In political science, one issue still in need of greater theorizing is the proper measurement of bureaucratic autonomy, that is, the degree of discretion that political principals should grant to bureaucratic agents. This article reviews the literature on bureaucratic autonomy both in US administrative law and in political science. It uses the American experience to define five mechanisms by which political principals grant and limit autonomy, then goes on to survey the comparative literature on other democratic systems using the American framework as a baseline. Other democracies use different mixtures of these mechanisms, for example by substituting stronger ex post review for ex ante procedures or using appointment and removal power in place of either. We find that the administrative law and social science literatures on this topic approach it very differently, and that each would profit from greater awareness of the other discipline.
Mary-Therese is on leave until April 2025. Please email Senem Erberk at seneme@stanford.edu with LAD related inquiries during this time.
Mary-Therese Heintzkill is the Program Manager for Frank Fukuyama's Leadership Academy for Development (LAD). Prior to Stanford, she worked in startups and small businesses, focusing on strategic operations, innovation, and process improvement to create, implement and iterate on process efficiencies for growing businesses.
Mary-Therese earned both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in music with a concentration in vocal performance from Western Michigan University and the University of South Carolina, respectively. Music has always been a vital part of her life, and she has spent the past two decades performing classical music professionally and voluntarily, most recently having dedicated 6 years with the Colorado Symphony Chorus as a member and auditioned soloist.
Program Manager, Leadership Academy for Development
The Stanford/SPICE East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawai‘i or “Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i” is a nine-month fellowship program created to empower educators to reinvigorate their teaching of Asia. The program is made possible through the generous support of the Freeman Foundation.
Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i convenes Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows for four virtual seminars during the academic year and a culminating three-day in-person institute the following summer. So far, this year’s Fellows have participated in virtual seminars featuring Stanford-affiliated scholars Ethan Segal (Associate Professor of History and Chairperson of the Japan Council at Michigan State University), Zoë Gioja (PhD candidate in History and a PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University), and Andrew Walder (Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University). These sessions have focused on Japan, Korea, and China, respectively. The final virtual seminar will take place next month, when Fellows will meet Scot Marciel, former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar and Indonesia, and deepen their understanding of Southeast Asia.
“I’ve really enjoyed learning in this environment alongside all of the SPICE fellows, and [I] find the content very interesting and informative to my work,” commented Fellow Jonathan Chang, who manages a national mentorship program for Asian American youth. “I’ve had several conversations with my family, friends, and colleagues about our learnings and it’s been really great!”
Besides receiving content lectures and engaging in Q&A sessions with the guest speakers, Fellows also debrief their learnings and share favorite teaching resources with each other, so that everyone can benefit from their shared learning and teaching experience.
Fellows discuss the lecture content and share their key takeaways in small groups.
The current 2022–23 cohort of Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows is comprised of 19 teachers representing three islands (Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Hawai‘i Island). Most teach world history and/or U.S. history, and others teach subjects such as English, math, foreign language, and civics. The SPICE staff is pleased to work with the Hawai‘i educators below.
Amy Boehning, Mililani High School Carl Wright, Kapolei High School Chayanee Brooks, Ka‘u High and Pahala Elementary School David Brooks, Ka‘u High and Pahala Elementary School Grace Nguyen, Konawaena High School Gregory Gushiken, Punahou School Hannah Lim, ‘Iolani School John Ates, Le Jardin Academy Jonathan Chang, Apex for Youth Jonathon Medeiros, Kauaʻi High School Laura Viana, Mid-Pacific Institute Mariko Shiraishi, Hawaii Baptist Academy Michael Hamilton, Leilehua High School Molly M. Satta-Ellis, Konawaena High School Niti D. Villinger, Hawai‘i Pacific University Patricia Tupinio, Leilehua High School Ria Lulla, Kawananakoa Middle School Sarah Fujioka, Waipahu High School William Milks, ‘Iolani School
Fellow Amy Boehning launched Mililani High School’s Asian Studies class eight years ago, offering it for a single period. Now it is offered for four periods and still has a waiting list. Like many others in her cohort, she joined Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i in hopes of adding more depth and richness to her existing practice. “I’m so excited to be a part of [this] program. Everything so far has been stellar, and I have immediately been able to add to my Asian Studies curriculum and Social Studies Directed Studies curriculum.”
