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.

Nicola Sturgeon: "Scotland's Place in the World"

This event has reached full capacity and we are no longer able to accept RSVPs.

We will be livestreaming this talk on April 4th at https://livestream.com/accounts/1973198/events/7109075  beginning at 12:00pm.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will discuss key international issues affecting Scottish, UK and international politics.  She will touch on a range of areas including Brexit, climate change, refugees and Syria and the relationship between the US and Scotland. This will be followed by a Q&A.

Image of Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland


Nicola Sturgeon: Voted into the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Nicola Sturgeon became the First Minister of Scotland in 2014 – the first female to hold the position. She led her party to success in the Westminster and Holyrood elections, with the SNP becoming the first party in Scotland to secure a third term in government. Following the Brexit vote in the UK, the First Minister has been a leading voice arguing for a continuing relationship between Scotland and the EU and an open and welcoming approach to immigration. She was ranked as the 50th most powerful woman in the world in 2016 and 2nd in the United Kingdom by Forbes magazine.
 
 
Nicola Sturgeon First Minister of Scotland
Lectures

Alexander Stubb: "Life after Trump and Brexit: Will Europe be able to take the lead?"

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If you thought that world politics is boring, think again. 2016 was potentially as important as 1945 and 1989. The end of WWII marked the beginning of our current global institutions and a bipolar world. The end of the Cold War kicked off an unprecedented era of liberal democracy, social market economics, and globalization. Last year arguably marked an end of that era, as demonstrated by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Was Brexit and the election of Donald Trump the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Come and find out. As a former Prime, Finance, and Foreign Minister of Finland, Alex will give you a practical answer with a theoretical twist and a blend of humour.

 

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Alexander Stubb has served as Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade and Europe Minister of Finland. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004-2008 and in the national government from 2008-16. He was the Chairman of the National Coalition Party from 2014-16 and is currently a Member of the Finnish Parliament.

Stubb's background is in academia and civil service. He has published 16 books, tens of academic articles and hundreds of columns. He holds a Ph.D. From the London School of Economics and Political Science, a Master's degree from the College of Europe in Bruges, and a B.A. from Furman University in South Carolina. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked as an expert adviser at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki and in Brussels, and in President Romano Prodi's team at the European Commission. He has been a visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges.

His expertise includes European and International Affairs, Foreign and Security Policy, the Euro and the Global Economy. His current interests are Brexit, global affairs, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (digitalisation, robotisation and artificial intelligence) and health and exercise science. Stubb is a sought after speaker and a frequent commentator on international affairs for many global news channels. He writes a regular column for the Financial Times and Dagens Industri, the Swedish business journal.

Stubb speaks Finnish, Swedish, English, French and German. He is an avid sportsman, having played ice-hockey, handball, and national team golf in his youth. His current passions are cycling and triathlon. He participated in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii in October 2016.

Alexander Stubb Speaker former Prime Minister of Finland and current member of the Finnish Parliament
Lectures
European Governance Seminar Series
European Governance

Why Do the Japanese Work Long Hours?

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Reducing long working hours has been a high priority in the agenda to improve work conditions in Japan.  Towards this aim, the government has introduced legislation and policy measures, and corporations have modified their human resource policies to help employees strike better work-life balance.  Yet, working hours in Japan have remained virtually unchanged since the 1990s.  In this talk, I argue that the true causes of long working hours lie not in the “observable” barriers such as compensation schemes, public policy and law, but rather are embedded in “unobservable” or “unmeasurable” attributes such as social norms and work conventions.  Understanding this problem better requires an approach that accounts for both economic principles (which focus on monetary rewards and incentives) and sociological perspectives which pay closer attention to the social-institutional context.  I argue that long working hours in Japan stem from the institutional complementarities of the Japanese employment system and the cultural particularities underlying it.  I discuss the role of the input-driven society, work conventions that rely on signaling, internal labor market structure, group consciousness and hierarchy, ambiguous job functions, and the traditional gender division of labor.  I close by proposing measures to reduce working hours that follow from my analysis.

 

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Hiroshi Ono (Ph.D. Sociology, University of Chicago) is Professor of Human Resource Management at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University and Affiliated Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University.  His research interests include economic sociology, work and labor markets, and happiness.  He has extensive international experience, having held professional and academic positions in the U.S., Japan and Sweden.  His work has won a number of awards such as the Best Paper Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter Top 20 Paper Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research.  He is the author of the book, Redistributing Happiness:  How Social Policies Shape Life Satisfaction (with Kristen Schultz Lee, 2016).  His papers have appeared in the American Sociological Review, Journal of Japanese and International Economies, Social Forces, Social Science Quarterly and Social Science Research, among others.

Hiroshi Ono Professor of Human Resource Management, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Bits and pieces: Liberal democracy in the digital era

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The event is a joint sponsorship between CISAC, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the European Security Initiative (in The Europe Center) and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES).

About the Event: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow, FSI, Visiting Scholar at CISAC, and former President of Republic of Estonia (2006 - 2016), will be interviewed by Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), FSI Senior Fellow, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Science. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. 

