In Thailand in 1997 reformers drafted a new constitution. They hoped to trigger dramatic improvements in the country's political system. Analysts, activists, and politicians alike blamed many of Thailand's problems on shortcomings of a party system seen as dangerously weak and fragmented. Accordingly, the new charter was designed to strengthen political parties while reducing their number. These constitutional changes profoundly affected Thai politics, but not always in the ways or for the reasons that reformers had in mind. Have the changes improved or worsened the quality of democracy in Thailand? In addressing this question, Professor Hicken will highlight the unintended consequences of constitutional reform and the nature of governance under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party.

Allen Hicken studies political institutions and policy making in developing countries, especially in Southeast Asia. Countries he has worked in include Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Cambodia. Writing-in-progress includes a book manuscript, "Building Party Systems: Elections, Parties, and Coordination in Developing Democracies." He has published in the American Journal of Political Science and Electorial Studies, among other places. At Michigan he is affiliated with the university's Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for Political Studies. He earned his Ph.D in political science and Pacific studies from the University of California - San Diego.

In his provocative new book, "Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy", renowned scholar Stephen Walt analyzes the different strategies used by other countries to counter U.S. power. Walt cites that many countries are becoming increasingly worried about U.S. dominance and are beginning to turn their concerns into actions. These responses threaten our country's ability to achieve foreign policy goals and may eventually undermine our foremost position. To prevent this, Walt argues that the U.S. must adopt a foreign policy that other countries welcome, rather than one that reinforces the fear of U.S. power.

Co-Sponsored with the Commonwhealth Club of Silicon Valley

Lynn Eden is associate director for research/senior research scholar at CISAC. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. Her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Michael May is professor emeritus (research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for Intenrational Studies. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988.

Charles Perrow is professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University. His current interests are in managing highly interactive, tightly-coupled-systems (including hospitals, nuclear plants, chemical plants, power grids, aviation, the space program, and intelligent transportation systems). These interests grew out of his work on "normal accidents," with its emphasis upon organizational design and systems theory. An organizational theorist, he is the author of a number of award winning books in the field of sociology.

The Philippines suffers from an ominous systemic deficit: the incapacity of democratic institutions to respond to pent-up social demands. A scant four years after a second "peoople power revolution" in 2001 brought down President Joseph Estrada on charges of involvement in illegal gambling, the country again finds itself in crisis. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo struggles to retain power as she faces allegations that close relatives are also involved in gambling syndicates and still more damaging accusations of complicity in fixing the May 2004 elections. Unlike in 1986 and 2001, when changes in leadership nurtured new hopes, the crisis of 2005 reveals a system desperately struggling for legitimacy. Prof. Hutchcroft will argue for well-considered institutional reform designed to break the cycle of recurrent crisis and tackle the country's perilous democratic deficit.

Paul D. Hutchcroft has written widely on Philippine politics and political economy, including Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines (1998). His current writing includes a book on state formation and territorial politics in the Philippines from the early American colonial period through the enactment of the Local Government Code in the 1990s; and an edited volume on Philippine political reform stemming from a workshop he organized in Manila in July. He has been a visiting fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore and is now the associate chair of UW-Madison's Political Science Department.

During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union made launch-on-warning an important part of their nuclear strategies. To achieve the launch-on-warning capability both countries deployed networks of early-warning satellites and radars as well as command and control systems that allowed them to launch a retaliatory strike in response to a ballistic missile attack. These systems, which remain operational to this day, are believed to support the "hair-trigger alert" posture of strategic nuclear forces.

This presentation will consider the current status of the U.S. and Russian early-warning systems and the extent to which characteristics of these systems can contribute to the danger of an accidental ballistic missile launch. It will also analyze various proposals that aim at reducing the danger of accidental launch--de-alerting, reduction of strategic forces, repairing the Russian early-warning system, etc. It will be shown that most of these measures are inadequate and some may in fact increase the danger of an accident.

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

How have curators responded to the 1995 controversy over the National Air and Space Museum's Enola Gay exhibit? Trends in curatorial practice since then offer opportunities for museum professionals who wish to question the costs of wars. Curators now believe that museum exhibits should be open-ended and also should reflect a multiplicity of views about a given subject. Their main strategy is to evoke a variety of memories among museum goers without trying to integrate them completely - collecting memories rather than collectivizing them. Far more challenging for museums is representing the larger social categories that shape peacetime lives as well. They have greatest difficulty with representing the experiences of foreigners. Yet, many Americans have never been comfortable with the official A-bomb narrative. If, as museum professionals now emphasize, visitors are bringing their own meaning to exhibits, display of the Enola Gay will forever provide an invitation to debate the moral and strategic legitimacy of the use of the atomic bomb in August 1945.

Laura Hein specializes in the history of Japan in the 20th century and its international relations. She is author of Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth Century Japan (University of California Press, 2004), which explores various ways in which economic expertise intersected with politics through a study of the lives of a tight-knit group of Japanese intellectuals. She also has a strong interest in problems of remembrance and public memory, resulting in three co-edited books with Mark Selden: Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (1997), Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States (2000), and Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to American and Japanese Power (2003). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.