Stanford University

Institutions and Organizations

Cold War Internationalism: The Case of Labor

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Sandrine Kott has been educated in France (Paris), Germany (Bielefeld and Berlin) and the USA (New York). Since 2004 she is professor of European contemporary history at the University of Geneva. Her principal fields of expertise are the history of social welfare and labor law in France and Germany since the end of the nineteenth century and labor relations in those countries of real socialism, in particular in the German Democratic Republic. Since 2004, she has developed the transnational and global dimensions of each of her fields of expertise in utilizing the archives and resources of international organizations and particularly the International Labor Organization. She has published over 80 articles in French, German and Anglo-Saxon journals and collective volumes, edited 4 volumes and published 6 books.

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Sandrine Kott Professor Speaker University of Geneva
Seminars

Human Welfare, War and Sanctions in Iraq under Saddam Hussein

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This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN).

Abstract: Who bears the costs associated with the foreign policy decisions of dictators? And to what extent are the burdens of war borne by particular ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic society? Using internal Iraqi government documents amassed in the wake of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq as well as survey data collected shortly after the fall of the regime, I provide evidence for the unequal distribution of war costs associated with the Iran-Iraq War, the First Gulf War as well as the impact of the international sanctions regime, what some have deemed an "invisible" economic war. I find that Shi`a Iraqis were more likely than their Sunni counterparts - and much more likely than Iraqi Kurds - to have been killed, become prisoners of war or to have gone missing in action during the first half of the Iran-Iraq War. Shi`a families were also more likely to have had a brother or father martyred in either the Iran-Iraq War or the First Gulf War while simultaneously being less likely to enjoy a "Friend of the President" designation, which afforded families certain rights and privileges vis-à-vis the regime. At the end of the sanctions period immediately following the fall of the regime, Shi`a Iraqis were also three times more likely to be living in poverty or extreme poverty than Sunnis from Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit but only about 20 percent more likely to be poverty stricken when compared to Sunnis from Iraq's far western provinces. These results provide strong evidence for the existence of a hierarchy of burden associated with the foreign policy decisions of the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein.

About the Speaker: Lisa Blaydes is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project.  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-9 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.  She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

CISAC Central Conference Room, 2nd floor

Lisa Blaydes Speaker Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stanford

Lisa Blaydes

Encina Hall West, Room 408
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 723-0649
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Political Science
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Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project.  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

 

Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Lisa Blaydes Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stanford University Speaker

Adi Greif

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C139
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Adi Greif is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Yale University and a pre-doc at CDDRL from 2013-2015. Her dissertation, "The Long-Term Impact of Colonization on Gender", investigates why gender equality varies by former colonizer (French or British) in the Middle East and globally. It uses cross-national statistics, a regression discontinuity across the former colonial border in Cameroon, and interviews from Egypt and Jordan. Her research abroad was supported by a Macmillan Dissertation Fellowship.

Adi's research interests are colonialism, international alliances, state formation and comparative gender policies with focus on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. She has lived in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, and visited Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Adi holds an M.A. in Political Science from (Yale University) and a B.A with honors in Political Science and a minor in Math (Stanford University). Before coming to Yale, she worked at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. through the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy.

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow, 2015; CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow, 2013-2014
Adi Greif CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow Commentator
Seminars

Social Science Seminar: Saumitra Jha

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This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN)

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Saumitra Jha Associate Professor of Political Economy Speaker Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Seminars

Journalism and Democracy in Korea: The First Year Presidential Jinx

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South Korean voters have chosen six presidents since the country’s democratization in 1987. Unlike the United States, where newly elected presidents pass signature legislation thanks to a "honeymoon" with Congress, new South Korean presidents immediately face parliamentary obstructionism. Korea’s current president, Park Geun-hye, who recently completed her first year in office, has not been an exception. During the past year, the ruling and opposition parties did not even engage in genuine dialogue, much less reach substantial compromises in the National Assembly. The damage to national governance is all the more serious as Korean presidents may serve only a single, five-year term. 
 
What explains this first year "jinx" for Korean presidents? While the causes include deficiencies in governmental and political institutions, 2013-2014 APARC Fellow Guem-nak Choe argues that a primary factor is the role played by Korean journalism. Himself a former senior journalist and the top public relations aide to the previous Korean president, Mr. Choe will compare Korean and American journalism and offer recommendations for Korean media reform.

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Guem-Nak Choe

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall C332
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-0938 (650) 723-6530
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2013-2014 APARC Fellow
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Gordon Guem-nak Choe joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as an APARC Fellow for the 2013-14 academic year. He will be involved with our Korean Studies Program. 

His research encompasses the relationship between media and politics. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Gordon will work on a comparative study on communication skills between presidents of Korea and the United States.

Choe has over 25 years of experience as a journalist, reporting with Korea’s major broadcasting stations including MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Company) and SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System). He was SBS's chief correspondent to Washington, DC during the Clinton admistration. He also worked as editor-in-chief and vice president for news and sports at SBS. Later he joined the public sector as Senior Secretary for Public Relations to then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Choe holds a BA in economics from the Seoul National University.

