Authors
Larry Diamond
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

The second presidential election campaign in Taiwan's young history as a democracy has entered its final week, providing a useful moment to ponder its larger meaning. This hard-fought election contest will determine more than simply which man and which (if any) party governs the country. It will also shape in important ways the future character and quality of democracy in the country.

All News button
1
Authors
Larry Diamond
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

Chen Shui-bian may not have much time to enjoy his historic presidential election victory. Very soon, he must begin pondering the very acute challenges of governance that await him. The president-elect has shown remarkable restraint and magnanimity on the cross-strait issue during the campaign and in the wake of his victory. All of those in Taiwan and internationally who have urged Chen to respect the status quo in cross-strait relations and the symbols of sovereignty have reason to be encouraged. Indeed, his repeated election-night reference to himself as the "tenth president of the Republic of China" shrewdly emphasized his determination to maintain continuity and avoid provocative words or acts.

All News button
1
Authors
Larry Diamond
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

North Korea is the world's last true Stalinist regime. In most of the world, communism is dead, at least in everything but name. But in North Korea, totalitarian controls and a bizarre ideology have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, the global wave of democratization and liberalization, the political transformation of South Korea, and the death in 1994 of dictator Kim Il Sung. Like almost everything else about the country, its very name - the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" - is a grotesque, Orwellian lie.

All News button
1
-

The symposium is being organized by the Center's "Taiwan Democracy Project." It will feature participation from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other publicly funded as well as civil society efforts to assist democratic development internationally.

The symposium, which will be limited in size to facilitate extensive dialogue and exchange, has several purposes. One set of purposes is informational and analytical. We want to delineate and assess what new and smaller democracy promotion organizations are doing-and what they can do effectively-to support and advance democratic development around the world. To answer the latter question, we want to distill some of what the more established democracy assistance organizations have learned over the last two decades that can be of value in guiding the strategic thinking and organizational development of these new initiatives. How should such new and emerging foundations define their priorities, and what types of grants and activities are most likely to add value to existing efforts? What countries, sectors, and problems may provide, within each region, opportunities for new democracy assistance initiatives to leverage their limited resources into a higher impact?

Second, we would like to promote, in a modest and limited way, some interaction between academic studies of democratic development and the practical efforts to assist it. The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has embarked upon a very ambitious study of how international influences affect democratic transitions and consolidation, and we would hope to inject some of what we are learning into the discussions-and most of all, to benefit from them.

Third, we want the workshop to be practically useful to the participants. We want to explore the possibilities for cooperation and joint effort among democracy promotion efforts, small and large, new and old. How can such newer and smaller initiatives acquire the information necessary to identify and evaluate potential projects and grantees? What opportunities may exist for sharing information about potential recipients of assistance? What other forms of exchange and interaction could help new and small assistance efforts to leverage their limited resources? How can the established democracy promotion organizations benefit from some of the "ground truth" that new initiatives may accumulate and the new methods that they may develop in their work?

DAY I: Thursday May 31

Morning Session (8:30 am - 12:30 am):

Introduction

Panel 1: Established Efforts to Promote Democracy: Evolution of Strategy, Priorities, and Programs

Panel 2: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Asia

Afternoon Session (1:30 pm - 4:45 pm):

Panel 3: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Eastern Europe

Panel 4: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Africa

DAY II: Friday June 1

Morning Session (9:00 am - 12:15 pm):

Panel 5: Starting New Democracy Foundations

Panel 6: What Kind of Assistance Do New and Struggling Democracies Need?

Afternoon Session (1:15 pm - 3:00 pm):

Round Table Discussion: How to Measure Success?

Closing Comments

Oksenberg Conference Room

Symposiums
Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

In April, a delegation from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) traveled to China. The visit was part of Shorenstein APARC's broader effort to introduce the work of the center to Asia by connecting with scholars, policymakers, business leaders, and journalists across the region.

The delegation, which included center director Gi-Wook Shin, Michael H. Armacost, Jean C. Oi, Daniel C. Sneider, and Neeley Main, visited three cities, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing. The group participated in roundtable discussions on foreign policy issues facing U.S. and China with the Shanghai Institute for International Studies and with scholars at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou; visited a steel plant; and met with executives and leaders from Baosteel Group Corporation, PetroChina, Cybernaut, and the People's Bank of China; journalists from Chinese media outlets; and development and research foundations of the Chinese government.

FSI Director Coit D. Blacker joined the group for several meetings in Beijing, including a roundtable discussion of pressing international policy issues with the Central Party School's foreign affairs research group, the China Reform Forum; meetings with both the School for International Studies and the School of Government at Peking University; and meetings with Stanford alumni.

All News button
1
-

On April 28, 2004, the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, unanimously passed UNSC 1540. The resolution "decided that all States shall refrain from providing any form of support to non-state actors" attempting to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, "adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws" to that effect, and "take and enforce effective measures to "prevent the proliferation of" WMD. To carry out its part of this mandate, the UNSC established and renewed a Committee, which has mainly and usefully assisted States in adopting "appropriate effective laws." This study, in collaboration with Committee members, has focused on implementation mechanisms and indicators of performance in border and exports controls, securing materiel and facilities, and adapting controls to State needs. We conclude that the most meaningful measures of implementation need to be more broadly adopted and that the 1540 Committee needs a more extensive staff in order to extend its role to disseminate States' experience with those measures. We also conclude that mechanisms need to be developed to facilitate information sharing between the Committee and the private sector.

