Stanford University

International Development

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.

Rising international stars: 2010 Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development

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New Draper Hills Summer Fellows come to Stanford to study linkages between democracy, development, and the rule of law

Rising leaders from a diverse group of nations in transition, including China, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria arrived on campus on July 25 for a three-week seminar as Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. Initiated by FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) six years ago, the program has created a network of some 139 leaders from 62 transitioning countries.  This year's exceptional class of  23 fellows includes a deputy minister of Ukraine, current and former members of parliament (including a deputy speaker), leading attorneys and rule of law experts, civic activists, journalists, international development practitioners, and founders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). (One fellow needed to withdraw because he was named to the Cabinet of the new Philippine president, Noynoy Aquino).

Draper Hills Summer Fellows are innovative, courageous, and committed leaders, who strive to improve governance, enhance civic participation, and invigorate development under very challenging circumstances"
- Larry Diamond"Draper Hills Summer Fellows are innovative, courageous, and committed leaders, who strive to improve governance, enhance civic participation, and invigorate development under very challenging circumstances," says CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "This year's fellows are an inspiring group. They have come here to learn from us, but even more so from one another. And we will learn much from them, about the progress they are making and the obstacles they confront as they work to build democracy, improve government accountability, strengthen the rule of law, energize civil society, and enhance the institutional environment for broadly shared economic growth."

The three-week seminar is taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty. In addition to Diamond, faculty include FSI Senior Fellow and CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner; Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper; FSI Deputy Director and political science Professor Stephen D. Krasner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; professor of political science, philosophy, and law Joshua Cohen; professor of pediatrics and Stanford Health Policy core faculty Paul H. Wise; visiting associate professor Beth van Schaack; FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy; Walter P. Falcon, deputy director, Program on Food Security and the Environment; Erik Jensen, co-director of the Stanford Law School's Rule of Law Program; Avner Greif, professor of economics; Rick Aubry, lecturer in management, Stanford Graduate School of Business; and Nicholas Hope, director, Stanford Center on International Development.

Other leading experts who will engage the fellows include President of the National Endowment for Democracy Carl Gershman, United States Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Rymer, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, Omidyar Network partner Matt Halprin, Conservation International's Olivier Langrand, executives of leading Silicon Valley companies, such as Google and Facebook, and media and nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area.  Michael McFaul, a Stanford political science professor and former CDDRL director, who now serves on the National Security Council as President Obama's chief advisor on Russia, will come to campus to teach a session on U.S. foreign policy in the Obama administration.

The demanding, but compelling curriculum will devote the first week of the seminar to defining the fundamentals of democracy, good governance, economic development, and the rule of law.  In the second week, faculty will turn to democratic and economic transitions and the feedback mechanisms between democracy, development, and a predictable rule of law. This week will include offerings on liberation technology, social entrepreneurship, and issues raised by development and the environment.  The third week will turn to the critical - and often controversial - role of international assistance to foster and support democracy, judicial reform, and economic development, including the proper role of foreign aid.

Our program helps to create a broader community of global activists and practitioners, intent on sharing experiences to bring positive change to some of the world's most troubled countries and regions"
- Kathryn Stoner-Weiss The fellows themselves also lead discussions, focused on the concrete challenges they face in their ongoing work in political and economic development. "Fellows come to realize that they are often engaged in solving similar problems - such as endemic corruption in different country contexts," says Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. "Our program helps to create a broader community of global activists and practitioners, intent on sharing experiences to bring positive change to some of the world's most troubled countries and regions."

The program has received generous gifts from donors William Draper III and Ingrid Hills.  Bill Draper made his gift in honor of his father, Maj. Gen. William H. Draper, Jr., a chief advisor to Gen. George Marshall and chief diplomatic administrator of the Marshall Plan in Germany, who confronted challenges comparable to those faced by Draper Hills Summer Fellows in building democracy, a market economy, and a rule of law, often in post-conflict conditions. Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, made her gift in honor of her husband, Reuben Hills, president and chairman of Hills Bros. Coffee and a leading philanthropist. The Hills project they ran for 12 years improved the lives of inner city children and Ingrid saw in the Summer Fellows Program a promising opportunity to improve the lives of so many people in developing countries.

Thanking the program's benefactors, Larry Diamond says, "The benefit to CDDRL faculty and researchers is incalculable, and we are deeply grateful for the vision and generosity of Bill Draper and Ingrid Hills." As he and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss state, "The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program allows us to interact with a highly, talented group of emerging leaders in political and economic development from diverse countries and regions. They benefit from exposure to the faculty's cutting edge work, while we benefit from a cycle of feedback on whether these ideas work in the field."  Like CDDRL, which bridges academic theory and policy, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, they note, "is an ideal marriage between democratic and development theory and practice."

