Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War | Helen Kinsella

-

About the event: Histories of political science and of the laws of war identify the nineteenth-century scholar Francis Lieber as their modern founder. His 1863 General Orders 100 codified the modern laws of war, internationalizing his political thought. Yet relatively unremarked is that Lieber wrote his foundational texts during U.S. settler colonization, which he justified in whole. I argue that GO100 facilitated settler colonial violence by defining modern war as a public war, arrogating it to sovereign states; distinguishing revenge from retaliation, attributing revenge to the “savage”; and elevating a certain racialized/gendered governance, ascribing it to the Cis-Caucasian race. Producing Native peoples and Native wars as lacking in the proper characteristics of sovereign belligerency resulted in a subordination of status and a legitimation of exterminatory tactics that were subsequently universalized and (re)internationalized through GO100’s determinative influence on the laws of war. Tracing GO100 further exposes the founding of the discipline in Native peoples’ dispossession and extermination.

About the speaker: Helen M Kinsella is a Professor of Political Science & Law, Affiliate Faculty of the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Human Rights Center, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change and a Visiting Scholar, The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.  

She writes on gender and armed conflict and on the histories of international humanitarian law and humanitarianism. She has published in the American Political Science Review, Review of International Studies, International Theory, Political Theory, International Studies Quarterly, Feminist Review, among others.
She is the author of the award winning book The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press) and recently  “Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War,” in the American Political Science Review.

She is currently writing on two longer projects on U.S. Native peoples and Native wars the the development of the laws of war, and on sleep in war.

https://www.helenmkinsella.com

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

William J. Perry Conference Room

Helen Kinsella
Seminars
Date Label

Tiejun Yu

0
Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2024-2025
China Policy Fellow, 2024-2025
tiejun_yu_2024_headshot.jpg Ph.D.

Professor Yu Tiejun joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as China Policy Fellow for the 2024 fall quarter. He currently serves as President of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS) and Professor at the School of International Studies (SIS), all at Peking University (PKU). Previously, he studied at the University of Tokyo in 1998-2000. He served as visiting fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in 2005, and also as visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University in 2005-06.

Dr. Yu has co-edited The Sino-Japanese Security and Defense Exchange: Past, Present, and Prospect (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 2012, with Zhu Feng and Akiyama Masahiro). He is also the Chinese translator of Myths of Empire by Jack Snyder (2007) and Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics by Arnold Wolfers (2006). His research interests include International Security, China-U.S.-Japan Relations, and China’s National Defense Policy. He won the Excellent Teaching Award of Peking University in 2010. Dr. Yu received his Ph.D., M.A. and B.A. from Peking University.

While at APARC, he conducted research on contemporary China affairs and U.S.-China policy.

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Brandon Yoder

1
Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2024-2025
Stanford Next Asia Policy Fellow, 2024-2025
brandon_yoder_2024_headshot.jpg Ph.D.

Brandon Yoder joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Stanford Next Asia Policy Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. He currently serves as Senior Lecturer at Australian National University in the School of Politics and International Relations, Australian Centre on China in the World, as well as non-resident Research Fellow at National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Centre on Asia and Globalisation. While at APARC, he worked with the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) on U.S.-Asia relations.

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Matthew Dolbow

0
Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2024-2026
matthew_dolbow1_2024_headshot.jpg

Matthew Dolbow joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar from 2024 to 2026 from the U.S. Department of State.  Before coming to APARC, Mr. Dolbow strengthened U.S. military deterrence capabilities in Asia as the U.S. Consul General in Okinawa, Japan.  As Chief of Staff in the U.S. National Security Council’s international economics office during the first Trump administration, Mr. Dolbow helped compile the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy, which declared for the first time that "economic security is national security," and thus helped to establish a new bipartisan U.S. consensus on innovative trade, investment screening, and energy policies that increased U.S. competitiveness and secured the U.S. defense industrial base. As head of economic strategy at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2013 to 2016, Mr. Dolbow created a Department of State-wide training program that taught colleagues to track and assess China's Belt and Road Initiative projects.  While at APARC, he will be conducting research on competition with China related to technology, innovation, human capital, and national security.

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Beyond Power Transitions

Paragraphs
Cover of book "Beyond Power Transitions" showing a Chinese painting of officials

Questions about the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China have dominated international policy discussion for years. But the leading theory of power transitions between a declining hegemon and a rising rival is based exclusively on European examples, such as the Peloponnesian War, as chronicled by Thucydides, as well as the rise of Germany under Bismarck and the Anglo-German rivalry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What lessons does East Asian history offer for both the power transitions debate and the future of U.S.-China relations?

