Stanford University

The Future of Real-Existing Democracy

-

Philippe C. Schmitter has been on the faculty of the European University Institute (EUI) from 1996 to 2004, after ten years at Stanford University.  He was educated at Dartmouth College, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Geneva and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  He taught for many years at the University of Chicago (1967-1982) and held visiting appointments at the University of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, the Institute for the Integration of Latin America in Buenos Aires, Harvard University, the Universities of Geneva, Zürich, Paris and Mannheim, the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid and the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais in Lisbon.  Before coming to Stanford in 1986, he spent the previous four years as a professor at the EUI. Currently, he has been a recurrent visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest, at the Istituto delle Scienze Humanistiche in Florence and at the University of Siena.

Schmitter has conducted research on comparative politics and regional integration in both Latin America and Western Europe, with special emphasis on the politics of organized interests.  His dissertation dealt with the rise and persistence of corporatism in Brazil and his early work focused on the role of this mode of interest intermediation in Latin America and Western Europe. With Gerhard Lehmbruch, he edited Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation and Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making.  He is the co-author (with Guillermo O=Donnell) of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (4 vols.) and is currently completing a book on Essaying the Consolidation of  Democracy.  In recent years, he has devoted increasing attention to the "emerging polity@ of the European Community, first in a co-authored book on Governance in the European Union (with Gary Marks, Fritz Scharpf and Wolfgang Streeck) and in a book entitled: How to Democratize the European Union ....and Why Bother?  With Alexandre Trechsel, he has written a Green Paper for the Council of Europe on The Future of Democracy in Europe.

He has been the recipient of numerous professional awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim in 1978, and has been vice-president of the American Political Science Association.  He was honoured with the award for lifetime achievement in European politics by the ECPR in 2008, and with the award for lifetime achievement in the study of European integration by EUSA, the Mattei Dogan Prize of the IPSA and the Johan Skytte Prize by Uppsala University - all in 2009.  His greatest achievement, however, was to have been rejected twice for membership in the political science section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Download pdf

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Philippe C. Schmitter

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

0
Visiting Scholar 2010
Schmitter.JPG PhD

Philippe C. Schmitter is a visiting scholar at CDDRL during winter quarter 2010. Since 1967 he has been successively assistant professor, associate professor and professor in the Politics Department of the University of Chicago, then at the European University Institute (1982-86) and at Stanford (1986-96). He was Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence, Department of Political and Social Sciences until September 2004. He is now Emeritus of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute.

He has been visiting professor at the Universities of Paris-I, Geneva, Mannheim and Zürich, and Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation and the Palo Alto Centre for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.

He has published books and articles on comparative politics, on regional integration in Western Europe and Latin America, on the transition from authoritarian rule in Southern Europe and Latin America, and on the intermediation of class, sectoral and professional interests.

His current work is on the political characteristics of the emerging Euro-polity, on the consolidation of democracy in Southern and Eastern countries, and on the possibility of post-liberal democracy in Western Europe and North America.
Recently, Professor Schmitter was awarded the The Johan Skytte Prize in political science (2009).

He earned his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.

Philippe C. Schmitter Professorial Fellow Speaker European University Institute
Seminars

Balancing act in global fertilizer use: Science report

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Synthetic fertilizers have dramatically increased food production worldwide. But the unintended costs to the environment and human health have been substantial. Nitrogen runoff from farms has contaminated surface and groundwater and helped create massive "dead zones" in coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico. And ammonia from fertilized cropland has become a major source of air pollution, while emissions of nitrous oxide form a potent greenhouse gas.

These and other negative environmental impacts have led some researchers and policymakers to call for reductions in the use of synthetic fertilizers. But in a report published in the June 19 issue of the journal Science, an international team of ecologists and agricultural experts warns against a "one-size-fits-all" approach to managing global food production.

"Most agricultural systems follow a trajectory from too little in the way of added nutrients to too much, and both extremes have substantial human and environmental costs," said lead author Peter Vitousek, a professor of biology at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

"Some parts of the world, including much of China, use far too much fertilizer," Vitousek said. "But in sub-Saharan Africa, where 250 million people remain chronically malnourished, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrient inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility."

