FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
The Recent Subtraction and Prospects of Addition of Democracy in Russia - Can They at Last Get Right What We All First Got Wrong?
-
Ambassador Kinsman retired from the Canadian Foreign Service in 2006. Over his 40 years of service, he was Chairman of Policy Planning and later Political Director before being named Canada's Ambassador in Moscow in 1992. He was subsequently Ambassador in Rome (1996-2000), High Commissioner in London (2000-2002), and Ambassador to the EU in Brussels (2002-2006). Earlier postings abroad included being Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York and Minister for Political Affairs in Washington. From 1985 to 1989 he was the senior federal official responsible for Cultural Affairs and Broadcasting where he was responsible for preparing the still-current Broadcasting Act, on which he continues to consult.
Today Ambassador Kinsman is a Contributing Writer for Policy Options magazine, a regular commentator for CBC News, and is published widely elsewhere, such as in the International Herald Tribune. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer in Europe and North America, and in 2007-2008 was Diplomat in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. In fall, 2009 he will be a Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
He has been a member of numerous Boards, including the Imperial War Museum, London, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and the European Policy Centre, and several non-profit Boards, including the Council for a Community of Democracies, and the Victoria Conservatory of Music. His principal business contribution is to the Dundee Group of companies, and he sits as an independent Director on the Board of Dundee Precious Metals, Toronto.
He attended Princeton University and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife Hana.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Jeremy Kinsman
Lecturer
Speaker
UC Berkeley
Seminars
Russia's Negative Influence on Democracy in the Post-Soviet Space
Related Multimedia
Presentation
New Challenges for Anglo-American Law and Policy on Business, Human Rights, and Corporate Social Responsibility
-
Professor Horrigan will be discussing recent developments in corporate governance, responsibility and sustainability under Anglo-american law. In particular, he will explain how Australia's embrace of the UK-Canadian institutional dialogue model will affect business, human rights, and corporate social responsibility. He will also be providing an update from the recent UN Secretary-General's Special Representative business and human rights session in Toronto.
Professor Bryan Horrigan is currently the Louis Waller Chair of Law and Associate Dean (Research) at Monash University’s Faculty of Law in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a long-standing law firm consultant in business and governmental areas of law and practice.
Professor Horrigan completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland and holds a doctorate in law from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has held academic and research leadership positions previously at a number of Australian universities, including Director of the National Centre for Corporate Law and Policy Research, Deputy Director of the National Institute for Governance, and Foundation Co-Director of the Centre for Comparative Law, History, and Governance.
His most recent book in the area of corporate responsibility and governance, Corporate Social Responsibility in the 21st Century: Debates, Models, and Practices Across Government, Law, and Business, is to published internationally by UK-based Edward Elgar Publishing in the latter part of 2009. The book was commenced during his time as a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton Business School.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Bryan Horrigan
Louis Waller Chair of Law and Associate Dean (Research)
Speaker
Monash University’s Faculty of Law in Melbourne, Australia
Seminars
Democratic Governance and the Performance of Democracy
Paragraphs
The battle for accountability and good governance-and thus sustainable democracy and development-will not be won by foreign actors or pressures. The most that international actors can do is to empower and partner with advocates of good governance-which includes freedom, human rights, accountability, and a rule of law. But throughout the emerging market countries, societies are organizing and demanding for these goals. It's about time we gave them the full measure of political, financial and technical support they need to bring about a revolution in governance-a revolution that will transform the possibilities for democracy and development.
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
CDDRL Working Papers
Peter Semmelhack on open source hardware innovation
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Peter Semmelhack, founder of BugLabs, spoke about his company's goal to make hardware as malleable as software, freeing people to create the devices that meet their needs and improve quality of life.
While the Open Source movement has enabled rapid progress in the field of software in recent years, hardware innovation lags behind. The way that hardware products come to market is time consuming and expensive for all. A number of factors mean that only big multinational players tend to be able to survive in this space:
- Research and development and distribution of mass market products is an extremely expensive process
- The upfront investment required to develop a new product is very high: typically it takes one year and a million dollars to produce just one prototype
- To get a high enough price point you have to produce at a very large scale
- Average returns tend to diminish significantly after about two years
However, there are big opportunities outside of mass market products, Peter argues. In the areas of healthcare and energy management, for example, there are niche markets for products with very specific uses. If an efficient platform could be used to develop these niche products, there are potentially as many gains in the ‘long tail' of the electronics market as in the mass market products such as DVD players and mobile phones.
Bug Labs provides an open source, modular system for hardware that enables businesses and individuals to innovate in a way that is affordable. Bugmodules, which include GPS, 3G, speakers and motion sensors, are designed to be clicked together to build new products with unique combinations of functionality. This approach frees individuals to start creating the specific gadgets they need in a low cost, efficient way. Users can then add to their device any number of online applications created and shared by the BUG Community.
The BUG system can also be used to create products with specific social uses. For example, BUG4good is a handheld device designed to enable human rights workers to capture material (video, photograph etc) in such a way that it can be used as official evidence in the courts in Geneva. With total demand of just a few hundred units, this is not a market a large technology company would be likely to serve.
All News button
1
Tapan Parikh: evaluating impact of various types of mobile technology
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Tapan Parikh, of UC Berkeley School of Information, spoke about a number of projects that are using mobile phone based technology to give small businesses the information they need to improve productivity. He argued that voice technology has distinct advantages over text, because it overcomes challenges of illiteracy while responding to a strong need people feel to be heard.
Information is key for economic development and empowerment. But information is worthless unless it is also useable (leads to decisions the business owner can actually take), trusted (comes from a source he respects) and relevant (speaks about the issues he is facing). For information to be really empowering, it must also be two way: there must be ways for individuals to create content themselves.
Tapan described three current projects he is involved in:
Hisaab: Microfinance groups in India often suffer from poor paper based record keeping, making it difficult for the group to track loans and repayments. The Hissab software was designed with an interface suitable for those who may be illiterate and/or new to computing. The use of voice commands and responses in the local language, Tamil, prevented the software from feeling remote and inaccessible and contributed to the success of this initiative.
Avaaj Otalo: Agricultural extension workers provide advice to farmers on pests, new techniques etc to help improve yields. But often they have limited reach, visiting areas only rarely, or perhaps lacking the expertise to respond to all the problems they encounter. Avaaj Otalo is a system for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record questions, respond to others, or access content published by agricultural experts and institutions. The service has been hugely popular, with farmers willing to spend time listening to large amounts of material to find what they want. The opportunity to be broadcast was a major attraction, reflecting the desire to be heard and to create media rather than be a passive consumer of it.
Digital ICS: Smallholders' compliance with organic, fair-trade and quality requirements is usually measured via paper based internal inspections. The data uncovered by these is vital but often lost. Digital ICS is a mobile phone based application that allows inspectors to fill out the survey digitally, enhance it with visual evidence (e.g. from camera phones) and upload it onto a web application. This is being piloted with coffee farmers in Mexico. A key finding from the work is that farmers want to know who ends up drinking their coffee, what they pay for it and what they think about it. Greater links between producers and consumers may therefore be another area for this project to investigate.
All News button
1