Examining the rise and fall of East Asian powers over 1,500 years, Beyond Power Transitions offers a new perspective on the forces that shape war and peace. Xinru Ma and David C. Kang argue that focusing on the East Asian experience underscores domestic risks and constraints on great powers, not relative rise and decline in international competition. They find that almost every regime transition before the twentieth century was instigated by internal challenges, and even the exceptions deviated markedly from the predictions of power transition theory. Instead, East Asia was stable for a remarkably long time despite massive power differences because of common understandings about countries’ relative status. Provocative and incisive, this book challenges prevailing assumptions about the universality of power transition theory and shows why East Asian history has profound implications for international affairs today.

About the Authors


Xinru Ma is a Research Fellow on the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab research team at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Her scholarship focuses on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security.

David C. Kang is Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Korean Studies Institute. His Columbia University Press books include East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (2010) and, with Victor D. Cha, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (revised and updated edition, 2018).

Book Review

 

By Stefan Messingschlager, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany
International Studies Review, Volume 28, Issue 1, March 2026

 

"Beyond Power Transitions distinguishes itself through its theoretical originality, empirical rigor, and incisive critique of dominant IR paradigms. By adeptly integrating meticulous historical scholarship with critical theoretical insights, Ma and Kang not only challenge entrenched Eurocentric perspectives but significantly advance discourse on the normative underpinnings of international stability."

 

Extract


Amid escalating geopolitical tensions between the USA and China, Xinru Ma and David C. Kang’s Beyond Power Transitions thoughtfully engages one of the most pivotal contemporary debates in International Relations (IR): How can shifts between established and rising powers be conceptualized without presuming an inevitable conflict? Critically examining “power transition theory”—a paradigm famously articulated by A.F.K. Organski and recently popularized through Graham Allison’s concept of the “Thucydides Trap,” which contends that rapid shifts in relative power between a declining hegemon and an ascending challenger significantly heighten the risk of war—Ma and Kang persuasively argue that the theory’s predominantly materialist and Eurocentric foundations severely limit its explanatory power beyond Western historical contexts. By disproportionately emphasizing cases such as the Anglo-German rivalry of the late nineteenth century, traditional analyses systematically obscure alternative historical experiences and non-Western mechanisms for managing power shifts.

To redress this imbalance, Ma and Kang propose a theoretical recalibration that emphasizes the crucial role of normative and culturally embedded structures in managing interstate relations (Chapter 1). Central to their reconceptualization is the innovative notion of the “common conjecture,” defined as a socially constructed consensus among East Asian states regarding legitimate leadership roles, recognized hierarchies, and accepted status positions within the regional order (p. 5). Significantly, the authors stress that this normative consensus was not merely an abstract ideal but rather a concretely institutionalized system maintained through culturally embedded diplomatic rituals and tributary practices. Korea’s regular tribute missions to the Ming and Qing courts, involving highly formalized ceremonies, exemplify how these normative practices symbolically enacted legitimacy and mutual recognition, thereby actively reinforcing and stabilizing regional hierarchies. Ma and Kang convincingly argue that these normative frameworks functioned as “snap-back mechanisms,” effectively restoring regional stability after major disruptions, such as dynastic transitions or external invasions. Additionally, they underscore the strategic agency exercised by smaller states within these normative orders, demonstrating how such actors carefully balanced hierarchical obligations with their own political autonomy—thus highlighting the tangible political significance and practical effectiveness of normative diplomacy.

Continue reading via International Studies Review >

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Subtitle

The Lessons of East Asian History and the Future of U.S.-China Relations

Authors
Xinru Ma
David Kang
Book Publisher
Columbia University Press
Book Publisher External URL

Women and the Bomb | Jana Wattenberg

-

About the Event: In recent years, a series of initiatives have emerged with the aim to advance women’s participation in the nuclear weapons field. These initiatives are informed by two assumptions. Women are missing, and women’s inclusion can bring change. Currently, empirical evidence is missing to support either of the two assumptions. Systematically collected data is lacking on the number of women working in the nuclear weapons field. Women's experiences have been recorded only anecdotally and the impact of women's increased participation remains unclear. The Women and the Bomb project collects the missing data. It studies the roles, experiences and views of women in various sectors of the US nuclear weapons field, including government departments and agencies, national nuclear laboratories, the military and non-governmental organizations.

About the Speaker: Jana Wattenberg is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Aberystwyth University (funded by UKRI). She is also a visiting scholar at American University (Washington DC), a Lecturer in Security at Aberystwyth University and a Senior Fellow with Women in International Security.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

William J. Perry Conference Room

Jana Wattenberg
Seminars
Research Seminar Series
Date Label

Abby McConnell

0
abby_mcconnell_headshot.jpg

Abby McConnell joined FSI in 2024, after serving as the assistant director of student services in Stanford’s Oceans Department. Prior to Stanford, she worked in academic settings for over 15 years with a focus on teaching writing to a range of students, from high school seniors to mid-career military officers, and crafting marketing and internal communications materials.  She is also a published fiction writer and essayist, with a BA in Communications from UC Berkeley and an MFA in English-Creative Writing from UC Irvine.

