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.

A Research Agenda for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security

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Stephen Stedman joined CISAC in 1997 as a senior research scholar, and was named a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC and professor of political science (by courtesy) in 2002. He served as the center's acting co-director in 2002-03. Stedman is the former director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and is a director of 'Managing Global Insecurity,' a joint project with Stanford, New York University and the Brookings Institution. 

Stedman's research addresses the future of international organizations and institutions, an area of study inspired by his work at the United Nations. In 2003, he was recruited to serve as the research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The panel was created by then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to analyze global security threats and propose far-reaching reforms to the international system. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to remain at the U.N. as an assistant secretary-general to help gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work, Stedman returned to CISAC.

Before coming to Stanford, Stedman was an associate professor of African studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. In 1993, he was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, where he studied the negotiations for a new constitution. He was an election observer in Angola in 1992 and in South Africa in 1994. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on issues of peacekeeping in civil war, light weapons proliferation and conflict in Africa, and preventive diplomacy.

Stedman has taught courses on international conflict management, war in the 20th century, and the Rwandan genocide. In 2000, Scott Sagan and he founded the CISAC Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. From 1997 to 2003, Stedman and his wife, Corinne Thomas, were the resident fellows in Larkin House, the second largest all-frosh residence. Stedman received his PhD in political science from Stanford in 1988.

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Stephen J. Stedman

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Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

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Ahmed Benchemsi

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Ahmed Benchemsi is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His focus is on the democratic grassroots movement that recently burgeoned in Morocco, as in Tunisia and Egypt. Ahmed researches how and under what circumstances a handful of young Facebook activists managed to infuse democratic spirit which eventually inspired hundreds of thousands, leading them to hit the streets in massive protests. He investigates whether this actual trend will pave the way for genuine democratic reform or for the traditional political system's reconfiguration around a new balance of powers - or both.  

Before joining Stanford, Ahmed was the publisher and editor of Morocco's two best-selling newsweeklies TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic), which he founded in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Covering politics, business, society and the arts, Ahmed's magazines were repeatedly cited by major media such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and more, as strong advocates of democracy and secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.

Ahmed received awards from the European Union and Lebanon's Samir Kassir Foundation, notably for his work on the "Cult of personality" surrounding Morocco's King. He also published op-eds in Le Monde and Newsweek where he completed fellowships.

Ahmed received his M.Phil in Political Science in 1998 from Paris' Institut d'Etudes Politiques (aka "Sciences Po"), his M.A in Development Economics in 1995 from La Sorbonne, and his B.A in Finance in 1994 from Paris VIII University.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate Your People

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In a piece for the blog Jadaliyya, Arab Reform and Democracy Program Manager Lina Khatib at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, makes the argument that Arab leaders have reacted in a similar fashion to the growing demands for reform at home.

The extraordinary events that have been gripping the Arab world since December 2010 have demonstrated the steadfastness of Arab citizens across the region in the face of despotic regimes. But they have also demonstrated that Arab despots indeed engage in authoritarian learning. From Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain to Libya to Morocco to Yemen to Syria (and the list goes on), Arab rulers have followed a peculiarly familiar pattern in the way they have-and are-responding to the protests calling for regime change.

1. Ignore the protests

One of the first reactions to budding protests is simply to ignore them and their potential. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia completely dismissed the protests when they first started in December 2010, and so did King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya went even further in the early days by actually joining the protests himself.

2. Offer cosmetic concessions

As the pace of protests picks up, we have seen Arab rulers offer their people a range of largely cosmetic concessions. The rulers of Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia have responded by throwing money at their people, while those of Jordan and Yemen have dissolved their governments, and the latter ruler, like Ben Ali and Mubarak before him, promised not to run for reelection.

3. Engage in denial

"Egypt is not Tunisia". "Syria is not Egypt". "Yemen is not Tunisia or Egypt". And the statements by Arab rulers go on in trying to convince themselves and their people that the regime change that happened "over there" will not happen "over here". The denial continues even after the leaders start losing those they had thought were on their side, from ambassadors to ministers to army generals, and that's not to mention those international "friends" who call upon them to step down.

