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This article investigates how technology has influenced the size of armies. During the nineteenth century, the development of the railroad made it possible to field and support mass armies, significantly increasing the observed size of military forces. During the late twentieth century, further advances in technology made it possible to deliver explosive force from a distance and with precision, making mass armies less desirable. The authors find support for their technological account using a new data set covering thirteen great powers between 1600 and 2000. They find little evidence that the French Revolution was a watershed in terms of levels of mobilization.

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The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's center overviews provide detailed information about CDDRL's mission, history, faculty, financial support, organizational structure, projects, and programs.
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The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's center overviews provide detailed information about CDDRL's mission, history, faculty, financial support, organizational structure, projects, and programs.

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The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's center overviews provide detailed information about CDDRL's mission, history, faculty, financial support, organizational structure, projects, and programs.

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Recap:  The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World

 
On April 30, May 1, and May 2, 2014, Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History at Yale University, delivered in three parts The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World, the first of an annual series. 
 
With the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War as his backdrop, Tooze spoke about the history of the transformation of the global power structure that followed from Germany’s decision to provoke America’s declaration of war in 1917. He advanced a powerful explanation for why the First World War rearranged political and economic structures across Eurasia and the British Empire, sowed the seeds of revolution in Russia and China, and laid the foundations of a new global order that began to revolve around the United States. 
 
The three lectures focused successively on diplomatic, economic, and social aspects of the troubled interwar history of Europe and its relationship with the wider world. Over the course of the lectures, he presented an argument for why the fate of effectively the whole of civilization changed in 1917, and why the First World War’s legacy continues to shape our world even today.
 
Tooze also participated in a lunchtime question-and-answer roundtable with graduate students from the History department.
 
Image of Yale's Barton M. Briggs Professor of History Adam Tooze, speaking at Stanford University, May 2, 2014Tooze is the author of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy(2006) and Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (2001), among numerous other scholarly articles on modern European history. His latest book, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931, will be released in Summer 2014 in the United Kingdom and in Fall 2014 in the United States.
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Recap:  European Commission President José Barroso Visits Stanford

 
José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, delivered a lecture entitled, “Global Europe: From the Atlantic to the Pacific,” before an audience at Stanford on May 1, 2014. 
 
Barroso discussed at length the political and economic consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008 for European affairs. He acknowledged that the crisis revealed “serious flaws” in the economic management of some national economies, but stressed that the 28-member union adapted and reformed to handle the fallout from the crisis. For example, he explained how banking supervision is now controlled at the “European level through the European Central Bank,” and that “there are common rules for banks so that we avoid having to use taxpayers' money to rescue them." 
 
Barroso also discussed various political and security aspects related to the ongoing upheaval in Ukraine, and affirmed that Europe “stands ready” to support the country as it comes “closer to the European Union.” He added that Russia’s decision “to interfere, to destabilize, and to occupy part of the territory of a neighboring country” was a “gesture that we hoped was long buried in history books.”
 
Image of José Manuel Barroso, President of the European CommissionBarroso was named President of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Portugal in 1999, following which he was re-elected three times. He was appointed Prime Minister of Portugal in 2002. He remained in office until July 2004 when he was elected by the European Parliament to the post of President of the European Commission. He was re-elected to a second term as President of the European Commission by an absolute majority in the European Parliament in September 2009.
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Workshop:  Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion

 
On May 9, 2014 and May 10, 2014, The Europe Center will host the Fourth Annual Workshop on Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion.
 
Speakers draw from a range of national and international universities and include Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Efrén Pérez, Lauren Prather, Jorge Bravo,  Giovanni Facchini, Cecilia Testa, Harris Mylonas, Rahsaan Maxwell, Ali Valenzuela, Mark Helbling, Rob Ford, Matthew Wright, Karen Jusko, Maggie Peters, Justin Gest, Rafaela M. Dancygier, and Yotam Margalit.
 