Guem-Nak Choe 2013-2014 APARC Fellow Speaker the Shorentein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Seminars

An Army Like No Other: The Origins of Military Culture

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

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Gil-li Vardi

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Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

Gil-li Vardi Visiting Scholar, CISAC; Lecturer, Department of History, Stanford; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Speaker
Joel Beinin Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford Commentator
Seminars

Dealing with Terrorism

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The problems of terrorism and counterterrorism are closely related to other themes stressed in this volume: sovereignty; state building, nation building, and peacebuilding; norms; responsibility to prevent and protect; legitimacy of the use of force; failed, failing, and fragile states; and democratic transitions. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the threat of terrorism emanated principally from proponents of radical Islamism, as it did during the first decade. Finding an effective response remained a challenge. Although terrorism receded as a global threat, it contributed to state failure and civil war and continued to provoke military intervention from targeted states. 

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Explaining Dominance: The Sources of Long-Lived One-Party Rule in Electorally Contested Regimes

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Abstract:

Why do some ruling parties last in power for decades despite facing regular, contested elections?  Well-known examples include the PRI in Mexico, the LDP in Japan, the PAP in Singapore, and the ANC in South Africa. The existence of these long-lived “dominant parties” raises normative concerns: can we really call these regimes democratic if there is never, or rarely, ruling party turnover? They also present a theoretical puzzle: if opposition parties are able to contest elections that decide who rules, why do they consistently fail to win? In this talk, I approach these questions by focusing on variation in ruling party duration.  Drawing on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence, I show that “dominant” parties are typically the first to hold office in a new regime, and often have played a central role in founding it.  As a consequence, these ruling parties frequently start out with enormous electoral advantages over their competitors in the party system, including a strong party “brand,” a disciplined and well-resourced party organization, and the ability to shape and manipulate the rules of competition. These advantages allow them to endure in power by winning consecutive elections for a generation or more.  Only with the erosion of these advantages do elections become more competitive, and the risk of ruling party defeat increases. Once dominant parties are defeated, subsequent partisan competition becomes much more even, and regular rotation in power becomes the norm.  Thus, one-party dominance is best thought of as a kind of temporary “adolescence” on the way to fully consolidated democracy.  

Speaker Bio:

Kharis Templeman received a BA (2002) from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in political science (2012) from the University of Michigan. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.  As a graduate student, he worked in Taipei at the Election Study Center, National Cheng Chi University, and later was a dissertation research fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.  His dissertation examined the development of Taiwan’s competitive party system from a comparative perspective, including a large study of the origins and decline of dominant party systems around the world over the last 60 years.

Current research interests include democratization, party system development in newly-contested regimes, and political institutions, with a regional focus on the new and transitioning democracies of Pacific Asia.  He is currently a regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy project.  Other ongoing collaborations include research on constitutional design for divided societies, on the arms-allies tradeoff in client states, and on intra-tribal voting coordination in elections in Jordan.

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Kharis Templeman Speaker
Seminars

Military Operations and National Policies, 1914-1918

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About the Speaker: Hew Strachan has been Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College since 2002, and was Director of the Oxford Program on the Changing Character of War between 2003 and 2012. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Chief of the Defence Staff and on the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board, as well as being a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and member of both the National Committee for the Centenary of the First World War and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is also a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003 and awarded an Hon. D. Univ. by the University of Paisley in 2005. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge and became a specialist adviser to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Tweeddale, and a Brigadier in the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers).

In December 2012, Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of top global thinkers for the year. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honors ceremony.

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Sir Hew Strachan Chichele Professor of History of War Speaker University of Oxford
Seminars

State Building Outside-In

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Abstract:
 
There is no consensus in the policy or academic worlds about what kind of interventions are most effective in promoting governance in badly governed polities.   The three major approaches to understanding state development — modernization theory, institutional capacity, and rational choice institutionalism suggest very different approaches.   While modernization theory is most expansive about the possibilities for external action, its record over time is the most problematic.   Rational choice institutionalism, in contrast, suggests that in rent-seeking exclusive orders the opportunities for external actors are limited.  Rational choice institutionalism, however, does not provide a clear mapping of mixed order polities, ones in which the interests of political elites are torn between open access and rent-seeking.
 
Speaker Bio:
 
Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution. From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Stephen D. Krasner

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stephen Krasner Speaker
Seminars

Electoral System Reform

On March 14-15, the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, held a workshop on electoral system alternatives in the United States. The workshop brought together a number of scholars of American electoral institutions, practitioners working to implement electoral reforms, and experts on electoral systems reforms in advanced democracies. The workshop examined how different electoral systems options have worked in other countries, and what the implications of similar reforms might be in the United States.

Among other things, the workshop asked:

  • How might plurality elections in single-member districts in the United States skew democratic outcomes? Is there a relationship between the electoral system and the problems we see today, such as ideological and political polarization?
  • What lessons might be drawn from reforms in other countries? Examples include the single-transferable vote (STV) in Ireland, the alternative vote (AV) in Australia, and mixed-member systems in Italy, Japan, and New Zealand;
  • How might we go about reforming American electoral systems -- through local, state, or federal means, and through engagement with which types of political and civil service actors?
  • How has ranked-choice voting (RCV) worked in local experiments in the United States, including in Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA; and Cambridge, MA?
  • How might electoral systems reforms interact with other proposed political reforms in the United States, including the National Popular Vote for the Electoral College, top-four primaries, and the adoption of redistricting commissions? 

 

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Nick Stephanopoulos: Our Electoral Exceptionalism

 

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Electoral System Reform in the U.S.
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Conferences
American Democracy Conferences
Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective
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