4. Quell the protests by force

All Arab rulers who have witnessed protests calling for democracy have responded to those protests through violence. Some, like in Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan, pretended that the violence was "spontaneous" and not orchestrated by the government as they relied on plain-clothed thugs to do the dirty work. While others, like in Libya and Bahrain, sent their (mercenary) armies to quell the protests by force.

5. Warn of civil war

Both Qaddafi and Ali Abdallah Saleh of Yemen have warned that civil war may break out if their regimes crumble. The tragedy is that their warnings have an element of truth, but that's mainly because the civil wars they have warned of are largely to do with that fact that the wars would be catalyzed by them and their (private) armies and allies as they strive to regain power or as a consequence of their "divide and rule" strategies.

6. Blame the media

It would have been amusing had it not been so tragic that so many Arab rulers have blamed the protests on the media, from the social media to satellite television. Qaddafi called the foreign media "dogs", while the Emir of Bahrain put the blame on television-the Iranian Arabic-language channel Al-Alam and Hizbullah's channel Al-Manar-and in Egypt the blame was directed at Al-Jazeera. Egypt, Syria, and Libya have also engaged in various degrees of internet shut down. It is as if the social, economic, and political problems the people are protesting against would disappear if only the media would stop talking about them.

7. Speak about foreign plots

The Emir of Bahrain proudly spoke of successfully foiling a "foreign plot" in an attempt at justifying the violent suppression of protests. So did Mubarak back in February and Qaddafi has also blamed "outsiders" for the unrest. That's because, of course, no indigenous problems ever existed in those countries. Ever.

8. Or al-Qaeda

Ali Abdallah Saleh and Qaddafi have both invoked al-Qaeda to instill fear in the protesters and the international community. Saleh presented himself as the only alternative to an al-Qaeda takeover of Yemen while Qaddafi went even further by warning that he would collaborate with al-Qaeda if all else fails.

What the above demonstrates vividly is two things:

1. Arab rulers seem to belong to the same authoritarian club.

Similar actions, reactions, and strategies can be seen across the board. The stunning irony is that the Arab leaders engaging in this authoritarian learning seem to be doing this blindly, without seeing that those strategies, after having been repeated time and time again elsewhere, are no longer fooling anybody, and while completely ignoring the fate of Ben Ali and Mubarak and the possibility of it happening to them. That's the power of denial (and ego). Arab rulers are showing that they are, par excellence, detached not only from the societies they rule but also from realities on the ground altogether as they refuse to acknowledge that the rules of the game have changed.

This is to do with a number of factors: First, those leaders have, for the most part, ruled over several decades without seeing their authority challenged. So they are likely to underestimate the degree of dissent against them, and overestimate the likelihood of their survival in power. Second, non-democratic leaders normally rely on two ruling mechanisms, "the sword and the gold" (in the words of Yemeni scholar Abdul Nasser Al Muwaddah in a recent paper). They either try to co-opt dissidents by offering them monetary gains (and that is why having complete authority over public funds is so important), or quell them by brute force.

Third, neoclassical realism says that state policy is often affected by the success or failure of outcomes of decisions made earlier by leaders. When a regime like Syria's succeeds in quelling dissidents by wiping more than 20,000 citizens off the map in a past decade, its decisions in the present tense are likely to be influenced by this perceived success. Fourth, the same school of international relations says that leader decisions tend to become more and more ambitious in scope when there are no internal or external checks on their authority. As most Arab despots have had no viable internal opposition movements and have been directly or indirectly supported by the West, they have largely been able to do what they want.

Fifth, leaders are able to invoke scare factors (like al-Qaeda) when they see themselves as being immune to those factors. Invoking al-Qaeda suggests back dealing done by Saleh and Qaddafi with the group, which is not surprising considering both leaders' legacies in ruling their countries. Sixth, the easiest way to absolve oneself from responsibility is to put the blame on "others". The Lebanese did that for years when they called their civil war "the war of others on our land". This kind of conspiracy theory can work because sometimes, when a named foreign "other" is persistently pointed at, they may well become interested in being involved after all, which ends up giving the theory credibility. Think of Iran's current stance towards what is going on in Bahrain, as demonstrated in the recent attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Finally, authoritarian learning is nothing new. Arab leaders have been engaging in similar behavior and tactics for a very long time as a mechanism of self preservation (from silencing oppositions to imposing emergency laws to controlling the media). So it would actually be unusual for them to suddenly break with tradition.

