michael Ross professor of political science at UCLA will present findings from a paper co-authored with Jørgen Juel Andersen to show there is little evidence of the bias they allege, and point out that they decline to test the most credible version of the resource curse hypothesis.  The versions that they do test, moreover, are based on two implausible assumptions: that oil will effect a country’s regime type immediately, rather than over a period of several years; and that the relationship between oil wealth and political power did not change over the 200 year period covered by their data.  We argue that oil only had strong anti-democratic effects after the 1970s, when most oil-producing autocracies nationalized their industries; and show their main results are overturned when we add to their models a dummy variable for the post-1979 period, and allow the effects of oil to take place over a period of three, five, or seven years, instead of just one year.  

Speaker Bio: 

Michael L. Ross is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. 

He has published widely on the political and economic problems of resource-rich countries, civil war, democratization, and gender rights; his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Confiict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Politics and Gender, and World Politics.  In 2009, he received the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association for the best article published in the American Political Science Review. 

His work has also appeard in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and many other publications. 

Ross currently serves on the advisory boards of the Review Watch Institute, the Natural Resource Charter, and Clean Trade, and was previously a member of the Advisory Group for the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review.  He is also a member of the Political Instability Task Force and the APSA Task Force on Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael Ross Professor, Political Science Speaker UCLA
Seminars

Building a Rule of Law in Afghanistan

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Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (FSI).   Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center.

Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.

He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the  United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service and Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.  His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Czech Republic Meritorious Cross, Hungarian Alliance Medal, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association.  He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.  He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving.  He is married to Ching Eikenberry.

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Karl Eikenberry Payne Distinguished Lecturer Speaker FSI
Seminars

The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law

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From Oxford University Press:

There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.


Features

  • Forces us to fundamentally rethink the origins of human rights activism
  • Filled with fascinating stories of captured slave ship crews brought to trial across the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century
  • Shows how the prosecution of the international slave trade was crucial to the development of modern international law
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After the Arab Spring: The Current State of the Internet & Democracy Debate

d.school uses mobile technology for social issues in Kenya

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The November 17 Liberation Technology Seminar was co-hosted by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a nonpartisan economic policy research organization that unites remarkable economic talent from all parts of Stanford University. This seminar featured four student-led design projects that were created in the Designing Liberation Technologies course taught each spring at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) by professors' Josh Cohen and Terry Winograd. The class works in partnership with the University of Nairobi's School of Computing and Informatics to develop user-based designs that address outstanding challenges in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. 

Josh Cohen described the three main elements of the design school class:

(1) There is a focus on user/human-centered design. Projects are designed based on a close engagement with end users: the people who will be using the solutions. (2) Courses are inter-disciplinary. The idea is to take people who are deeply embedded in a certain discipline and put them together with people from other disciplines. In order to come up with a solution to a real problem, team collaboration is necessary and (3) The approach to problem solving is about practice, not about theory. It is necessary to fail early and fail often in the process of creating workable solutions.

The panelists consisted of students who were working with partners in Kenya on how mobile technology could be used to address various social issues. A multidisciplinary team of students work in close collaboration with partners in Kenya, and some of these ideas are now being tested on the ground.

The first project that was described was M-maji (mmaji.wordpress.com). Sangick Jeon described how water in Kibera is scarce, costly and contaminated. Their aim is to use the nearly ubiquitous mobile technology to improve access to water. Vendors are able to advertise their water and then buyers can ask questions and provide feedback. This saves the time and resources that it takes to find clean water.

Nishuari, the second project, addresses the problem of inaccurate advice and rumors which lead to risky sexual behavior and often HIV and AIDS. They provide a mobile counseling service whereby individuals can submit health questions and receive responses from trained counselors using text messages. This helps to break down logistical and social barriers.

The third, Makmende considered the issue of serious crime in Kibera. Their aim is to look at how individuals can get safely from Point A to Point B. They set up walking groups so that people would not have to walk alone. Over 90% of people had a mobile phone and this was seen to be an effective way of building timely communication, so that groups of people can coordinate to walk more safely to reach their destinations.

The final project was Take Taka, which was the one project that was not focused on using computer technology. The team took up sanitation as the project and decided early on that the use of mobile phones adds no value to the issue. The focused instead of designing a special sanitary bucket that could be used instead of a toilet inside the home, and on developing a system of transmitting the deposits to a biogas unit. This project however has not been carried forward.

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