Boehning also leads Mililani’s National History Day program, and she has noticed that each year more students choose to focus their projects on Asia-centric topics.
“It’s our goal to support teachers like Amy as they coach and mentor students like that,” said Sabrina Ishimatsu, a coordinator of Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i. “It’s always gratifying to know that our program is making a positive difference for both educators and students.”
Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i is coordinated by Ishimatsu and Rylan Sekiguchi.
In addition to Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i, SPICE offers teacher PD opportunities virtually to teachers nationwide and locally in California to middle school teachers, high school teachers, and community college instructors.
Indigenous Voices: Educational Perspectives from Navajo, Native Hawaiian, and Ainu Scholars in the Diaspora
This article recaps a June 18, 2021 webinar that featured three Native and Indigenous scholars and includes recommendations for using the webinar recording in classrooms.
Announcing the Stanford/SPICE East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawaii
SPICE, with generous support from the Freeman Foundation, is proud to announce the launch of a new teacher professional development opportunity for secondary school teachers in Hawaii.
By traditional measures, South Korea is not a large country. It ranks 28th in the world in population and only 107th in land mass. Its language is not widely spoken outside the Korean peninsula, and it does not have a large diaspora. Yet since around 2005, it has arguably become the major producer of youth culture in the world. How did this happen?
Stanford professor Dafna Zur has filmed a video to answer that complicated and important question. Dr. Zur is an Associate Professor of Korean literature and culture in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures of Stanford University. She specializes in Korean literature, cinema, and popular culture. As part of her research, Dr. Zur has interviewed the main architects of South Korea’s popular culture wave, including SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man and many K-Pop stars.
Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies and SPICE collaborated on a discussion guide to bring the lessons from Dr. Zur’s video to high school and university students. The video and discussion guide are available for free on SPICE’s Multimedia page. They address the following questions:
What is popular culture?
What is soft power, and why is it important?
How did South Korea become such a successful producer of popular culture in the past 20 years?
How can we measure South Korea’s success in becoming a popular culture powerhouse?
How did South Korea’s popular culture evolve in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? What’s the next stage in its development?
How easy would it be for other countries to replicate South Korea’s soft power success?
Because the main vehicle for South Korea’s rise as a soft power giant has been Korean pop music, known as K-Pop, Dr. Zur directs viewers to several music videos that illustrate how K-Pop has evolved since 1997 and where it might go in the future.
She provides deep insight into the building blocks of K-Pop’s success, which she identifies as support from the national government, the kihoeksa (entertainment conglomerate) system, technology, timing, content release strategy, and fan communities. In particular, Dr. Zur explains how the kihoeksa are able to produce high-quality entertainment at a low cost and how their scale has allowed them to invest in new technologies that keep them at the forefront of pop culture production.
The discussion guide provides context for students to understand the complexity in Dr. Zur’s video. In preparation for the video, students take and then discuss a quiz on South Korea’s popular culture. The teacher then defines key terms such as popular culture and soft power and displays charts that show how South Korea’s soft power has increased since 2000.
Students view Dr. Zur’s video and the accompanying K-Pop music videos as homework and respond to a series of questions on the main themes of the video. During the next class period, they work in groups to develop a plan for another country to elevate its soft power by drawing on what they learned about South Korea’s success. This complex activity requires students to clearly define the factors that have led to the popularity of Korean popular culture, distinguish between the factors they believe are replicable and those that are not, and then adapt this analysis into a set of recommendations for another country that hopes to achieve the same success as South Korea. After groups present their findings to the class, the teacher concludes the lesson by asking students to predict whether South Korea will be able to maintain its soft power dominance into the future.
The discussion guide contains a complete transcript of the video and is appropriate for advanced secondary students and university students.
The video lecture and guide were made possible through the support of U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center funding under the auspices of Title VI, Section 602(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Korea Gone Global: K-Pop and Technologies of Soft Power
Stanford professor Dr. Dafna Zur is an Associate Professor of Korean literature and culture in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures of Stanford University. She specializes in Korean literature, cinema, and popular culture. In this video, Dr. Zur covers the origins, features, consequences, and future of Korean popular culture. A free classroom-friendly discussion guide for this video is also available for download.
