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.

A Perspective on the Development of Cross-Strait Economic Relations Post-Taiwan Presidential Election

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Mr. Siew began his civil service career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1962. He was soon appointed vice consul at the ROC?s Consulate General in Kuala Lumpur and then appointed Consul. He held the position of consul for 3 years. Once home, he became a section chief in the East Asian & Pacific Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1972 he rose to department director-general. Trade negotiations and market promotion were two areas to which he was particularly dedicated. As member of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), Mr. Siew was elected in July 1988 to the KMT Central Committee. In June 1990 a new premier was appointed and the cabinet was reshuffled. Mr. Siew was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs. In November 1992, he helped to secure formal observer status for the ROC in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization.) In August 1997, soon after the National Assembly had completed a revision of the Constitution, the government reorganized the cabinet. President Lee Teng-hui appointed Mr. Siew premier. He took office in September of that year and held the position until May 2000. Mr. Siew has since retired from government office and spends his time as an ordinary citizen devoting his efforts to education and social welfare.

Vidilakis Dining Room, Schwab Residential Center, 680 Serra Street, Stanford University Campus

His Excellency Vincent Siew Former Premier of Taiwan (1997-2000)
Seminars
Walter H. Shorenstein Forum for Asia Pacific Studies

A Tale of Two Cities

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News Type
Commentary
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From techie to truck driver in Silicon Valley. From tea broker to techie in Bangalore. The wave of jobs heading offshore causes wrenching loss--and produces enticing gains. Rafiq Dossani comments.

In Silicon Valley 200,000 workers have lost their jobs since 2001, albeit only 6,000 of those jobs headed overseas, Stanford University researcher Rafiq Dossani estimates. But that number will grow, he says, as the offshoring pace accelerates for jobs in software programming and product development. Already 150,000 engineers hack away in Bangalore--20,000 more than in Silicon Valley, the Times of India reports. Cisco used only a few Infosys workers in Bangalore six years ago; now it uses almost 300 contract staff, plus 550 full-fledged employees in its own Bangalore office. In two years PeopleSoft's Bangalore offshore force has grown to 200 freelancers and 350 full-timers.

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How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru

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Professor McMillan presents a paper co-authored by Pablo Zoido in which they descibe secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos Torres' effectiveness in undermining Peru's democratic institutions through bribery.

One single television channel's bribe was five times larger than the total of the opposition politicians' bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the government's power was the news media.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

John McMillan Professor Graduate School of Business
Seminars

Markets, Specialization and China's Smallholder Agriculture

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As seen in the previous sections, China's reformers, more than anything, have followed a
strategy based on providing incentives through property rights reforms, even though in China the shift to private ownership is today far from complete. The reforms started with the Household Responsibility System (HRS), a policy of radical decollectivization that allowed farmers to keep the residual output of their farms after paying their agricultural taxes and completing their mandatory delivery quotas. Farmers also began to exercise control over much of the production process (although in the initial years, the local state shared some control rights and in some places still do today). In this way the first reforms in the agricultural sector reshuffled property rights in an attempt to increase work incentives and exploit the specific knowledge of individuals about the production process (Perkins, 1994). In executing the property rights reforms, leaders also fundamentally restructured farms in China. Within a few years, for example, reformers completely broke up the larger collective farms into small household farms. In China today there are more than 200 million farms, the legacy of an HRS policy that gave the primary responsibilities for farming to the individual household. McMillan, Whalley and Zhu (1989), Fan (1991), Lin (1992) and Huang and Rozelle (1996) have all documented the strong, positive impact that property rights reforms had on output and productivity. 

In addition to property rights reform and transforming incentives, the other major
task of reformers is to create more efficient institutions of exchange. Markets-whether
classic competitive ones or some workable substitute-increase efficiency by facilitating
transactions among agents to allow specialization and trade and by providing information
through a pricing mechanism to producers and consumers about the relative scarcity of
resources. But markets, in order to function efficiently, require supporting institutions to
ensure competition, define and enforce property rights and contracts, ensure access to
credit and finance and provide information (John McMillan, 1997; World Bank 2002).
These institutions were either absent in the Communist countries or, if they existed, were
inappropriate for a market system. Somewhat surprisingly, despite their importance in
the reform process there is much less work on the success that China has had in building
markets and the effect that the markets has had on the economy.

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Working Papers
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Journal Publisher
Food and Agricultural Organization
Authors
Scott Rozelle

Europe Enlarged. Implications for Transatlantic Relations

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On May 1 the European Union has taken ten new countries on board. The second biggest economy in the world now consists of 454 million people in 25 countries with an overall gross domestic product of 9.600 billion EURO.

Agreement on a European constitution seems imminent in June, thus "deepening" the integration after the biggest ever process of "widening". The consequences of both events are also bigger than ever. What are the choices ahead of the European Union that is also voting for a new Parliament in June, the only supranational Parliament on the globe? And moreover: What might be the implication of an enlarged and more assertive European Union for transatlantic relations, most notably in foreign and security affairs? In light of the past Internal Western Cold War on Iraq, this issue is of more concern than ever.

Ludger Kuehnhardt, Director at the Center of European Studies (ZEI) at Bonn University and currently Visiting Professor with Stanford's International Relations Program will discuss current developments in the European Union and their transatlantic implication.