Assistant Director of Donor Relations
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Throwin’ in the Towel: Global Patterns of Presidential Election Concessions

-
CDDRL seminar with Anne Meng — Throwin’ in the Towel: Global Patterns of Presidential Election Concessions

A fundamental aspect of democracy is that losers accept defeat. However, despite the importance of this concept, we do not have a clear sense of the empirical prevalence of concessions, nor do we have systematic evidence assessing its effects on election outcomes. This article presents the first global dataset on concessions in presidential elections in all countries worldwide from 1980 to 2020. For each election, we code whether the top-placing losing candidate made a concession statement that clearly acknowledges defeat, as well as the number of days they took to concede. We find that candidates in democratic countries are more likely to concede compared to candidates in autocratic countries. Surprisingly, losing incumbents are more likely to concede compared with non-incumbents who lose. The data also shows that precedence matters: if the loser in the previous election conceded, the current loser is more likely to concede. Finally, concessions are positively and significantly associated with fewer post-election protests (including those alleging electoral fraud), although it is difficult to convincingly establish a causal relationship.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anne Meng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her research centers on authoritarian politics, institutions, and elite power sharing. Her book, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2020), won the Riker Book Prize and was listed as a 2021 Best Book by Foreign Affairs. She has also published articles on authoritarian ruling parties, rebel regimes, opposition cooptation, term limit evasion, leadership succession, and democratic backsliding. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, PS: Political Science & Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and others. 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Anne Meng
Seminars
Date Label

America and the Middle East Warscape

-
CDDRL seminar with Marc Lynch - America and the Middle East Warscape

The Middle East is often understood as a violent, unstable, conflict-ridden region in which the United States sometimes intervenes — or fails to intervene — to provide security and order. This talk presents an alternative understanding of the Middle East as a transnationalized warscape characterized by perpetual (though not constant) war in which the US has long been an integral structural component. This approach, I argue, better explains the patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region, as well as the seeming failures of US foreign policy. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Marc Lynch is Professor of Political Science at The George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science. He is the author of The Arab Uprisings and The New Arab Wars, and co-editor of Making Sense of the Arab State.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Marc Lynch
Seminars
Date Label

Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab Receives Grants to Advance Policy Engagement and Research Collaboration

Authors
Noa Ronkin
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) has received two grants to offer guidance for more effective U.S. foreign policy strategies in Asia and propose structural reforms that propel the region toward growth, innovation, and democratic resilience. The first grant, from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), supports SNAPL's policy engagements with stakeholders in Washington, D.C., forthcoming this September. The second grant, from Stanford Global Studies, funds a series of SNAPL-hosted research workshops throughout the 2024-25 academic year.

Both funded initiatives underscore SNAPL's commitment to generating evidence-based policy recommendations and promoting transnational collaboration with academic and policy institutions to advance the future prosperity of Asia and U.S.-Asia relations.

Housed at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), SNAPL is led by Stanford sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, a senior fellow at FSI, and the director of APARC and the Korea Program. The lab’s mission is to address emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges facing Asia-Pacific countries and guide effective U.S. Asia policies through interdisciplinary, comparative research and collaboration with academic and policy research institutions in Asia and the United States.  

“We are grateful to FSI and Stanford Global Studies for supporting SNAPL's interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research,” says Shin. “The two grants provide a tremendous boost as we work to contribute evidence-based recommendations to advance a more nuanced understanding of Asia's role in global affairs and informed new directions for U.S. Asia policies.”

Policy Considerations for U.S.-China and U.S.-Asia Relations


With a grant from FSI to support policy engagement, SNAPL team members will share research findings from several of the lab’s flagship projects. The SNAPL team — including Shin, Research Fellow Xinru Ma, and Postdoctoral Fellows Gidong Kim and Junki Nakahara — will travel to Washington, D.C. in September 2024 to present these findings at forums and meetings with academic and policy communities. The trip includes a joint symposium with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a presentation at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and meetings with think tanks and Congress members.