Michael May is a professor emeritus (research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings. His research project this year is entitled "The Energy Security Initiative and a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Center: Two Enhancement Options for the Current Non-Proliferation Regime."

Allen Weiner is an associate professor of law (teaching) at the Stanford Law School, as well as the inaugural Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy, a chair held jointly by FSI and the Stanford Law School. He is also an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. His expertise is in the field of public international law and the foreign relations law of the United States. His work focuses on the effect of positive international law rules on the conduct of foreign relations and other implications for the behavior of states, courts (both national and international), and other international actors. Current research interests focus on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He teaches courses in public international law and international criminal law at Stanford Law School. Before coming to Stanford, Weiner served for 12 years as a career attorney in the U.S. Department of State. He served in the Office of the Legal Adviser in Washington, D.C. (1990-1996) and at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague (1996-2001), most recently as legal counselor, in which capacity he served as the U.S. Government's principal day-to-day interlocutor with the international legal institutions in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. He received a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Roger Speed is a physicist formerly with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now an affiliate of CISAC. He has also worked at the National Academy of Sciences, at R&D Associates, and, as a Peace Fellow, at the Hoover Institution, where he wrote a book on strategic nuclear policy. He has served on a number of defense-related committees, including ones for the Office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the American Physical Society, the U.S. Navy (Non-Acoustic ASW Panel), the National Academy of Sciences, and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization. He has conducted a broad range of national security studies for the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and Central Intelligence Agency in such areas as arms control, strategic deterrence, nuclear war, ballistic missile defense, nuclear weapons safety, and the survivability of strategic systems.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael M. May Speaker
Chaim Braun Speaker
Allen S. Weiner Speaker
Roger Speed CISAC Affiliate Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
-

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

Dr. Chen-yuan Tung is vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, Republic of China (Taiwan) and associate professor at the Sun Yat-Sen Graduate Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, National Chengchi University (Taiwan). He received his Ph.D. in international affairs from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. His expertise focuses on economic relations between Taiwan and China, Chinese economic development, Taiwan-U.S.-China trilateral relations, and international economics.

Dr. Tung published book and book chapters including Challenges in the Era of Hu Jingtao (2002, in Chinese), The Globalization of the Chinese Economy (2002), Cross-Strait Economic Relations in the Era of Globalization (2003, in Chinese), Future China: Degenerative Totalitarianism (2004, in Chinese), Renminbi Exchange Rate: Economic and Strategic Analysis (2004, in Chinese), China Today (2005), and China as the World Factory (2006).

Philippines Conference Room

Chen-yuan Tung Vice Chairman Speaker Mainland Affairs Council, ROC (Taiwan)
Seminars
Authors
Heather Ahn
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Ten 2007 POSCO NGO Fellows were selected by the Fellowship Admission Committee during the first POSCO NGO Conference held on April 26 and 27, at George Washington University.

George Washington University:

Mr. Sanghoon Lee, Korea Federation for Environmental Movements

Ms. Mi-Kang Yang, Asia Peace and Historical Education

 

Indiana University:

Ms. Jin Young Park, Korean Women Workers Associations United

Mr. Chang Sun Kim, Ulsan Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice

Columbia University:

Ms. Hee Sun Park, Civil Solidarity for Open Society

Mr. Sung Bong Kang, The Educational Foundation for Koreans Abroad

University of British Columbia:

Ms. Jungok Chun, Easy Access Movement for People with Disabilities in Korea

Mr. Kangbaek Lee, Beautiful Store

 

Stanford University:

Ms. Kyungsook Lee, Korean Women's Association United

Mr. Ji-hoon Lee, Jeju Solidarity for Participatory Self-government and Environmental Preservation

All News button
1
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

On April 27, Dr. Gi-Wook Shin presented a paper entitled "North Korea and Contending South Korean Identities: Analysis of the South Korean Media and Policy Implications for the United States," co-authored with Kristin C. Burke, at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C. This paper is part of a larger study of American and Korean media coverage of the U.S.-ROK alliance and the DPRK.

This paper argues that while U.S. officials approach the alliance and the DPRK as matters of national security policy, these issues are fundamental to the evolution of South Korean national identity in the post-Cold War, post-authoritarian era. Using data on media frames used by two prominent Korean newspapers from 1992 to 2003, this paper examines how Korean conservatives and progressives have advocated their views of North Korea and how the terms of this debate have changed since the implementation of the Sunshine Policy.

As South Koreans seek to redefine their national identity in the context of a developing regional and global order, there is deep and bitter division within South Korea over North Korea and the alliance. The process of reformulating national identity can be contentious and conflict-ridden and is not likely to be resolved soon. The nature of this political division on the question of identity, explored in this paper, means that even if South Korean conservatives win the upcoming presidential election, there is not likely to be a dramatic change in policies or attitudes. The debate over North Korea is a durable feature of the political landscape in the South, and the U.S. faces distinct policy challenges in coordinating with a government that represents a starkly divided polity.

For the full text of this paper, please visit the link to KEI, KEI Academic Paper Series.

All News button
1
Subscribe to Asia-Pacific