Other co-authors of the Science report include Woods Institute Senior Fellows Pamela Matson, dean of Stanford's School of Earth Sciences, and Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

China and Kenya

In the report, Vitousek and colleagues compared fertilizer use in three corn-growing regions of the world--north China, western Kenya and the upper Midwestern United States.

In China, where fertilizer manufacturing is government subsidized, the average grain yield per acre grew 98 percent between 1977 and 2005, while nitrogen fertilizer use increased a dramatic 271 percent, according to government statistics. "Nutrient additions to many fields [in China] far exceed those in the United States and northern Europe--and much of the excess fertilizer is lost to the environment, degrading both air and water quality," the authors wrote.

Co-author F.S. Zhang of China Agriculture University and colleagues recently conducted a study in two intensive agricultural regions of north China in which fertilizer use is excessive. Their results showed that farmers in north China use about 525 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre (588 kilograms per hectare) annually--releasing about 200 pounds of excess nitrogen per acre (227 kilograms per hectare) into the environment. Zhang and his co-workers also demonstrated that nitrogen fertilizer use could be cut in half without loss of yield or grain quality, in the process reducing nitrogen losses by more than 50 percent.

At the other extreme are the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Kenya and Malawi. In a 2004 study in west Kenya, co-author Pedro Sanchez and colleagues found that farmers used only about 6 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre (7 kilograms per hectare)--little more than 1 percent of the total used by Chinese farmers. And unlike China, cultivated soil in Kenya suffered an annual net loss of 46 pounds of nitrogen per acre (52 kilograms per hectare) removed from the field by harvests.

"Africa is a totally different situation than China," said Sanchez, director of tropical agriculture at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Unlike most regions of the world, crop yields have not increased substantially in sub-Saharan Africa. Nitrogen inputs are inadequate to maintain soil fertility and to feed people. So it's not a matter of nutrient pollution but nutrient depletion."

U.S. and Europe

fertilizer
A comparison of 3 agricultural areas of the world found massive imbalances in fertilizer use, resulting in malnourishment in some regions and pollution in others.

Photo: David Nance, USDA

The contrast between Kenya and China is dramatic and will require vastly different solutions, the authors said. However, large-scale change is possible, they said, noting that since the 1980s, increasingly stringent national and European Union regulations and policies have reduced nitrogen surpluses substantially in northern Europe.

In the Midwestern United States, over-fertilization was the norm from the 1970s until the mid-1990s. During that period, tons of excess nitrogen and phosphorus entered the Mississippi River Basin and drained into the Gulf of Mexico, where the large influx of nutrients has triggered huge algal blooms. The decaying algae use up vast quantities of dissolved oxygen, producing a seasonal low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf that in some years is bigger than the state of Connecticut.

Since 1995, the imbalance of nutrients--particularly phosphorus--has decreased in the Midwestern United States, in part because better farming techniques have increased yields. Statistics show that from 2003 to 2005, annual corn yields in parts of the Midwestern United States and north China were almost the same, even though Chinese farmers used six times more nitrogen fertilizer than their American counterparts and generated nearly 23 times the amount of excess nitrogen.

"U.S. farmers are managing fertilizer more efficiently now," said co-author Rosamond Naylor, who is also a professor of environmental Earth system science and senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico persists due to continued fertilizer runoff and animal waste from increased livestock production."

Low nitrogen in Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, the initial challenge is to increase productivity and improve soil fertility, the authors said. To meet that challenge, co-author Sanchez recommends that impoverished farmers be given subsidies to purchase fertilizer and good-quality seeds. "In 2005, Malawi was facing a serious food shortage," he recalled. "Then the government began subsidizing fertilizer and corn seeds. In just four years production tripled, and Malawi actually became an exporter of corn."

Food production is paramount, added co-author G. Philip Robertson, a professor of crop and soil sciences at Michigan State University. "Avoiding the misery of hunger is and should be a global human priority," Robertson said. "But we should also find ways to do this without sacrificing other key aspects of human welfare, among them a clean environment. It doesn't have to be an either/or choice."