Three core projects the team will share guide U.S. policies in Asia, particularly toward China. The first project challenges many pundits’ framing of the U.S.-China competition as a “new Cold War.” In contrast to this narrative, a recent SNAPL study reveals that contemporary U.S.-China relations are markedly different from the U.S.-Soviet Cold War dynamics. “Our analysis of over 41,000 Congressional speeches spanning 36 years suggests that current U.S. discourses on China mirror those on the past economic competition with Japan rather than the ideological or military conflicts with the USSR in the Cold War era,” says Ma. “Applying Cold War analogies to today's geopolitical landscape would thus misguide efforts to navigate current U.S.-China tensions.”

The research findings from a second SNAPL study offer a better understanding of how U.S. alliance relationships and U.S.-China tensions shape public attitudes toward China in the Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, another study challenges the conventional wisdom that democracy promotion gives the U.S. a competitive edge in its foreign policy over China. “Our research indicates that liberal values do not serve as a key lens through which Asia-Pacific citizens view recent geopolitical developments,” notes Kim. “The United States should therefore pivot from focusing on liberal rhetoric to emphasizing its role in promoting shared benefits with Asia-Pacific citizens in economic, trade, and military security areas.”

These studies are part of SNAPL’s U.S.-Asia Relations research track.

Racism in Global Context


At George Washington University, the SNAPL team will discuss findings from a project the lab explores as part of another research track, Nationalism and Racism. Recognizing that racism is a global problem with diverse roots and manifestations, this research track examines how nationalism and racism intertwine to create forms of exclusion and marginalization in Asia and provides policy recommendations to advance more inclusive societies in the region and beyond.

At this discussion, to be hosted by the Elliott School of International Affairs’ Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the team will present findings from a study that analyzes how 16 Northeast, Southeast, and South Asian nations discuss and justify their positions on race and racial discrimination. “Our study reveals various forms of racism ‘denial’ rooted in nationalist and religious ideologies, hindering efforts to address ongoing inequalities,” says Nakahara. “Addressing these forms of denial is crucial for promoting critical dialogue on race and racism in Asia and dismantling systems of oppression in the region and elsewhere.”

A Platform for Interdisciplinary Research on Contemporary Asia


SNAPL’s second grant, awarded by Stanford Global Studies, will enable the lab to host throughout the 2024-25 academic year a research workshop series focused on projects from the two research tracks above. Involving scholars and students from Stanford and Asia, the six-part series will foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and share policy-relevant findings grounded in the lab’s research.

The four workshop installments in fall and winter quarters 2024 will be dedicated to the projects discussed above. The spring quarter 2025 workshops will focus on two additional projects: one that examines the discursive construction of U.S. rivals and the respective roles of the media, executive, and legislative branches in this process, and the second that investigates elite articulation of “multiculturalism” in four Asia-Pacific nations.

“These workshops will be invaluable to advancing exchange and partnerships with academics and experts from Stanford and across Asia,” says Shin. “They directly promote SNAPL’s mission to serve as a platform that facilitates trans-Pacific, network-based collaboration."

Visit SNAPL's website for information about the workshops’ schedule and discussion topics.

Read More

Stanford building with palm trees and architectural details on the foreground and text "Call for Applications: Fall 2025 Fellowships" and APARC logo.
News

Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center Invites Applications for Fall 2025 Asia Studies Fellowships

The Center offers multiple fellowships for Asia researchers to begin in Autumn quarter 2025. These include postdoctoral fellowships on Asia-focused health policy, contemporary Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region, postdoctoral fellowships and visiting scholar positions with the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, a visiting scholar position on contemporary Taiwan, and fellowships for experts on Southeast Asia.
Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center Invites Applications for Fall 2025 Asia Studies Fellowships
(Clockwise from top left) Michael McFaul, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Gi-Wook Shin, Kiyoteru Tsutsui
News

Stanford Experts Assess the Future of the Liberal International Order in the Indo-Pacific Amid the Rise of Autocracy, Sharp Power

At the Nikkei Forum, Freeman Spogli Institute scholars Oriana Skylar Mastro, Michael McFaul, Gi-Wook Shin, and Kiyoteru Tsutsui considered the impacts of the war in Ukraine, strategies of deterrence in Taiwan, and the growing tension between liberal democracy and authoritarian populism.
Stanford Experts Assess the Future of the Liberal International Order in the Indo-Pacific Amid the Rise of Autocracy, Sharp Power
Gidong Kim
Q&As

Popular Political Sentiments: Understanding Nationalism and Its Varied Effects on Liberal Democracy

Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow Gidong Kim discusses his research into nationalism and its behavioral consequences in Korea and East Asia.
Popular Political Sentiments: Understanding Nationalism and Its Varied Effects on Liberal Democracy
Hero Image
U.S. and China flags on Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC, with the Capitol building in the background.
All News button
1
Subtitle

New grants to inform U.S. Asia policy and fuel cross-disciplinary research on Asia’s role in the global system of the 21st century.

Date Label
Subscribe to International Relations