Oksenberg Conference Room

Ludger Kuehnhardt

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall, E106
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0145 (650) 723-4811
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Visiting Scholar

Ludger Kuehnhardt was born in Muenster (Germany) in 1958. He is Director of the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), a think-tank of the University of Bonn which he helped to set up since 1997(www.zei.de). Prior to this, he was Chair of Political Science at the University of Freiburg and worked as Speechwriter for the former German President Richard von Weizsaecker. Ludger Kuehnhardt has been a Visiting Fellow ot Stanford's Hoover Institution in 1995/96. He was a Public-Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C. in 2002 and a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College in 2000. He is a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Milan and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna.

Prof. Kuehnhardts research interests center on transatlantic relations and European foreign and security policy in light of the joint new challenges in the Greater Middle East. He is also conducting research on the constitution-building process of the European Union and its ramification for European identity. His research interests include the "globalization" of regional integration processes and its link to the European integration experience.

He has wide range experiences in political and academic consulting work and has lectured in all continents. He studied history, philosophy and political science in Bonn, Geneva, Tokyo and at Harvard's Center for European Studies.

Ludger Kuehnhardt is the author of more than twenty books on Europe, transatlantic relations,political theory and history of ideas.

Ludger Kuehnhardt Director Speaker the Center of European Studies (ZEI) at Bonn University
Lectures

APARC's Henry S. Rowen featured in new book on Bush's War Cabinet

Authors
Henry S. Rowen
News Type
News
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APARC's Henry S. Rowen is featured in James Mann's new book for his role in formulating the military strategy that the United States should employ in a war against Iraq. The book details the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rowen war plan -- dubbed "Operation Scorpion" -- which proposed an invasion of Iraq from the west, through the country's empty desert regions toward the Euphrates River.

APARC's Henry S. Rowen is featured in James Mann's new book, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, Viking Penguin: New York, 2004, pp 186-97, for his role in formulating the military strategy that the United States should employ in a war against Iraq. The book details the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rowen war plan -- dubbed "Operation Scorpion" -- which proposed an invasion of Iraq from the west, through the country's empty desert regions toward the Euphrates River.

While campaigning for president in 2000, George W. Bush downplayed his lack of foreign policy experience by emphasizing that he would surround himself with a highly talented and experienced group of political veterans. This core group, consisting of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice, has a long history together dating back 30 years in some cases. Dubbing themselves the Vulcans, they have largely determined the direction and focus of the Bush presidency. In this new book, Mann traces their careers and the development of their ideas in order to understand how and why American foreign policy got to where it is today.

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Malaysia after Mahathir: The Recent (March 21) Election and What It Means

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Future historians will mark the first national election to be held in Malaysia since the retirement of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003) as a watershed in the country's political history. Among key questions circulating in the run-up to the voting on 21 March 2004 were these: Would the ruling National Front gain or lose votes and seats? (Surprise: gained greatly.) Would the opposition Islamic Party, now in control of two states, improve or worsen its position? (Surprise: worsened sharply.) Would KeADILan, the political party which emerged after the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim, gain or lose? (Surprise: lost badly.) Answers to other questions were still unknown: Would the election benefit Malaysia's current Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, at the congress of his political party later this year? What would the ruling coalition's landslide imply for Malaysian democracy, stability, and development? For Malaysia's role in the campaign against terrorism? For the country's relations with its neighbors and with the U.S.? (Surprise: Come hear Elizabeth Wong and find out.)

This is the ninth seminar of the 2003-2004 academic year Southeast Asia Forum.

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall

Elizabeth Wong Secretary-General National Human Rights Society (Hakam), Malaysia
Seminars
Southeast Asia Program

Not My Specialty: The Nexus of Health and Human Rights

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Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to treating some of the world's poorest populations, in the process helping to raise the standard of health care in underdeveloped areas of the world. Paul Farmer has worked in infectious-disease control in the Americas for nearly two decades and is a world-renowned authority on tuberculosis treatment and control. Dr. Farmer has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis) in resource-poor settings.

In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Genius Award in recognition of his work, and in 2003 the Heinz Award for the Human Condition.

Bechtel Conference Center

Dr. Paul Farmer Professor of Medicine and Medical Anthropology, Harvard University and Medical Director, Clinique Bon Sauveur, Cange, Haiti
Lectures
S.T. Lee Lectureship

Ludger Kuehnhardt

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall, E106
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0145 (650) 723-4811
0
Visiting Scholar

Ludger Kuehnhardt was born in Muenster (Germany) in 1958. He is Director of the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), a think-tank of the University of Bonn which he helped to set up since 1997(www.zei.de). Prior to this, he was Chair of Political Science at the University of Freiburg and worked as Speechwriter for the former German President Richard von Weizsaecker. Ludger Kuehnhardt has been a Visiting Fellow ot Stanford's Hoover Institution in 1995/96. He was a Public-Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C. in 2002 and a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College in 2000. He is a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Milan and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna.

Prof. Kuehnhardts research interests center on transatlantic relations and European foreign and security policy in light of the joint new challenges in the Greater Middle East. He is also conducting research on the constitution-building process of the European Union and its ramification for European identity. His research interests include the "globalization" of regional integration processes and its link to the European integration experience.

He has wide range experiences in political and academic consulting work and has lectured in all continents. He studied history, philosophy and political science in Bonn, Geneva, Tokyo and at Harvard's Center for European Studies.

Ludger Kuehnhardt is the author of more than twenty books on Europe, transatlantic relations,political theory and history of ideas.

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