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.
"The robots aren't going to take over, or even destroy jobs," says CDDRL's Jerry Kaplan. Read the article here.
The most dangerous impact of North Korea’s long-range missile test this past week may not have been the one in the Sea of Japan, felt in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. It was in Moscow where Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin locked arms in a united front on how to respond to the growing North Korea crisis. The target of this front was not, however, North Korea. It was the United States, who the Sino-Russian axis accused of pursuing a military “buildup” in the region.
In the days leading up to the Washington summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump, the tension in Seoul was hard to escape. Fears of an open clash between the two leaders, of a handshake that went on too long, or of a hostile early morning tweet directed at Moon were widespread. But when a senior national security advisor to Moon met a group of American visitors after the first day of talks, he was visibly relieved. The dinner between Moon and U.S. President Donald Trump went so well, he recounted with a slight smile, that it was extended 35 minutes.
This module addresses the challenges faced by public sector leaders as they foster economic growth in politically charged environments. Offered in partnership with the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, it uses case studies on how public policy can help the private sector be a constructive force for economic growth and development. A driving principle of the LAD module is that policy reform is not like engineering or other technical fields that have discrete skills and clear, optimal solutions. Instead, successful reformers must be politically aware and weigh a broad range of factors that influence policy outcomes. They must have a solid grasp of country-specific economic, financial, political and cultural realities. Most importantly, they must have a sense of how to set priorities, sequence actions and build coalitions. LAD provides participants with an analytical framework to build these leadership abilities and operate effectively under adverse conditions.
University of Sarajevo
Faculty of Political Science
Rising powers often seek to reshape the world order, triggering confrontations with those who seek to defend the status quo. In recent years, as international institutions have grown in prevalence and influence, they have increasingly become central arenas for international contestation. Phillip Y. Lipscy examines how international institutions evolve as countries seek to renegotiate the international order. He offers a new theory of institutional change and explains why some institutions change flexibly while others successfully resist or fall to the wayside. The book uses a wealth of empirical evidence - quantitative and qualitative - to evaluate the theory from international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union, League of Nations, United Nations, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The book will be of particular interest to scholars interested in the historical and contemporary diplomacy of the United States, Japan, and China.
The CISAC Fellowship Program is training and educating the next generation of thought leaders and policy makers in international security.
Our fellows spend the academic year engaged in research and writing, and participate in seminars and collaborate with faculty and researchers. Every summer, many complete their fellowships and move on to new career endeavors. For the 2016-17 academic year, CISAC hosted 21 fellows (the center has 399 former fellows).
Some of our fellows, in their own words, explain what they will be doing next:
Having spent two years as a nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, I return to my home institution, the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany. As a historian of late modern history, I do so in great gratitude for an excellent and abundantly rich scholarly experience at Stanford. Once I am back in Germany, I will publish my first book early next year, the manuscript of which I finalized at CISAC. I will also proceed to publish the manuscript of my second book, which I wrote entirely at Stanford. And I will move towards the pursuit of the so-called “habilitation,” which is required (in Germany) to qualify for a position as a full professor in my home country.
It is not easy to put into a few words how much my CISAC experience has helped me with making progress at a crucial juncture of my career. CISAC fellowships offered me a transformative opportunity to make my research more rigorous, to think more creatively and more carefully, to appreciate interdisciplinary approaches in addressing complex problems, to improve my teaching abilities, and to establish relationships with leading scholars and specialists, which I hope will be long-lasting ties to communities at CISAC, Stanford, and the U.S.
I have a tenured position at my institute in Hungary so I will move home in August and get back to teaching and research.
My CISAC experience was amazing, from the beginning I felt that I was part of a community here. I got much useful feedback on my research, and I really feel that my work improved in quality and I became a better researcher. I learned a lot about how to present my ideas so that it would be relevant for policy makers, and my fellowship opened new doors for me. I am grateful for this opportunity, and I am certain that I will continue to be an active member of the CISAC community wherever I go.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, I will remain at CISAC. As a social sciences postdoctoral fellow, I will study how international actors and third parties utilize diplomacy to manage and resolve interstate conflicts. This builds upon my broader research agenda, which uses new quantitative data and statistical methods to analyze the strategic logic of negotiations during war.
Given that I came from a predominantly social science background, my year at CISAC was invaluable in helping me to understand the policymaking world and how my research could more effectively communicate the technicalities of my research to a broader informed yet general audience. I also learned about what kinds of pressing questions concern policymakers, which I will use to shape my future work. I look forward to meeting another group of diverse and knowledgeable individuals next year.
