Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Mr. Siew began his civil service career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1962. He was soon appointed vice consul at the ROC?s Consulate General in Kuala Lumpur and then appointed Consul. He held the position of consul for 3 years. Once home, he became a section chief in the East Asian & Pacific Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1972 he rose to department director-general. Trade negotiations and market promotion were two areas to which he was particularly dedicated. As member of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), Mr. Siew was elected in July 1988 to the KMT Central Committee. In June 1990 a new premier was appointed and the cabinet was reshuffled. Mr. Siew was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs. In November 1992, he helped to secure formal observer status for the ROC in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization.) In August 1997, soon after the National Assembly had completed a revision of the Constitution, the government reorganized the cabinet. President Lee Teng-hui appointed Mr. Siew premier. He took office in September of that year and held the position until May 2000. Mr. Siew has since retired from government office and spends his time as an ordinary citizen devoting his efforts to education and social welfare.
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Stanford University
Encina Hall, C144
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Erik Jensen holds joint appointments at Stanford Law School and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He is Lecturer in Law, Director of the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School, an Affiliated Core Faculty at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and Senior Advisor for Governance and Law at The Asia Foundation. Jensen began his international career as a Fulbright Scholar. He has taught and practiced in the field of law and development for 35 years and has carried out fieldwork in approximately 40 developing countries. He lived in Asia for 14 years. He has led or advised research teams on governance and the rule of law at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank. Among his numerous publications, Jensen co-edited with Thomas Heller Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press: 2003).
At Stanford, he teaches courses related to state building, development, global poverty and the rule of law. Jensen’s scholarship and fieldwork focuses on bridging theory and practice, and examines connections between law, economy, politics and society. Much of his teaching focuses on experiential learning. In recent years, he has committed considerable effort as faculty director to three student driven projects: the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) which started and has developed a law degree-granting programs at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), an institution where he also sits on the Board of Trustees; the Iraq Legal Education Initiative at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani (AUIS); and the Rwanda Law and Development Project at the University of Rwanda. He has also directed projects in Bhutan, Cambodia and Timor Leste. With Paul Brest, he is co-leading the Rule of Non-Law Project, a research project launched in 2015 and funded by the Global Development and Poverty Fund at the Stanford King Center on Global Development. The project examines the use of various work-arounds to the formal legal system by economic actors in developing countries. Eight law faculty members as well as scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute are participating in the Rule of Non-Law Project.
Oksenberg Conference Room
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Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
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An expert in international law and legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. He has created innovative courses on the role of law in transitional and developing economies, as well as the comparative study of law in developed economies. He co-directs the law school’s Rule of Law Program, as well as the Stanford Program in International Law. Professor Heller has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, and Hong Kong University, and has served as the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is now a senior fellow.
Professor Heller is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an attorney-advisor to the governments of Chile and Colombia.
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.
From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.
At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.
He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999), and How to Make Love to a Despot (2020). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999), Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001), and Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (2009). He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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).
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a Senior Fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.
(Abstract from paper) Sociological theorizing and research on the relationship between inequality and corruption is surprisingly rare given the discipline’s long-standing focus on the correlations of inequality with democracy and development, as well as research that demonstrates the associations between corruption, democracy and development. We propose that greater income inequality increases corruption and find that its explanatory power is significant relative to conventionally accepted correlates of corruption such as low levels of economic development and democracy. We argue that the rich will employ corruption as one means to preserve and advance their own status, privileges and interests while the poor will be vulnerable to extortion at higher levels of inequality.
While countries with authoritarian regimes are likely to have greater levels of corruption on average, higher levels of inequality increase the likelihood of corruption in countries with democratic regimes because the wealthy cannot employ oppression to advance their interests in these political systems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, smaller and not larger government is associated with higher levels of corruption because higher inequality through corruption is associated with both lower tax rates as well as lower government transfers and subsidies. We also corroborate the finding that the negative effect of inequality on economic growth can be explained at least in part by its impact on corruption.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these proto-democratic institutions endured in an independent Russia.
But did the processes unleashed by Gorbachev and continued under Russian President Boris Yeltsin lead eventually to liberal democracy in Russia? If not, what kind of political regime did take hold in post-Soviet Russia? And how has Vladimir Putin's rise to power influenced the course of democratic consolidation or the lack thereof? Between Dictatorship and Democracy seeks to give a comprehensive answer to these fundamental questions about the nature of Russian politics.
This book reflects the unique collaboration of Russian and American scholars. Additional contributors include: Viktor Sheinis, Mikhail Krasnov, Vladimir Petukhov, and Elina Treyger.
