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.

Dr. Karen Eggleston to lead Shorenstein APARC's comparative healthcare in East asia program

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Dr. Karen Eggleston will join the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a center fellow on July 1, 2007. Dr. Eggleston will lead the center's program on comparative health care in East Asia.

Dr. Eggleston's research focuses on comparative healthcare systems and their link to broader social protection policies during economic development and transition from central planning to market-based economies; payment incentives and their impact on healthcare insurer and provider behavior; the market structure of healthcare, including competition, integration, ownership, and healthcare productivity; and incentives surrounding health behaviors such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, overuse of antibiotics, and smoking. She studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea.

Eggleston earned her Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University in 1999. She has an M.A. in economics and another in Asian studies from the University of Hawaii, Economics (August 1995 and May 1992, respectively.) She is currently an assistant professor of economics at Tufts University in Boston. Dr. Eggleston joined the faculty at Tufts in 1999.

Currently, Dr. Eggleston is a research associate at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an academic program coordinator at the Kennedy School Health Care Delivery Policy Program also at Harvard. Dr. Eggleson has been a research associate at the China Academy of Health Policy (CAHP) at Peking University, Beijing, China since 2003 and in the summer of 2004 she was a consultant to the World Bank on their project on health service delivery and the rural health sector.

"Karen will be a great addition to the center," says director of the center, Gi-Wook Shin.

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Security and Policy Issues as seen by the United States and Europe

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Dominique Struye de Swielande became ambassador of Belgium to the United States on December 29, 2006. Ambassador Struye previously served as Belgium's permanent representative to NATO (2002-06), ambassador to Germany (1997-2002), head of cabinet for the state secretary for international cooperation (1995-96), and director-general for administration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1994-95). In addition, Ambassador Struye was diplomatic counselor and deputy head of cabinet for the prime minister (1992-94), head of cabinet for the minister of foreign affairs (1991-92), director of the European Section at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1990), deputy permanent representative and consul general to the United Nations in Geneva (1987-90), as well as counselor in the cabinet of the foreign affairs minister (1984-87). He has also served postings in Zaire, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Austria.

Ambassador Struye, who joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974, holds a doctorate in law from the Catholic University of Leuven, a master's of law from the University College London, and a master's of European Law from the University of Ghent.

 

Event Synopsis:

Ambassador Struye describes the difficulty in defining common security interests between Europe, where ideas of security tend to revolve around individual welfare provided by the state, and the United States, where international terrorism is viewed as the predominant security threat especially after 9/11.

Ambassador Struye then describes three major multilateral institutions and their role in global security: the UN, NATO, and EU. He outlines how the UN has expanded in recent years, both in terms of membership and of issue areas. Belgium has been actively involved in security discussions within the UN, and has shared the disappointment of the US about the limited capacity of the UN to contribute to peace and security in the world. He then addresses NATO's recent evolution in the direction of "out of area" policy, influenced by American pressure for NATO to become a security provider outside of Europe, including as an "instrument of democratization." Finally, Ambassador Struye describes the development of political mechanisms of the European Union which are now moving toward building common foreign and security policy, which the ambassador sees as important even without a European military force.

The ambassador details several challenges, including the difficulty  of evaluating common threats, determining how global a regional organization should be in its policy and how each organization should relate to the others, and a lack of a coherent global vision for how the world should evolve. Two policy areas where Ambassador Struye sees consensus are Afghanistan and missile defense. He concludes that although security policy is hard to define across regions, multilateral organizations are essential and the transatlantic alliance remains indispensable.

A discussion session following the talk included such issues as whether Turkey should be a member of the EU given its UN and NATO membership, how the ambassador views prospects for relations between North Africa and the multilateral institutions he describes, whether sufficient development funding should be available before military interventions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and whether the EU might come to serve as a world power in its own right.

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Dominique Struye de Swielande Ambassador of Belgium to the United States Speaker
Seminars

2007 Payne Lecture: AIDS: Pandemic and Agent for Change

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Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Peter Piot comes from a distinguished academic and scientific career focusing on AIDS and women's health in the developing world.

Drawing on his skills as a scientist, manager, and activist, Dr. Piot has challenged world leaders to view AIDS in the context of social and economic development as well as security.

Under his leadership, UNAIDS has become the chief advocate of worldwide action against AIDS. It has brought together ten organizations of the United Nations system around a common agenda on AIDS, spearheading UN reform.

Dr. Piot earned a medical degree from the University of Ghent, a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium and was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating from medical school, Dr. Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976.

In the 1980s, Dr. Piot launched and expanded a series of collaborative projects in Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zaire. Projet SIDA (Project AIDS) in Kinshasa, Zaire, was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of our understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and the Universities of Nairobi, Brussels, and Lausanne.

In 1992, Dr. Piot joined the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organization, in Geneva, as Associate Director.

Born in 1949 in Belgium, Dr. Piot is fluent in three languages and is the author of 16 books and more than 500 scientific articles. He has received numerous awards for scientific and societal achievement, and was made a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium in 1995. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, UK.