This fall, I will return to my regular life at Boston College, where I am an associate professor of political science and international studies. In the upcoming academic year, I will continue to work on the research I worked on at CISAC on new weapons and the laws and norms of war and the nuclear weapons portion of my project in particular. I will also teach two sections of the Introduction to International Studies for BC undergraduates and the Field Seminar in International Politics for BC graduate students. In the fall, I also look forward to being affiliated with the Security Studies Program at MIT.
CISAC has been a tremendous source of academic support for my research. Not only has it given me time and resources to do research and write, but it has also introduced me to new colleagues, who have generously provided insights and expertise that have improved that research. It also made it possible for me to attend events like a conference on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War at the Air Force Academy in April 2017, the Military Immersion Map Exercise at RAND in May 2017, and the UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons in June 2017.
These experiences, as well as all of the opportunities to attend events and meet people at CISAC itself, will continue to shape how I think about my research and teaching and have helped me build new professional networks for the long term.
In the next academic year, I will be a postdoc in Stanford’s Department of Geological Sciences. There, I will continue my work on the role of geologic disposal (burial) of weapons plutonium in the global arms control and disarmament regimes. I will also conduct scientific research on the manner in which nuclear materials change in response to their environments. For example, I am currently starting a project in which I attempt to determine the conditions in which uranium-bearing materials have been stored by studying the oxidation and hydration of their surfaces. This could help to determine the provenance of smuggled uranium that has been interdicted by law enforcement or security authorities.
My fellowship at CISAC has allowed me to translate my scientific skills to the policy realm, and to greatly expand the impact of my work. I have long been interested in science policy, but lacked the resources, connections, and experience necessary to effectively analyze critical issues and to communicate the results to both scholarly and governmental audiences. Through interactions with CISAC’s resident policy experts, I learned about the role that technical analysis can play in the policymaking process.
While my transition to policy-relevant work is ongoing, my efforts have already yielded some impact on international policy, with an Australian Royal Commission report citing my work on quantifying the long-term risks associated with the burial of nuclear materials. I expect that the valuable experience and mentorship I received over the course of my CISAC fellowship will continue to inform and enhance my work at the interface of nuclear science and policy.
I will become the Jill Hopper Memorial Fellow at Georgetown University and will be teaching a course, the History and Politics of Nuclear Proliferation, in spring 2018. From August this year, I will be a visiting scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University. CISAC provided me with amazing resources. I loved my intellectually stimulating meetings with my mentor Scott Sagan and other amazing scholars who opened their office doors to me. CISAC is an ‘intellectual candy store.’ I am grateful to everyone there for creating such a special environment.
Starting July 1, I will be a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where I will keep working on my research about technology and international security.
The CISAC experience helped my career in three main ways. First, CISAC is a fantastic academic environment where young researchers can deal with leading scholars in a plurality of fields: the constant interactions between different views and expertise represent a unique source of intellectual growth that has helped me develop new ideas and identify new questions in my field.
Second, CISAC's activities and professional growth initiatives help fellows gain the skills and acquire the knowledge to succeed not only as an academic but also, more broadly, as public intellectual. CISAC has helped me improve my understanding of policy dynamics as well as my capacity to present to non-experts the findings of my research. Third, CISAC's "be-good" motto combined with its strong mentorship provides fellows with a perfect working environment.
This fall, I will be starting my position as a systems research analyst at Sandia National Lab. For my research here at CISAC, I have taken a broad, holistic look at the proliferation impact of the thorium fuel cycle. Therefore, CISAC has given me valuable experience in thinking through difficult problems using a systematic, top-down approach, which is a skill that I will take with me to my next position.
Accepting a postdoctoral fellowship with CISAC was an unconventional career move for me, personally. I got my doctorate in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2016. Most of my peers in the chemistry department went on to conduct postdoctoral research at another university, a national lab, or in industry. A few made the leap into science policy fellowships in Washington, D.C. For me, CISAC provided a happy compromise between these two options. It allowed me the freedom to continue conducting technical research (albeit outside the chemistry lab), while still exploring the policy implications of my research.
