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.

Shameful Preferences and the Legitimization of Europe’s Far Right

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Abstract:

As the number of migrants in Europe has risen in recent years, far right parties have fuelled voters’ fears concerning what the influx will mean for their nations. This project utilizes paired pre-election polls and actual vote shares across state and regional elections pre- and postmigrant crisis to provide evidence that far right sympathists often practiced preference falsification prior to this legitimizing shock, but that the crisis reshaped the political conversation such that far right identification is no longer deemed politically shameful. Although the theoretical framework surrounding preference falsification is well developed in the social movement literature as well as in American politics, Laura Jakli argues that it has untapped parallels in the study of Europe's far right. She also embeds priming and list experiments in a Facebook survey to determine whether there is a significant difference between subjects' willingness to identify with the far right using explicit versus implicit measurement approaches.

 

Speaker Bio:

headshot jakli
Laura Jakli is a PhD student and FLAS fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the intersection of modern European politics and political behavior. She has designed and implemented field experiments, internet-based survey experiments, and interview-based research in the US, Greece, and Hungary. Her dissertation examines the relationship between digital media polarization and individual-level attitude strength as well as aggregate-level electoral mobilization. The overall goal of her dissertation is to explain why recent far right voter turnout has been remarkably high relative to the underlying distribution of ideological adherents across the West. She holds a BA from Cornell University and an MA from UC Berkeley.

Laura Jakli PhD student and FLAS fellow at UC Berkeley
Seminars

Planning for the Occupation of Japan (Event cancelled)

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Abstract:

The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the "good occupation." An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan. But where did occupation policy come from? This talk considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress as part of an informal policy network created to manage the postwar world during World War II.

 

Speaker Bio:

dbarnes1
Dr. Dayna Barnes is a specialist in 20th century international history, American foreign policy, and East Asia. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and is an incoming assistant professor of history at City, University of London. Her book, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan, was published in Cornell University Press in March 2017.

Dana Barnes Visiting scholar at CDDRL
Seminars

Ivan Krastev, "The Imitation Imperative"

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Although the post-1989 world is the world that America and Europe made, it has now become the world that America and Europe have started to fear and sometimes even hate. Looking back across the turbulent decades since 1989, we are astounded by the speed with which yesterday's euphoric victory has turned into today's anxiety and distress. Explaining why and how it happened in the different parts of Europe, Russia, Turkey, Eastern Europe is the principal ambition of this lecture.

 

[[{"fid":"225445","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"font-size: 13.008px; height: 320px; width: 320px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"1"}}]]Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and Permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and is a Contributing Opinion Writer of The New York Times. His latest books in English are “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, May 2014); “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a forthcoming book on Russian politics.  His book “After Europe” is forthcoming in English (Penn Press, 2017) and in German (Suhrkamp, 2017).

 

 

THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY. PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA magdafb@stanford.edu TO GET ON THE WAITLIST. 

Ivan Krastev Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies Speaker
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

Damian Collins: "Britain and Brexit"

Damian Collins MP is a member of the House of Commons, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Cuture, Media and Sport. He graduated in modern history from the University of Oxford, and 'Charmed Life, the phenomenal world of Philip Sassoon'Damian Collins MP is a member of the House of Commons, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. He graduated in modern history from the University of Oxford, and Charmed Life, the Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon is his first book.

 

 

 

No RSVP required.  For more information, please contact jewishstudies.stanford.edu.

This event is co-sponsored by The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of History, and The Europe Center.
 

 

Lane History Corner (Building 200)
Room 302

 

Damian Collins Member of Parliament, UK
Lectures

A visit to Russia's secret nuclear labs

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Siegfried S. Hecker
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Published in the journal Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, this column by Seigfried Hecker below is based on content in his 2016 book, Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers:

On February 23, 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I landed on the tarmac in Sarov, a city the government had removed from maps to keep secret its status as a nuclear weapons center. I was then director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and­­ accompanied by two senior scientists from my own lab plus three colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The six of us were about to walk through the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear bomb, the technological and intellectual powerhouse behind the sophisticated arsenal that had been pointed at our country for the previous 40 years.

