Stanford University

Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

Political Clientelism, Social Policy, and the Quality of Democracy: Evidence from Latin America, Lessons from other Regions

On November 5-6  2010, the global Network of Democracy Research Institutes (NDRI) convened a conference in Quito, Ecuador, on "Political Clientalism, Social Policy, and the Quality of Democracy: Evidence from Latin America, Lessons from Other Regions." The meeting was cosponsored by three NDRI member institutes: the Washington-based International Forum for Democratic Studies (IFDS) of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Ecuador's Grupo FARO, and the Program on Poverty and Governance at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

The conference aimed to explore, in comparative framework, the modus operandi of political clientalism in the realm of social policies as well as the strategies that might be employed to combat it. The conference brought together 21 scholars and practitioners from around the world, including several from South America, particularly the Andean region. Participants from CDDRL included; Larry Diamond, Beatriz Magaloni, Francis Fukuyama, and Simeon Nichter.

Please see the attached conference report, which summarizes the main issues and key findings discussed at the meeting. The papers presented at the conference will be compiled into a volume edited by Diego Abente, deputy director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at NED.

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Quito, Ecuador

Simeon Nichter

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CDDRL Fellow 2010-2011
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Simeon Nichter is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He also serves as a non-resident Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Nichter holds a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley, an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Economics from Carleton College.

Simeon's ongoing research explores the political voice of poor and marginalized populations in emerging democracies, with central reference to Latin America. He examines how politicians offer material benefits to the poor in exchange for political support, and investigates how individuals' vote choices affect subsequent access to services. His research has been funded by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Jacob K. Javits Program, and other sources. He has recently published articles in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Review of Economics and Statistics, and World Development.

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Simeon Nichter Speaker

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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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

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Clientelism and Distortion of Anti-Poverty Policies

Thomas Isaacs: Is nuclear the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?

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The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. At the World Affairs Council of Northern California, Thomas Isaacs discussed what this disaster means for the future of U.S. energy.
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Powering America: Does Nuclear Have a Future?

CISAC's Tom Isaacs participated in a discussion on nuclear energy in America for the World Affairs Council Northern California. 

Event Description:

The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the US and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. The three panelists will discuss what this disaster means for the future of US energy. How will the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant shape future energy policies and public opinion, and are there existing renewable technologies capable of fulfilling the world’s energy needs? Will nuclear energy be the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?

Listen to the talk by clicking the link below. 

V. John White Executive Director Speaker Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies
Per F. Peterson Chair Speaker Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley

Thomas Isaacs

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Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.

Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.

Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison  at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.

He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Thomas Isaacs Consulting Professor Speaker CISAC
Seminars

CDDRL honors students recognized for outstanding theses

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to announce that undergraduate senior honors student Yihana von Ritter was awarded The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her outstanding thesis examining HIV/AIDS policy in Papua New Guinea. Von Ritter was presented with the award at a ceremony held on June 11 during commencement weekend at Stanford University.

Larry Diamond with Yihana von Ritter (Firestone awardee)
Von Ritter, a political science major, spent the summer of 2010 on the Papua New Guinea island of Karkar, where she performed extensive field research. She interviewed over 40 government officials, medical personnel, religious and civic leaders, youth, and HIV positive individuals. Her thesis entitled "Between Hope and Despair: An Assessment of HIV/AIDS Policy in Papua New Guinea," underscored the fact that while only 1% of Papua New Guinea's adult population is AIDS-infected, a public health crisis is looming if preventative policies are not swiftly adopted.

According to her thesis co-advisor Professor Emeritus David Abernethy, Von Ritter's thesis received the Firestone Medal­--awarded to the top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science, and engineering--for its remarkable combination of social science analysis and informed policy advocacy.

"Von Ritter provides policy-relevant recommendations in her thesis to enhance interagency communication and encourage active government leadership (in Papua New Guinea)," said Abernethy. Von Ritter also worked closely with Francis Fukuyama, FSI senior fellow and CDDRL faculty member, who provided guidance and support during the thesis writing process.