My experience at CISAC helped my career progression in two ways. First, through targeted workshops, reading groups, and less formal daily interactions, CISAC provided me with the opportunity to view my research and interests from a different lens, that of the policymaker. It was interesting to see my fellow fellows, of all academic backgrounds, struggling with how to translate the finer points of their academic research into policy-relevant media. I learned a lot from their experiences and challenges. The second way that CISAC has helped my career progression was through exposure to others who have done this transition successfully. This was achieved through fantastic seminar series, as well as through daily interaction with faculty and fellows here at CISAC. Speaking with people who have worked at high levels in Washington, D.C. made me realize that I would prefer to continue doing policy-relevant academic and technical research in nuclear science, rather than to transition to policy completely.
Fellowship information
Current fellowship opportunities at CISAC include:
• Social Sciences or Humanities International Security Fellowship
• Natural Sciences or Engineering International Security Fellowship
• Cybersecurity and International Security Fellowship
• Law and International Security Fellowship
• William J. Perry Fellowship in International Security
For more information about CISAC fellowships, email cisacfellowship@stanford.edu.
Fewer girls in low-and-middle-income countries finish secondary school, resulting in poorer health and economic outcomes for their own children — and perpetuating the vicious cycle of gender inequality worldwide.
According to The World Bank, in Sub-Saharan and South Asia, boys are 1.5 times more likely to complete secondary education than girls. Many are forced to stay at home and help their mothers with housework and childcare, particularly if a younger sibling is sick.
Yet the potential gains from increased participation of women in the global workforce over the next decade are estimated at $12 trillion. Studies show that women’s equal participation in the workforce could boost some countries’ GDP by up to 20 percent.
Stanford Health Policy’s Marcella Alsan, a physician and economist, argues in a new study in the journal Pediatrics, that identifying contributors to education disparities and making investments in early childhood health could significantly advance global health and development.
“There are so many advantages to girls staying in school,” Alsan, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford Medicine, said in an interview. “For one thing, the longer they’re in school, the less likely they are to become young mothers or contract HIV. And the more educated the mother, their own children have better chances of survival.”
So what are some of the biggest barriers to girls completing secondary school in less developed countries?
Alsan and her co-authors found the gender gap is compounded by illness among young children in the household since adolescent girls are often tasked with childcare and domestic chores. The problem is exacerbated if the mother works outside the household.
Follow the Numbers
Along with SHP research data analyst Anlu Xing, Alsan and her team used Demographic and Health Surveys on 41,821 households in 38 low-and-middle-income countries. The surveys asked about illnesses in children under 5 in the last two weeks, and then asked the adolescent boys and girls if they had been in school in the same period.
As expected, more girls remained at home than boys. When no young children in the household are ill, adolescent girls are on average 6 percent less likely to attend school than adolescent boys within the same household.
But the gap increases to 7.8 percent if the household reports one illness episode among an under-5 child, and up to 8.5 percent if there are two or more episodes of illness.
In other words, the authors write, “The gender gap in adolescent school attendance increased by around 50 percent when young children in the household became ill.”
The education gap between adolescent boys and girls jumps to 10.06 percent if the younger child has two or more episodes of illness — and the mother is working outside the home or in the fields.
“Policies that strengthen family and community supports for challenges such as sick child care will prove essential,” the authors write, “particularly as women move increasingly into the workforce outside the home.”
Alsan’s co-authors are Eran Bendavid, assistant professor of medicine and core faculty member at Stanford Health Policy; Gary Darmstadt, a professor of pediatrics and associate dean for maternal and child health at Stanford Medicine; and Paul Wise, another core faculty member at SHP and professor of pediatrics.
Vaccines Also Key
Alsan and her team also examined data on the gender gap in adolescent education in association with national vaccine rates, using the same country-year surveys.
They found that in countries where about 70 percent of all the boys and girls had the same series of eight vaccines — including polio, diphtheria, tetanus and measles — the gender gap in education approaches zero.
“We hypothesize that countries with high rates of childhood vaccination will experience lower rates of young child illness, thereby decreasing the need for adolescent girls’ to devote time to caring for sick children,” the authors write.
Given the long-term benefits of secondary school for women’s health and economic outcomes, the authors believe their study underscores the societal benefits of keeping girls in school. A combination of vaccines and early childhood interventions to keep toddlers healthy and their older sisters in school are paramount.
“The international community agrees that educating girls through secondary school has plenty of societal benefits — we show that health interventions targeting young kids are an important way to do just that,” says Alsan. “Not only the targeted little kids benefit but also their older sisters — a double dividend.”