For countries where over-fertilization is a problem, the authors cited a number of techniques to reduce environmental damage. "Some of these--such as better-targeted timing and placement of nutrient inputs, modifications to livestock diets and the preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation strips--can be implemented now," they wrote.

Designing sustainable solutions also will require a lot more scientific data, they added. "Our lack of effective policies can be attributed, in part, to a lack of good on-farm data about what's happening with nutrient input and loss over time," said co-author Alan Townsend, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "Both China and the European Union have supported agricultural research that yields policy-relevant information on nutrient balances. But the U.S. is particularly lacking in long-term data for a country with such a well-developed scientific enterprise."

Even in Europe, with its strong research programs on nutrient balances and stringent policies for reducing fertilizer runoff, nitrogen pollution remains substantial. "The problem of mitigation of excess nitrogen loss to waters is not easily resolved," said co-author Penny Johnes, director of the Aquatic Environments Research Centre at the University of Reading, U.K. "Society may have to face some difficult decisions about modifying food production practices if real and ecologically significant reductions in nitrogen loss to waters are to be achieved."

According to Vitousek, it is important in the long run to avoid following the same path to excess in sub-Saharan Africa that occurred in the United States, Europe and China. "The past can't be altered, but the future can be and should be," he said. "Agricultural systems are not fated to move from deficit to excess. More effort will be required to develop intensive systems that maintain their yields, while minimizing their environmental footprints."

Other co-authors of the Science report are Tim Crews, Prescott College; Mark David, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laurie Drinkwater, Cornell University; Elisabeth Holland, National Center for Atmospheric Research; John Katzenberger, Aspen Global Change Institute; Luiz Martinelli, University of São Paulo, Brazil; Generose Nziguheba, Columbia University; Dennis Ojima, The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment; and Cheryl Palm, Columbia University.

This work is based on discussions at the Aspen Global Change Institute supported by NASA, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; and at a meeting of the International Nitrogen Initiative sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment.

All News button
1

Quality of Democracy Project

As democracy has spread over the past three decades to a majority of the world's states, analytic attention has turned increasingly from explaining regime transitions to evaluating and explaining the character of democratic regimes. Much of the democracy literature of the 1990s was concerned with the consolidation of democratic regimes. In recent years, social scientists as well as democracy practitioners and aid agencies have sought to develop means of framing and assessing the quality of democracy.

Martinelli to join FSE as Visiting Fellow

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Luiz Martinelli, a biogeochemist at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, will join FSE as a Cargill Fellow in winter 2009/10. Dr. Martinelli's research into the ecology and geochemistry of the Amazon Basin has earned him recognition as one of Brazil's leading scientists in his field. In addition to publishing numerous papers in scientific journals, Dr. Martinelli has worked with both the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program and the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment. He will be a welcome addition to the FSE team.
All News button
1

Book offers new roadmap for tackling transnational threats

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

As fallout from accelerating climate change and the economic meltdown reveals, today's gravest threats are transnational, demanding unprecedented cooperation among competing nations to find lasting solutions. The policies and strategies developed for the balance-of-power rivalries of the 20th century no longer apply in this one, according to the authors of Power & Responsibility, a book launched March 17 at Stanford.

"Transnational threats create security interdependence between the most powerful states and the weaker states," author Stephen J. Stedman said during the panel discussion hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "The United States can't defend itself against any threat without sustained international cooperation from others."

Stedman, a faculty member at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Bruce Jones of New York University and Carlos Pascual from the Brookings Institution, said their book seeks to promote the concept of "responsible sovereignty" to rebuild international order and strengthen international institutions such as the United Nations. In other words, the authors argue, their notion of sovereignty demands responsibility from states in addition to according privilege. Furthermore, nations should be held responsible for the harmful international effects of their domestic policies-whether it's producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide or failing to secure national borders and financial institutions, thus enabling terrorist groups to attack targets thousands of miles away.

