Stanford University

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.

Visiting Scholar: Jonas Tallberg

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Jonas TallbergJonas Tallberg is Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. His research interests are global governance and European Union politics. He currently directs the research program “Legitimacy in Global Governance” (LegGov), funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Tallberg’s book publications include Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, co-edited), The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013, co-authored) and Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, and European Journal of International Relations. While at The Europe Center, Jonas will work on three different projects related to European and global governance:

The Choice for Europe since Maastricht: Member States’ Preferences for Economic and Fiscal Integration Funded by the European Commission, Horizon 2020, 2015-2019

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Following the outbreak of the Eurozone crisis in 2009, European policy-makers agreed to a string of reforms that together amount to a profound deepening of fiscal and monetary cooperation in Europe. These reforms resulted from a rear-guard battle against the raging crisis and arduous negotiations among EU governments. While it is far from certain that they will suffice to alleviate the Eurozone’s problems, they raise a number of intriguing questions. What considerations led EU states to advocate these particular solutions to the Eurozone crisis? What states were successful in shaping the reforms agreed upon and why? What are the implications of these reforms for the viability of the Eurozone? This project brings together researchers in eight European countries to provide the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of domestic preference formation and interstate bargaining in the reform of the Eurozone.

Legitimacy in Global Governance (LegGov) Funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2016-2021

statsvet.su.se/leggov

The purpose of this research program is to offer the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of legitimacy in global governance. To what extent are global governance institutions (GGIs) regarded as legitimate? What explains that legitimacy? By what processes are GGIs legitimated and delegitimated? What are the consequences of legitimacy (or its absence) for the functioning of GGIs? How are these legitimacy dynamics in global governance similar to or different from the dynamics of legitimacy in the nation-state and other forms of governance? While legitimacy in global governance has generated growing interest in recent years, it has not yet been researched methodically by a coordinated team of specialists. We address the overarching question of why, how, and with what consequences GGIs gain, sustain and lose legitimacy by exploring three principal themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) legitimation and delegitimation strategies, and (3) consequences of legitimacy. In the broadest sense, the program considers what systematic attention to legitimacy can tell us about world politics, and what experiences from world politics suggest for understanding legitimacy in contemporary politics generally.

The Performance of International Organizations: Institutional Design and Policy Output in Global Governance Funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2014-2018

statsvet.su.se/forskning/forskningsprojekt/pio

Many problems confronting today’s societies are transnational in character, leading states to increasingly rely on international organizations (IOs) for policy solutions. Yet the performance of IOs varies extensively. While some IOs are highly successful in developing, adopting, and enforcing policy, others are less successful. How can we account for this mixed record in IO performance? Are there identifiable factors that make IOs work better or worse? While existing research points to a multitude of factors that are beyond the control of IOs themselves, this project explores when, how, and why the institutional design of IOs shapes their performance. The project adopts a mixed-method design, combining a statistical analysis of performance in a large number of IOs with in-depth case studies of select IOs. It spans IOs in multiple policy areas and world regions over the time period 1950 to 2010. The project promises three central contributions to research and policy. First, it will offer the most systematic and comprehensive analysis so far of how institutional design shapes the performance of IOs. Second, it will generate a unique dataset on the policy output of IOs of extensive value to the research community. Third, it will be policy relevant, by providing policy-makers with evidence on the effects of design choices that can help them to systematically improve global governance.

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Our Year of Living Dangerously

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"As 2018 unfolds, the domestic and international dimensions of Trump’s crisis-ridden presidency are beginning to intersect in wildly unpredictable and potentially disastrous ways. There are signs of preparations for a U.S. military attack on North Korea by mid-year, and a new report by a leading Russian expert on North Korea indicates that the Pyongyang regime “is convinced that the U.S. is preparing to strike.” This would likely be not a full-scale military assault to terminate the North Korea’s tyrannical regime but rather a punishing “bloody nose” strike, either to send a message about American resolve to halt further testing and development of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons program or to actually destroy as much of its existing infrastructure as possible," writes Larry Diamond in The American Interest. Read here. 