2. Arab citizens have by now become so familiar with the above pattern that they have come to expect it and even embrace it.

Here is the good news: This embrace is because the above pattern has become a proof of failure on the part of the rulers. First, Arab despots have become very predictable, which will make it easier for protesters to anticipate their actions and strategize accordingly. This is especially that Arab reformists do not operate in a vacuum. Just like the rulers learn from each other, so do the reformers, only that they are firmly tuned in to the changing realities around them. It is not just that they are communicating on Facebook, they are also learning from one another's experiences on the ground.

Second, there has been a role reversal when it comes to the fear factor. Protesters are viewing the cheap concessions offered to them by despots as proof that the despots themselves are scared, and thus are not settling for compromises and escalating their demands. They also see the despots' use of brutal force as proof of how little their own lives as citizens are valued, and consequently are no longer fearful. The more suppression the rulers apply, the more resilient the protesters become. After all, they have already gone so far, and have already sacrificed so much, and look at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. The rules of the game have changed, and a new Arab reality is in the making.

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Ten Years of Failed Transition to Democracy in Mexico: The Struggle between Modernity and Feudalism in Society

How is Obama doing on Human Rights?

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Please join the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in welcoming Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for a special event on the topic of President Obama's human rights record. Mr. Roth will speak about the US response to human rights abuses around the world, including recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

The event will be chaired by Professor David Abernethy, Professor Emeritus in the Stanford department of Political Science.  

How is Obama doing on human rights?
Executive Director Kenneth Roth will assess the Obama Administration's human rights record. How has the president done in addressing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa? How has he performed on legacy issues, such as Guantanamo and torture? How has he handled competing national interests in places like China? Has his greater emphasis on multilateral diplomacy, especially at the United Nations, helped or hurt the promotion of human rights? 

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 80 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations.

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Janine Zacharia was born in New Hyde Park, New York and received her bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. In 1995, she became a correspondent for the Jerusalem Report in Israel, covering Yitzhak Rabin's 1995 assassination and Israeli elections. She became a news-wire reporter for Reuters in Jerusalem in 1998. She moved to Washington in 1999 to serve as the bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post. She reported on a series of Middle East summits starting with the Shepherdstown, West Virginia Syrian-Israeli peace talks in 2000. She also regularly wrote for The New Republic during this time and was a cable news analyst. Bloomberg News hired her as its diplomatic correspondent in 2005. Over the past several years, she has reported on U.S. diplomacy abroad and traveled to more than 40 countries with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior administration officials. In October 2007, she accompanied Benazir Bhutto on her return to Pakistan where militants killed 140 of her supporters during an attack on the former prime minister

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Resisting Europe: Protest and opposition in the EU

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Protest, street demonstrations and social unrest have been increasingly prevalent across the European Union. European citizens appear ever more discontent with their national governments and with ‘Europe'. Reforms and policies aimed at countering the challenges of the economic crises and increased global competition are met by strong public opposition. Recent student movements protesting against educational reforms, strikes and massive anti-austerity demonstrations in many European capitals, protest votes for extreme right or left political parties are just some of these manifestations. What translates dissatisfaction to protest and drives these collective actions? How is protest expressed in European politics and in the public sphere today? Who is protesting and against what? Is this growing opposition the result of socio-economic insecurity felt by European citizens due to Europe's increasingly strained economic security and prosperity? Or, has Europe hit the limits of how much integration and diversity it can digest? As the current model of European economic liberalism is attacked by protest groups and populists from both left and right, how does this affect European democracy and the future of the European project?  

Ruby Gropas is Lecturer in International Relations at the Law Faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace, and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, Greece. She studied political science and international relations at ULB (Belgium), management at the State University of Maryland, and holds a PhD from Cambridge University.