The book's publication follows a policy oriented Plan for Action booklet released last November on the heels of the U.S. presidential election. Timed to coincide with the start of the Obama administration, the 360-page book, published by Brookings Institution Press, highlights seven issues that demand transnational solutions: nuclear proliferation, climate change, bio-security, civil violence and regional conflicts, terrorism and economic security. According to Stedman, the book was received positively during recent launches in Europe, Asia and Washington, D.C. and, earlier this month, the authors presented their findings to senior White House officials.

While U.S. power is in decline, Jones said, it is the only nation with the military, diplomatic, economic and political power needed to take a global lead in tackling transnational threats. The world's rising powers-China, India and Brazil-recognize that the alternative to U.S. leadership is "entropy and chaos," he said, and that every state stands to benefit more from the former as long as it is geared to structured cooperation.

"This is not a love fest of great powers," Jones continued. "There are real interests here and there [would] be tough and sustained negotiations." But the alternatives-maintaining the status quo where global decisions are made by the outmoded G-7 group of industrialized nations, or establishing a "league of democracies" that would exclude critical players such as China-are simply unworkable. "We recognize that our model is tough but we think it's the most likely to have impact on the threats that face us," Jones said.

Hero Image
MGI
All News button
1

Supply Chain of the Future

-

This daylong discussion, attended by roughly 40 scholars and practitioners from universities, labor organizations, corporations and NGOs, focused on how companies can move beyond monitoring and compliance to build socially and environmentally responsible supply chains.

At two workshops in 2008, the group discussed a few key strategies, leading Josh Cohen and Rick Locke to seek funding for a new research center. These included:

  1. Scaling up codes of conduct
  2. Reinvigorating national regulation
  3. Combining labor standards and trade rules

The event on January 29th covered the following topics, summarized below:

Panel 1.   Recent research on ethical consumption

  • Michael Hiscox, Jens Hainmueller, Sandra Sequeira (Harvard)
  • Margeret Levi (University of Washington)
  • Yotam Margalit (Stanford University)
  • Dara O’Rourke (GoodGuide, UC Berkeley)

Selected findings:

  • The Average “Fair Trade” effect is 9%, based on a coffee experiment with Whole  Foods
  • Consumers are willing to pay some premium for social labels (7.3-13.1%)
  • Berkeley: Personal health and wellness and the environment outrank labor concerns for consumers of products listed on GoodGuide.com

Panel  2.   Best practices in the environmental area that might be carried over to labor/trade

  • Edgar Blanco (MIT)
  • Bonnie Nixon (HP)
  • Erica Plambeck (Stanford)
  • Charles Sabel (Columbia)

Selected discussion points:

  •  Compliance-based regulation no longer works; there are new roles for NGOs, government, and public-private partnerships in creating incentives for suppliers
  • Suppliers care most about volume and length of contracts; since not everyone is Wal-Mart, buyers may need to come together to encourage ethical behavior

Panel 3.   New regulatory strategies in labor markets in emerging economies

  • Salo Vinocur Coslovsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Mary Gallagher, University of Michigan
  • Andrew Schrank, University of New Mexico
  • Rick Locke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Selected discussion points:

  • Evidence from Brazil shows that law enforcement operates in parallel with private auditors in monitoring suppliers, becoming “shock troops of sustainable development”; some issues require state regulation
  • There may be trade-offs between bureaucratic efficiency and equity in a compliance system, as in the Dominican Republic
  • In some cases, the state’s role is to delegate work so private sector can police more effectively

Panel 4.   Looking Forward

  • Caitlin Morris (Nike)
  • Marcela Manubens (Phillips-Van Heusen)

Selected discussion points:

  • Key issue is how to tie labor and environmental agenda together; for some companies, environmentalism is self-interest—materials like bamboo often resonate with designers. But who makes the bamboo shirt is less of an issue. One option is to derive cost savings from environmental policies and direct that money to programs for workers.
  • Big question: in an entry-level sector, how far across the spectrum from minimum or entry-level to living wage do we go? How do we measure progress? Is it a 3% increase in labor value /product each year?
  • Another issue in need of further exploration: where upgrading doesn’t reach lower down in the supply chain. There’s got to be a virtuous circle where technical upgrading and labor issues can be joined
  • Environmental issues have won the battle because regulatory environment incents companies to care about it, and consumers care, too—it’s become hip. Maybe what’s needed is to institutionalize the “triple bottom line” approach to business such that companies with good labor policies get tax breaks.