Purun Cheong and Kamil Dada were both recipients of the CDDRL Undergraduate Honors Program "Best Thesis Award" for their outstanding research and policy-relevant scholarship. Cheong, an international relations major, critically evaluated the failed United Nations state-building efforts in East Timor in his thesis, "When the Blind lead: The United Nations in East Timor-Lessons in State Building."

After spending a summer conducting research in Pakistan, Dada, a political science major, wrote "Understanding International Democracy Assistance: A Case Study of Pakistan," a sobering account of democracy assistance to Pakistan. Cheong and Dada were both advised by CDDRL director Larry Diamond.

CDDRL congratulates the 2011 graduating class of CDDRL Undergraduate Honors

Students:

Purun Cheong

International Relations

"When the Blind Lead: The United Nations in East Timor- Lessons in State Building"

Kamil Dada

Political Science

"Understanding International Democracy Assistance: A Case study of Pakistan"

Sarah Guerrero

International Relations

"Automation Nation: Electronic Elections, Electoral Governance and Democratic Consolidation in the Philippines"

Ayesha Lalji

International Relations

"Unleashing the Cheetah Generation: How Mobile Banking Enables Access to Capital for the Poor in Developing Countries"

Lauren Swartz

International Relations

"Agribusiness as a Means of Economic Development: Case Studies of Chile and Mexico"

Ann Thompson

History

"The Other Side of the Coin: The US Military and Afghan Women in Contemporary Counterinsurgurgency Operations"

Yihana von Ritter

Political Science

"Between Hope and Despair: An Assessment of HIV/AIDS Policy in Papua New Guinea"

Ari Weiss

International Relations

"Israel: Managing Diversity with Democracy"

 Check out more photos of this event on our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/StanfordCDDRL

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Bridging Silicon Valley and Tahrir Square

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The Program on Liberation Technology at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted two events in May, which brought together the technology and activist communities in support of a common cause-Egypt. The Program benefitted tremendously from the presence of two Egyptian activists, Ahmed Saleh and Sabah Hamamou, who traveled from Cairo to share their experiences and contribute ideas to help build a community between Tahrir Square and Silicon Valley. These events were coordinated by Stanford and Silicon Valley technology firms interested in leveraging their expertise in technology innovation to provide practical benefits for pro-democracy activists in Egypt and beyond.

On May 14, the Program on Liberation Technology in partnership with the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, Code the Change (a Stanford student group), CloudtoStreet, and Platform d, organized a Hack-a-Thon for Egypt at Stanford's design school. This event attracted more than 80 computer engineers, programmers, technologists, academics, activists, and members of the public. All expressed a firm commitment to volunteer their skills and time towards the development of technology applications to aid activists.

Volunteers connected in real time with Egyptian activists through videoconference and live presentations where they described the type of applications that would be beneficial to their work. Programmers and designers in the room listened intently as ideas for the following technologies were proposed; mobile phone applications for political mobilization, web-based training for election monitors, a crowdsourcing platform for constitutional negotiations, and a tool to monitor the Egyptian parliament.

Ahmed Saleh, a political activist and founder of the Kifaya movement (the Egyptian Movement for Change), provided a personal account of the revolution, captivating the audience's attention with his details of the 18 days leading up to President Mubarak's fall. Sabah Hamamou, a journalist and blogger, emphasized social media's impact on the public's capacity to organize and connect.

Hackers quickly got to work dividing into groups to begin designing the prototypes for some of the suggested applications. Sketching out designs on whiteboards and developing basic code, programmers worked late into the evening on four tangible projects: a web platform to crowdsource constitutional negotiations, a content management system for an Egyptian watchdog group to increase citizens’ ability to hold politicians to account, an election monitoring training and certification interface, and new visualizations of Twitter usage data emerging from the 18 days of protests.

