Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

Not What It Seems: Muslim Governance in Malaysia Today

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Tectonic shifts have underscored the gradual Islamization of mainstream politics in contemporary Malaysia. This is so despite popular media representations of the country as an epitome of moderate and progressive Muslim governance -- a portrayal regularly belied by the actions of its leaders as well. Recently, these shifts have been expressed in heated debates over apostasy, religious freedom, and constitutional rights. Insofar as the media have acknowledged Islamization, they have attributed it to the Islamist opposition party (PAS). Prof. Liow will show, however, that the ruling party (UMNO) has proven no less strident in expressing its own Islamist predilections, with significant implications for the dynamics of UMNO-PAS relations and, beyond them, the country's political future.

Joseph Chinyong Liow is head of research at S. Rajaratnam School of International

Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His books include Muslim

Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, and Politics (2006); The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (2005); and (as co-editor) Order and Security in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2006). He is associate editor of Asian Security, and guest-edited "Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: The Nature, Legitimacy and Changing Role of the State," a special issue of that journal (2007). He has published numerous articles on Malaysian politics and the conflict in Southern Thailand. His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Joseph Chinyong Liow Associate Professor Speaker S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Seminars

Can Democracy Reach the Poor? A Presidential Perspective on Education, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America

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Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

For more information about this event, please refer to the article in The Stanford Report.

Cubberley Auditorium (School of Education)
485 Lausen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Alejandro Toledo Speaker

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

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.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Lectures

The Third Annual Globalization of Services Conference

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The Third Annual Globalization of Services Conference will explore the following questions:

  1. The changing geography of system integrators: The incumbent system integrators (SIs) are building up their developing nation service provision capability through acquisitions and internal expansion. The thrust of their expansion is to add capacity quickly. Can they manage it effectively? At a slower pace, the Indian SIs are doing the same in developed and developing nations: adding low cost workforces in developing countries, buying relationships in developed countries. Can they manage it effectively. Will growth rates and margins converge; if not, why not? What are some of the interesting differences between firm strategies?
  2. The changing business models of system integrators: The Indian system integrators appear to be driving a new, metric-based quality model that is driving price compression. Is this strong enough to provide a permanent advantage? IBM and others are responding with a combination of superior technology, client relationships and domain expertise, drawing upon their established strengths while also expanding in India and other low-cost developing countries. Are we witnessing a convergence to a common business model? Is there a European perspective? Is it different and does it make a difference?
  3. Product firms' globalization strategies (separate sessions on established and new firms): The IT product firms have to balance several additional factors that service firms like the SIs do not face when they globalize; among them, intellectual property protection, business development, managing innovation, research team coordination and marketing. How is this working, and what business models are they experimenting with? What are the differences between an established firm versus a startup?

All participants will receive a copy of Dr. Dossani's newest book India Arriving: How this Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business. Details of this can be found through the link below. Provided through the generosity of Arada Systems.

Details about the previous two events can be found at:

Globalization of Services

The Second Annual Globalization of Services Conference

Conference Sponsors:

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Bechtel Conference Center

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South Asia Initiative
Globalization of Services Conference

Taiwan and the New U.S. Strategic Environment

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This is a CDDRL's Special Event within our Democracy in Taiwan Program.

Dr. Jaushieh Joseph Wu arrived in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 2007 to assume his responsibilities as Taiwan's chief representative to the United States.

Representative Wu began his government career in 2002 as Deputy Secretary-General to President Chen Shui-bian, a position he held until May 2004. From 2004 to April 2007, Representative Wu was the chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, a ministry-level organization that coordinates and implements Taiwan's policies toward the People's Republic of China.

Prior to his government career, Representative Wu held a number of academic positions at his alma mater, National Chengchi University, including the chairmanship of the First Division of the Institute of International Relations, an adjunct research fellowship at the Election Study Center and an adjunct professorship in the Department of Political Science.

Dr. Wu received his undergraduate education at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He did his graduate work in political science at the University of Missouri in St. Louis in 1982, obtaining a master's degree in Political Science, followed by a Ph. D. in the same field from Ohio State University in 1989. His areas of specialization include Taiwan's political development, cross-strait relations, international relations, and Middle East politics. Among Dr. Wu's academic publications, he has authored Taiwan's Democratization: Forces Behind the New Momentum (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1995), and edited Divided Nations: The Experience of Germany, Korea, and China (Taipei, Institute of International Relations, 1995) and China Rising: Implications of Economic and Military Growth of the PRC (Taipei, Institute of International Relations, 2001).