Her main research interests lie in European integration and foreign policy, human rights, migration and multiculturalism. She has taught at the University of Athens and was Managing Editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2006-2009). She was Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC (2007, 2009) and a Member of the Organizing Committee of the 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development (2009). Ruby is Vice-President of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholars' Association and is currently working on an EU-funded research project on history, identities and modernity.

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Diamond on Obama's moment of truth

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Each president of the United States enters office thinking he will be able to define the agenda and set the course of America's relations with the rest of the world. And, almost invariably, each confronts crises that are thrust upon him-wars, revolutions, genocides, and deadly confrontations. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor FDR imagined having to plunge America into world war. Truman had to act quickly, and with little preparation, to confront the menace of Soviet expansion at war's end. JFK, for all his readiness to "bear any burden" in the struggle for freedom, did not expect his struggle to contain Soviet imperial ambitions would come so close to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Nixon was tested by a surprise war in the Middle East. Carter's presidency was consumed by the Shah's unraveling and the Iranian revolution. George H.W. Bush rose to the challenge of communism's collapse and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Clinton squandered the opportunity to stop a genocide in Rwanda and waited tragically too long before stopping one in Bosnia. George W. Bush mobilized the country to strike back after September 11, but, in the view of many, he put most of his chips in the wrong war.

In the eye of the historical storm, and in the absence of a challenge as immediate and overpowering as September 11, Pearl Harbor, or the Nazis' march across Europe, it is risky to identify any set of world events as game-changing. Yet that is what many analysts, including myself, believe the Arab revolutions of 2011 are. And a surprising number of specialists-including hard-eyed realists like Fareed Zakaria-have seized upon the crisis in Libya as a defining moment not just for the United States in the region but for the foreign policy presidency of Barack Obama as well.

To date, one could say that Obama has had a surprisingly good run for a foreign policy neophyte. He has revived the momentum for arms control with a new START treaty with Russia, while pressing the issue of human rights within Russia. He has managed the meteoric rise of China decently, while improving relations with India. He has not cut and run from Iraq-as most Republicans were convinced he would. And he has ramped up but at least set limits to our involvement in Afghanistan. As the Arab revolutions have gathered momentum, he has increasingly positioned the United States on the side of democratic change. His statements and actions have not gone as far as democracy promotion advocates (like myself) would have preferred, but they have overridden cautionary warnings of the foreign policy establishment in the State Department, the Pentagon, think tanks, and so on. Without Obama's artful choreography of public statements and private messages and pressures, Hosni Mubarak might still be in power today.

All of this, however, may appear in time only a prelude to the fateful choice that Obama will soon have to make-and, one fears, is already making by default in a tragically wrong way-in Libya. Why is Libya-with its six million people and its significant but still modest share of global oil exports-so important? Why must the fight against Muammar Qaddafi-a crazy and vicious dictator, but by now, in his capacity for global mischief, a largely defanged one-be our fight?

When presidents are tested by crisis, the world draws their measure, and the impressions formed can have big consequences down the road. After watching Jimmy Carter's weak and vacillating posture on Iran, the Soviets figured he'd sit on the sidelines if they invaded and swallowed Afghanistan. They misjudged, but Afghanistan and the world are still paying the price for that misperception. In the face of mixed messages and a long, cynical game of balance-of-power, Saddam too, misjudged that he could get away with swallowing up Kuwait in 1991. When the United States did not prepare for war as naked aggression swept across Asia and Europe, the Japanese thought a quick strike could disable and knock out the slumbering American giant across the Pacific. When Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb allies launched their war of "ethnic cleansing," while "the West"-which is always to say, first and foremost, the United States-wrung its hands, many tens of thousands of innocent people were murdered and raped before President Bill Clinton finally found the resolve to mix air power and diplomacy to bring the genocidal violence to a halt.

If Muammar Qaddafi succeeds in crushing the Libyan revolt, as he is well on his way to doing, the U.S. foreign policy establishment will heave a sad sigh of regret and say, in essence, "That's the nasty business of world politics." In other words: nasty, but not our business. And so: not their blood on our hands. But, when we have encouraged them to stand up for their freedom, and when they have asked for our very limited help, it becomes our business. On February 23, President Obama said: "The United States ... strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people. That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. They are not negotiable. ... And they cannot be denied through violence or suppression." Yet denying them through murderous violence and merciless suppression-with a massacre of semi-genocidal proportions likely waiting as the end game in Benghazi-is exactly what Qaddafi is in the process of doing.