About the Guest Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chaired The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

 

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Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Republic of Estonia, Stanford University
Panel Discussions
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

Insider threats often ignored

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Whether it’s WikiLeaks and CIA documents or nuclear thieves, the danger from insiders in high-security organizations is escalating in our Internet age.

But many threats from within go unrecognized or misunderstood, according to Stanford professor Scott Sagan, who co-edited a new book Insider Threats with Matthew Bunn, a professor of practice at Harvard University. Their work analyzes the challenges that high-security organizations face in protecting themselves from employees who might betray them. Sagan, a core faculty member in Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Bunn recently participated in an online discussion of the book’s key arguments. They will hold a talk and book signing at 3:30 p.m. on May 16 in the CISAC Central Conference Room.

Sagan and Bunn wrote, “Perhaps the most striking lesson we learned in working with scholars and officials who have dealt with this problem was the sheer scale of the red flags – from explicit statements of support for Osama bin Laden to behavior leading other staff to fear for their lives – that organizations are able to ignore.”

They found that organizations tend to have biases that cause them to downplay insider threats. In particular, organizations with high-security needs face significant risks from trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. 

The researchers highlight "worst practices" from these past mistakes, suggesting lessons and insights that could improve the security situations at many workplaces. Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, has a chapter in Insider Threats that provides a detailed account of the organizational dysfunction that allowed Nidal Hasan to carry out his massacre at Fort Hood.

Other chapters include the following topics and authors:

  • An analysis of the similar problems that led Bruce Ivins, who probably carried out the anthrax attacks in 2001, to continue to have access to deadly pathogens (by Jessica Stern, then of Harvard and now at Boston University, and Ron Schouten, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School);
  • An analysis of the rapid rise and subsequent fall of “green-on-blue” attacks in Afghanistan – that is, Afghan soldiers and police officers attacking Americans there to help them (by Austin Long of Columbia University); and 
  • An assessment of how casinos and pharmaceutical plants, with a profit incentive to protect against insiders, cope with the problem (by Bunn and Kathryn Glynn, then of IBM Global Business Services and now at the National Nuclear Security Administration). 

Another chapter examines the potential terrorist use of nuclear insiders, offering new data that shows that jihadist writings and postings contain only a modest emphasis on possible nuclear plots, and essentially no mention of the possibility of using nuclear insiders. However, the authors warn this is no reason for complacency – insiders have been largely responsible for past nuclear theft incidents.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Scott Sagan, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-2715, ssagan@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

 

 

 

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CISAC's Scott Sagan writes in a new book that organizations tend to ignore the many red flags typically associated with insider threats. | xijian/Getty Images
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Empires and Occupations: Global Dynamics of the Illiberal Wartime State, 1914-18

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- This event is co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, The Europe Center, and the History Department - 

Abstract: By 1914, exploiting colonies was a well-established practice of even the most ‘liberal’ empires. Treating areas of Europe like colonies was not, except on the more remote peripheries. However, when the Central Powers occupied substantial parts of Europe during World War One, they applied harsh economic regimes while the British and French intensified the use of their empires. This paper will consider the comparisons – and the links - between these two forms of exploitation. It will suggest that both became ‘laboratories of autarky’ for kinds of economic regime (especially with regard to manpower) that were still not possible domestically for the nation-states fighting the war. The argument will be general but focus empirically on French North Africa and German-occupied France and Belgium. 

About the Speaker: John Horne is Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford University (2016-17) and Emeritus Fellow and former Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin, where he founded the Centre for War Studies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy and a board member of the Research Centre at the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne (France). He is the author and editor of a number of books and over ninety chapters and articles, many relating to the history of the Great War. Among his latest publications are (ed.) A Companion to World War One (Oxford, Blackwell-Wiley, 2010); (ed.) Vers la guerre totale: le tournant de 1914-1915 (Paris, Tallandier, 2010); and with Robert Gerwarth (ed.) War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is currently working on a history of the French experiences of the First World War.

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

John Horne Leverhulme Visiting Professor Oxford University Oxford University and Trinity College Dublin
Seminars

Economic Transformation and Government Reforms in Georgia 2004-2012

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Nika Gilauri, has recently published a book Practical Economics: Economic Transformation and Government Reform in Georgia 2004-2012. Former Prime Minister discusses why the Georgian case is exemplary and relevant for countries in transition. He describes how Georgia managed a breakthrough in the fight against corruption, rightsizing of government, creation of business-friendly environment, tax and customs reform, privatization of state-owned companies, etc. During the seminar, Mr. Gilauri will try to answer a question: how do you manage a transformation to bring about fast and sustainable growth? And he will approach this question from two angles: What is the right size for a government, both in terms of its regulatory footprint and in terms of its budget in relation to the size of the economy? How do you ensure a government’s efficiency in terms of its decision making, its interaction with the private sector, financial flows, and the services it provides?