SPICE offers a series of Korea-focused lesson plans, an online course for U.S. high school students, and teacher professional development opportunities.
This commentary originally appeared in Nikkei Asia.
An economic response toward China will be a leading agenda item for the Group of Seven major economies this year, Michael Beeman, who served as assistant U.S. trade representative for Japan, South Korea and APEC affairs until January, told Nikkei.
"It is important to agree on the most pressing issues, which will send a message to the rest of the world," said Beeman, now a visiting scholar at Stanford University. The U.S. is urging European nations and Japan to align with export restrictions of advanced semiconductors. "The G-7 is the best forum for discussion," said Beeman, who stressed member nations should work together to address export curbs and other measures.
Dr. Beeman is a Visiting Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for calendar year 2023 to research and write about trade policy issues such as economic security between the United States and Asia.
Business Experts Unpack the Myths and Realities of Decoupling with China
In the second installment of a series recognizing the 40th anniversary of Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the China Program gathered cross-sector executives currently engaged in reshaping their China businesses to shine a light on what U.S.-China tensions and potential decoupling between the two powers look like on the ground.
Ambassador Jung-Seung Shin, the Winter 2023 Payne Distinguished Fellow, offered insights into the dynamics of the trilateral U.S.-China-South Korea relationship, the impacts of the great power competition between the United States and China on South Korea, and the prospects for enhanced Korea-U.S. collaboration.
Japanese and American Innovators Gather at Stanford to Examine the Future of Social Tech
Kicking off a special event series celebrating the 40th anniversary of Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the Japan Program convened eminent entrepreneurs, investors, educators, and content creators, including global rock star YOSHIKI, to explore pathways for social impact innovation.
Launched in summer 2022, Stanford e-Sendai Ikuei is a collaborative course between the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School. The program offers Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School students the opportunity to develop their English and critical thinking skills while examining their roles on a global scale. Stanford e-Sendai Ikuei is one of SPICE’s local student programs in Japan.
On October 28, I had the privilege of travelling to Sendai, Japan to attend the closing ceremony for the 2022 inaugural class of Stanford e-Sendai Ikuei. The trip was a precious opportunity to meet the students in-person for the first time, after five months of learning together over Zoom. While there, I considered the educational journey the students had taken that led up to this moment of accomplishment.
Stanford e-Sendai Ikuei was designed to challenge students to examine the world from new perspectives as they consider their own role on the global stage. To this end, the class was structured into three main topics: diversity, global citizenship, and entrepreneurship.
For the first topic, students examined diversity through the framework of the United States’ history of immigration and richly diverse population. Guided by guest speakers, the class engaged in thoughtful conversations on why stereotypes take root and how biases grow through systemic oppression. Students analyzed the work done by change makers and activists in the pursuit of inclusion and equity. Finally, students were able to reflect on the concept of identity and contemplate what their unique perspectives bring to the table.
In the second section of the program, students applied their self-reflections and understanding of diversity to discussions on what it means to be a global citizen. Lessons focused on establishing a general understanding of global issues and international collaboration and encouraged students to consider the global issues they hold important. Invited guest speakers generously shared their personal journeys of finding their passions to exemplify how the students might engage with global issues on a local and grassroots scale.
Hearing the inaugural class’s conviction and sense of growth, I am grateful to have been a part of their education as young leaders, and I look forward to seeing where their curiosity takes them next.
After feeling a bit overwhelmed by the weight of the world, students were eager to understand how to make these problems approachable. In our final unit on entrepreneurship, the class explored how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs applied a growth mindset—which normalizes and embraces failure to achieve success—to stay innovative and reach for new solutions. Students practiced their own innovation skills through Design Thinking and learned how to collaborate as a team to create stronger ideas. Lastly, the students considered how to take care of their mental health and well-being as they pursue their goals through practicing mindfulness and finding supports.
The program culminated in a final research project where students had the opportunity to take a turn in the instructor’s seat and teach the class about the issues that sparked their passion and curiosity. With a 3–5 minute presentation written and delivered in English, students challenged themselves to apply the communication skills, analysis, and self-reflection they had practiced throughout the course. They rose to the challenge with determination and compassion.
