Browse FSI scholarship on geopolitics, global health, energy, cybersecurity and more.
Featured Publications
Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt
Classless Politics offers a counterintuitive account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of “more identity, less class.”
Imperfect Partners: The United State and Southeast Asia
Scot Marciel, widely considered the State Department’s top Southeast Asia hand, explores the diplomatic successes, challenges, missteps, and opportunities in U.S. diplomacy with Southeast Asia.
It's no secret that liberalism hasn't always lived up to its own ideals. But in this short, clear account, Francis Fukuyama offers an essential defense of a revitalized liberalism for the twenty-first century.
This volume, edited by Marietje Schaake and Francis Fukuyama provides perspectives on how digital technologies are used, perceived, and affect behavior in a range of countries outside of North America and Europe. This volume should be seen as a modest first effort to gather comparative data on digital technology issues affecting ECs that will inform government policy, the platforms, and civil society around the world.
As the Internet and digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) have spread globally, governments around the world have struggled to understand the transformative impacts of these technologies and determine how best to govern them.
Economic Development and Cultural Change,
May 23, 2023
EdTech, which includes computer assisted learning (CAL), online education, and remote instruction, was expanding rapidly even before the current full-scale substitution for in-person learning at all levels of education around the world because of COVID-19. Studies of CAL interventions often find positive effects, however, these “CAL programs” often include non-technology based inputs such as more time on learning and instructional support by facilitators in addition to technology-based components. In this paper, we discuss the possible channels by which CAL programs affect academic outcomes among schoolchildren. We isolate the technology-based effects of CAL from the total program effects by designing a novel multi-treatment field experiment with more than four thousand schoolchildren in rural China. For the full sample, we find null effects for both the total CAL program and the technology-based effects of CAL (which are measured relative to a traditional pencil-and-paper learning treatment) on math test scores. For boys, however, we find a positive and statistically significant effect of the CAL program, but do not find evidence of a positive effect for the technology-based effect of CAL. When focusing on grades, we find evidence of positive CAL program effects but find null effects when we isolate the technology-based effects of CAL. Our empirical results suggest that the “Tech” in EdTech may have relatively small additional effects on academic outcomes and yet that tech programs can substitute atleast to a certain extent for traditional learning.
This book explores the social and psychological factors behind how ISIS was able to rise in Iraq, control most of it, and why most of that population eventually turned on it.
Using open-source intelligence - including photographs from the regiment's New Year's party - Ukranian hacktivists were able to ascertain the identity of the Russian pilots.
Educational Research for Policy and Practice,
May 3, 2023
This study utilizes semi-structured interviews to explore the status quo of teacher training of rural and urban public primary school teachers in Henan Province China. Our findings showed that both rural and urban teachers had very limited training opportunities available to them. Most of the participants did not find the current training opportunities useful in improving their teaching practices. Both rural and urban teachers desired training in pedagogy, educational psychology, and curriculum. Rural teachers particularly expressed the need for training in ICT and classroom management skills. Observing education experts’ demonstration classes is the most preferred training format. Policy implications are discussed.
Unlike previous such strategies, the new National Cyber Strategy rebalances responsibility to generate a new social contract for a resilient national cybersecurity to counter threats from malicious nations and emerging technology.
We study the effect of a victimization narrative on national identity and public opinion in China experimentally. Previous research has suggested that governments can shape public opinion by guiding citizens’ collective memories of historical events, but few studies have established a clear causal link. By conducting an online survey experiment among 1890 urban Chinese citizens, we examine the causal impact of historical narratives on political attitudes. We find that, compared to control conditions, a narrative focusing on China’s humiliating past in the late Qing significantly reinforces respondents’ attachment to the victim side of the Chinese national identity, raises suspicion of the intention of foreign governments in international disputes, stimulates preference for more hawkish foreign policies, and strengthens support for China’s current political system. These effects are particularly strong among respondents without a college degree.
This study investigated the association between household characteristics, perceived family support (PFS), and the developmental outcomes (resilience, academic performance, and prosociality) among at-risk students. Our large sample included 1564 primary and secondary school students from poor rural China (M = 11.55 years old). Having a caregiver whose resilience score was in the top 50% of the sample was associated with a 0.48-point increase (or 0.31 d effect size), while having a migrant mother was correlated with a 0.26-point decrease (or 0.17 d effect size). PFS was a significant (p < 0.0001) mediator between household characteristics and developmental outcomes. Our study highlights the link between caregiver resilience and PFS, and the healthy functioning of disadvantaged students in a developing context.
in Antje von Ungern-Sternberg (ed.), Content Regulation in the European Union – The Digital Services Act, TRIER STUDIES ON DIGITAL LAW, Volume 1, Verein für Recht und Digitalisierung e.V., Institute for Digital Law (IRDT), Trier April 2023