Barack Obama has bluntly declared that Qaddafi must go. The Libyan resistance, based in Benghazi, has appealed urgently for the imposition of a no-fly zone. Incredibly, the Arab League has endorsed the call, as has the Gulf Cooperation Council. France has recognized the rebel provisional government based in Benghazi as Libya's legitimate government-while Obama studies this all. Can anyone remember a time when France and the Arab League were ahead of the United States on a question of defending freedom fighters?

There is much more that can be done beyond imposing a no-fly zone. No one in their right mind is calling for putting American boots on the ground in Libya. But we can jam Qaddafi's communications. We can, and urgently should, get humanitarian supplies and communications equipment, including satellite modems for connection to the Internet, to the rebels in Benghazi, where they can be supplied by sea. And we should find a way to get them arms as well. Benghazi is not a minor desert town. It is Libya's second largest city, a major industrial and commercial hub, and a significant port. Through it, a revolt can be supplied. If Benghazi falls to Qaddafi, it will fall hard and bloodily, and the thud will be heard throughout the world.

Time may be running out. As the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday, "All that stands between Kadafi and rebel headquarters in Benghazi are disorganized volunteers and army defectors spread thinly along the coastal highway." They have passion and courage, but they lack weaponry, strategy, and training. Like so many rebel movements, they need time to pull these all together. Time is what a no-fly zone and an emergency supply line can buy them.

Libya's rebels are pleading for our help. "Where is America?" asked one of them, quoted in the L.A. Times, who was manning a checkpoint in Port Brega. "All they do is talk, talk, talk. They need to get rid of these planes killing Libyan people." The "they" he was referring to was the Americans, beginning with their leader-one would hope, still the leader of the "free world"-President Obama.

Many prudent reasons have been offered for doing nothing. It is not our fight. They might lose anyway. We don't know who these rebels really are. We have too many other commitments. And so on. The cautions sound reasonable, except that we have heard them all before. Think Mostar and Srebrenica. And we had a lot of commitments in World War II as well, when we could have and should have bombed the industrial infrastructure of the Holocaust. As for the possibility that the rebels might lose-a prospect that is a possibility if we aid them and a near certainty if we do not-which would be the greater ignominy: To have given Libya's rebels the support they asked for while they failed, or to have stood by and done absolutely nothing except talk while they were mowed down in the face of meek American protests that the Qaddafi's violence is "unacceptable"?

Oh yes. There is also the danger that China will veto a U.N. Security Council Resolution calling for a no-fly zone. Part of us should hope they do. Let the rising superpower-more cynical than the reigning one ever was-feel the first hot flash of hatred by Arabs feeling betrayed. Go ahead, make our day.

Presidents do not get elected to make easy decisions, and they certainly never become great doing so. They do not get credit just because they go along with what the diplomatic and military establishments tell them are the "wise and prudent" thing to do. This is not Hungary in 1956. There is no one standing behind Qaddafi-not the Soviet Union then, not the Arab League now, not even the entirety of his own army. That is why he must recruit mercenaries to save him. Qaddafi is the kind of neighborhood bully that Slobodan Milosevic was. And he must be met by the same kind of principled power. For America to do less than that now-less than the minimum that the Libyan rebels and the Arab neighbors are requesting-would be to shrink into global vacillation and ultimately irrelevance. If Barack Obama cannot face down a modest thug who is hated by most of his own people and by every neighboring government, who can he confront anywhere?

For the United States-and for Barack Obama-there is much more at stake in Libya than the fate of one more Arab state, or even the entire region. And the clock is ticking.

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Advancing a new narrative for statebuilding in Afghanistan

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On February 25 and 26, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, in partnership with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, hosted a symposium titled, "Addressing the Accountability Gap in Statebuilding: The Case of Afghanistan." This event brought together leading experts, government officials, diplomats, practitioners, and academics to examine the problems of accountability, corruption, and election fraud that have risen in the wake of international statebuilding efforts in Afghanistan.

