FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Conference in Jerusalem engages European, US, and Middle East scholars on democracy
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The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to announce its major international conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” (May 18-19, 2011, Jerusalem). This conference – co-sponsored and hosted by the Center’s project partner, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – is designed to engage global, profound, and heretofore considered intractible problems of divided societies, as well as today’s crises events of the Arab world in the greater Middle East and North Africa. With US, European, and NATO command forces engaged in the region, The Europe Center recognizes shared concern across the transatlantic community, and brings its Stanford senior research affiliates as well as international partner scholars to illuminate the immediate as well as long-term points of contention, and prospects for meaningful peace and reconciliation.
The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” includes
sessions on the following critical subjects:
- In Search of What Democracy Is and Should Be: Contemporary Challenges to democratic ideas/formations
- Institutional Forms of Contemporary Democracies: Translating Democratic Theory into Practice
- The Challenge of Managing Diversity in Contemporary Democracies
- Civil Societies and Democratic Quality and Efficacy
- Democracy and Development
- Democratic Transitions and Recessions: The International Dimension
The participants include leading scholars and policy analysts:
- Dan Banik, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
- Bashir Bashir, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford University
- Naomi Chazan, Hebrew University, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo
- Amir Eshel, Stanford University, The Europe Center, FSI
- Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University FSI
- Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
- Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University
- Michael Karayanni, The Sacher Institute, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
- Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto
- Stephen Krasner, Stanford University FSI
- Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence
- Gabriel Motzkin, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, University of Jerusalem
- Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford University FSI
- Ramzi Suleiman, University of Haifa
- Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford University
The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” is co-developed by Michael Karayanni and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and co-sponsored by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The conference is one of The Europe Center’s international partner projects run within the Center’s larger and multi-year program on “Reconciliation".
This project is conceived to address subjects of contention, and potentially reconciliation, in divided societies. The multi-year collaborative project is designed to develop, in successive stages, a full range of programming including international workshops, publications, and scholar exchange. Sponsored work will benefit scholarly, policy-oriented, and cultural relations. We especially seek to support the work of colleagues from a wide range of fields including the humanities, social sciences, law, business, and education.
Further information on The Europe Center’s multi-year program on “Reconciliation” may be found here.
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The Changing State of India's Development
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India's high rates of economic growth in recent years raise the prospect that her developmental needs can be addressed. Evidence, however, requires a nuanced approach to resolving the development issues. The panelists will address these complexities, including factors behind improvement in economic indicators in the face of some continuing challenges.
Co-sponsored by Consulate General of India and the Stanford Center for South Asia
In addition to his Ministry of Finance work, Thomas Mathews is also a member of the Indian Administrative Service.
K.P. Nayar has nearly 40 years of experience as a journalist, and has served as a visiting scholar at Oxford University, the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, DC, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Philippines Conference Room
Thomas Mathews
Joint Secretary (Capital Markets) in the Department of Economic Affairs
Panelist
the Ministry of Finance, Government of India
K. P. Nayar
Chief Diplomatic Editor and Correspondent of the Americas
Panelist
the Telegraph
Seminars
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
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Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their citizens. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries-with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.
In The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of a rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.
Drawing on a vast body of knowledge-history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics-Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics.
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Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
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978-0-374-22734-0