For more information about Dr. Piot, read "The Life of a Virus Hunter" from Newsweek's special edition of May 15, 2006, AIDS at 25.

Kresge Auditorium

Dr. Peter Piot Executive Director, UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General, United Nations Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

Ukraine and the European Union: Current Prospects and Concerns for Ukraine Membership in the European Union

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Steven Pifer is a Senior Adviser with the Center for Strategic & International Studies. A retired Foreign Service Officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, with responsibility for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997). He also served at the U.S. Embassies in Warsaw, Moscow, and London, and is advisor on the U.S. delegation to the negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva.

Richard L. Morningstar served as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, appointed under President Bill Clinton in April 1999. His diplomatic career has included service as Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy (1998), and special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Assistance to the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union (1995-1998). Presently, he is teaching both at the Kennedy School at Harvard and the Stanford Law School. In addition, he is the senior director at Stonebridge International LLC, a global business strategy firm, and is senior council at the law firm of Nixon Peabody.

CISAC Conference Room

Steven Pifer Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Speaker
Richard L. Morningstar Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Speaker
Seminars

The Missing Link: State-building and the Rule of Law in Afghanistan

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J. Alexander Thier is Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace. Prior to joining USIP, Thier was Scholar-in-Residence at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2004, Thier was legal advisor to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. Thier has also worked as a UN and NGO official in Afghanistan from 1993-1996, as well as in Iraq, Pakistan, and Rwanda. He has written extensively about Afghanistan and is a contributing author of the newly released "Twenty-First Century Peace Operations," edited by William Durch, and was lead project advisor on the PBS documentary, "Afghanistan: Hell of a Nation."

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

J Alexander Thier Senior Rule of Law Advisor and Co-Director Speaker International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL)
Seminars

From the Fall of the Wall to September 11: The Struggle to Define a New Direction in American Foreign Policy in the 1990s

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About the Event:

President George W. Bush has called the decade before September 11 the "years of sabbatical." The popular misconception that America was too distracted to focus on foreign policy obscures the significant debates both inside and outside government to define a new purpose for the world's lone superpower. The end of the Cold War had a profound impact on the Democratic and Republican parties, and a reexamination of the efforts across the political spectrum to articulate a new grand strategy after containment is instructive for understanding how American elites think about issues like democracy promotion, the role of international institutions, and the use of force.

About the Speaker

James Goldgeier is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. In 2005-06, he held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. He taught previously at Cornell University, and he has been a visiting scholar at Brookings and Stanford. In 1995-96, he was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow serving at the State Department and National Security Council Staff. His most recent book, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War, co-authored with Michael McFaul, received the 2004 Georgetown University Lepgold book prize in international relations. He is also the author of Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Brookings, 1999) and Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 1994), which received the Edgar Furniss book award in national and international security. He graduated magna cum laude in government from Harvard University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley. He is currently co-authoring a book for Public Affairs on American foreign policy from 1989 to 2001.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

James Goldgeier Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Speaker George Washington University
Seminars

Book Discussion: A Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History

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Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Weingast will present their new book A Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History.

Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This book develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.

About the speakers:

Douglas C. North received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1993 "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change". Douglas C. North was installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in Saint Louis in October 1996 and is the Hoover Institution's Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in July 1996. He is the author of more than fifty articles and ten books. His current research activities include research on property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, a theory of the state, the free rider problem, ideology, growth of government, economic and social change, and a theory of institutional change.

North received his B.A. in 1942 and his Ph.D. in 1952 from the University of California at Berkeley.

John J. Wallis is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, where he has taught since 1983. His field of specialization is economic history, and his major areas of interest are state and local government finances, the New Deal, the 1830s, and explaining institutional change. His current research focuses on understanding early American government and the critical decade of the 1830s. Wallis has authored dozens of academic journal articles and book chapters.

Wallis received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington in 1981.

Barry R. Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; where he served as department chair from 1996 to 2001. He is also a professor of economics, by courtesy, at the university and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy. Weingast is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He co-authored Analytic Narratives (1998, Princeton) and has numerous academic publications.

Weingast received his Ph.D. in economics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978.

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Philippines Conference Room

Douglas C. North Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences Speaker Washington University in Saint Louis
John J. Wallis Professor of Economics Speaker the University of Maryland
Barry R. Weingast Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science Speaker Stanford University
Conferences

Global Scale Climate-Crop Yield Relationships and the Impacts of Recent Warming

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Changes in the global production of major crops are important drivers of food prices, food security and land use decisions. Average global yields for these commodities are determined by the performance of crops in millions of fields distributed across a range of management, soil and climate regimes. Despite the complexity of global food supply, here we show that simple measures of growing season temperatures and precipitation--spatial averages based on the locations of each crop--explain about 30% or more of year-to-year variations in global average yields for the world's six most widely grown crops. For wheat, maize, and barley, there is a clearly negative response of global yields to increased temperatures. Based on these sensitivities and observed climate trends, we estimate that warming since 1981 has resulted in annual combined losses of these three crops representing roughly 40 MT or $5 billion per year, as of 2002. While these impacts are small relative to the technological yield gains over the same period, the results demonstrate already occurring negative impacts of climate trends on crop yields at the global scale.

