This paper was discussed at the Global Justice workshop on October 20, 2006.

Abstract of Richard Locke's "Beyond Corporate Codes of Conduct: Work Organization and Labor Standards in Two Mexican Garment Factories":

This paper presents a matched pair case study of two factories supplying Nike, the world's largest athletic footwear and apparel company. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. On the surface, both factories appear to have similar employment (i.e., recruitment, training, remuneration) practices and they receive comparable scores when audited by Nike's compliance staff. However, actual labor conditions exist between these two factories. What drives these differences in working conditions? What does this imply for traditional systems of monitoring and codes of conduct? Field research conducted at these two factories reveals that beyond the code of conduct and various monitoring efforts aimed at enforcing it, workplace conditions and labor standards are shaped by very different patterns of work organization and human resource management policies.

About the Author

Richard Locke is professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also faculty director of the MIT Sloan Fellows program and co-director of the MIT Italy program. His research focuses on economic development, comparative labor relations, and political economy.

This coming July, Mexicans will not only have the chance to democratically elect a president, but more importantly, they will have the opportunity to endorse democracy. On July of 2000, Mexico had its first democratic elections after being ruled by a single party - PRI - for seventy one years. The question is not whether Mexico has transited to democracy, but rather, whether Mexicans - the government, the politicians, the media, civil society, and the citizens in general can sustain and consolidate the new democratic system.

With the intent of shedding some light on this question, Mexicanos at Stanford University, the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists, and Yost House organized the conference "2006 Mexican Elections: A Challenge for Democracy." The event took place on Saturday March 11, 2006 in Stanford's Kresge auditorium.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, The Charles F. Riddell Fund - Yost House, the Center for Latin American Studies, VPUE/DOSA - New Student Initiatives, Bechtel International Center, El Guiding Concilio - El Centro Chicano, Camacho Fund, ASSU Speakers Bureau, and United Airlines were co-sponsors of the conference.

The 2006 Mexican Elections conference proved to be wonderfully enriching for anyone with an interest in Mexican politics and/or in democratic consolidation. The conference consisted of three sections: a) a roundtable that discussed the role of the media in the 2006 electoral process; b) a keynote address given by one of the most respected figures in Mexican academia, the historian and essayist Enrique Krauze, on the progress that Mexico has achieved in the political arena in the last decade, and on the challenges that Mexicans will face in the coming 2006 presidential election; and, c) a political debate between representatives of the three main political parties in Mexico - PRI, PAN and PRD.

This report provides a brief summary of the main arguments addressed by each speaker, the most important themes and points of discussion that arose in each panel, a brief analysis of each section, and a conclusion.

In March 2006, Stanford University's Center for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) brought together 25 leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the political, security, and economic situation in Iraq.

The purpose of the conference was to consider what could be done to stabilize Iraq at a crucial moment after three elections and with the country in the midst of putting together a viable coalition. Participants were asked to generate candid analysis and constructive policy recommendations.

This report summarizes many of the key arguments, suggestions, thoughts and ideas that arose out of the two-day conference. It is offered in the hope of contributing to an understanding of the situation in Iraq and providing possible innovations to the country's ongoing challenges.

External-led state building is at the forefront of international security governance; it has been called "a growth industry"; and it is, against the backdrop of the US-led intervention in Iraq, more controversial than ever. Since the end of the cold war, the UN have launched more than 60 missions in 24 countries. Whilst the primary objective of all of these missions was to monitor, keep, enforce or build peace, a second objective, which is intrinsically linked to the first, was to contribute directly or indirectly to the reestablishment of functioning state-hood. Peace-building mission have become state-building missions. There are two broad reasons for this. First, fragile states are seen as a risk to both their societies and to international security. And second, it is now broadly assumed that one vital condition for sustainable peace is that the state-apparatus has the capacity to exercise core functions of state-hood in an efficient, non-violent and legitimate way. Consequently, peace-building is more and more seen as state-building, and this evolution is reflected in both UN strategy documents, and the development aid strategies of most nation states.

It is against this background that the need for a systematic evaluation of successes and failures of external-led state building emerges. This in turn requires a framework that enables a cross-case comparison of outcomes of external-led state building efforts.

This paper has two objectives: First, I propose a framework that allows for the tracing of the absolute and the relative state-building progress of countries hosting a state-building operation. I argue that "success" should be disaggregated and measured along five dimensions: the absence of war, the reestablishment of a full monopoly over the means for violence, economic development, democracy, and institutional capacities. I discuss at some length the implications for data collection and proxying these measures of success. Secondly, I evaluate the outcome of 17 UN-led peace-building operations, using a new data set. I compare the successes and failures of state-building along these five dimensions against three hypothetical scenarios: The first one is "more is better." In this scenario, it is assumed that the more intrusive the intervention, the more successful the outcome. The second scenario can be called "less-is-more" and assumes that too intrusive missions are counterproductive, because they hinder the endogenous emergence of stable statehood. The third scenario is the "trade-off-scenario." Here, it is assumed that more intrusive interventions produce better outcome in some policy fields and worse in others. This then would point to existing trade-offs between different objectives of state building. Rather than assuming that all good things go together, in the "trade-off"-scenario the success in one dimension (for example democracy) comes at the expense of less success in another dimension (for example economic development).