Shockingly, after an hour-long flight from Moscow, we stepped out of the Aeroflot turboprop into the open arms of our Russian hosts: Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear program, and other senior lab staff who had waited in the chilly wind to welcome us. Just as remarkable was the fact that this wasn’t the first time we met our Russian counterparts. Two weeks earlier, directors of the Russian nuclear weapons labs, VNIIEF in Sarov and VNIITF in Snezhinsk, had for the first time in history set foot in our labs in Livermore and Los Alamos. This exchange of visits a quarter century ago marked a new turn in relations between the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers.

The road to Sarov

Our first meeting on Russian soil would have been deemed improbable just a few months earlier. The encounter on the Sarov tarmac grew out of both persistence by determined individuals and larger historical forces. As the Soviet Union scrambled to adjust domestic and international policy in the face of mounting economic and social challenges in the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reached across the political divide to US President Ronald Reagan to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. One such step was the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, in which the Soviet Union and the United States asked their nuclear weapons scientists to conduct parallel nuclear-explosion yield measurements at testing grounds in Nevada and Semipalatinsk, located in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiment helped overcome a stumbling block related to verification procedures needed to ratify the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). The 1988 nuclear tests enabled the two sides to sign a new ratification protocol in Geneva in June 1990, and the TTBT entered into force in December 1990.

As history would have it, an unintended outcome of the TTBT ratification effort proved to be the most momentous. Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet team that took part in the Joint Verification Experiment and later Russian minister of atomic energy, was right when he said that “the main result of the Joint Verification Experiment was not the development of procedures and extent of nuclear test monitoring of the joint development of technical verification means, but the chance for interpersonal communications with the American nuclear physicists.”

Indeed, it was working side by side at each other’s test sites that gave rise to deep-rooted affinity and built trust. Over the years, we had only caught glimpses of our Soviet nuclear scientist counterparts at a few international conferences where they disguised their institutional affiliations, saying they were part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was through months of collaboration at our test sites that the contours of their true home institutions—the nuclear weapons labs VNIIEF and VNIITF—began to emerge. As we would discover eventually, these Soviet labs were remarkably similar to our own. We realized that in addition to nuclear weapons work, they were conducting outstanding fundamental science. We became consumed with curiosity to learn more about it first-hand. The Russians were curious about our work as well.

We were all interested in cooperation, but the Russians even more so because they sensed before we did just how dramatically the Soviet Union was changing. Lev D. Ryabev, who headed the atomic ministry at the time, told me years later that Russian nuclear weapons scientists were so eager to work with their American counterparts because “we arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—movement by any one will affect everyone. We were doomed to work together.”

It was during a 1990 trip to Moscow by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore lab scientists for technical discussions supporting the Geneva test ban talks that Mikhailov extended an impromptu invitation to visit the USSR’s secret nuclear city Sarov (then called Arzamas-16) for the first time.

The American scientists returned with specific proposals from the VNIIEF director and his senior scientists for collaboration with the US labs, along with an invitation to Lawrence Livermore Director John Nuckolls and me to visit the secret Russian cities.

Convinced by my Los Alamos colleagues that this was a great opportunity to collaborate scientifically in important areas of research, I tried a number of avenues in Washington to get approval for exploring potential cooperation. I got little traction until the second half of 1991, after the Soviet Union had begun to disintegrate. As it did so, President George H.W. Bush became concerned that brain drain from the Soviet nuclear complex could lead to the spread of knowledge about how to build these weapons of mass destruction.

Driven by that concern, US Energy Secretary James D. Watkins approved my request for the laboratory directors’ exchange visits, and two months after Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, we entered the surreal world of the Soviet Los Alamos.