The all-day workshop will begin at 8:30 am on Friday and at 9:15 am on Saturday, and will be held in the CISAC Conference Room in Encina Hall. Visitors are cordially invited to attend. 
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Spring 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition Winners Announced

 
Please join us in congratulating the winners of The Europe Center Spring 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition:
 
Lisa Barge, German Studies, “Beyond Objectivity: Questioning Shifting Scientific Paradigms in Erwin Schrödinger's Thought”
 
Michela Giorcelli, Economics, “Transfer of Production and Management Model Across National Borders:  Evidence from the Technical Assistance and Productivity Program”
 
Benjamin Hein, Modern European History, “Capitalism Dispersed: Frankfurt and the European Stock Exchanges, 1880-1960”
 
Michelle Kahn, Modern European History, “Everyday Integration: Turks, Germans, and the Boundaries of Europe”
 
Friederike Knüpling, German Studies, “Kleist vom Ende lesen”
 
Orysia Kulick, History, “Politics, Power, and Informal Networks in Soviet Ukraine”
 
Claire Rydell, U.S. History, “Inventing an American Liberal Tradition: How England's John Locke Became ‘America's Philosopher’, 1700-2000”
 
Lena Tahmassian, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, “Post-Utopian Visions: Modes of Countercultural Discourse of the Spanish Transition to Democracy”
 
Donni Wang, Classics, “Illich Seminar”
 
Lori Weekes, Anthropology & Law, “Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Baltics as a Legal, Institutional, and Ethno-Cultural Project”
 
The Spring Grant Competition winners will join 16 graduate students who were awarded competitive research grants by the Center in Fall 2013. The Center regularly supports graduate and professional students at Stanford University whose research or work focuses on Europe. Funds are available for Ph.D. candidates across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to prepare for dissertation research and to conduct research on approved dissertation projects. The Center also supports early graduate students who wish to determine the feasibility of a dissertation topic or acquire training relevant for that topic. Additionally, funds are available for professional students whose interests focus on some aspect of European politics, economics, history, or culture; the latter may be used to support an internship or a research project. 
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Meet our Visiting Scholars:  Vibeke Kieding Banik

 
In each newsletter, The Europe Center would like to introduce you to a visiting scholar or collaborator at the Center. We welcome you to visit the Center and get to know our guests.
 
Image of Vibeke Banik, Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, Stanford UniversityVibeke Kieding Banik is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, at the University of Oslo. Her main focus of research is on the history of minorities in Scandinavia, particularly Jews, with an emphasis on migration and integration. Her research interests also include gender history, and her current project investigates whether there was a gendered integration strategy among Scandinavian Jews in the period 1900-1940. Dr. Banik has authored several articles on Jewish life in Norway, Jewish historiography, and on the Norwegian women’s suffragette movement. She has taught extensively on Jewish history and is currently writing a book on the history of the Norwegian Jews, scheduled to be published in 2015.
 
 
 

Workshop Schedules  

 
The Europe Center invites you to attend the talks of speakers in the following workshop series: 
 

Europe and the Global Economy

 
May 15, 2014
Christina Davis, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
“Membership Conditionality and Institutional Reform: The Case of the OECD”  
RSVP by May 12, 2014
 

European Governance

 
May 22, 2014
Wolfgang Ischinger, Former German Ambassador to the U.S.; Chairman, Munich Security Conference
“The Future of European Security & Defence” 
RSVP by May 19, 2014
 
May 29, 2014
Simon Hug, Professor of Political Science, University of Geneva
“The European Parliament after Lisbon (and before)” 
RSVP by May 26, 2014
 
 

The Europe Center Sponsored Events

 
We invite you to attend the following events sponsored or co-sponsored by The Europe Center:
 
May 16 and May 17, 2014
“Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality”
A Stanford University Conference
Margaret Jacks Hall: Terrace Room
 
May 29, 2014
Josef Joffe, FSI Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, and Publisher/Editor of Die Zeit
“The Myth of America's Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies”
Oksenberg Conference Room
 
Jun 3, 2014
Tommaso Piffer, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University and University of Cambridge
“The Allies, the European Resistance and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe”
History Corner, Room 307
 
 

Other Events

 
The Europe Center also invites you to attend the following event of interest:
 
May 12, 2014
Latvian Cultural Evening: Sustaining a Memory of the Future
Cubberley Auditorium
 

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.

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2014 Undergraduate Internship Program Winners Announced

 
A key priority of The Europe Center is to provide Stanford’s undergraduate student community with opportunities to develop a deep understanding of contemporary European society and affairs.  By promoting knowledge about the opportunities and challenges facing one of the world’s most economically and politically integrated regions, the Center strives to equip our future leaders with the tools necessary to tackle complex problems related to governance and economic interdependence both in Europe and in the world more broadly.
 
