FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling.
FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world.
FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.
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Asia-Pacific leaders recently met in Beijing at the annual APEC summit, and after two days of discussion, concluded with some significant pledges and remarkable moments. President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan held a landmark meeting, and the United States and China discussed two agreements that are both symbolic, and lay groundwork for regional progress, say Stanford scholars.
High-level intergovernmental meetings are often more theatre than substance, but this year the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the oldest trans-Pacific regional organization, delivered important messages and may spur actions by member governments.
“Any summit is a ‘hurry up, get this done’ motivator,” says Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The head of state goes to the meeting – and generally speaking – he doesn’t want to arrive and say ‘my guys were asleep for the last year.’”
Fingar says the APEC summit prodded countries to work on “deliverables,” particularly the goals and projects on the agenda from previous meetings. He recently returned from Beijing, and shared his perspectives with students in the Asia-Pacific Scholars Program.
Writing for the East Asia Forum, Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said many of the commitments declared at the APEC summit, and at the subsequent meetings of the G20 in Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Myanmar, will have implications for global governance, particularly as China holds a more influential role in the region.
APEC countries account for over 40 percent of the world’s population and nearly half of global trade – and true to form, the grand vision of the summit is to advance regional economic integration.
Yet, “the ancillary things – things that went on in the margins – are in many ways more important,” Fingar says, referring to areas outside of the summit’s obvious focus, and what’s discussed on the sidelines of the public talks.
Key outcomes from the 2014 gathering include:
Emmerson said the outcomes of the APEC summit from the U.S.-China standpoint were better than expected, speaking to McClatchy News. The visa and climate deals, as well as their commitment to lowering global tariffs on IT products, will lessen chances of conflict between the two countries.
However, the summit did leave some areas unsolved. One of the most important is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact proposed by the United States that includes 11 others countries in the region, but does not yet include China.
Leaders “made positive noises” coming out of the TPP discussions, Fingar says, but nothing was passed. The gravity and complexity of trade-related issues, especially agriculture and intellectual property, is likely to blame for slow action.
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From the early 1980s, Anwar was a rising star and leading figure in the long-ruling UMNO party, serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia from 1993-1998. Highly respected for his stance against corruption and his skillful management of the Malaysian economy during the Asian financial meltdown, Anwar spearheaded the Asian Renaissance movement and remains a leading advocate of civilizational dialogue aimed at bridging the gap between East and West.
An ardent supporter of freedom and democracy and critic of corruption in Malaysia, he was dismissed from office in 1998 and imprisoned by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed after a sham trial. The Malaysian Courts later overturned his conviction, but only after he served six years in solitary confinement.
After his release from prison Anwar assumed teaching positions at Oxford University, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Georgetown University, lecturing on governance, democracy and Southeast Asian politics. He has also served as President of the UNESCO General Conference, Chairman of the Development Committee of the World Bank and IMF, and an Advisory Board member of the International Crisis Group.
Donald Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Program
Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, FSI
Larry Diamond, Director, CDDRL
This event is sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Muslim Student Awareness Network and Stanford in Government.
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”
Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces. Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).
Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).
Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
On 10 Nov. 2014 a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will convene in Beijing, followed in rapid succession by the East Asia Summit in Naypyidaw and the G20 in Brisbane.
Much of what will be said and done at these events will implicate the tectonics of nascent global governance set in motion by China’s campaign for greater influence in Asia.
At the APEC summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping will stress the need for massive spending on infrastructure in Asia. He will tout China’s sponsorship of a Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that would operate outside of, and potentially compete with, the American-led World Bank and the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank (ABD).
Many will welcome the AIIB as evidence of China’s willingness to assume responsibility for public goods in a rebalanced post-Cold War world whose needs exceed the resources of existing global institutions. But will ‘public’ goods benefit the public if their terms are not made public? In 2014 China ranked 68th of 68 donors in the Aid Transparency Index compared with the 5th-place ADB and the 7th-place World Bank. Given the commercial importance of cyberspace, it is also concerning that China is the worst violator of the rights of internet users in the latest Freedom House ranking of 60 countries on that variable.
In the ADB as of 2013, Tokyo held respective 16 and 13 per cent shares of subscribed capital and voting power. Understandably, at the AIIB’s inception, Beijing’s shares will be far larger. But how soon and by how much will China allow its initial dominance to be diluted by other contributing members? Concerns over Beijing’s intentions may already underlie the wait-and-see attitudes of Tokyo, Seoul, and Canberra as to whether to join the new bank.