A tradition worth sustaining 

Our visits to Sarov and Snezhinsk shattered our Cold War preconceptions of the Soviet nuclear program. We were particularly impressed by the depth of scientific talent. Although they lacked modern computers and electronics, their computational achievements were remarkable, and their experimental facilities were innovative and functional. We found the scientists’ dedication to their mission deeply patriotic, and their attention to nuclear weapons safety reassuring. During our briefings and tours, Russian scientists described leading-edge research in the fundamental science that underpinned their nuclear weapons program. The visits convinced me that our US nuclear labs should collaborate with their Russian counterparts, not only to help solve immediate problems like proliferation and loose nukes, but also because in doing so we would benefit scientifically.

Our Russian colleagues were prepared with proposals for cooperation in a surprisingly broad range of areas. During a daylong session in Chief Weapon Designer Boris Litvinov’s office in Snezhinsk, watched by portraits of Lenin and Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet Bomb, we hammered out a protocol for cooperation that we would take back to our governments. We came up with a long list problems we wanted to work on together. It included enhancing the security and safety of nuclear weapons during reduction and dismantlement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons knowledge; promoting the conversion and diversification of nuclear facilities; preventing non-nuclear states and terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons; developing joint mechanisms for emergency response; enhancing the safety of nuclear arsenals; preventing unauthorized use of remaining weapons; and promoting protection and cleanup of the environment at nuclear weapons facilities.

It turned out that we scientists were far ahead of what the US government was prepared to authorize at the time. We heard that when members of the National Security Council staff, which coordinated interagency government issues with Russia, received a copy of the protocol, they declared it did not exist and threw it in the waste paper basket. However, Nuckolls and I presented the protocol to Watkins and received approval to proceed, though only in fundamental science cooperation.

By May 1992, even though the US Energy and State Departments had only agreed to general principles, the former had provided us with the necessary financial support and the latter with the required permissions for travel to Russia. Just as importantly, we had defined what we wanted to do first in the collaboration we called lab-to-lab. We planned for joint experiments in high-energy-density physics and conferences on computer modeling and simulation.

In spite of the initial US government concerns, we would eventually end up cooperating in almost all the areas outlined in the initial protocol. A spirit of collaboration prevailed for nearly a quarter century, and was essential to successfully mitigating the dangers resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, that cooperation has all but come to an end during the past few years as relations between Moscow and Washington have soured. But the benefits of future cooperation are potentially enormous, as a new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative makes clear. The US and Russian governments, as well as the two countries’ scientists, should seize any opportunities that arise to rekindle nuclear cooperation.

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This picture shows the 1992 visit of U.S. nuclear weapon labs directors to the Russian nuclear weapons institutes in Sarov and Snezhinsk. On the left, in a white sweater is the Russian physicist Alexander Pavlovsky. Next to him is "Russia’s Oppenheimer" Yuly Khariton, almost 88 at that time. The second and third persons on the right are Sig Hecker, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and John Nuckolls, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. | Courtesy of Siegfried Hecker
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Money and Muscle in Indian Politics

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Abstract:

In India, the world’s largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic elections exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties actively recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why do voters elect (and even reelect) them, to the point that a third of state and national legislators assume office with pending criminal charges? In a new book, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics, Milan Vaishnav takes readers deep into the marketplace for criminal politicians by drawing on fieldwork on the campaign trail, large surveys, and an original database on politicians’ backgrounds. The result is the first systematic study of an issue that has profound implications for democracy both with and beyond India’s borders.

 

Speaker Bio:

milan vaishnav
Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur) of Rethinking Public Institutions in India (Oxford University Press, 2017). He was previously a fellow at the Center for Global Development and has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington Universities. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Milan Vaishnav Senior Fellow, South Asia Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Seminars

Hidden Risks: global supply chains, public health and global governance

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About the Event: Despite much current talk about “America First,” the United States has a vital interest in global health that is rooted in both practical necessity and humanitarian traditions.  There is growing recognition of the complex problem of direct and indirect threats to the health and security of U.S. populations and people around the globe related to the state of health in all countries, the risk of disease spread into this country, the reality of emerging or resurging infections, most recently Ebola, Zika or a pandemic flu, and the growing possibility that biological agents might be deliberately used to do harm.  Perhaps less well-recognized are the significant health and safety risks posed by the growing number of products that flow across borders. In our increasingly globalized world, the benefits of a global marketplace can be seen in greater choice for consumers and new opportunities for business and innovation, but it has also created many new challenges for product oversight and protection of complex supply chains. Harmful products result from poor quality manufacturing, production, and distribution, contamination, and even from intentional adulteration, fraud and counterfeiting. Success in protecting the public now depends on reaching beyond our borders, and working effectively with regulatory authorities, industry, and intergovernmental and international organizations to build a global product safety net for consumers and patients around the world.  

About the Speaker: Dr. Hamburg is an internationally recognized leader in public health and medicine. As Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Dr. Hamburg serves as senior advisor on international matters and is the liaison with other Academies of Medicine around the world. She is also President-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Dr. Hamburg earned her A.B. from Harvard College, her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her medical residency at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Following completion of her formal medical training, Dr. Hamburg went to Washington to explore the world of health policy. She soon took on the role of Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In 1991, Dr. Hamburg was named Commissioner of the New York City Department of health. During her six-year tenure there, she implemented rigorous public health initiatives that tackled the city’s most pressing crises head-on — including improved services for women and children, an internationally recognized tuberculosis control program, a needle-exchange program to combat HIV transmission, and the nation’s first public health bio-terrorism preparedness program.       

In 1997, President Clinton named Dr. Hamburg Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the lead policy position in the Department. She later became founding Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

In 2009, President Obama nominated Dr. Hamburg for the post of FDA Commissioner. In that role, Dr. Hamburg emphasized the critical need for innovation in meeting medical care and public health needs. As Commissioner, she provided leadership on many groundbreaking activities, including: new authority to regulate tobacco products; implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act designed to transform food safety to a preventive system rather than simply responding when outbreaks occur; and modernization of the system for the evaluation and approval of medical products. Dr. Hamburg also worked hard to reposition FDA as an agency prepared for the challenges of globalization and was very active in efforts to establish new mechanisms for global governance of regulatory systems, including enhanced communication, collaboration and regulatory harmonization.

Dr. Hamburg currently sits on a number of Boards, including for the Commonwealth Fund, the Simons Foundation, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy,  the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the Urban Institute, and the American Museum of Natural History. She is also a member of the Harvard University Global Advisory Council, the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows, the World Dementia Council and the Global Health Scientific Advisory Committee for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Hamburg formerly served on the Boards of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller University, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Conservation International and Henry Schein Inc. Dr. Hamburg is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American College of Physicians. She is the recipient of multiple honorary degrees and numerous awards.

 

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Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Margaret A. Hamburg Foreign Secretary National Academy of Medicine
Seminars

China faces its future of urbanization

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A new book published by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) explores the future of China’s urbanization. Addressing the complex challenges facing Chinese cities will require updated institutions and unparalleled innovation, researchers say.

China’s growth in cities has been unprecedented over the past decade, and the urbanization policies the government put in place, while achieving notable successes, continue to face systemic obstacles that challenge the effectiveness of central and local governments. How the government will resolve the complex sets of conflicting interests will considerably shape Chinese society and politics for decades.
 
That is the premise of a new book co-edited by Karen Eggleston, senior fellow in Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Jean C. Oi, the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics; and Yiming Wang, deputy director general and senior research fellow at the State Council Development and Research Center.
 
In the book Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, eleven chapters authored by 21 authors feature urbanization challenges ranging from property rights and affordable housing to food security and the environment.

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“Urbanization is not merely a process of financial engineering or rational decision-making, but a complicated ‘dance’ of power and politics,” the editors write in the introductory chapter.
 
The book is one of two publications that emerged from a conference in May 2014 at the Stanford Center at Peking University, that was part of a joint five-year research initiative between the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) – a government agency in China that formulates and implements strategies of national economic and social development.  
 
Wang, who was the deputy chief of staff at the NDRC and executive director of its Institute of Macroeconomic Research, facilitated ongoing scholarly exchanges, including workshops and conferences as well as joint fieldwork in China. At one point, the NDRC came to the Bay Area to interview local government officials about urbanization and affordable housing policies.  
 
Eggleston and Oi responded to a few questions about the book.
 
What patterns are shaping urbanization in China?
Oi: A primary pattern shaping China’s urbanization is the movement of people from rural areas to megacities – Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere.  There also is movement from poorer to richer areas within the countryside. Rural to urban migration has been taking place in China since the 1970s, but the difference now is that the government is encouraging it. The Chinese government has an officially sanctioned program that is advocating migration. A second pattern shaping China’s urbanization is administrative redistricting. Redistricting is a government-led process that changes the administrative makeup of a municipality. For example, areas originally designated as ‘rural’ can be redistricted to qualify as ‘urban.’ Additionally, smaller cities can become larger by absorbing surrounding areas. Counties can also be combined into districts.
 
Why are cities and counties pursuing redistricting?
Oi: One of the main factors driving redistricting in China is the perks and power that are linked to the size of an administrative unit. Government officials in charge of smaller cities or counties have incentives to become larger. The larger the municipality, the more power and resources the municipality has. Smaller cities that become larger cities gain resources; yet on the other hand, counties that become part of a district lose certain local-level rights. Municipalities are essentially competing with each other. The book dives into the incentive structures at play and other political economy issues embedded in the urbanization process.
 
What kind of disciplinary approaches are undertaken in the book?
Eggleston: One of the book’s strengths is its array of disciplinary approaches. Drawn primarily from the social sciences, the book includes theoretical and empirical analyses of evidence gathered from case studies and fieldwork. 
 
Oi: The book is a true collaboration of scholars from the United States and China. About half of the chapter authors are officials from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), including our co-editor, Yiming Wang, who was NDRC deputy-secretary when we did the work for the volume. Each chapter attempts to offer a balanced perspective of the policy implications of China’s urbanization experience at both national and local levels.

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Karen Eggleston, FSI senior fellow and director of the Asia Health Policy Program, speaks on a panel about demographic change and health at the conference, "Challenges in Process of Urbanization: China in Comparative Perspective," Stanford Center at Peking University, May 2014.

What do you hope the book will achieve?

Oi: The book offers an analysis of the intricacies of and potential solutions to problems related to the process of China’s urbanization. We hope the book taken as a whole gives a sense of the magnitude of these problems, why there are no easy solutions, as well as what will be needed to address them going forward.  Some of the solutions are not just about money. 
 
Eggleston: The book aims to sketch an interesting picture of the varied aspects of China’s urbanization. Each chapter looks at a select issue, for example, land financing, spatial growth and housing security, and sets it in the broader context of urbanization. We purposely decided not to cover everything that falls under the banner of urbanization. Most of the topics could very well be made into a whole book alone. We hope the book will enliven conversation amongst scholars, policy influencers and China and urbanization enthusiasts.
 

What do “people-centered” solutions to urbanization challenges in China include?

Eggleston: “People-centered” is the term used in China’s official urbanization plan, the New National Urbanization Plan, published in 2014. We defined the term “people-centered” to include what makes life in urban areas attractive. “People-centered” urbanization emphasizes well-being and the factors that lead to a good livelihood, including access to public goods. For example, from a health perspective, cities around the world were historically less healthy locations to live in during the industrial revolution, before basic knowledge of how to control infectious disease with clean water and other population health measures. Now, cities can be healthier places to live in compared to rural areas. The Chinese government has a successful record of building basic infrastructure, but faces many challenges in harnessing the requisite resources to innovate and truly achieve people-centered development.

 

"In trying to reach a public goal like low-income housing, the Chinese government is trying to set up an incentive system so that the goal can be reached not just with taxpayer money but also by bringing in the private sector to build housing in a way that includes affordable units and doesn’t lead to segregation."  

     — Karen Eggleston; FSI senior fellow, Asia Health Policy Program director

 
An issue highlighted in the book is China’s household registration system. Why is it an issue and what is being done to address it?
Oi: Because China’s urbanization has been so rapid, institutions have not yet fully caught-up. There is a disjuncture between the institutions that exist and those that are actually necessary. One pressing example is the household registration system. Citizens who live in rural areas have a different kind of residency status than citizens in urban areas. Everyone has rights, but rights differ depending on where primary residence was originally listed. A Chinese citizen is only able to enjoy all of his or her rights where he or she is registered. So migrants tend to lose out as soon as they move away from their home locality. However, the central government has started to make changes to this system. For example, children of migrants now have access to public services such as primary education. Some localities have begun to implement a points-based system wherein families accumulate points over time and, after reaching a certain level, become eligible for citizenship in that place of residence.
 
Can you describe the state of housing in Chinese cities?
Eggleston: Affordable housing is a key issue of urbanization across the world, not just in China. So, the glass is half-full or half-empty depending on how you look at it. China has been remarkably successful in avoiding the development of large urban slums common in lower income countries with rapid urbanization. That said, problems associated with housing are not going to go away quickly. The macro nature of China’s population amplifies the problem, and coincides with a dramatic increase in housing prices. Continued government investment in affordable housing will help address scarcity, and could help tackle interrelated problems such as assisted living for the elderly population in China.
 
Oi: The central government began to offer affordable housing in 2007 with the intention of providing housing for the neediest portion of the population. In theory, it works, but in reality, it has faults. Supply and demand sometimes isn’t in sync. For example, quotas were used as a way to decide the location of its affordable housing, but some cities found that housing units remain unused. The local government builds a number of affordable housing units but then discovers no one wants them because commercial housing is less expensive or factories provide dormitory space. Part of this mismatch in supply and demand is rooted in the issue of resident permits. In most cases, the neediest portion of the population is typically migrants but they are not eligible for affordable housing in the cities where there is most need for low cost housing such as Beijing or Shanghai. As a result, migrants often live in inadequate housing in city centers – small, windowless spaces with many people living together in one room. 
 
One of the chapters in the book focuses on food security. As Chinese migrants continue to move from rural to urban areas, are fears of declining food security founded?
Eggleston: Food security is an important issue. In the book, one chapter written by 9 co-authors applies rigorous methods to understand whether urbanization threatens food security in China. They found that fear of declining food security is mostly overblown. Continued government investment in agricultural production such as irrigation systems can help address those fears, and help enable sustainable food production.

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Jean Oi, FSI senior fellow and director of the China Program, (Center), and Xueguang Zhou, FSI senior fellow and professor of sociology, (Left of Center), take a tour of housing developments during fieldwork with the National Development and Reform Commission in August 2012. Oi is speaking with one of the village leaders about a "new rural community" concept developed in a housing development in Chengdu, where this photo was taken.

Another chapter in the book references pollution. Beijing has faced unprecedented levels of air pollution lately. Does it coincide with urbanization?

Eggleston: Although issues of pollution and “green growth” merit separate book-length treatment and are not central to this book, pollution illustrates the broader issue of concentrations of industry and people living in one area. Everyone has to share public space. Both a migrant and someone working at the top levels of government in Beijing breathe the same air. Things that are less visible like water quality are avoidable by some of the population, but air pollution is not, and therefore, quickly reveals how hard it is for the government to efficiently fix a problem. Policies to mitigate pollution often take awhile to have an effect, and in the mean time, people begin to doubt government accountability. Local governments have made strides within the past few years in revising evaluation structures so that officials are incentivized to react to public problems like air pollution. Historically, an official’s performance was based largely if not solely on GDP growth of his or her municipality, but it has since expanded to include other factors such as health insurance enrollment.
 
Infrastructure spending has been a driver of China’s economic growth. Has China’s rush to build quickly come at the expense of safety?
Oi: Economic growth is intimately tied to the process of China’s urbanization. Growth of cities has been driven by the ambitions of local officials who want to see their municipalities expand. But the question remains over how they’re going to finance rising needs for and costs of public goods. Each municipality receives funding from the central government and it’s based on the quantity of citizens – a number that excludes migrants. Any migrant is then – administratively speaking – a burden on the system. Municipalities have to determine how they’re going to fund public goods. This is where fiscal politics comes in. China’s fiscal system is really the most important institution in need of reform. Each chapter of the book touches upon the issue of public funding in some way.
 