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Environmental Research Letters
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David Lobell
Christopher B. Field
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Switzerland in the United Nations: A Five-Year Report Card

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Peter Maurer is Switzerland's first Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, assuming the position in September 2004, when Switzerland became the body's 190th member. He was a leader of the ultimately successful effort to establish the Human Rights Council in early 2006.

Maurer studied history, political science and international law at universities in Berne and Perugia, obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Berne in 1983. After lecturing at the university's Institute for Contemporary History, he joined Switzerland diplomatic service in 1987. He was immediately posted to Switzerland's embassy in South Africa. There he witnessed the violent last throes of the Botha regime, and the first steps towards reforming and ultimately eliminating apartheid.

Maurer returned to Switzerland and became Secretary to the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1996 he was posted to New York where he served as Deputy Permanent Observer of the Swiss Mission to the UN. In May 2000 he assumed the rank of Ambassador and returned to Berne to become head of Political Affairs Division IV (Human Security). In that capacity, Maurer managed Switzerland's increasingly robust and innovative human rights diplomacy, launching, among other initiatives, the Berne process, a grouping of countries engaged in human rights dialogues with China.

Ambassador Maurer will talk about the UN Human Rights Council, of which Switzerland was in the forefront of creating. He will address questions related to Europe: how European human rights and security issues are being treated within the UN, and will attempt to answer the question of why the Swiss people have embraced the UN but have been reluctant to join the European Union.

Sponsored by Forum on Contemporary Europe and Stanford Law School.

 

Event Synopsis:

Ambassador Maurer describes Switzerland's decision to join the United Nations and outlines the achievements it has made in the 5 years since gaining membership. These achievements encompass a broad human security agenda and include developing mine detection technology, combatting small arms dealing, improving natural disaster preparedness, and promoting accountability for crimes against humanity and for the actions of UN peacekeeping troops. Switzerland was a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court and has pushed for improvements to the UN's mediation processes. It has also shaped discussion about the reform of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Ambassador Maurer then offers prospects for issues such as engagement with North Korea, trans-regional alliances on issues of human rights, and the future of the Human Rights Council. He also describes recent cooperation with China and Russia on the topic of human rights. Moving forward, Ambassador Maurer believes Switzerland's best option for making its voice heard on the international stage will be to expand existing partnerships with European universities and to mobilize applied scientific research to help solve the world's most pressing issues.

A discussion session following the talk raised such issues as: What is Switzerland's approach to the areas of the world, for example those under Sharia law, where international human rights are not a common value? How will the western and non-western parts of the world bridge their very different approaches to human rights? Can cultural influence be more effective than formal multilateral institutions like the UN on certain issues? Should existing organizations like the ICRC deal with refugees from environmental degradation (like rising sea levels)? Is there conflict between different international organizations who deal with the same agenda items, such as between the EU and UN?

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Peter Maurer Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations Speaker
Seminars

The International Initiative First Annual Symposium: Technology & Culture

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The Symposium on Technology and Culture is open to the entire Stanford community, but is designed primarily for Stanford faculty to share their work with other faculty as a means of promoting collaborative interdisciplinary work on various aspects of the symposium's theme. "Technology" and "culture" are two of six global challenges and cross-cutting drivers that are the focus of the Stanford International Initiative.

8:00 - 8:30 AM Continental breakfast

8:30 - 10:00 AM Panel 1: Impact of Technology on Gender

10:15 - 11:45 AM Panel 2: Culture, Technological Change, and Development

11:45 - 12:30 PM Lunch (RSVP strongly suggested)

12:30 - 1:15 PM Keynote: David Kennedy

Does the United States Have a Mercenary Army?

How Technology Has Made it Too Easy to Go to War

1:30 - 2:45 PM Panel 3: Technology, Culture, and National Security

3:00 - 4:30 PM Panel 4: Health Technology Adoption

Impact of Technology on Gender

Richard Saller, Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, moderator

Denise Johnson, Associate Professor of Surgery

Clifford Nass, Professor of Communication

Christine Min Wotipka, Assistant Professor of Education

Culture, Technological Change, and Development

Jeremy Weinstein, Assistant Professor of Political Science, moderator

Avner Greif, The Bowman Family Endowed Professor in Humanities and Sciences

Jessica Riskin, Associate Professor of History

Romain Wacziarg, Associate Professor of Economics, GSB

Technology, Culture, and National Security

Scott Sagan, Professor of Political Science, moderator

David Kennedy, The Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History

Rebecca Slayton, Lecturer in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society

Health Technology Adoption

Grant Miller, Assistant Professor of Medicine, moderator

Lynn Hildemann, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Science

David Katzenstein, Professor (Research) of Medicine (Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine)

Aprajit Mahajan, Assistant Professor of Economics

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