This unique forum allowed participants-both Afghan actors and members of the international community- who are heavily involved in building the institutions of the Afghan state, to participate in an honest exchange with their peers to surface challenges and generate recommendations to improve the practice of statebuilding moving forward. 

Panels were designed around the following questions: how to establish accountability in statebuilding, address electoral fraud evidenced in 2009 and 2010, manage powerbrokers who monopolize informal governance networks, coordinate anti-corruption efforts, and develop a political strategy for Afghanistan's future. What surfaced throughout these presentations and discussion was the issue of the "double compact" in Afghanistan-the failure of Afghans to self-govern and the failure of the international community to construct the institutions of a functioning state.

Participants proposed a new framework for governance that adopts a more participatory approach with the international community, Afghan government, and the public as equal partners in statebuilding endeavors. While challenges emerged there were also a number of key recommendations and strategies proposed  that can be pioneered by this influential group of policymakers and practitioners to ease the transition of responsibility to the Afghan government in 2014.  

The keynote address was delivered by former Afghan Minster of Finance and 2009 presidential candidate Dr. Ashraf Ghani, to an audience of more than 100 students and members of the local community. Dr. Ghani provided an honest and pragmatic account of the parallel and conflicting systems driven by the international community, which have given rise to systemic failure and corruption in Afghanistan.

"We are dealing with a crooked playing field," Dr. Ghani said recognizing that both the Afghan and international community were jointly responsible for this outcome. "When the field itself is crooked the nature of reform and change that we must initiate are very different. "

Dr. Ghani spent considerable time discussing the outsourcing of development to Washington-based firms that manage million dollar contracts and outsource technical work to foreign technocrats. This in Dr. Ghani's opinion does little to strengthen the internal capacities of the state, provide training opportunities to Afghans or allocate resources effectively to the general public.

Dr. Ghani stressed the importance of speaking honestly about these dysfunctions in the development system, "We need to start talking truth to each other if we are going to deal with this phenomenon. This double failure now is the genesis of the present."

Dr. Ghani channeled the sentiments of the Afghan public into the room by emphasizing the uncertainty that defines their lives. "Today it is the sense of injustice that drives conflict," Dr. Ghani said. "The level of conflict is driven by injustice. What Afghans yearn for is normalcy-the sense that the lives of our children and grandchildren will be better and what my generation endured will not be repeated."

The level of conflict is driven by injustice. What Afghans yearn for is normalcy-the sense that the lives of our children and grandchildren will be better and what my generation endured will  not be repeated.                    -Dr. Ashraf Ghani 

 Looking forward, Dr. Ghani advised that accountability mechanisms and feedback loops must be implemented to ensure that the necessary auditing and accounting mechanisms are in place to control corruption and ensure transparency. In addition, he called for one coherent system of rules that must be developed and agreed upon to govern development and prevent parallel systems from circumventing these rules. Finally, he advised adopting national programs that model the success of the National Solidarity Program, which reduced child mortality rates by 16%.

Dr. Ghani commented on the unique position that Afghanistan occupies at the crossroads of Asia, in the middle of "four huge hubs of change," China, India, Russia, and the Gulf. "A new regional era has to be created, if France and Germany could overcome hundreds of years of conflict we must create another sense of opportunity."

Dr. Ghani concluded by placing the hope and responsibility for Afghanistan's future in the hands of its younger generation, "We must talk about the generation compact in Afghanistan, our sons and daughters-both literal and figurative-are the source of growth and the source of dynamism...The women of Afghanistan, the youth of Afghanistan, and the poor of Afghanistan are the three numerical majorities that have been reduced to political and economic minority. Without investing in women, investing in youth and tackling the challenge of poverty, we are not going to have stability."

At the end of the two day symposium, participants collectively called for a comprehensive political strategy to facilitate the peaceful and legal transfer of power in 2014, which marks the end of President Karzai's term in office. With this important milestone in the near future, the international community remains committed to working with their Afghan counterparts to introduce political reform measures that will strengthen accountability mechanisms between the Afghan state and society. 

As Dr. Ghani eloquently stated at the end of his presentation, "We have to have an agenda of the future, we must engage in writing the history of the future."

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