Another alternative to international lending by traditional sources is the New Development Bank (NDB) recently innovated by the BRICS. Headquartered in Shanghai, it will be led first by an Indian.
In the formal sessions of APEC, lip service will be paid to its hopes for free and open trade and investment worldwide by 2020. But in the corridors delegates will debate whether China’s AIIB and the BRICS’s NDB will further ‘responsible stakeholding’ and shared governance by emerging states in a global economy no longer centred on the West. Some may fear that Xi wants to use these new institutions to tie Asia more tightly and deferentially to Beijing in a web of ‘Silk Roads’ that will disproportionally serve Chinese interests.
China’s ambitions will also be questioned at the East Asia Summit in Myanmar, especially regarding the South China Sea (SCS). China will again be asked to clarify its generously self-serving U-shaped line: Does Beijing really want to possess or control nearly all of that body of water? Southeast Asians will again urge China to implement the Document on Conduct (DOC) in the South China Sea that it signed with all ten members of ASEAN in 2002. China will again be implored to accept a future Code of Conduct (COC) regulating state behaviour in the SCS. But Beijing will likely continue to delay and demur, while ASEAN’s historic centrality to Asian region-formation continues to diminish.
It is symbolic of ASEAN’s plight that the group has been too divided to express more than ‘serious concern’ over ‘developments’ in the SCS — untethered abstractions that leave China happily uncharged. In ASEAN’s field of vision, the COC has become an entrenched mirage. Calls for a code are repetitively embedded in ASEAN’s communiqués because it is one of the few things the members can agree should happen. Thanks to Chinese foot-dragging, however, the goal keeps receding and Beijing keeps doing whatever it wants to in the SCS.
Chinese activity now includes a unilateral land-reclaiming and construction work at the specks that China already controls — actions that violate the spirit if not the letter of the DOC.
Some US$5.3 trillion in goods are shipped annually across the SCS, including US$1.2 trillion to or from the United States. China has unilaterally declared and begun to enforce a monopoly on fishing in more than half of the SCS. If multilaterally negotiated limitations are being flouted or forestalled in this key regional instance, how much confidence can one have that Xi will cooperate in Asia on behalf of a rules-based order at the global level?
None of this means denying the overdue need to restructure existing institutions to accommodate the voices and priorities of rising powers. But time is running out. Convincingly dire warnings in the just-released UN report on climate change render existential the need for concerted global action. Nationalism and nationalistic regionalism — by Beijing, Moscow or Washington — must not derail progress toward the constructive rebalancing and sharing of global governance. Shifting power to emerging actors should facilitate not frustrate that process. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of one wall in Berlin should not be spent building another in Asia.
This article was originally carried by the East Asia Forum on Nov. 7 and reposted with permission.
This past May, India, a country of over 1.2 billion people, elected Narendra Modi, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the new prime minister, shifting leadership away from an incumbent party that held power for the past few decades. This new government, set in the context of shifting political and security dynamics, brings new challenges for dialogue in a region that sees unresolved border disputes and historical tensions, particularly between China and India.
What impact will India’s new leadership have in Northeast Asia? How do historical relationships continue to shape the present? What is the outlook for policy priorities between India and countries in Northeast Asia?
Scholars from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution’s India Center will offer perspectives in a panel discussion. This event is Shorenstein APARC’s inaugural event in New Delhi.
Taj Palace
Sardar Patel Marg
Diplomatic Enclave
New Delhi - 110 021, India
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.
In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.
Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.
Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.
Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.
Michael McFaul, a Stanford political scientist and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been selected as the next director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The announcement was made Wednesday by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, the university’s vice provost and dean of research. McFaul will succeed Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was nominated in July as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court and elected Tuesday.
McFaul takes the helm of FSI in January.
"Stanford has long been a home for scholars who connect academia to policy and public service, and Professor McFaul is the embodiment of that model," Etchemendy said. "We are grateful for Mike's service and confident he will be a strong leader for FSI."
Arvin said McFaul is a strong fit for the position.
“Professor McFaul’s background as an outstanding scholar and his service as an influential ambassador give him a vital perspective to lead FSI, which is Stanford’s hub for studying and understanding international policy issues,” she said. “His scholarship, experience and energy will keep FSI and Stanford at the forefront of international studies as well as some of the most pressing global policy debates."
McFaul has been a faculty member in the department of political science at Stanford since 1994. He joined the Obama administration in January 2009, serving for three years as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House. He then served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014.