For additional details on the program or to request permission to attend a session, please contact program coordinator Audrey McGowan, audrey.mcgowan@stanford.edu.

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Brute Luck, Justice, and Hypothetical Reciprocity

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Joseph Mazor is a Post Doctoral Scholar at Stanford's Center for Ethics in Society.  He completed his Ph.D in the interdisciplinary Political Economy and Government Program at Harvard University in June of 2009.  While at Harvard, Joseph served as a Graduate Fellow in the Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics and at the Center for Ethics.  He spent the 2009-2010 academic year as a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Princeton's University Center for Human Values.  Joseph wrote his dissertation on natural resource property rights, and his broader research interests include distributive justice, environmental justice, and deliberative democracy.  

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Liberation Technology

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(excerpt) In March 2003, police in Guangzhou (Canton), China, stopped 27-year- old Sun Zhigang and demanded to see his temporary living permit and identification. When he could not produce these, he was sent to a detention center. Three days later, he died in its infirmary. The cause of death was recorded as a heart attack, but the autopsy authorized by his parents showed that he had been subjected to a brutal beating.

Sun’s parents took his story to the liberal newspaper Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily), and its investigation confirmed that Sun had been beaten to death in custody. As soon as its report appeared on April 25, “newspapers and Web sites throughout China republished the account, [Internet] chat rooms and bulletin boards exploded with out- rage,” and it quickly became a national story. The central government was forced to launch its own investigation and on June 27, it found twelve people guilty of Sun’s death.

Sun’s case was seen as a watershed—the first time that a peaceful outpouring of public opinion had forced the Communist Chinese state to change a national regulation.

Optimists discern in these events a striking ability of the Internet— and other forms of “liberation technology”—to empower individuals, fa- cilitate independent communication and mobilization, and strengthen an emergent civil society. Pessimists argue that nothing in China has funda- mentally changed. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains firmly in control and beyond accountability. The weiquan movement has been crushed. And the Chinese state has developed an unparalleled system of digital censorship.

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Gi-Wook Shin Interview on Arirang TV's "Heart to Heart"

Speaking on June 17, 2010 in a television interview in South Korea, Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University, said, “No one can now ignore or overlook the importance of Asia.” He spoke of the rise of Asian countries in the past 50 years, particularly in the area of economics, and the world’s growing awareness of Asia. Dr. Shin discussed the important role that Shorenstein APARC and its Korean Studies Program (KSP) play in the field of Asian studies, noting that Shorenstein APARC’s unique focus on research, policy, and the social sciences distinguishes it from most academic Asian studies centers in the United States. He explained that not only do scholars from Shorenstein APARC carry out academic research, but they also “produce some policy reports for the American government and…try to promote dialogue between the U.S. and Asian countries.”

In his interview with Heart to Heart (Arirang TV) host Kolleen Park, Dr. Shin discussed the history of the field of Asian studies, noting the growing importance of Korean studies in the past 15 years. Dr. Shin said that in the past 100 years of Korean history are found “the key elements that we talk about in the social sciences.” He then asked, “How can we use the Korean experience to generate a general model or theoretical experience for the rest of the world?”

Dr. Shin’s interview took place during his visit to South Korea for the POSCO Asia Forum where he was a keynote speaker. The theme of the 2010 Forum was the “Globalization of Asian Culture.” “Looking back, Asia had a great contribution to human society and human civilization,” Dr. Shin said. His motivation in addressing the attendees of the Forum, he explained was, “I felt that it was time to take Asia more seriously and think about how Asia can continue to make contributions to human society and civilization.”

Highlights from the POSCO Asia Forum, a summary of Dr. Shin’s new book One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (Stanford University Press 2010), and Dr. Shin’s thoughts on relations between the two Koreas are also covered in the interview.

Gi-Wook Shin

Shorenstein APARC
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
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Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL)

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No one can now ignore or overlook the importance of Asia, says APARC Director Dr. Gi-Wook Shin

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Speaking on June 17, 2010 in a television interview in South Korea, Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University, said, "No one can now ignore or overlook the importance of Asia." He spoke of the rise of Asian countries in the past 50 years, particularly in the area of economics, and the world's growing awareness of Asia. Dr. Shin discussed the important role that Shorenstein APARC and its Korean Studies Program (KSP) play in the field of Asian studies, noting that Shorenstein APARC’s unique focus on research, policy, and the social sciences distinguishes it from most academic Asian studies centers in the United States. He explained that not only do scholars from Shorenstein APARC carry out academic research, but they also “produce some policy reports for the American government and…try to promote dialogue between the U.S. and Asian countries.”