During the in-person closing ceremony, students came up one by one to share their reflections and lessons learned. Many of their statements echoed a similar tune—a confession of a nervous and intimidated mindset at the outset of the program, a desire to push themselves in order to broaden their skills and perspectives, and a goal to continue their learning journeys with empathy as their guide. Hearing the inaugural class’s conviction and sense of growth, I am grateful to have been a part of their education as young leaders, and I look forward to seeing where their curiosity takes them next.
I am enormously grateful to all of the Stanford e-Sendai Ikuei guest speakers for their shared knowledge, experience, and mentorship:
Esther Priscilla Ebuehi, Birth Equity Analyst, Cherished Futures for Black Moms & Babies
Kenji Harsch, Associate Clinical Social Worker, Fred Finch Youth & Family Services
Makiko Hirata, Professional Pianist and SPICE Instructor
Rebecca Jennison, Professor, Kyoto Seika University
Sukemasa Kabeyama, Co-Founder and CEO, Uplift Labs
Gary Mukai, Director, SPICE
Jennifer Teeter, Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University
Samanta Vásquez, Social Worker, Office of Refugee Resettlement
Sam Yee, Senior Program Coordinator, GPI US, and the GPI US Design Team
I would like to give a special thank you to Principal Takehiko Katoh, the Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School staff, and my partner coordinator at Sendai Ikuei Gakuen Rina Imagawa for their endless support and assistance to make this course possible.
Diego A. Zambrano’s primary research and teaching interests lie in the areas of civil procedure, transnational litigation, and judicial federalism. His work explores the civil litigation landscape: the institutions, norms, and incentives that influence litigant and judicial behavior. Professor Zambrano also has an interest in comparative constitutional law and legal developments related to Venezuela. He currently leads an innovative Stanford Policy Lab tracking “Global Judicial Reforms” and has served as an advisor to pro-democracy political parties in Venezuela. In 2021, Professor Zambrano received the Barbara Allen Babcock Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Professor Zambrano’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming at the Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Virginia Law Review, among other journals, and has been honored by the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) and the National Civil Justice Institute. Professor Zambrano will be a co-author of the leading casebook Civil Procedure: A Modern Approach (8th ed. 2024) (with Marcus, Pfander, and Redish). In addition, Professor Zambrano serves as the current chair of the Federal Courts Section of the AALS. He also writes about legal issues for broader public audiences, with his contributions appearing in the Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and Lawfare.
After graduating with honors from Harvard Law School in 2013, Professor Zambrano spent three years as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb in New York, focusing on transnational litigation and arbitration. Before joining Stanford Law School in 2018, Professor Zambrano was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
Michele Gelfand is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy at Stanford University. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture — as well as its multilevel consequences for human groups. Her work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist, De Standard, among other outlets.
Gelfand has published her work in many scientific outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Psychological Science, Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS 1, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, Annual Review of Psychology, American Psychologist, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Current Opinion in Psychology, among others. She has received over 13 million dollars in research funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and the FBI.
She is the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World (Scribner, 2018) and co-editor of the following books: Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2017); The Handbook of Conflict and Conflict Management (Taylor & Francis, 2013); and The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture (2004, Stanford University Press). Additionally, she is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology Annual Series and the Frontiers of Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press). She is the past President of the International Association for Conflict Management, past Division Chair of the Conflict Division of the Academy of Management, and past Treasurer of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. She has received several awards and honors, such as being elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2021) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019), the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association, the 2016 Diener Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) provides a civil cause of action for computer hacking victims that have suffered certain types of harm. Of these harms, the one most commonly invoked by plaintiffs is having suffered $5,000 or more of cognizable “loss” as defined by the statute. In its first-ever CFAA case, 2021’s Van Buren v. United States, the Supreme Court included intriguing language that “loss” in civil cases should be limited to “technological harms” constituting “the typical consequences of hacking.” To date, lower courts have only followed the Court’s interpretation if their circuit already interpreted “loss” narrowly pre-Van Buren and have continued to approach “loss” broadly otherwise.
Van Buren did not fully dissipate the legal risks the CFAA has long posed to a particular community: people who engage in good-faith cybersecurity research. Discovering and reporting security vulnerabilities in software and hardware risks legal action from vendors displeased with unflattering revelations about their products’ flaws. Research activities have even led to criminal investigations at times. Although Van Buren narrowed the CFAA’s scope and prompted reforms in federal criminal charging policy, researchers continue to face some legal exposure. The CFAA still lets litigious vendors “shoot the messenger” by suing over security research that did them no harm. Spending just $5,000 addressing a vulnerability is sufficient to allow the vendor to sue the researcher who reported it, because such remediation costs qualify as “loss” even in courts that read that term narrowly.