» Notes and Presentations (password protected)

Co-sponsored with the Global Supply Chain Management Forum

Panel Discussions

Larry Diamond: How to save democracy

Authors
Larry Diamond
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
Bush gave democracy promotion a bad name, Larry Diamond writes in Newsweek. The new administration needs to get it right.

The new U.S. President will face more than one kind of global recession. In addition to the economic downturn, the world is suffering a democratic contraction. In Russia, awash with oil money, Vladimir Putin and his KGB cronies have sharply restricted freedom. In Latin America, authoritarian (and anti-American) populism is on the rise. In Nigeria, the Philippines and once again in Pakistan, democracy is foundering amid massive corruption, weak government and a loss of public faith. In Thailand, the government is paralyzed by mass protests. In Africa, more than a dozen fragile democracies must face the economic storm unprepared. And in the Middle East—the Bush administration's great democratic showcase—the push for freedom lies in ruins.

In the past decade, the breathtaking democratic wave that swept the world during the final quarter of the 20th century reversed course. Making democracy work proved harder than bringing down authoritarian rule. And receptive peoples everywhere were alienated by the arrogance and unilateralism of President George W. Bush's approach, which associated "democracy promotion" with the use of force and squandered America's soft power. Advancing democracy abroad remains vital to the U.S. national interest. But the next president will have to craft a more modest, realistic and sustainable strategy.

It's easy today to forget how far freedom has advanced in the past 30 years. When the wave of liberation began in 1974 in Portugal, barely a quarter of the world's states met the minimal test of democracy: a place where the people are able, through universal suffrage, to choose and replace their leaders in regular, free and fair elections. Over the course of the next two decades, dictatorships gave way to freely elected governments first in Southern Europe, then in Latin America, then in East Asia. Finally, an explosion of freedom in the early '90s liberated Eastern Europe and spread democracy from Moscow to Pretoria. Old assumptions—that democracy required Western values, high levels of education and a large middle class—crumbled. Half of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 states became democracies, and of the world's poorest countries, about two in every five are democracies today.

This great shift coincided with an unprecedented moment of U.S. military, economic and cultural dominance. Not only was America the world's last remaining superpower, but U.S. values—individual freedom, popular sovereignty, limited government and the rule of law—were embraced by progressive leaders around the world. Opinion surveys showed democracy to be the ideal of most people as well.

In recent years, however, this mighty tide has receded. This democratic recession has coincided with Bush's presidency, and can be traced in no small measure to his administration's imperial overreach. But it actually started in 1999, with the military coup in Pakistan, an upheaval welcomed by a public weary of endemic corruption, economic mismanagement and ethnic and political violence. Pakistan's woes exposed more than the growing frailty of a nuclear-weapon state. They were also the harbinger of a more widespread malaise. Many emerging democracies were experiencing similar crises. In Latin America and the post-communist world, and in parts of Asia and Africa, trust in political parties and parliaments was sinking dramatically, as scandals mounted and elected governments defaulted on their vows to control corruption and improve the welfare of ordinary people.

Thanks to bad governance and popular disaffection, democracy has lost ground. Since the start of the democratic wave, 24 states have reverted to authoritarian rule. Two thirds of these reversals have occurred in the past nine years—and included some big and important states such as Russia, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Thailand and (if one takes seriously the definition of democracy) Nigeria and the Philippines as well. Pakistan and Thailand have recently returned to rule by elected civilians, and Bangladesh is about to do so, but ongoing crises keep public confidence low. Democracy is also threatened in Bolivia and Ecuador, which confront rising levels of political polarization. And other strategically important democracies once thought to be doing well—Turkey, South Africa and Ukraine—face serious strains.