 

Speaker Bio:

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Mr. Gilauri has been a managing partner of Reformatics since 2012 and a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company since 2014. Earlier, he spent 8 years in the Georgian government, where he served as Minister of Energy (2004-2007), Minister of Finance (2007-2009) and Prime Minister (2009-2012). Mr. Gilauri’s term as Prime Minister was notably marked by rapid economic recovery and growth in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global economic crisis: Georgia’s GDP rose from - 9.0% when Mr. Gilauri was appointed (Q2 2009) to +8.1% when his term came to an end (Q2 2012). Georgia’s budgetary deficit also decreased during his term as prime minister, dropping from 9% in 2009 to 3% in 2012.

During his time in government, Mr. Gilauri also guided reforms in the energy sector, fiscal policy, healthcare, customs, education and other spheres of economic development, and contributed to efforts to improve Georgia’s overall business environment. His greatest achievement as Minister of Energy was to transform Georgia from being a country of semi- permanent blackouts into a net exporter of electricity to all its neighbors.

In his more recent capacity as managing partner of Reformatics, Mr. Gilauri has been involved in over 20 advisory assignments on three continents for various high-ranking government officials and politicians including presidents and prime ministers. Mr Gilauri holds a BA in Economics and Finance from the University of Limerick (Ireland) and an MA in International Business Management from Temple University (USA).

Nika Gilauri Founder & Managing Partner of Reformatics, Senior Advisor to McKinsey and Company Former Prime-Minister of Georgia (’09-’12)
Seminars

Tina Hernandez-Boussard

1265 Welch Road, Room 245
Stanford, CA 94305-5479

(650) 725-5507
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Associate Professor in Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Surgery, and Biomedical Data Science
hernandez-boussard.jpg PhD, MPH, MS

Dr. Hernandez-Boussard is an Associate Professor in Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Surgery, and Biomedical Data Science at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Hernandez-Boussard's background and expertise is in the field of computational biology, with concentration on accountability measures, population health, and health policy. A key focus of her research is the application of novel methods and tools to large clinical datasets for hypothesis generation, comparative effectiveness research, and the evaluation of quality healthcare delivery.

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Head of US Pacific Command visits Shorenstein APARC

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Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), visited the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center last Friday. Throughout the day, he met with faculty, fellows and students and delivered a keynote speech to the broader Stanford community.
 
In his remarks titled Deterring Revisionist Powers, Harris described how the Indo-Asia-Pacific region fits in the context of the “global operating system,” a term used to illustrate the norms and standards that have defined the international system since the end of World War II. Harris also explained how USPACOM is ensuring continued international access to the shared domains of the Indo-Asia-Pacific, which include use of the air, sea and cyber domains.
 
Harris also led discussions on the strategic environment and security challenges that the United States faces. He engaged in an exchange with various audience members on current security dilemmas such as North Korea’s nuclear program, the South China Sea, and the state of U.S. alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
 
The Chatham House Rule applied to Harris’ public presentation, and his subsequent meetings were closed to the public and news media.
 
Harris was later featured at a meeting held at the Highly Immersive Classroom at the Graduate School of Business. Faculty and students at Stanford conversed by way of video teleconference with affiliates at Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU), Beijing. U.S.-Asia Security Initiative Director Karl Eikenberry and SCPKU Executive Director Josh Cheng moderated the dialogue.
 
Admiral Harris’ visit to Stanford was co-sponsored by Ambassador Eikenberry and Admiral Gary Roughead, Robert and Marion Oster Distinguished Military Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific Command, delivers remarks titled "Deterring Revisionist Powers" at the Bechtel Conference Center, March 3, 2017. | Debbie Warren
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The Dynamics of Extortion in Mexico’s War on Drugs

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This paper provides an account of the strategies of extortion and co-optation used by drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) toward civil society in Mexico. Our theoretical approach focuses on levels of territorial contestation among armed actors, as well as state capture by DTOs, to explain variation in co-opting or coercing civil society. Through the use of list experiments in a nationally representative survey, the paper measures extortion and assistance by DTOs in Mexico. We find that territorial contestation among rival DTOs increases predation on civil society while reducing DTOs assistance, which is found to occur in uncontested municipalities. Additionally, we find that extortion is higher in municipalities where DTOs have captured the state. These results suggest that territorial contestation and state capture are important in determining the strategy toward civil society during drug wars.

 

Speaker Bio:

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Gustavo Robles is a Research Scholar for the Program on Poverty and Governance (POVGOV) at CDDRL. He finished his PhD in Political Science at Stanford University in 2017 with specialization in Political Methodology and Comparative Politics. His PhD dissertation focused on the dynamics and consequences of drug-related violence in Mexico. His research interests include the economics of crime and violence in Latin America, political economy of development, and legislative studies. He is involved in POVGOV’s projects on police accountability and use of force, crime and security, and violence prevention in Brazil and Mexico. He holds a M.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a BA in Economics and Political Science from ITAM.

Research Scholar for the Program on Poverty and Governance (POVGOV) at CDDRL
Seminars
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