In his interview with Heart to Heart (Arirang TV) host Kolleen Park, Dr. Shin discussed the history of the field of Asian studies, noting the growing importance of Korean studies in the past 15 years. Dr. Shin said that in the past 100 years of Korean history are found “the key elements that we talk about in the social sciences.” He then asked, “How can we use the Korean experience to generate a general model or theoretical experience for the rest of the world?”

Dr. Shin’s interview took place during his visit to South Korea for the POSCO Asia Forum where he was a keynote speaker. The theme of the 2010 Forum was the “Globalization of Asian Culture.” “Looking back, Asia had a great contribution to human society and human civilization,” Dr. Shin said. His motivation in addressing the attendees of the Forum, he explained was, “I felt that it was time to take Asia more seriously and think about how Asia can continue to make contributions to human society and civilization.”

Highlights from the POSCO Asia Forum, a summary of Dr. Shin’s new book One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (Stanford University Press 2010), and Dr. Shin’s thoughts on relations between the two Koreas are also covered in the interview. Watch the entire interview online here at the Shorenstein APARC website and learn more about the activities of Shorenstein APARC and KSP.

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Brazilian Law: Full Speed in Reverse?

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Is it possible to combine modern tropical agriculture with environmental conservation? Brazilian agriculture offers encouraging examples that achieve high production together with adequate environmental protection. However, these effective practices may soon lose ground to the conventional custom of resource overexploitation and environmental degradation.

A revision to the Forest Act, the main Brazilian environmental legislation on private land, has just been submitted to Congress, and there is a strong chance that it will be approved. The proposed revision raises serious concerns in the Brazilian scientific community, which was largely ignored during its elaboration. The new rules will benefit sectors that depend on expanding frontiers by clear-cutting forests and savannas and will reduce mandatory restoration of native vegetation illegally cleared since 1965. If approved, CO2 emissions may increase substantially, instead of being reduced as was recently pledged in Copenhagen. Simple species-area relationship analyses also project the extinction of more than 100,000 species, a massive loss that will invalidate any commitment to biodiversity conservation. Proponents of the new law, with well-known ties to specific agribusiness groups, claim an alleged shortage of land for agricultural expansion, and accuse the current legislation of being overprotective of the environment in response to foreign interests fronted by green nongovernmental organizations. However, recent studies show that, without further conversion of natural vegetation, crop production can be increased by converting suitable pastures to agriculture and intensifying livestock production on the remaining pasture. Brazil has a high potential for achieving sustainable development and thereby conserving its unique biological heritage. Although opposed by the Ministry of the Environment and most scientists, the combination of traditional politicians, opportunistic economic groups, and powerful landowners may be hard to resist. The situation is delicate and serious. Under the new Forest Act, Brazil risks suffering its worst environmental setback in half a century, with critical and irreversible consequences beyond its borders.

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Democracy and development expert Francis Fukuyama joins FSI

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Francis Fukuyama, one of the world's most prominent experts on democracy, development, and governance has joined Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) as the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, effective July 2010.  He will reside in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and fully engage in the center's research, teaching, and policy missions, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond announced.

I am thrilled to be joining Larry Diamond, Stephen D. Krasner, Kathryn Stoner and other colleagues in CDDRL's research, teaching, and policy engagement," said Fukuyama.  "CDDRL is world renowned for its interdisciplinary programs which bridge academic research and policy analysis - and we need break-through thinking in both to advance political and economic development."
- Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama comes to FSI from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of the International Development Program at SAIS.

"We are thrilled that Frank is joining CDDRL and our quest to understand how countries advance politically and economically and the role governance plays in these interrelated challenges," said Diamond. "His path-breaking work on democracy, governance, and state building, his probing intellect, and his passionate commitment to advance theoretical and practical understanding of development - in all its dimensions - will be wonderful assets to our center and students, to the Freeman Spogli Institute, and to Stanford University."

Fukuyama has written widely on political and economic development. His best-known book, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992) made the bestseller lists in the United States, France, Japan, and Italy and was awarded the Los Angeles Times' Book Critics Award and the Premio Capri for the Italian edition.  Fukuyama is also the author of America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (2006), State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (2004), Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (1999) and Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995).  His new book The Origins of Political Order will be published in March 2011.

"We are delighted to welcome Frank Fukuyama at this dynamic time for FSI, particularly as we launch a new Global Underdevelopment Action Fund, to seed action-oriented, multidisciplinary faculty research projects in support of global development," said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker. "Frank's exemplary scholarship and teaching, and his dedication to the expansion of democracy and development, are an inspiration to Stanford faculty and students, and to leaders in transitioning countries the world over."

Dr. Fukuyama served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2005. He holds an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College, Doane College, and Doshisha University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, and sits on the editorial or advisory boards of The American Interest, the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the New America Foundation.