This isn't to say there haven't been a few heartening successes in recent years. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has become a robust democracy nearly a decade after its turbulent transition from authoritarian rule. Brazil, under the left-leaning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has also strengthened its democratic institutions while maintaining fiscal discipline and a market orientation and reducing poverty. In Africa, Ghana has maintained a quite liberal democracy while generating significant economic growth, and several smaller African countries have moved in this direction.

But the combination of tough economic times, diminished U.S. power and the renewed energy of major authoritarian states will pose a stiff challenge to some 60 insecure democracies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet bloc. If they don't strengthen their political institutions, reduce corruption and figure out how to govern more effectively, many of these democracies could fail in the coming years.

Part of the tragedy is that Washington has made things worse, not better. The Bush administration was right that spreading democracy would advance the U.S. national interest—that truly democratic states would be more responsible, peaceful and law-abiding and so become better contributors to international security. But the administration's unilateral and self-righteous approach led it to overestimate U.S. power and rush the dynamics of change, while exposing itself to charges of hypocrisy with its use of torture and the abuse of due process in the war on terror. Instead of advancing freedom and democracy in the Middle East, 2005 and 2006 witnessed a series of embarrassing shocks: Hamas winning in the Palestinian territories and Islamist parties winning in Iraq; Hizbullah surging in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood surging in Egypt. After a brief moment of optimism, the United States backed away and Middle Eastern democrats grew embittered.

The new American administration will have to fashion a fresh approach—and fast. That will mean setting clear priorities and bringing objectives into alignment with means. The United States does not have the power, resources or moral standing to quickly transform the world's entrenched dictatorships. Besides, isolating and confronting them never seems to work: in Cuba, for example, this policy has been a total failure. This does not mean that the United States should not support democratic change in places like Cuba, Burma, Iran and Syria. But it needs a more subtle and sophisticated approach.

The best strategy would be to open up such places to the freer flow of people, goods, ideas and information. The next administration should therefore start by immediately lifting the self-defeating embargo on Cuba. It should offer to establish full diplomatic ties with Havana and free flows of trade and investment in exchange for a Cuban commitment to improve human rights. Washington should also work with Tehran to hammer out a comprehensive deal that would lift economic sanctions, renounce the use of force to effect regime change and incorporate Iran into the WTO, in exchange for a verifiable halt to nuclear-weapons development, more responsible behavior on Iraq and terrorism, and improved human-rights protection and monitoring. Critics will charge that talking to such odious governments only legitimizes them. In fact, engaging closed societies is the best way to foster democratic change.

At the same time, the United States should continue to support diaspora groups that seek peaceful democratic change back home, and should expand international radio broadcasting, through the Voice of America and more specialized efforts, that transmits independent news and information as well as democratic values and ideas.

In the near term, however, Washington must focus on shoring up existing democracies. Fragile states need assistance to help them adjust to the shocks of the current economic crisis. But they also need deep reforms to strengthen their democratic institutions and improve governance. This will require coordinated help from America and its Western allies to do three things.

First, they must ramp up technical assistance and training programs to help the machinery of government—parliaments, local authorities, courts, executive agencies and regulatory institutions—work more transparently and deliver what people want: the rule of law, less corruption, fair elections and a government that responds to their economic and social needs. This also means strengthening democratic oversight.

Second, we know from experience that these kinds of assistance don't work unless the political leaders on the receiving end are willing to let them. So we need to generate strong incentives for rulers to opt for a different logic of governance, one that defines success as delivering development and reducing poverty rather than skimming public resources and buying support or rigging elections. This will mean setting clear conditions that will have to be met before economic and political aid is doled out to governments.

The third priority is to expand assistance to independent organizations, mass media and think tanks in these fragile states that will increase public demand for better governance and monitor what governments do. This means aiding democratic professional associations, trade unions, chambers of commerce, student groups and organizations devoted to human rights, women's rights, transparency, civic education, election monitoring and countless other democratic activities. Ordinary people must be educated to know their rights and responsibilities as citizens—and be ready to defend them.