Going forward, the teams will work with their Egyptian counterparts to scale-up their projects into applications with practical and broad application. The CloudtoStreet project led by CDDRL visiting scholar Ben Rowswell will work to incubate several of the projects and maintain connections with their Egyptian partners to aid in the implementation phase on the ground. A follow-on event to the Hack-a-Thon is planned for the summer quarter of 2011 to encourage the teams to continue the development of applications.

The second event hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology on May 20, brought executives from Google and Facebook to Stanford to explore social media's impact on democratic transition. More than 40 gathered to hear from Egyptian activists Saleh and Hamamou who spoke at length about their direct experience using social media and its impact on the uprisings.

According to Saleh, "Facebook had a humble start in 2008 (in Egypt) but quickly became viral when activists coordinated a national strike on April 6. This shocked the security services but they quickly learned from their mistakes.” The We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page communicated the message of the revolution, Saleh explained, but it still took a great deal of social mobilization to convince people to join the protests in Cairo. Once the power was cut, Saleh told the audience, the "keyboard activists" were then inspired to go to the streets.

If it wasn't for the world watching (the revolution) I am not sure we could have done it.
-Sabah Hamamou

Hamamou showed a variety of YouTube videos featuring cartoons poking fun at the deposed regime, which were produced by small Egyptian media companies. In doing so, she highlighted the fact that social media is becoming increasingly more popular in Egypt as politicians and civil society groups use this tool for civic education and outreach. Sabah explained this by noting that "people want alternative ways of being entertained outside of traditional media." She continued by pointing out that, "if it wasn't for the world watching (the revolution) I am not sure we could have done it."

Both activists outlined practical steps that the technologists in the room could take to help aid their efforts. Saleh underscored the importance of secure communication, which is an enormous challenge for activists who are confronted with sophisticated technologies used by regimes to survey their communication. With limited funds, activists are unable to afford expensive circumvention systems and require software and secure tools that provide user-friendly and cheap solutions. Saleh ended by emphasizing that these secure communication technologies can save lives and are urgently needed.

Hamamou suggested that Silicon Valley-based technology companies should expand their grant-making and philanthropic programs to include Egypt where they can engage directly with NGOs on the ground. She specifically highlighted YouTube's Partnership program and Google's digital journalism grant, which currently have no formal presence in Egypt. A representative from Google explained that engagement in Egypt requires them to comply with local laws to use the Egypt domain, requiring them to censor materials that are not permitted by the authorities. These laws and limitations make it challenging to maximize freedom of expression in this kind of environment.

Both events allowed the Program on Liberation Technology and its partners to match the technological ingenuity of Silicon Valley with the needs of activists in Egypt. Looking forward, the Program will be building on the applications created and the community established around this cause to make a more profound impact on the efforts of pro-democracy activists in Egypt and beyond.

Note: News of the Hack-a-Thon spread quickly through both the traditional and social media sectors, eliciting a great deal of interest and coverage of this event. The initiative was featured on the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page, home to over 100,000 international members generating an upwards of 350 "likes" and 80 comments. In addition, Fast Company.com published an article on the event and the Financial Post of Canada mentioned the CloudtoStreet project in their business section. See the links below to read more:

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Teaching Human Rights in a Global Context

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Gary Mukai
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On June 4, 2011, SPICE co-sponsored a conference, “Teaching Human Rights in a Global Context,” with the Program on Human Rights (Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, FSI), the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA), and the Stanford Humanities Center. Fifty community college and high school faculty attended a full day of lectures, panel discussions, and small-group work. Dr. Helen Stacy, Director of the Program on Human Rights, set the context for the conference, and her remarks were followed by a lecture on “The Globalization of Human Rights Education” by Professor Francisco Ramirez, Stanford School of Education. 

