Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again
Co-sponsor by Stanford in Government (SIG)
Abstract:
Speaker Bio:
Negotiation in War
Abstract: What role do negotiations play in the midst of interstate wars? Extant scholarship has largely treated negotiations as being irrelevant to understanding a conflict's trajectory, or as being a direct reflection of hostilities on the battlefield. Neither view is supported by historical readings or empirical patterns of intra-war diplomacy. I present an alternative view of negotiations as being instrumental. Diplomatic bargaining not only occurs in response to battlefield outcomes, but is also used deceptively by disadvantaged belligerents to stall for time, manage political pressures, and regroup militarily. Using two new daily-level datasets of battles and diplomatic activity, I show that negotiations in post-1945 wars extend conflict when the war initiator has an advantage in fighting, occur in response to lop-sided battle outcomes, dampen the intensity of combat, and are associated with subsequent improvements in the war target's success on the battlefield. This framework of instrumental negotiations shows that the effect of intra-war diplomacy is conditional on the state of hostilities, and has substantial implications on our understanding of war termination and conflict resolution.
About the Speaker: Eric Min is a CISAC Predoctoral Fellow for 2016-2017 and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University. His research is focused on interstate diplomacy, information gathering and sharing during crises, and applications of machine learning and text analysis techniques to declassified documents related to conflict and foreign policy.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
China's Quality of Government in Comparative Perspective
Abstract:
China's government alternately appears in western scholarship as an idealized meritocracy or a corrupt cohort of venal officials. Yet empirical attempts to place China's government in comparative perspective are limited. We develop and exploit a new empirical source--survey testimony from political insiders--to measure three Weberian qualities of Chinese bureaucracy: meritocracy, autonomy, and morale. By translating questions from a major survey of U.S. officials, we place the responses of Chinese officials in comparative perspective. In contrast to claims that political connections dominate official promotions in China, Chinese bureaucrats are markedly more likely than U.S. bureaucrats to report that their agencies recruit people with the right skills and promote people based on performance. Responses from municipal governments in China resemble those of high-performing federal bureaucracies in the United States, such as NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However, the Chinese advantage shrinks in autonomy and nearly disappears in workplace morale.
Speaker(s) Bio:
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also a professor by courtesy in the Department of Political Science. He was previously at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.
Greg Distelhorst is the Mitsubishi Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies contemporary Chinese politics and public policy, as well as the social impacts of multinational business. He was a CDDRL Predoctoral Fellow in 2012-2013.
Margaret Boittin is Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada. She studies Chinese law and politics. She was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at CDDRL (2012-2015).
Francis Fukuyama
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
Global Populisms
Greg Distelhorst
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.
Margaret Boittin
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Margaret Boittin has a JD from Stanford, and is completing her PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation is on the regulation of prostitution in China. She is also conducting research on criminal law policy and local enforcement in the United States, and human trafficking in Nepal.
Capitalist Maturity and South Korea’s Development Conundrum
Korea’s economic development trajectory is well known. From an impoverished war-torn nation, the country has progressed on all fronts. In the 1950s the country’s per capita income was estimated to be lower than India’s. Today the income difference is fifteen-fold in favor of Korea. It stands out internationally when it comes to education. Politically it has moved away from authoritarian to more spirited, people-driven democratic system. This presentation will shift the debate to the question what does a country do after it has achieved prosperity. Using the concept of capitalist maturity, do we look for answers in the OECD experience or should we treat Korea on its own terms? What are the development challenges for Korea in the post-development era? Given that there are both external and internal issues that merit appropriate responses, the presentation focuses on Korea’s regional (Asian) economy, business and institutional responses to expanding Asia, and the societal adjustment issues to increasing flows of Asian students, professionals, and unskilled workers. The presentation concludes by briefly indicating the many unfinished domestic reforms at multiple levels, which could reinforce Korea’s external engagement and potentially resolve the development conundrum arising from capitalist maturity.
Shaping Beliefs: The Role of Organizations and Leaders
Abstract: Margaret Levi attempts to understand the conditions under which individuals act beyond their narrow economic interests in situations where logic suggests that self-interest should triumph. In this paper she investigates what kinds of governance arrangements make it possible for leaders to successfully ask members to undertake costly actions in the interest of others. The answer has two parts: first, creating confidence in information that then is the basis for beliefs about the state of the world; second, the development of an expanded community of fate, in which individuals understand their own well-being as implicated with that of others beyond their narrow circle of family and tribe. Both factors affect what individuals understand as the facts of the case and, therefore, the kinds of actions they are willing to undertake.