Oksenberg Conference Room

Joseph Wu Representative Speaker Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C.
Seminars

A theory of the origins of coercive enforcement by the state: Insights from Colonial Mexico

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Luz Marina Arias

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CDDRL Hewlett Fellow 2007-2008
Llumi.jpg PhD

Luz Marina Arias was a graduate student in the Department of Economics at Stanford University before coming to CDDRL. She was born and raised in Mexico City and completed her undergraduate studies in Economics in Mexico, at ITAM. Her research interests lie at the intersection of economics, political science, and history. She is interested in the impact on economic and political development of institutions that organize and coordinate economic and political behavior. Her current project focuses on one such central institution, the state, and studies the factors that lead to the emergence of the state as an entity centralizing coercive power. She studies Latin American history and in particular the experience of colonial Mexico in the transition to such a form of state.

Luz Marina Arias CDDRL Hewlett Fellow Speaker Stanford Department of Economics
Seminars

Muslims in Europe

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Dr. Gilles Kepel is a professor at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris and a research director for CNRS Paris. A prominent French scholar and analyst of the Islamic and Arab world, he is the author of several books and articles: Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam; The Revenge of God; Muslim Extremism in Egypt; Allah in the West and his most recent book The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West.

Dr. Kepel is fluent in French, English, Arabic, and Italian. He holds doctorate degrees from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris in political science and sociology

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Gilles Kepel Speaker Professor, Institut d'Études Politiques, and Research Director, CNRS/CERI Paris, co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
Seminars

Economic Consequences of Population Aging in Asia

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Dr. Lee currently holds the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Endowed Chair in Economics and is a professor in the Department of Demography at University of California - Berkeley (Berkeley). He has taught courses in economic demography, population theory, population and economic development, demographic forecasting, population aging, indirect estimation, and research design, as well as a number of pro-seminars.

Professor Lee is also the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at Berkeley, funded by the National Institute of Aging. His current research includes including modeling and forecasting demographic time series, the evolutionary theory of life histories, population aging, Social Security, and intergenerational transfers.

He has received several honors, including Presidency of the Population Association of America, the Mindel C. Sheps Award for research in mathematical demography, the PAA Irene B. Taeuber Award for outstanding contributions in the field of demography. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding member of the British Academy. He has chaired the population and social science study section for NIH and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population, and served on the National Advisory Committee on Aging (NIA Council).

Professor Lee holds an MA in demography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Philippines Conference Room

Ronald Lee Director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging Speaker University of California - Berkeley
Seminars

Cohen leads Google.org course on global poverty and development

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In September Google.org launched the first of three courses on its main areas of philanthropic activity--Global Development, Global Health, and Climate Change. Joshua Cohen, director of the Program on Global Justice (PGJ) at FSI Stanford and professor of political science, philosophy, and law, is moderating the 10-week course, which focuses on understanding poverty and development at the global, national, local, and personal levels.

"Google has an extraordinary collection of creative employees," says Cohen. "This course on global poverty aims to enlist their energetic creativity in addressing one of our most commanding moral challenges."

The course on global poverty and development meets once a week at a Google headquarters. Each two-hour session features guest speakers on development-related issues such as education and health, equitable financial markets, globalization, and population mobility. On October 3, Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at FSI Stanford, co-taught a session on productive agriculture for the 21st century with Frank Rijsberman, Google.org director of water and climate adaptation issues.

Cohen opens each session, synthesizing points from previous weeks, and then moderates the hour-long discussion between guest speakers and Google employees that follows the speaker presentations. The 200-person capacity of the room is superseded by participation from employees at more than 20 remote locations. On October 3, Google.org Executive Director Larry Brilliant joined the discussion as well.

In a related collaboration, Cohen may also be leading a small-group seminar, "Global Poverty 2.0," at Stanford for Google employees as well as graduate students and colleagues. Global Poverty 2.0 is expected to meet on Friday afternoons and draw on readings from history, sociology, political science, economics, and philosophy. Students would be required to make one presentation and also to submit a 3,000-word project proposal for dealing with some aspect of the large problem of global poverty.

Google.org is the philanthropic arm of Google and the umbrella for its commitment to devote employee time and one percent of Google's profits and equity toward philanthropy.

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