Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

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EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series


RSVP required by March 6, 2019

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

Oral Democracy studies citizens' voices in civic and political deliberations in India's gram sabhas (village assemblies), the largest deliberative institution in human history. The book analyses nearly three hundred transcripts of gram sabhas, sampled within the framework of a natural experiment, allowing the authors to study how state policy affects the quality of discourse, citizens' discursive performances and state enactments embodied by elected leaders and public officials. By drawing out the varieties of speech apparent in citizen and state interactions, the authors’ analysis shows that citizens' oral participation in development and governance can be improved by strengthening deliberative spaces through policy. Even in conditions of high inequality and illiteracy, gram sabhas can create discursive equality by developing the “oral competence” of citizens and establishing a space in which they can articulate their interests. The authors develop the concept of 'oral democracy' to aid the understanding of deliberative systems in non-Western and developing countries. 

Vijayendra (Biju) Rao, a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank, works at the intersection of scholarship and practice.  He integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from anthropology, sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries. He leads the Social Observatory, an inter-disciplinary lab to improve the conversation between citizens and governments.  His research, published in leading journals in Economics, Political Science and Development Studies has spanned a variety of subjects including dowries in India, domestic violence, the economics of sex work, public celebrations, community development, and deliberative democracy.   He and Ghazala Mansuri co-authored  Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? He is speaking about his latest book (with Paromita Sanyal), Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Rural India (Cambridge University Press, 2019).  It be downloaded for free from here. He was a co-author of the 2006 World Development Report on Equity and Development, and has co-edited Culture and Public ActionHistory, Historians and Development Policy, and, Deliberation and Development.  He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is a  member of the Successful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
 

Vijayendra (Biju) Rao World Bank
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Open to Stanford faculty, students, staff and visting scholars.

This conference aims to examine the international aspects of the rise of populism across the globe: the role of international alliances, disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and the use of hacking, international institutions, and ideology as ways of building the new "illiberal international."

For more information, please visit the Conference Website.
RSVP required by email to sj1874@stanford.edu.  Please specify which date(s) you plan to attend.

Conference Poster
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Conference Program
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Seawell Family Boardroom
Bass Center
Knight Management Center (Graduate School of Business)

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA  94305

 

(650) 723-4270
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

Director of The Europe Center
Anna Grzymala-Busse

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

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Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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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)

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Conferences
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Brent Christensen is the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Taipei office. Mr. Christensen has been in the United States Foreign Service for more than 29 years and has extensive experience in senior positions related to Taiwan and China.  Mr. Christensen previously served as Deputy Director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Taipei office.  Prior to that, he was Director of the State Department’s Office of Taiwan Coordination, where he had a primary role in formulating U.S. policy toward Taiwan.  He has served three assignments at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the most recent being Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor.

Mr. Christensen has also served as a Senior Level Career Development Advisor in the State Department’s Human Resources Bureau.  Prior to that assignment, he served as the Foreign Policy Advisor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS).  Other overseas postings include Hong Kong and South Africa.  Mr. Christensen also served as a Congressional Fellow on the staff of Senator Olympia Snowe.  Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he was a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

Mr. Christensen is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and holds the personal rank of Minister-Counselor.  Mr. Christensen earned an M.A. in East Asian Studies from the George Washington University, a B.A. in Chinese language and literature from Brigham Young University, and a Doctor of Medical Dentistry degree from the Oregon Health and Sciences University.  Mr. Christensen is married to Brenda Barrus Christensen and has three children.  He is a native of Provo, Utah.

Oksenberg Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
Brent Christensen Director, American Institute in Taiwan
Seminars
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We are sorry that the registration is now closed. It has reached the limit of the room capacity.

A conversation about Taiwan’s economic future, moderated by Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

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Eric Chu was the first Mayor of the newly-created Special Municipality of New Taipei, a position he held from 2010-2018. He has also served in several other elected offices and government posts in Taiwan during his career, including as a member of the Legislative Yuan (1999-2001), Magistrate of Taoyuan County (2001-2009), and Vice Premier of the Republic of China (2009-2010). In 2015, he became the chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), and he was the party’s nominee in the January 2016 presidential election.

Dr. Chu holds a bachelor’s degree in management from National Taiwan University, and a master’s degree in finance and a Ph.D. in accounting from New York University. He taught as an assistant professor at City University of New York before returning to Taiwan and joining the faculty of National Taiwan University, where he was promoted with tenure in 1997.

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
Mayor Eric Chu
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Abstract: Many scholars and policymakers argue that drone proliferation will be destabilizing. By removing pilots from harm’s way, drones allow states to launch military operations without the political risks of sending troops into battle. Although these reduced risks may increase the likelihood of conflict onset, technology that removes warfighters from the battlefield may actually help states avoid escalatory spirals. To identify the effect of drones on escalation dynamics, I develop a theory of technology-enabled escalation control: when used as a substitute for manned assets, drones increase the frequency of conflict between actors, but limit the intensity of these disputes by decreasing pressures for retaliation. This restrained retaliation prevents crises from spiraling into more destabilizing conflicts. To test this argument, I develop a novel methodological approach – embedding experimental manipulations into wargames played by military personnel. The wargames demonstrate that drones can limit escalation and showcase wargaming as a tool for international relations research. 

 

Speaker Bio: Erik Lin-Greenberg is a Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC and a PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University. His dissertation assesses the effects of emerging technology on military escalation. In other work, Erik examines alliance dynamics, the interaction of technology and international law, and the determinants of military force structure. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of outlets including Security Studies, International Peacekeeping, War on the Rocks, and The Washington Post. Erik previously served as an active duty U.S. Air Force officer, and he continues to serve as a reservist assigned to the Joint Staff.