While Western countries have provided this kind of aid for more than two decades, economic assistance handed out at the same time has often undermined democracy efforts by subsidizing corrupt, abusive governments. Aid donors should thus strike a new bargain with recipients, telling them: if you get serious about containing corruption, building a rule of law and improving people's lives, we will get serious about helping you. Those that show a real commitment should get significant new rewards of aid and freer trade. Those unwilling to reform should get little, though the West should continue to fight disease and directly help people in dire need wherever they are.

Finally, the new president should keep in mind the power of example. Washington can't promote democracy abroad if it erodes it at home. The contradictions between the rhetoric of Bush's "freedom agenda" and the realities of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, torture, warrantless surveillance and boundless executive privilege have led even many of the United States' natural allies to dismiss U.S. efforts as hypocritical. Thus the new president must immediately shut down Guantánamo and unequivocally renounce the use of torture; few gestures would restore American credibility more quickly. The United States should also reduce the power of lobbyists, enhance executive and legislative transparency and reform campaign-finance rules—both for its own good and for the message it would send.

Make no mistake: thanks to the global economic crisis and antidemocratic trends, things may get worse before they get better. But supporting democracy abroad advances U.S. national interests and engages universal human aspirations. A more consistent, realistic and multilateral approach will help to secure at-risk democracies and plant the seeds of freedom in oppressed countries. Patience, persistence and savvy diplomacy will serve the next president far better than moralistic rhetoric that divides the world into good and evil. We've seen where that got us.

All News button
1

US Civil - Military Relations and the Implications of the Private Military Contractors

-

Thomas Bruneau is a Distinguished Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has researched and written extensively on Latin America, especially Brazil, and Portugal. Dr. Bruneau has published more than fifteen books in English and Portuguese as well as articles in journals including Latin American Research Review, Comparative Politics, Third World Quarterly, Encyclopedia of Democracy, South European Society and Politics, Journal of Democracy, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Democratization, and Military Affairs.

In addition to his position as Professor in the NSA Department, Professor Bruneau was the Academic Associate for the curriculum in International Security and Civil-Military Relations from its founding in 1996 until 2002. Between 1998 and 2001 he served as rapporteur of the Defense Policy Board that provides the Secretary of Defense and his staff with independent and informed advice on questions of national security and defense policy.

He has three recently published books. He is co-editor, with Scott Tollefson, of Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil - Military Relations (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). His second book, also published by University of Texas Press, with CDR Steve Boraz, is Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness. His co-edited book with Harold Trinkunas, Global Politics of Defense Reform, was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in February 2008.

A native of California, Professor Bruneau received his BA from California State University at San Jose and his MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley

Stephen Krasner is a former director of CDDRL, former deputy director of FSI, an FSI senior fellow, and the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.        

He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.

If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar 

Download pdf

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Thomas C. Bruneau CISAC Visiting Scholar; Distinguished Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School Speaker

Stephen D. Krasner

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0676 (650) 724-2996
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Emeritus
krasner.jpg MA, PhD

Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999), and How to Make Love to a Despot (2020). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999),  Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001), and Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (2009). He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.

CV
Stephen D. Krasner Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and Former Director, CDDRL; Former Deputy Director, FSI; FSI Senior Fellow; Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Commentator
Seminars

Climate Accession Deals: New Strategies for Taming Growth of Greenhouse Gases in Developing Countries

Paragraphs

Effective strategies for managing the dangers of global climate change are proving very difficult to design and implement. They require governments to undertake a portfolio of efforts that are politically challenging because they require large expenditures today for uncertain benefits that accrue far into the future. That portfolio includes tasks such as putting a price on carbon, fixing the tendency for firms to under-invest in the public good of new technologies and knowledge that will be needed for achieving cost-effective and deep cuts in emissions; and preparing for a changing climate through investments in adaptation and climate engineering. Many of those efforts require international coordination that has proven especially difficult to mobilize and sustain because international institutions are usually weak and thus unable to force collective action...."

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Authors
David G. Victor
External URL
Subscribe to Brazil