This paper assesses Pan Wei's proposal for a 'consultative rule of law system' for China, finding it a potentially important step along the path of political reform. China urgently needs political reform to deal with the rapidly mounting problems of corruption, abuse of power, financial scandals, rising crime and inequality, and declining legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. A rule of law, with an independent judiciary and other autonomous institutions of horizontal accountability, is vital if China is to rein in these problems and deliver better, fairer, more transparent and effective governance. However, Pan Wei's proposed system goes only part of the way toward addressing the deficiencies of governance in China, and is therefore best viewed as a transitional framework. To work, horizontal accountability must be supplemented with and reinforced by vertical account ability, through competitive elections, which give local officials an incentive to serve the public good and enable bad officials to be removed by the people. Ultimately, I argue, China can only achieve adequate and enduring political accountability by moving toward democracy. Among the other issues addressed in the paper are the architecture and appointment of a system of horizontal accountability for China; the role of the Communist Party (or its successor hegemon) in a 'rule of law' system; and the timing and phasing of the transition to a rule of law.
Reprinted in Suisheng Zhao, ed., Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law vs. Democratization, 2006.
Russia, once seen as America's greatest adversary, is now viewed by the United States as a potential partner. This book traces the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, during the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers -- particularly in the executive branch -- coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia.
Drawing on extensive interviews with senior U.S. and Russian officials, the authors explain George H. W. Bush's response to the dramatic coup of August 1991 and the Soviet breakup several months later, examine Bill Clinton's efforts to assist Russia's transformation and integration, and analyze George W. Bush's policy toward Russia as September 11 and the war in Iraq transformed international politics. Throughout, the book focuses on the benefits and perils of America's efforts to promote democracy and markets in Russia as well as reorient Russia from security threat to security ally.
Understanding how three U.S. administrations dealt with these critical policy questions is vital in assessing not only America's Russia policy, but also efforts that might help to transform and integrate other former adversaries in the future.
James M. Goldgeier is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, the Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.
Chechnya has been and remains one of the greatest stains in Russia's efforts to move toward a more open and democratic system . The Chechen wars, as Professor Michael
McFaul of Stanford University reminds us in this important essay, "rank as the most serious scars of Russia's troubled transition." Since 1994 these wars, with their vast destruction and terrible human rights abuses, have also posed an enormous policy (and moral) problem for American administrations intent on trying to better integrate Russia into the Western community of nations. Dealing with Chechnya has aroused much debate in and out of the US government-a debate that over the years has sadly declined.
In 2001 the Stanley Foundation and the Century Foundation established a task force to look at the broad question of the impact of American domestic political forces on US-Russia relations. (A report was issued in October 2002.) The first subject the task force discussed was Chechnya, which we labeled "the dog that did not bark." Professor McFaul made an impressive oral presentation on US policy on Chechnya, which we asked him to expand and bring up to date. This essay is the result, a detailed analysis of US policy from the Clinton to Bush administrations and the impact on that policy from forces within Congress and from the NGO community who tried to generate greater public debate and secure a tougher American response toward Russia's actions in Chechnya.
McFaul's tale is a sad one. Its bottom line is that US policy has had little impact on Russia's behavior in Chechnya. Similarly, while many like Senator Jesse Helms fought very hard to toughen policy, domestic political forces had little impact on changing it.
On 15-16 November 2002, the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University sponsored a workshop in Stanford, CA on "Regime Transitions from Communist Rule in Comparative Perspective." Over 40 individuals attended the workshop, including many notable American and international scholars. The six individual sessions of the workshop examined a variety of issues: the transitions model two decades later; whether transitions from communist rule are distinctive; theoretical perspectives seeking to explain the variation in outcome among post-communist regimes; and regional perspectives examining the variation in outcome in Central and Eastern Europe, the Slavic Region, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The workshop also sought to determine whether there is a compelling intellectual rationale for a larger scale, multi-year project on transitions from communism or if the workshop itself represented the capstone event.
The workshop was organized by Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Michael McFaul, Hoover Institution and Political Science, and Gail Lapidus, Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Studies. Workshop participants included scholars at many of the leading political science and government departments in the United States, as well as scholars associated with international academic institutions, governments, and development organizations. This report summarizes the presentations given as part of the workshop, and the discussion that followed. Every effort has been made to portray accurately the range of opinions expressed; however, space and organizational considerations resulted in omissions and paraphrasing. Kathryn Ducceschi, who served as a rapporteur during the meeting with John Cieslewicz, authored this document, and the workshop organizers served as editors.
Any errors in fact or interpretation should be attributed to the author and the editors.