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How to support Iran’s protesters

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"While it is folly to underestimate the severity of the crisis in Iran, it is no less dangerous to underestimate the regime’s capacity for brutality. There are hundreds of thousands of Revolutionary Guard and militia forces whose perks of power and privilege are tethered to the survival of the regime, and it is hard to imagine they would give up wealth and status beyond their wildest dreams without a fight." - writes Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies and CDDRL affiliated faculty on latest protest in Iran. Read the article here.

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Mini-Trumps are coming up all over Europe

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"Mr. Fukuyama warns that Europe is weak and divided, distracted by Brexit, the festering euro crisis, and the new autocrats of Eastern Europe. That includes Germany, in political paralysis and stymied by the rise of its own populist right. Those who once complained about Berlin’s hegemony may soon discover worse: a weak Germany. For all the praise heaped on Chancellor Merkel abroad, Mr. Fukuyama sees this as a serious problem. “If I had a criticism of Germany, it is that Angela Merkel has not been very tough on people like Viktor Orbán,” he said. “We need strong leadership in defense of these liberal values.” - writes Handelsblatt in their latest interview with CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama. Read the interview here. 

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Migration Policymaking in Japan: Does Citizenship Law Matter?

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Japan is commonly regarded as a country that is closed against migrants. It does not allow their entries in a large size, granting restricted rights. As an attempt to understand this tendency, this research claims that Japan’s citizenship law, jus sanguinis (by ancestry) principle, sets a fundamental frame for its migration policymaking. To test this claim, it examines how the citizenship law influences attitudes of the general public as well as those of politicians. Specifically, Japan under a strong emphasis on blood ties is more likely to impose a restrictive migration policy, because (1) the general public tends to reveal a greater distance toward migrants (societal nature); and (2) migrant groups are excluded from electorate, and thus, politicians are less inclined to impose generous policies for them (electoral nature).  In order to demonstrate these mechanisms, this research traces Japanese public attitude and political incentives, which have governed its migration policy until today.

 

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Yu Jin Woo is a Japan Program Research Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). Woo’s research interests are in the fields of international and comparative political economy, particularly migration policies and citizenship laws.  Woo holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Virginia. She received her first master’s degree in international cooperation at Seoul National University and her second master’s degree in political economy at New York University. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies at Smith College.

 

Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Seminar with Lars-Erik Cederman

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Born in Sweden in 1963, Lars-Erik Cederman received an M.Sc. in Engineering Physics from the University of Uppsala in 1988 and an M.A. in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva in 1990 before obtaining his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1994. Using computational modeling, he wrote his dissertation on how states and nations develop and dissolve. He has since taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Oxford, UCLA, and Harvard.

Lars-Erik Cederman is editor of Constructing Europe's Identity: The External Dimension (Lynne Rienner, 2001) and the author of Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve (Princeton University Press, 1997), which received the 1998 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award. He is also the author and co-author of articles in scholarly journals such as the American Political Science Review, European Journal of International Relations, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His main research interests include computational modeling, International Relations theory, nationalism, integration and disintegration processes, and historical sociology.

 

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by the Munro Lectureship Fund and The Europe Center.

Lars-Erik Cederman Professor of International Conflict Research ETH Zurich
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Seminar with James Alt

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James E. Alt is the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government. His current interests are in comparative political economy; the interaction of voters, political parties, budget and other political institutions, financial markets, and fiscal policies in industrial democracies. His recent research analyzes institutional transparency, accountability and corruption, and fiscal policy outcomes in OECD countries and US states. He is author, co-author, or editor of The Politics of Economic Decline (Cambridge University Press, 1979, reissued 2009), Political Economics (University of California Press, 1983), Cabinet Studies (Macmillan, 1975), Advances in Quantitative Methods (Elsevier, 1980), Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1990), Competition and Cooperation (Russell Sage, 1999) and Positive Changes in Political Science (Michigan, 2007). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including "Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964-1974" in the British Journal of Political Science, "Political Parties, World Demand, and Unemployment" in the American Political Science Review, "Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Deficits: Evidence from the States," in the American Political Science Review, "Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States," in the American Political Science Review, and “Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits,” in the Journal of Politics. He is the founding director of the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, now the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Studies, and other journals, and has been a member of the Political Science Panel of the National Science Foundation. He was a Guggenheim Fellow 1997-98 and a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford from 2007-2011. Alt is an International Fellow of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by the Munro Lectureship Fund and The Europe Center.