Fukuyama received a BA in classics from Cornell University and a PhD in political science from Harvard. He was a member of the political science department of the Rand Corporation in 1979-80, from 1983 to 1989 and in 1995-96. In 1981-82 and again in 1989, Fukuyama was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, specializing first in Middle East affairs and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. From 1996-2000, Fukuyama was the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University.

"I am thrilled to be joining Larry Diamond, Stephen D. Krasner, Kathryn Stoner and other colleagues in CDDRL's research, teaching, and policy engagement," said Fukuyama.  "CDDRL is world renowned for its interdisciplinary programs which bridge academic research and policy analysis - and we need break-through thinking in both to advance political and economic development."

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Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
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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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d.school class sees Stanford students develop ICT solutions to healthcare challenges in Kenya

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This Spring quarter, while our seminar series took a break, Terry Winograd and Joshua Cohen taught a new course at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school): Designing Liberation Technologies.

During this class, small interdisciplinary teams focus on a term-long design project, taking advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed in the d.school. This year's course developed as a collaboration between Stanford, the University of Nairobi and Nokia Africa Research Center.  The focus area was finding ICT solutions to the healthcare needs of people living in Kibera slum outside Nairobi.

Under the guidance of Jussi Impiö at Nokia and the Computer Science faculty, 27 students from the University of Nairobi Computer Science department conducted need finding studies at a number of health-related sites, including clinics, hospitals, community health workers, community leaders, and government offices. They read background materials, made observations, and talked with a wide variety of stakeholders. Their reports became the basis of the Stanford teams' initial understanding of users and needs. Communication with the group in Nairobi was also maintained throughout the course, using a Facebook group to facilitate discussions, as well as several teleconference sessions.

Working in small teams, 20 Stanford students from a wide range of disciplines worked over 10 weeks to develop initial design concepts to respond to some of the needs that had been identified. Click on the title of each project to view their final presentations:

  • mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
  • M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
  • Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
  • Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
  • PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
  • PatientMap :a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.

This summer, two follow up trips are planned, with Nairobi students due to spend several weeks at Stanford, while a number of students from the Stanford group will visit Nairobi to explore possibilities for developing their projects further. Building on the success and lessons learnt so far, the Designing Liberation Technologies course will be open to a new set of students next academic year. 

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Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance, and Institutions

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The 2008–2009 financial crisis demands we look anew at the role of corporations, and the working of financial markets around the world. In this challenging and insightful book, one of our most eminent economists provides a compelling new analysis of the corporate firm; the role of shareholders, managers and workers; and institutional governance structures.

In recent decades the firm has predominantly been seen as an organization run and governed in the interests of shareholders, where management acts as the agent of shareholders, and the workers simply as instruments for share-value maximization. This book reverses this viewpoint. It sees corporations as associational cognitive systems where "cognitive actions" are distributed amongst managers and workers, with shareholders supplying "cognitive tools" and monitoring their use in the systems. Aoki analyses the different relationships that can exist between shareholders, managers, and workers from this perspective, and identifies a range of different models of organizational architecture and associated governance structures. He also discusses ways in which corporations act as players in social, political, and organizational games, as well as global economic games; how these inter-related social dynamics may change particular, distinctive national structures into the diversity incorporated in the global corporate landscape; and how they now call for new roles for financial markets.


"Masahiko Aoki uses the social mathematics of game theory to reveal the deep structure of corporate governance systems, in the process explaining the persistence of diversity under conditions of globalization. His profound and highly original analysis speaks directly to the issue of corporate governance reform in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008–9."
-Simon Deakin, Professor of Law, University of Cambridge
"The recent wave of fraud, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility at the highest corporate levels dramatizes the need for a model of the modern corporation that is at the same time deeply economic in the recognition of the centrality of incentives, and deeply sociological in the recognition of the centrality of social norms and a culture of corporate morality. Professor Aoki has combined his magisterial knowledge of business organization with a foundational study of the role of culture in epistemic game theory to produce, for the first time, a truly transdisciplinary model of the corporation."
-Herbert Gintis, Santa Fe Institute
"This is a path breaking book that provides a rigorous analysis of the cognitive underpinnings of corporations. It gives fundamental insights into the diversity of organizational forms that exist and the association of these with the historical, political, social, and technological contexts within which they operate. As with so much of Professor Aoki's work, it will radically alter the way in which we view the corporation."
-Colin Mayer, Peter Moores, Dean, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
"A pioneering contribution which formalizes in game theoretic language complex institutional structure and environment of the corporation both at a moment of time and over time."
-Douglass C. North, Nobel Laureate in Economics 1993, Spencer; T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

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