About the Speaker: Margaret Levi is a comparative political economist who focuses on what creates productive relationships between governments and citizens, organizations and their members. She is Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University. She is Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Washington, where she was director of the CHAOS (Comparative Historical Analysis of Organizations and States) Center and formerly the Harry Bridges Chair and Director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She earned her BA from Bryn Mawr College in 1968 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1974. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is a past president of the American Political Science Association. In 2014 she received the William H. Riker Prize for Political Science. Levi and her husband, Robert Kaplan, are avid collectors of Australian Aboriginal art. They have promised or given over 150 pieces of Australian Aboriginal art to major American art museums, including the Seattle Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
The dilemma of multiple choices: Comparing the technical suitability of sites for a deep-mined, geologic repository for high-activity radioactive waste
Abstract: All nations that have selected a strategy for the long-term management of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel have opted for disposal in a deep-mined, geologic repository. Choosing a site for such a facility has been problematic. Of the two dozen efforts that have been undertaken in the United States and abroad over the last half decade, only six remain on track, and only three have reached what appears to be a stable outcome. Typically, a country organizes its waste management program to compare at least two sites before making a final choice. All those sites must be shown to be technically suitable based on predetermined criteria. For countries like the United States, which can site a repository in a variety of host geologic formations, these criteria are generic in nature. Basing a siting decision on generic criteria especially requires the exercise of discretion. This circumstance produces tough dilemmas that may be quite difficult to overcome credibly.
About the Speaker: Dr. Metlay is a member of the Senior Professional Staff of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB). He received his Bachelor of Science degrees from Caltech in molecular biology and medieval history and his Masters and Doctoral degrees in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught political science at Indiana University and MIT. Dr. Metlay has authored numerous publications dealing with technology policy, regulation, organization behavior, and radioactive waste. He has worked in the Carter White House and with the Secretary of Energy on radioactive waste issues. Dr. Metlay has testified before Congress and several state legislative committees.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
4000 Deaths: Chernobyl’s Mortality Revisited
Abstract: Among the key knowledge-claims that frame modern nuclear discourse is an oft-repeated assertion that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster caused (or will cause) “no more than 4000 deaths”. This number — attributed to the 2006 report of the ‘Chernobyl Forum,’ a group helmed by the IAEA — is implicit, to some degree, in almost all policy discussions of radiological hazards: shaping understandings of everything from Fukushima to putative ‘dirty-bombs’. At the same time, however, it is ambiguous and contested on a scale that few other scientific pronouncements can match. The models from which it is derived contain a spectrum of complex assumptions and judgments, small variations in which allow for radically divergent, but equally ‘scientific,’ interpretations of the same data. Many of these interpretations hinge are inherently political in nature, in the sense that they involve questions with no inherently correct answers. This talk will look closely at the Chernobyl Forum’s finding, and its relationship to the data and research from which it is derived. By highlighting some of the choices implicit in the 4000 deaths assertion, the talk will articulate some of the politics it embodies: illuminating both the nature of the figure itself, and the IAEA’s wider relationship to nuclear risk discourse.
About the Speaker: John Downer received his PhD in 2007, from Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. On graduating he worked at the London School of Economics’ ESRC Centre For Analysis of Risk and Regulation, and then Stanford University where he lectured for the Science, Technology and Society program and worked at CISAC as a Zuckerman- and then Stanton- Fellow. On returning to the UK in late 2012 he joined the faculty at the University of Bristol’s department of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), where he is affiliated with the Global Insecurities Centre. His publications look at a range of questions relating to technology regulation, risk management, and the structural causes (and consequences) of disaster in complex, safety-critical systems. Primarily using case studies from the civil aviation and nuclear spheres, and drawing heavily on the STS literature, they explore issues pertaining to the limits of knowledge and expertise: the inherent ambiguities of formal assessments and the policy implications that arise from understanding those ambiguities.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Meet Your Army: Now, What Do You Want Us to Do?
Abstract: The Army is in a period of Transition and Transformation, where the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are supposed to be over or winding down, in theory enabling the force to rebalance and refocus our efforts. Though we have been here before with many post-war and conflict periods, the Army and DoD are in actuality presented with possibly the most complex set of challenges and threats to the Army’s mission and to national security as a whole this nation has experienced. While the Budget Control Act is currently preventing any strategic planning for operations, training, personnel forecasting and management, and R&D/Acquisition investment, all key factors for input into any strategy, the myriad threats to national security and in global competition are on the rise. Resources and focus are down; threats and competition are going up. China’s rapid development and matching need for resources, such as those in Africa and the South China Seas; a reemerging Russia, bent on disrupting NATO efforts to expand while simultaneously persisting in efforts to expand their reach in the Arctic and the Middle East and disrupt U.S. interests where it can in the “Grey Zone” of conflict; an unstable and possibly nuclear weapons-capable North Korea; an Iran that will be nuclear-armed and looking to maintain Shia hegemony in the Middle East and defeat U.S. interests in the region; and existing and emerging transnational terrorist organizations and states, such as Daesh/ISIL; innovative and widely-available technologies in cyberwarfare, unmanned aerial systems, dynamic shifts in regional and global demographics, information and liberation technology, and even the U.S. national debt round out a list of our current and future national security challenges.