To mitigate the CFAA’s legal risk to researchers, a common proposal is a statutory safe harbor for security research. Such proposals walk a fine line between being unduly byzantine for good-faith actors to follow and lax enough to invite abuse by malicious actors. Instead of the safe harbor approach, this article recommends a simpler way to reduce litigation over harmless research: follow the money.
The Article proposes (1) amending the CFAA’s “loss” definition to prevent vulnerability remediation costs alone from satisfying the $5,000 standing threshold absent any other alleged loss, and (2) adding a fee-shifting provision that can be invoked where plaintiffs’ losses do not meet that threshold. Tightening up the “loss” calculus would disqualify retaliatory litigation against beneficial (or at least benign) security research while preserving victims’ ability to seek redress where well-intended research activities do cause harm. Fee-shifting would deter weak CFAA claims and give the recipients of legal threats some leverage to fight back. Coupled with the Van Buren decision, these changes would reach beyond the context of vendor versus researcher: they would help rein in the CFAA’s rampant misuse over behavior far afield from the law’s core anti-hacking purpose.
In the context of growing tensions between the U.S. and China, many Asian countries have faced the challenge of balancing their relationships with the two countries. Given its security alliance with the U.S. is a cornerstone of its foreign policy, Japan seems to be more closely aligned with the U.S. than any other country. However, Japan’s most important trade partner is China, and it cannot overlook its economic relations with China in making foreign policy decisions. What should Japan’s approach be with the increasingly authoritarian regime in China expanding its ambitions to compete with the U.S. while domestic turmoil hampers the U.S. capacity to project its power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region? As a growing number of trade agreements in the region, such as CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), and now IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework) create an alphabet soup of intersecting economic relations, how should Japan navigate the treacherous terrain to ensure its economic security and energy sufficiency? To answer these questions, this webinar features two leading Japanese experts in Chinese politics, economy, and diplomacy — Chisako Masuo and Ryo Sahashi.
Speakers
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Chisako T. Masuo (益尾知佐子) is a Professor at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). She was given the Nakasone Yasuhiro Award of Excellence in 2021 for her contribution to China studies and for the policy discussions regarding China’s Coast Guard Law. She received Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2008. Her research topics include Chinese domestic politics, foreign and maritime policies, and international relations with regard to China. Professor Masuo was a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and China Foreign Affairs University in 2019, and a coordinated research scholar working with the late Professor Ezra F. Vogel at the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 2014-2015. She is the author of China’s Behavioural Principles: International Relations Determined by the Domestic Currents (Tokyo: Chuko Publishing, 2019), as well as China Looks Back: Mao’s Legacy in the Open-Door Era (University of Tokyo Press, 2010), and a co-author of A Diplomatic History of China (University of Tokyo Press, 2017) all in Japanese. She also writes articles and book chapters in English and Chinese.
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Ryo Sahashi is an Associate Professor of International Relations, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. Dr. Sahashi specializes on international politics in East Asia. His recent book is US-China Rivalry: A Shift of American Strategy and Divided Worlds (Tokyo: Chuko, 2021),In a Search for Coexistence: the United States and Two Chinas during the Cold War (Tokyo: Keiso, 2015), and he edits East Asian Order in the Post-Cold War Era (Tokyo: Keiso, 2020). In English, he edits Looking for Leadership: The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan (Tokyo and New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2015), and his recent articles appears on China International Strategy Review, Contemporary Politics, and Journal of Contemporary China. he serves as a Member for Council on the Actual State of Land Use, Advisory Panel on Science & Technology Diplomacy, and Expert Panel on 50th Year of Japan-ASEAN Friendship and Cooperation. He also works as Faculty Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry; Visiting Fellow, 21st Century Policy Institute, Keidanren; Research Fellow of Japan Center for International Exchange. He has been Japan Scholar, Wilson Center, Visiting Associate Professor, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University and Professor, Kanagawa University. He received his B.A. from International Christian University and his Ph.D. from the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo.
Moderator
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Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021).