To this end, the Center recently spearheaded a new initiative, The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe.  The Center is sponsoring four undergraduate student internships with leading think tanks and international organizations in Europe in Summer 2014.  Laura Conigliaro (International Relations, 2015) will join the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), where she will work on a policy-related research project.  Additionally, Elsa Brown (Political Science, 2015), Noah Garcia (BA International Relations and MA Public Policy, 2015), and Jana Persky (Public Policy, 2016) will be joining Bruegel, a leading European think tank, where they will work on public policy briefs for the new European Union Commission that will take office in Fall 2014.  The Center is actively seeking to develop ties with business, governmental, and non-governmental organizations in Europe that can participate in The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in future years.
 
 

Workshop Recap:  Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion

 
On May 9, 2014 and May 10, 2014, The Europe Center hosted the Fourth Annual Workshop on Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion.  Speakers drew from a range of national and international universities.  Some of the papers presented included:
 
“Does Naturalization Foster the Political Integration of Immigrants?  Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design in Switzerland,” Jens Hainmueller (Stanford) & Dominik Hangartner (LSE).
 
“The Rhetoric of Closed Borders:  Quotas, Lax Enforcement and Illegal Migration,” Giovanni Facchini (Nottingham) & Cecilia Testa (Royal Holloway).
 
“How State Support of Religion Shapes Religious Attitudes Toward Muslims,” Mark Helbling (WZB Berlin).
 
“Opposition to Race Targeted Policies -- Ideology or Racism?  Particular or Universal?  Experimental Evidence from Britain,” Robert Ford (Manchester).
 
“Nature over Nurture:  Explaining Muslim Integration Discrepancies in Britain, France, and the United States,” Justin Gest (Harvard).
 
Other speakers included:  Efrén Pérez (Vanderbilt), Lauren Prather (Stanford), Jorge Bravo (Rutgers), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Rahsaan Maxwell (UNC-Chapel Hill), and Matthew Wright (American).
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Recordings of The Europe Center Special Events Available Online

 
On May 29, 2014, Josef Joffe, FSI Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, and publisher/editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, talked about his latest book, The Myth of America’s Decline:  Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophesies.  Stephen Krasner and Kathyrn Stoner served as discussants.  We welcome you to visit our website for an audio recording of the event. 
 
On April 30, May 1, and May 2, 2014, Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History at Yale University, delivered The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World.  This series of three lectures focused successively on diplomatic, economic, and social aspects of the troubled interwar history of Europe and its relationship with the wider world.  Video recordings of the lectures are available for viewing on our website.
 
 

Student Scholar Profile:  Jessie Marino

 
The Europe Center regularly sponsors the research of undergraduate and graduate students through our research grant, internship, and scholarly exchange programs.  We would like to introduce you to some of the students that we support and the projects on which they are working.  Our featured student this month has been sponsored by the Center’s Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region.
 
 
Image of Serge Vuille and Mark Knoop performing Jessie Marino's original piece Jessie Marino, a DMA candidate in Composition at Stanford, recently returned from Copenhagen’s SPOR festival, where she was selected as one of five artists from a field of 140 (representing 34 nationalities) to perform her original work, titled “Heartfelt bird, vivid and great in style.”  “I was commissioned by the SPOR Festival to compose a new piece featuring percussionist Serge Vuille and pianist Mark Knoop (photo inset) which was featured in a concert of all world premiere works,” writes Marino.  “This event allowed me to meet new musicians, artists, curators, and composers who are working under similar guises and to exchange ideas about how our art can expand and develop in the 21st century.” 
 
Image of Stanford PhD student Jessie MarinoMarino (inset) is also a recipient of a summer travel grant from the Center’s Graduate Student Grant Program.  She will be traveling to Germany to attend the 2014 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music.  Marino writes that the opportunity will give her the chance to “practice and perform my own compositions,” to “work and develop new ideas with composers and academics,” and to “attend lectures on current research, developments and discoveries in sound production and music technology.”
 
 
 
 

Featured Faculty Research:  David Laitin

 
The Europe Center serves as a research hub bringing together Stanford faculty members, students, and researchers conducting cutting-edge research on topics related to Europe.  Our faculty affiliates draw from the humanities, social sciences, and business and legal traditions, and are at the forefront of scholarly debates on Europe-focused themes.  The Center regularly highlights new research by faculty affiliates that is of interest to the broader community.  
 