 

Erik Lin-Greenberg Predoctoral Fellow CISAC
Seminars
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Abstract

In How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat, Farah Pandith, the former first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities argues that the solutions to the crisis of recruitment and radicalization are available and affordable. A pioneer in the war of ideas, her unprecedented experiences for Bush and Obama reveal information about Washington’s soft power challenge. She calls out the false claim that “ISIS is defeated” and focuses on the importance of defeating the ideology. The need is urgent as terrorist organizations continue to beat the current approach to this global threat. To win, she argues, we must go “all in” in order to extinguish this threat once and for all. She lays out a comprehensive strategy that is a call to action for policymakers, tech entrepreneurs, the media, business professionals, and anyone interested in fighting hate, and presents concrete solutions and recommendations for how we can stem the extremists’ toxic message. Drawing upon her experiences at the National Security Council, U.S. Department of State, and USAID, she makes the case that we have the resources right now to defeat the extremist threat. http://farahpandith.com/book/

 

Bio

FARAH PANDITH is an author, foreign policy strategist, and former diplomat. A world-leading expert and pioneer in countering violent extremism, she is a frequent media commentator and public speaker. She served as a political appointee under Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and most recently she was the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities.  She has served on the National Security Council, at the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in various senior roles. She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School as well as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her book is How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders and Social Medial Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat.

 

Farah Pandith
Seminars
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Please join Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) on Tuesday, February 19, 2019 for a conversation with Larry Summers on US-China relations.  Summers will be joined in coversation with Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL. 
 

Speaker Bio

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Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He directs the University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Summers was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan Waterman Award for scientific achievement and, in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most outstanding economist under 40 in the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He has published more than 150 papers in scholarly journals.
 
 
 
 
 
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research 366 Galvez Street Stanford, CA 94305
Lawrence H. Summers Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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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)

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Lectures
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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

The Heisei era started in 1989, with high hopes for Japan to contribute to the international order. As the Heisei era draws to an end, Japan is once again expected to “step up” with increased urgency, given the current US administration’s withdrawal from, and challenge to the international order.  In this talk, I will first look back at the thirty years of Heisei, and discuss why Japan did not take the “internationalist” path in a way that some had expected. Looking forward, I discuss how the domestic institutional changes, together with the geopolitical challenges in Asia, have prompted Japan to seek active leadership in the region and beyond. I will elaborate on the evolution of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Vision,” with focus on how exactly Japan seeks to achieve “free and open” in the region, and challenges and limitations going forward.

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Takako Hikotani is Gerald L. Curtis Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy. She previously taught at the National Defense Academy of Japan, where she was Associate Professor, and lectured at the Ground Self Defense Force and Air Self Defense Force Staff Colleges, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. Her research focus on civil-military relations and Japanese domestic politics, Japanese foreign policy, and comparative civil-military relations. Her publications (in English) include, “The Japanese Diet and defense policy-making.” International Affairs, 94:1, July, 2018; “Trump’s Gift to Japan: Time for Tokyo to Invest in the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2017; and “Japan’s New Executive Leadership: How Electoral Rules "Japan’s New Executive Leadership: How Electoral Rules Make Japanese Security Policy" (with Margarita Estevez-Abe and Toshio Nagahisa), in Frances Rosenbluth and Masaru Kohno eds, Japan in the World (Yale University Press, 2009). She was a Visiting Professional Specialist at Princeton University as Social Science Research Council/Abe Fellow (2010-2011) and Fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, US-Japan Foundation (2000- ). Professor Hikotani received her BA from Keio University, MAs from Keio University and Stanford University, and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, where she was a President’s Fellow.

Takako Hikotani Associate Professor, Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy, Columbia University
Seminars
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CDDRL Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-21
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My research centers on topics in comparative politics and the political economy of development. I focus on the micro-foundations of political behavior to gain leverage on macro-political questions. How do autocrats survive? How can citizen-state relations be improved and government accountability strengthened? Can shared identities mitigate out-group animosity? Adopting a multi-method approach, I use lab-in-the-field and online experiments, surveys, and in-depth field research to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa and the US. My current book project reexamines the role of elections in authoritarian endurance and explains why citizens vote in elections with foregone conclusions in Tanzania and Uganda. Moving beyond conventional paradigms, my theory describes how a social norm of voting and accompanying social sanctions from peers contribute to high turnout in semi-authoritarian elections. In other ongoing projects, I study how national and pan-African identification stimulated through national sports games influence attitudes toward refugees, the relationship between identity, emotions, and belief in fake news, and how researchers can use Facebook as a tool for social science research.

To listen to the audio recording of this talk, please visit our multimedia page.

 
Brexit, the migrant crisis, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the eurozone’s calamities have called into question the EU’s very existence. Thinking about the EU in comparative historical terms, however, shows that such challenges are nothing new when governing power is centralized. Examining the role of war, markets, and culture in the rise of nation-states provides a useful, and surprising, analysis for teasing out the key factors that might determine the EU's future.
 
 

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Kathleen R. McNamara
Kathleen R. McNamara is Professor of Government and Vice Dean of Faculty & Graduate Affairs in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  Her work focuses on markets, culture, and politics in the European Union and the United States, and her books include The Politics of Everyday Europe: Constructing Authority in the European Union, and The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. McNamara has served as Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown, and taught at Princeton University and Sciences Po (Paris).  She has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and is the International Studies Association’s 2018 Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy. Her public engagement includes work with the National Intelligence Council, writing for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, appearances on a variety of media outlets, and on Twitter @ProfKMcNamara. McNamara received her PhD from Columbia University and her BA from McGill University. 

 
Kathleen R. McNamara Georgetown University
Lectures
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