James Alt Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government speaker Harvard University
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Jonas Tallberg

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Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, 2018
Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University
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Jonas Tallberg is Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, where he directs the research group on global and regional governance, selected as a leading area of research at SU. His primary research interests are global governance and European Union politics. His most recent book is the The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013), co-authored with Thomas Sommerer, Theresa Squatrito and Christer Jönsson. Earlier books include Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Organizations, and Journal of Common Market Studies.

Tallberg has won numerous awards for his research, including the Forskraft Award for the best Swedish dissertation on international relations, the JCMS Prize for the best article in Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the German Humboldt Foundation. He has been awarded research grants from, among others, the European Research Council, Fulbright Commission, Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and Nordic Research Academy.

Tallberg has been a visiting researcher at, among other institutions, Harvard University, McGill University, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and European Commission. He currently directs the six-year research program “Legitimacy in Global Governance” (statsvet.su.se/leggov) and the four-year research project “The Performance of International Organizations” (statsvet.su.se/forskning/forskningsprojekt/pio).

Circles of Compensation: Economic Growth and the Globalization of Japan

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Japan grew explosively and consistently for more than a century, from the Meiji Restoration until the collapse of the economic bubble in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been unable to restart its economic engine and respond to globalization. How could the same political–economic system produce such strongly contrasting outcomes?

This book identifies the crucial variables as classic Japanese forms of socio-political organization: the "circles of compensation." These cooperative groupings of economic, political, and bureaucratic interests dictate corporate and individual responses to such critical issues as investment and innovation; at the micro level, they explain why individuals can be decidedly cautious on their own, yet prone to risk-taking as a collective. Kent E. Calder examines how these circles operate in seven concrete areas, from food supply to consumer electronics, and deals in special detail with the influence of Japan's changing financial system. The result is a comprehensive overview of Japan's circles of compensation as they stand today, and a road map for broadening them in the future.

 

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Kent Calder is currently Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS/Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. Before arriving at SAIS in 2003, he taught for twenty years at Princeton University, and has also been Distinguished Visiting Professor at Seoul National University, Visiting Professor at Yangon University, and Lecturer on Government at Harvard University. Calder, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1990, served as Special Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan (1997-2001), Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1989-1993 and 1996); and as the first Executive Director of Harvard University’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations (1979-1980). Calder received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1979, where he worked under the director of Edwin O. Reischauer. He is the author of ten books on East Asian political economy, energy geopolitics, Japanese politics, and US-Japan relations, including most recently Singapore: Smart City, Smart State (Brookings, 2016) Asia in Washington (Brookings, 2014), The New Continentalism (Yale, 2012); Ten of these books have been translated into Japanese. Calder was recently awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, for his contribution to Japan-US relations, and to the academic study of Japan.

 

Kent Calder Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies; and Director of Japan Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Colin H. Kahl

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

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Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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Colin Kahl is director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow. He is also the faculty director of CISAC’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and a professor of political science (by courtesy).

From April 2021-July 2023, Dr. Kahl served as the under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the secretary of defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy and represented the department as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. He oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which focused the Pentagon’s efforts on the “pacing challenge” posed by the PRC, and he led the department’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and numerous other international crises. He also led several other major defense diplomacy initiatives, including an unprecedented strengthening of the NATO alliance; the negotiation of the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; historic defense force posture enhancements in Australia, Japan, and the Philippines; and deepening defense and strategic ties with India. In June 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III awarded Dr. Kahl the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award presented by the secretary of defense.

During the Obama Administration, Dr. Kahl served as deputy assistant to President Obama and national security advisor to Vice President Biden from October 2014 to January 2017. He also served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East from February 2009 to December 2011, for which he received the Outstanding Public Service Medal in July 2011.

Dr. Kahl is the co-author (along with Thomas Wright) of Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021) and the author of States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). He has also published numerous article on U.S. national security and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a non-partisan think tank in Washington, DC.

Dr. Kahl previously taught at Georgetown University and the University of Minnesota, and he has held fellowship positions at Harvard University, the Council on Foreign Relations, CNAS, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and International Engagement.

He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

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