 
Image of David Laitin, Stanford UniversityDavid Laitin and his co-author Rafaela Dancygier’s article in the Annual Review of Political Science, “Immigration into Europe: Economic Discrimination, Violence, and Public Policy,” investigates and reviews recent research on changing Western European demographic patterns, and its implications for labor-market discrimination, immigrant-state relations, and immigrant-native violence.  The authors “discuss some of the methodological challenges that scholars have not fully confronted in trying to identify the causes and consequences of discrimination and violence,” and propose pathways to resolve contradictory results in existing studies regarding the economic consequences of immigration policymaking.  Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  
 
Additional information about The Europe Center’s research program on migration can be found here, and a copy of the research article can be found here.  
 
   

Events 

 
The regular seminar series sponsored by The Europe Center will be on break during the summer months.  We invite you to attend the following event of interest:
 
August 20, 2014
7:00 pm -- 9:00 pm
Film Screening 
Forasters (Outsiders), dir. Ventura Pona
Joan Ramon Resina, Director of The Europe Center’s Iberian Studies Program, will lead a Q&A session after the film.  The screening is part of the summer film series, “Beyond Boundaries:  Race, Gender and Culture Across the Globe,” organized by the Stanford Global Studies Division.
Braun Corner (Building 320), Room 105
 

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.  Here is wishing you a pleasant and productive summer.

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Twenty-five years after the release of his landmark essay, "The End of History?," FSI Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama stands by his initial arguments, offering some reflections and new insights in a recent article for The Wall Street Journal. Despite recent democratic shortcomings, Fukuyama reaffirms that liberal democracy still has no real competitors, emphasizing that the power of the democratic ideal remains immense.
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Abstract: 

The recently concluded 16th Lok Sabha elections in India was the biggest democratic election in history. It produced the first absolute majority in Indian national elections in thirty years and catapulted BJP and its leader Narendra Modi to power after a sustained presidential style campaign. The election decisively changed the political landscape in India and seemed to reverse a longstanding trend towards fragmentation of Indian politics along lines of region and caste.

What are the underlying dynamics that made this historic vote possible? Can BJP and Modi deliver the economic growth and employment that they promise? What are the necessary reforms and challenges that confront the new government? Will BJP remain focused on development, or will the older cultural and majoritarian agenda of the RSS and its associated organizations re-appear? What is the prospects for India’s multiple minorities in this new dispensation?

These and other questions will be debated by a panel of three Stanford based academics. 

 

Speaker Bios:

Thomas Blom Hansen (Moderator/Speaker) is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford. He has worked extensively on Hindu-Muslim relations, communal violence and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. His books include The Saffron Wave. Hindu Nationalism and Democracy in Modern India (Princeton University Press 1999) and Wages of Violence, Naming and identity in postcolonial Bombay (Princeton University Press 2001).

 

 

Harish S. Wankhede (Speaker) research interest is to imagine theoretical spaces by interconnecting certain approaches and themes of social science mainly, Justice, politics of recognition and redistribution, secularism, nationalism and the Caste identity. The emphasis of his work is on the marginalized communities in India especially the Muslims, Dalits and the Tribals.

Currently, he is a visiting scholar at the Center for South Asia, Stanford University and working on a research project on the Dalit Panthers’ Movement in Maharashtra. He teaches at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.

 

Alexander Lee (Speaker) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. In the fall of 2014 he will be an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on the historical factors governing the success or failure of political institutions, particularly in South Asia and other areas of the developing world. His work has been published in World Politics and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Alex earned his PhD from Stanford in 2013. More information on his work can be found on his website.

 

This event is hosted by the Center for South Asia and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. 

 

CISAC Conference Room

Thomas Blom Hansen Director Moderator Center for South Asia
Harish S. Wankhede Visiting Scholar Speaker Center for South Asia

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013-14
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Alexander Lee's research focuses on the historical factors governing the success or failure of political institutions, particularly in South Asia and other areas of the developing world. His dissertation examined the ways in which colonialism changed the distribution of wealth in Indian society, and the ways in which these changes affected the development of caste identities. Additional research areas include the study of colonialism and European expansion in a cross- national perspective, and the causes of political violence, especially terrorism. His work has been published in World Politics and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Alex earned his PhD from Stanford in 2013. More information on his work can be found on his website: https://people.stanford.edu/amlee/

Alexander Lee Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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