SECDEF Ash Carter has articulated that the DoD is looking for a Third Offset Strategy to keep our unique hedge of capabilities against many, if not all of these threats and conditions. Unfortunately, neither the First nor Second Offset were devised as such and only came into their being once key technologies and applications were developed against a much smaller list of threats and capabilities than we face now.
The key question is then, how does the Army, with these challenges, limitations, and threats, create opportunities now that assist a Third Offset Strategy? Or at least, how are we going to fight and win our nations’ wars in the near and far-term?
About the Speaker: COL J.B. Vowell has served as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army for over 25 years. He has had a variety of postings, including Europe, the Pacific, Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan. He was a combat leader in both the Surge in Iraq, 2006-2007 and the Surge in Afghanistan, 2010-2011. He currently serves as Army Chief of Staff GEN Mark Milley’s Senior Fellow to Brookings Institution, where he works to assist in the development of policy and strategy with research towards Land Warfare, 2030-2050 and the Human Domain of Battle.
COL Vowell commanded 2d battalion, 327th Infantry (“No Slack”) in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY. During this 2.5-year command, COL Vowell trained and deployed his Infantry Task Force to Kunar and Nangarhar provinces in support of Operation Enduring Freedom XI in Afghanistan. During this year-long deployment, COL Vowell and his task force of more than 1,000 men and women were deployed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, dealing with local, national and international issues at the tactical, operational and strategic levels of policy and diplomacy. The documentary film, The Hornet’s Nest, features the numerous missions and heroic fights during this challenging combat deployment.
COL Vowell then commanded 3rd Brigade Combat Team (“Rakkasans”), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), from 2013-2015. COL Vowell led the Brigade's deployment to Afghanistan for ISAF and Operation Resolute Support (RS) from January 2015-October 2015, where his task force led the efforts to train, advise, and assist Afghan Army and Police efforts across Eastern Afghanistan to defeat Taliban, al-Qaeda, and newly-formed ISIL efforts to destabilize the country.
COL Vowell’s military and civilian education includes the United States Army Command and General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), and he was a War College Fellow to Stanford and CISAC from 2012-2013. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree (Biology) from the University of Alabama and a Master of Science degree in Human Resources Management from Troy State University and a Masters of Arts in Theater Operations from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy
Abstract: Derek Chollet will offer his inside assessment of Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy, tackling the prevailing consensus to argue that Obama has profoundly altered the course of American foreign policy for the better and positioned the United States to lead in the future. His recent book The Long Game combines a deep sense of history with new details and compelling insights into how the Obama administration approached the most difficult global challenges. With the unique perspective of having served at the three national-security power centers during the Obama years – the White House, State Department, and Pentagon – Chollet takes readers behind the scenes of the intense struggles over the most consequential issues: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the meltdown of Syria and the rise of ISIS, the Ukraine crisis and a belligerent Russia, the conflict in Libya, the tangle with Iran, the turbulent relationship with Israel, and the rise of new powers like China. An unflinching, fast-paced account of U.S. foreign policy, The Long Game reveals how Obama has defied the Washington establishment to redefine America’s role in the world, offering important lessons for the next president.
About the Speaker: Derek Chollet served in senior positions during the Obama administration at the White House, State Department, and Pentagon, most recently as the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. He is currently a counselor and senior advisor at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a regular contributor to Defense One and many other publications. His previous books include America Between Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, coauthored with James Goldgeier, and The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World, coedited with Samantha Power. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
The Origins and Dynamics of Crony Capitalism in China: Insights from 260 Cases of Collusive Corruption
Abstract:
“Corruption in the post-Tiananmen era exhibits distinct characteristics not found in the 1980s, such as astronomical sums of money looted by officials, their family members, and their cronies in the private sector, large networks of co-conspirators, and the sale of public office. By examining the evolution of Chinese economic and political institutions since the early 1990s, we can trace the emergence of crony capitalism to two critical changes in the control of property rights of the assets owned by the state and the personnel management of the officials the ruling Communist Party. The cumulative effects of these changes have dramatically decentralized the control of public property without clarifying its ownership and granted local party chiefs unprecedented personnel power. Consequently, local political and business elites gain greater incentives and opportunities to collude with each other in looting the assets nominally owned by the state. The insights from a sample of 260 cases of corruption involving multiple officials and businessmen suggest that crony capitalism in China has given birth to a decentralized kleptocracy with its own market rules and dynamics.”
Speaker Bio:
