Stanford University

State-building

LAD Course: University of Cape Town, April 2015

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The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice (GSDPP), in collaboration with the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD), an affiliate of Stanford University, will be offering a course in April 2015 that addresses some of the challenges faced by public sector leaders as they foster economic growth in politically-charged environments. 

This course was run successfully in both 2011 and 2013. The 2015 version – updated with new case studies – will also be facilitated by international and national trainers and experts. 

The course is a 5-day, intensive programme for a small number of high level government officials and business leaders from South Africa and other African countries (25-30 in total). It will explore how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a more effective, productive role in economic growth and development. The curriculum is designed to reinforce and illustrate three critically important hypotheses about the role of public policy in private sector development.

Case studies for this course are available here.  

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University of Cape Town and the Cape Milner Hotel

Johannesburg, South Africa

Workshops

The End(s) of Compassion? Buddhist Charity and the State in Taiwan

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ABSTRACT

The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi (Ciji) Foundation from Taiwan is perhaps one of the largest Buddhist charities in the Chinese world today. This talk traces how Tzu Chi developed under the “regime of civility” in Taiwan. The same regime also contributed to the recent controversies between Tzu Chi and the Aborigines. I argue that the tension between the Buddhist non-governmental organization and the Christian Aborigines has to do with the inequality under the regime of civility: on the one hand, the Aborigines have been marginalized as the “subject” of the civility campaign by the state; and, on the other hand, the same regime of civility is what allows the Buddhist charity to thrive in civil society. This talk raises the question whether civility could turn against civil society.

SPEAKER BIO

huang julia

C. Julia Huang is a Professor of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University. Huang has published articles in the Journal of Asian Studies, Ethnology, Positions, Nova Religio, the Eastern Buddhist, and the European Journal for East Asian Studies. Her book, Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009) is an ethnography of a lay Buddhist movement that began as a tiny group in Taiwan and grew into an organization with ten million members worldwide. Huang has recently completed a book manuscript, The Social Life of Goodness: Religious Philanthropy in Chinese Societies (with Robert P. Weller and Keping Wu). She is currently working on a project on the Buddhist influences on cadaver donations for medical education in Taiwan.

 

This event is part of the Taiwan Democracy Project.

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Ends of Compassion--presentation
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C. Julia Huang Professor of Anthropology National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Seminars

The Ties that Bind: Elite Networks and Stability in Iraq and Syria

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Abstract: Why and how do elite arrangements vary across authoritarian regimes? Why do some arrangements persist, while others are dissolved through coup d’état, failed coup attempts, and extensive purges? Existing political science explanations of authoritarian stability broadly emphasize three factors: individual members’ attributes, material payoffs, and formal institutions. Yet historians and country experts emphasize the centrality of social and informal ties between actors. I argue that, to understand the variation in the source and extent of coalitional breakdown, scholars must situate the holders of political and military office in their organizational and social context. Authoritarian coalitions differ in systematic ways in their members’ patterns of organizational and social relationships; these different relational configurations have distinct implications for coalitional trajectories. This paper employs original archival and interview evidence to trace the emergence and evolution of authoritarian networks in Iraq and Syria. It demonstrates that the extent of overlap between organizational and social networks explains the type of elite breakdown (and its breadth) over time. 

About the Speaker: Julia Choucair-Vizoso is a joint predoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) for 2014-2015. She is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Yale University.

Choucair-Vizoso studies coalitional politics and elite networks in nondemocratic settings. Her dissertation examines how elites organize to enforce authoritarian rule, and how and why these organizational structures evolve. Drawing on network theory and analysis, her study examines ruling coalitions in Iraq and Syria.

Her research has been supported by fellowships from the United States Institute of Peace and Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She holds a B.S. in International Politics and an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 

This event is sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. 

CISAC Central Conference Room
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor
616 Serra St
Stanford, CA 94305

Julia Choucair-Vizoso Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC/CDDRL
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

State Fragility and Extreme Poverty: What Can be Done?

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Please note that this CDDRL seminar will be held on Wednesday. 

 

Abstract:

Recent estimates place half of the world’s poorest people in fragile and conflict-affected states by 2015. As the world moves towards the next phase of global development goals, which includes a central emphasis on eradicating extreme poverty, it will be necessary to understand the challenges for countries in the most difficult contexts. Is addressing and resolving fragility a condition (or precondition) for successfully addressing poverty?  Or, are there ways to significantly and sustainably reduce poverty even while countries remain fragile?

USAID is seeking to answer these questions as it recommits to working with its partners to end extreme poverty by 2030. And while we acknowledge that ending extreme poverty will not be easy, progress and gains already achieved over the past couple of decades have made us certain that it is possible. As the global community coalesces around this goal, USAID seeks to increase shared understanding of the nature of extreme poverty, where there has been success and why, and what we are already doing and will need to do differently to catalyze and invest in global solutions.

 

Speaker Bio: 

Alex Thier
Alex Thier is USAID’s assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL). The PPL Bureau is USAID’s center for policy development, strategic planning, learning and evaluation, and partner engagement. From June 2010‐ June 2013, Thier served as assistant to the administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs, overseeing USAID’s two largest missions in the world.
Before joining USAID, Thier served with the U.S. Institute of Peace as senior rule of law adviser and director for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2005‐ 2010. While at the Institute, he co‐authored The Future of Afghanistan (2009) as well as The Next Chapter: The United States and Pakistan, the 2008 report of the Pakistan Working Group. Thier also served as director of the Institute’sConstitution Making, Peacebuilding, and National Reconciliation project, during which he advised numerous governments and civil society organizations engaged in ongoing constitutional drafting and national reconciliation exercises. Thier was also a principal staffer on the Institute’s Genocide Prevention Task Force, and a coauthor of its final report, Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers. The recommendations from this report formed the backbone of President Barack Obama’s 2011 Directive on Mass Atrocities.
Thier previously served as director of the Project on Failed States at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. From 2002 to 2004, he was legal adviser to Afghanistan’s Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. He has also worked as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, a legal and constitutional expert to the British Department for International Development, and as an adviser to the Constitutional Commission of Southern Sudan.
From 1993 to 1996, Thier worked as a U.N. and NGO official in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Afghan civil war. He also served as coordination officer for the U.N. Iraq Program in New York.
An attorney, Thier was a Skadden fellow and a graduate fellow at the U.S. National Security Council’s Directorate for Near‐East and South Asia. He received the Richard S. Goldsmith award for outstanding work on dispute resolution from Stanford University in 2000.
Thier has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Brown University.
Discussion Paper: Ending extreme poverty in fragile contexts
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Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3nd Floor
616 Serra St
Stanford, CA 94305

Alex Thier Assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning Assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning United States Agency for International Development
Seminars

Mind the Gap? The International Sources of Sovereignty and State Weakness

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Abstract: 

Why have some developing countries faced persistent challenges at extending state authority throughout their territories? The consequences of incomplete governance are often severe in terms of public order, public goods, and economic growth, which raise the question of why ungoverned spaces remain without effective authority. Although there are many reasons why states leave broad swathes of their territory ungoverned, existing scholarship has overlooked the role of international politics. This dissertation demonstrates the importance of international factors in accounting for variation in state weakness, and argues that enemy states can subvert or deter the exercise of state authority near the borders of their neighbors. External interference can create or sustain ungoverned spaces in the target state, and yields policy benefits to the enemy state. Drawing on original data and a new measure of state authority, I support this argument with a cross-national statistical analysis that examines variation within countries, and a natural experiment from the case of Thailand that identifies the causal effect of hostile neighbors on state authority.


Speaker Bio:

lee
Melissa Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research interests bridge the subfields of international relations and comparative politics, and include the international causes and consequences of state weakness; statebuilding; conflict and security; and political and economic development. Her dissertation asks why some developing states leave parts of their territory ungoverned, and argues that state weakness near state borders is a function of hostile regional neighborhoods. Specifically, she argues that neighboring states can subvert or deter the exercise of state authority, resulting in the emergence or persistence of ungoverned space. She employs a variety of methods in her research, including statistical methods, quasi-experimental techniques, geospatial analysis, archival research, and field interviews.

Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and other research centers at Stanford University. She is a former research consultant for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

Seminars

State Building Outside-In

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Abstract:
 
There is no consensus in the policy or academic worlds about what kind of interventions are most effective in promoting governance in badly governed polities.   The three major approaches to understanding state development — modernization theory, institutional capacity, and rational choice institutionalism suggest very different approaches.   While modernization theory is most expansive about the possibilities for external action, its record over time is the most problematic.   Rational choice institutionalism, in contrast, suggests that in rent-seeking exclusive orders the opportunities for external actors are limited.  Rational choice institutionalism, however, does not provide a clear mapping of mixed order polities, ones in which the interests of political elites are torn between open access and rent-seeking.
 
Speaker Bio:
 
Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. 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.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Stephen D. Krasner

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0676 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Emeritus
krasner.jpg
MA, PhD

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.

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Stephen Krasner Speaker
Seminars

New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan

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New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan takes a creative and comparative view of the new challenges and dynamics confronting these maturing democracies.

Numerous works deal with political change in the two societies individually, but few adopt a comparative approach—and most focus mainly on the emergence of democracy or the politics of the democratization processes. This book, utilizing a broad, interdisciplinary approach, pays careful attention to post-democratization phenomena and the key issues that arise in maturing democracies.

“As two paradigmatic cases of democratic development, Korea and Taiwan are often seen as exemplars of both modernization and democratization. This volume both contributes and moves beyond this focus, looking forward to assess the maturation but also the risks to democracy in both countries. With its strong comparative focus and a sober appreciation of how hard it can be not to just to attain but to sustain democracy, it represents a major contribution."  

     — Benjamin Reilly, Dean, Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Murdoch University

What emerges is a picture of two evolving democracies, now secure, but still imperfect and at times disappointing to their citizens—a common feature and challenge of democratic maturation. The book demonstrates that it will fall to the elected political leaders of these two countries to rise above narrow and immediate party interests to mobilize consensus and craft policies that will guide the structural adaptation and reinvigoration of the society and economy in an era that clearly presents for both countries not only steep challenges but also new opportunities.

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Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. He is also Director of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Gi-Wook Shin is Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies, and Professor of Sociology at Stanford.

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Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Stanford University Press
Authors
Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond
Gi-Wook Shin
Gi-Wook Shin
Number
9780804787437

Regionalism and State Weakness

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Abstract:

Scholars of state development have paid insufficient attention to the question of regionalism; too often modeling state-building as the extension of the authority of a 'center' over peripheral territories, and too often linking regionalism to cultural or ethnic heterogeneity. A purely spatial account of the challenges to central control shows that even in the absence of cultural fractionalization, the presence of economically powerful and politically salient regions undermines political development. Three analytically distinct mechanisms - divergent public good preferences, economic self-sufficiency, and institutional design - underlie this relationship. I explore these issues through a region-wide analysis of Latin America, and case studies of the United States, Ecuador, Colombia, and early modern Poland.

Speaker Bio:

Hillel David Soifer earned his PhD in the Government Department at Harvard, and is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University. His research has been centered in Latin America, with a focus on political development and state capacity, and has been published in journals including Latin American Research Review and Comparative Political Studies. He is currently completing a book on the long-term divergence in state capacity in Latin America which contrasts the cases of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Hillel Soifer Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker Temple University
Seminars
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