Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

What Arabs Think and Does It Matter?

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Shibley Telhami holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was the Director of the Near Eastern Studies Program at Cornell University and has taught at Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley. His publications include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (Cornell University Press, 1995); and Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East , ed. with Michael Barnett (forthcoming, Cornell University Press, 2001); and numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs.

Professor Telhami has actively been bridging the academic and policy world. He served as advisor to the United States delegation to the United Nations during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, and was on the staff of Congressman Lee Hamilton. He is the author of a report on Persian Gulf security for the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-drafter of a Council report on the Arab-Israeli peace process. Professor Telhami is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. He has been a member of the American delegation of the Trilateral American/Israeli/Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee mandated by the Wye River Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and has a weekly radio commentary broadcasting widely over the Middle East.

He received his B.A. from the Queens College of the City University of New York (1974), M.A. from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (1978), and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1986).

Professor Telhami will be reporting on his latest poll of Arab public opinion and interpreting the results on key issues.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Shibley Telhami Senior Fellow Speaker Brookings Institution
Seminars

A trans-Atlantic plan for democracy: A joint plan to help the Greater Middle East

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Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul, et al - American and European leaders have started to talk about the need to promote greater freedom, justice and democracy in the "Greater Middle East." While Americans see this as the crucial battleground in the war on terror, Europeans want their southern neighbors to be stable and well-governed, to stem the flows of illegal migration and organized crime. Both sides have accepted that working with local partners for peaceful democratic regime change today is the best way of avoiding violent revolution or military action tomorrow.
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Reagan's Unfinished Agenda: Democracy Still Has a Way to Go in Russia

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Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul - President Ronald Reagan helped to accelerate the collapse of Soviet communism and thereby end the Cold War. But his greatest contribution to the end of communism was not increased American military spending or his Strategic Defense Initiative. Rather, it was Reagan's steadfast commitment to promoting ideas about freedom and democracy that contributed most importantly to the anti-communist revolutions first in Eastern Europe in 1989 and then in the Soviet Union in 1991.
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9/11 BEFORE & AFTER

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Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul - Russian-U.S. relations offer one bright counterpoint to the otherwise gloomy and complex set of issues facing makers of American foreign policy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Russian president Vladimir Putin was one of the first foreign leaders to speak directly to President Bush, expressing his condolences and offering his support for the American response. He followed these rhetorical pledges with concrete policies, including military and humanitarian support to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and Russian acquiescence to American troops in Central Asia. Bush and his foreign policy team responded positively to Putin's new Western leanings by calling on Chechen separatist leaders to renounce their ties to Osama bin Laden.
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Ukraine's Election is Pivotal

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Michael A. McFaul
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One of the decade's biggest events in Europe is happening at the end of October - the Ukrainian presidential election. The process by which the next leader of Ukraine is decided will determine that country's future orientation for years to come.

If the current government in Ukraine allows for relatively free and fair elections as the process for selecting the president, then Ukraine will be able to maintain the prospect of consolidating democracy and integrating fully into European institutions. If, however, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma does not allow the people to decide who will replace him, and instead wields the power of the state to undermine the democratic process, then Ukraine will have little chance to consolidate democracy, and no chance of further integrating into Europe. Instead of becoming the next Poland, that is a rising power in the heart of Europe, Ukraine will become yet another post-Soviet autocracy, following Russian dictates with no chance at all of joining the Western community of democratic states.

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Engaging Russia

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Michael A. McFaul
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Anatol Lieven is right to cite the West's approach to Turkey as a model for how to engage Russia today ("A different way of talking to Russia," Views, Oct. 18). Western advocates of disengagement and containment are gravely mistaken. Such an approach would only lead to greater conflict with Russia and would further isolate the Russian people from the West.

However, Western leaders and especially EU leaders must not compromise their standards concerning markets and democracy.

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A Washington Perspective (on the Ukrainian Elections)

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Michael A. McFaul
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Sergei Markov is right to worry about potential unrest and instability in Ukraine after the upcoming presidential vote. What his "view from Moscow," laid out in an op-ed in The Moscow Times earlier this week, fails to see, however, is the source of this unrest. The necessary, though not sufficient, condition for unrest is a clearly documented falsified vote. If "Moscow" is concerned about instability on Russia's border, then the Kremlin should be doing all that it can to ensure that the vote is free and fair. To date, there are few signs that Moscow is committed to facilitating such an outcome.

Of course, the playing field for all presidential candidates in the Ukrainian election has never been level, and the Kremlin has done much to tilt the context in favor of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

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Meddling in Ukraine: Democracy Is Not an American Plot

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Michael A. McFaul
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Did the U.S. government fund the Yushchenko campaign directly? Not to the knowledge of Michael A. McFaul. Both the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute conducted training programs for Ukrainian political parties, some of which later joined the Yushchenko coalition. But in the years leading up to the 2004 votes, American ambassadors in Ukraine insisted that no U.S. government money could be provided to any candidate. Private sources of external funding and expertise aided the Yushchenko campaign. Likewise, U.S. and Russian public relations consultants worked with the Yushchenko campaign, just as U.S. and Russian public relations people were brought in to help his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych. In future elections Ukrainian officials might enforce more controls on foreign resources. But this kind of private, for-profit campaign advice occurs everywhere now, and Americans no longer control the market.
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It's OK to Scold the Backslider

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Michael A. McFaul
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Lots of ruthless dictators have remained in power during [George W. Bush]'s tenure, but they were in power before Bush came to the White House. Russia is the only major country in the world that has, during Bush's time in office, moved from "partly free" to "not free" (as determined by Freedom House, the leading institution in the democracy assessment business). Vladimir V. Putin is also one of the few leaders in the world with whom Bush has developed a close relationship. If Russian democracy completely breaks down while Bush is still in office, Bush's decision to invest so much time and energy in Putin will look like a strategic mistake.

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