Educators discussed, shared, and learned about each other’s experiences of teaching human rights in a wide range of world areas, academic disciplines, and classroom settings. The rudiments of syllabus construction, methods of incorporating a human rights component into traditional courses, sample lesson plans, best ways to make use of interdisciplinary pedagogic resources and materials, and strategies for reaching diverse student populations were topics of discussion. One panel, “Incorporating Human Rights into Your Syllabus,” was facilitated by SPICE’s Jonas Edman. Jonas, Michael Lopez of the Program on Human Rights, and Dr. Robert Wessling, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, ICA, served as the primary organizers of the conference, and Dr. Laura Hubbard, Center for African Studies, ICA, served as the emcee. Megan Gorman, Center for Latin American Studies, ICA, and John Groschwitz, Center for East Asian Studies, ICA, also contributed to the organization and promotion of the conference.

As a follow-up to the conference, ICA and the Program on Human Rights will sponsor a limited number of year-long Human Rights Curricular Fellows in the coming 2011–12 academic year. Fellows must teach at an accredited California community college. Also, Jonas will be developing curricular lessons in consultation with some of the educators who attended the conference.

The conference was funded primarily by the Department of Education (Title VI) and ICA. 

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Dr. Helen Stacy, Director, Program on Human Rights, setting the context for the conference.
Jonas Edman
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Congratulations to the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors students

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Congratulations to the 10 members of the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies. The students were honored at a June 10 ceremony for their successful participation in the interdisciplinary program and for their contributions to the field of international security research.

The Stanford seniors join 114 others who have graduated from the program since its inception in 2000. This year's program was co-directed by Coit D. Blacker and Martha Crenshaw, with assistance from teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer.

In alphabetical order, the students, their majors, and their thesis titles are:

Devin Banerjee

Management Science and Engineering

India's Red Stain: Explaining the Indian Government's Ineffective Response to the Maoist-Naxalite Insurgency Since 1967.

Peter Davis

International Relations

The Non-Aligned Movement: A Struggle for Global Relevance

Anand Habib

Biology

The Demise and Rise of Governance in Health Systems: A Path Forward

RJ Halperin

Political Science

The U.S. and the Origins of the Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program: National Interests, Proliferation Pessimism, and Executive-Legislative Politics

Akhil Iyer

International Relations, Minor in Arabic

The Establishment of the U.S. Africa Command: Form, Function, and the Process of Agency Formation

Astasia Myers

Political Science and International Relations, Minor in Economics

IAEA Enforcement of Nuclear Nonproliferation Violators: Are Some Animals More Equal than Others?

Jimmy Ruck

History

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Evolving Civil Military-Relations in China

Varun Sivaram

Engineering Physics and International Relations

Sunny Side Up: Characterizing the U.S. Military's Approach to Solar Energy Policy

* Recipient of the William J. Perry Award

Jaclyn Tandler

International Relations

Let Them Eat Yellow Cake: Understanding the History of France's Sensitive Nuclear Export Policy

*Recipient of the Firestone Medal

Shine Zaw-Aung

International Relations, Minor in Energy Engineering

The Third Horseman: On Famines and Governments

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Kate Marvel and Michael May: What is the future of nuclear energy?

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“Anticipating the future is difficult in any situation, but assessing the prospects for nuclear power in the next fifty years presents especially complex challenges," write Katherine D. Marvel and Michael M. May in a new paper published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

"The public perception of nuclear power has changed and continues to change. Once viewed as a miracle of modern technology, nuclear power came to be perceived by many as a potential catastrophe; now it is viewed as a potential, albeit potentially still dangerous, source of green power. Conventional wisdom in the 1960s held that nuclear power could dominate the electricity sectors of developed countries, while less than twenty years later, many predicted the complete demise of the U.S. nuclear industry following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Yet neither attitude fully forecast the situation today: a nuclear industry that is not dominant, but is far from dead. Indeed, the history of long-range planning for nuclear power serves as a caution for anyone wishing to make predictions about the state of the industry over the next half-century.

Nonetheless, it is critical to assess its role in the future energy mix: decisions taken now will impact the energy sector for many years. This assessment requires both a review of past planning strategies and a new approach that considers alternate scenarios hat may differ radically from business as usual. While a number of studies have explored the future of nuclear power under various circumstances, the purpose of this paper is to consider gamechanging events for nuclear energy.”

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