Eggleston: China is generally known for its investment in infrastructure projects, but the goal of rapid growth can seemingly clash with a concern for safety. One of the main themes of the book is to think carefully about the incentives that govern the process. I think that theme certainly rings true with regard to infrastructure and safety. Put simply: if officials and contractors do not have incentive to prioritize safety, then safety problems are going to arise. The Chinese government efforts to develop and improve specific regulatory structures should continue, as several authors point out in different chapters of the book.

 

"Economic growth is intimately tied to the process of China’s urbanization. Growth of cities has been driven by the ambitions of local officials who want to see their municipalities expand. But the question remains over how they’re going to finance rising needs for and costs of public goods."  

     — Jean C. Oi; Stanford professor of political science, China Program director

 
How can a balance be struck between public and private sector led projects that address urbanization challenges?
Oi: The Chinese government is increasingly looking to establish public-private partnerships as a way to deal with urbanization challenges. Affordable housing is one area that could experiment further with the public-private model. Instead of going to local governments, the central government is now talking directly with housing developers. They say to the developers “we’ll give you permission to develop a housing estate, but within that housing estate, you’re going to have to set aside ‘X’ number of units for affordable housing.” Depending on the city, this approach has had mixed effects. Some high-end housing developers don’t want to include affordable housing because the price per unit could drop as a result.
 
Eggleston: It’s critical to think about public-private partnerships in the context of urbanization-related policy goals. I think we’re bound to see them grow. The government has an opportunity to harness the innovation of the private sector through such partnerships.
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A man pushes his bicycle past a construction site in the Central Business District in Beijing, China. | China Photos/Stringer
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Challenges and Perspectives for NATO in the 21st Century

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About the Event: NATO is entering today the 4th phase of its history and must adapt to changes in today’s security environment in order to remain relevant. NATO’s ability to adapt will ultimately redefine NATO’s place in the world.  General Mercier will discuss challenges facing NATO faces such as maintaining the unity between members in the Alliance, addressing potential crises in Eastern Europe, reopening dialogue with Russia, and addressing instability on NATO-member borders.

About the Speaker: General Denis Mercier is the North Atlantic Council as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. Prior to this assignment, he served as the French Air Force Chief of Staff from 2012-2015.

He graduated with a Master’s of Science from the French Air Force Academy in 1981, qualifying as a fighter pilot in 1983. He has more than 3000 flying hours including 182 hours in combat missions. Gen. Mercier commanded the 1/12 "Cambrésis" Fighter Squadron, a founding unit of the NATO Tiger association. He participated in numerous other NATO exercises and operations, including Operation Deny Flight over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994, "Strong Resolve” in 1998, and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo.

From 1999 to 2002, Gen. Mercier was deputy head of the combined joint task force deputy branch at Regional Headquarters where he contributed to the development of the Combined Joint Task Force concept. He was a member of the combined analysis team for exercise "Allied Effort '01" and an evaluator of the CJTF HQ for Exercise "Strong Resolve '02". He also acted as liaison officer for the Commander Striking Fleet Atlantic stationed in Norfolk, VA.

He later served as the commander of Reims Air force base, integrating Mirage F1CR squadrons with ISAF in Afghanistan. From 2004 to 2008 he served as the head of the plans division at the French Air Force headquarters and was nominated as a flag officer in 2007. He then commanded the French Air Force Academy in Salon-de-Provence. As senior military advisor for the Minister of Defence from 2010-2012, Gen. Mercier prepared and participated in all NATO ministerial meetings, summits in Lisbon and Chicago, and was special advisor to Operation Unified Protector over Libya.

Among other awards, Gen. Mercier has been awarded the rank of Grand Officier of the French Legion of Honor and, among other distinctions, an officer of the National Order of Merit.

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

General Denis Mercier Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, NATO
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