McFaul already has a deep affiliation with FSI. Before joining the government, he served as FSI deputy director from 2006 to 2009. He also directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) from 2005 to 2009.
During his four years leading CDDRL, McFaul launched the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program for mid-career lawyers, politicians, advocates and business leaders working to shore up democratic institutions in their home countries. He also established CDDRL’s senior honors program. From 1992-1994, McFaul also worked as a Senior Research Fellow at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
“I am thrilled to be assuming a leadership role again at FSI,” McFaul said. “FSI has become one of the premier institutions in the country for policy-relevant research on international affairs. I look forward to using my recent government experience to deepen further FSI’s impact on policy debates in Washington and around the world.”
Arvin said McFaul’s previous positions at FSI and CDDRL will make for a smooth transition in the institute’s leadership.
“His familiarity with FSI’s history and infrastructure will allow him to start this new position with an immediate focus on the institute’s academic mission,” she said.
McFaul is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and plans to build on his long affiliations with both Hoover and FSI to deepen cooperation between these two premier public policy institutions on campus.
He has written and co-authored dozens of books including Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
“In so many ways, Mike represents the best of FSI,” said Cuéllar, who has held leadership positions at FSI since 2004 and begins his term on the California Supreme Court in January. “He knows the worlds of academia and policy extremely well, and will bring unique experience and sound judgment to his new role at FSI.”
McFaul currently serves as a news analyst for NBC News, appearing frequently on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC as a commentator on international affairs. He also appears frequently on The Charlie Rose Show and The Newshour, as well as PBS and BBC radio programs. He has recently published essays in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Politico, and Time.
McFaul was one of the first U.S. ambassadors to actively use social media for public diplomacy. He still maintains an active presence on Facebook at amb.mcfaul and on Twitter at @McFaul.
McFaul received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
“Since coming here in 1981 as 17-year-old kid from Montana, Stanford has provided me with tremendous opportunities to grow as a student, scholar, and policymaker,” McFaul said. “I now look forward to giving back to Stanford by contributing to the development of one of the most vital and innovative institutions on campus.”
Reuben Hills Conference Room 2nd Floor, East Wing, Encina Hall
The purpose of this text is to present the proposals of drug policy reform elaborated by the Beckley Foundation for the Government of Guatemala, as part of the agreement set between these two bodies. Amanda Feilding was invited by President Otto Pérez Molina to establish a Beckley Foundation Latin American Chapter in Guatemala in July 2012, and was requested to produce a rigorous, evidence-based analysis of the impact of current prohibitionist drug policies on Guatemala and the wider region. The Beckley Foundation was also asked to develop and suggest a series of alternative drug policy options. The proposals were submitted in January 2013 as a contribution to the development of drug policies focused on public health, crime prevention, and social harm-reduction. While the Foundation’s proposals have been specifically tailored for Guatemala, elements of our research can serve as a model for other countries in the region and the hemisphere, and may nurture fruitful discussion and negotiation.
The North Korean regime has adjusted to international sanctions by shifting that economic pain away from cities to the countryside, new Stanford research using satellite night lights data shows.
U.S. policy toward North Korea has been based on the expectation that economic sanctions could deter North Korea from developing nuclear weapons or change the behavior of the regime, according to Yong Suk Lee, a Stanford economist at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Since 1950, both the United States and the global community have adopted a series of economic sanctions against North Korea. The latest came in 2013 when the United Nations approved restrictions on banking, travel and trade in response to North Korea's underground nuclear test and threat to launch nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea.
In a working paper, Lee examined how North Korea's Communist rulers have adapted to the increasingly tougher sanctions through the years.
"North Korea is one of many autocratic regimes that refuse to yield to sanctions, and its isolation and hereditary dictatorship make it a particularly good example to study the impact of economic sanctions in autocratic regimes," said Lee, the SK Center Fellow and a faculty member of the Korea Program at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, Lee noted. Its leaders follow an economic model based on a centrally planned economy and self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world.
Satellite data
Lee's research was based on nighttime views of lights from data collected by the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The researcher created "average luminosity" measures of lights across North Korea based on a 1-mile-by-1-mile grid for the years 1992 through 2010. Light usage was examined for brightness on one-minute intervals.
To predict the impact of sanctions on economic activity in North Korea, Lee used a formula that transformed the luminosity measures into GDP measures. For example, a 10 percent change in the satellite lights is associated with about a 3 percent change in GDP.
According to Lee, satellite data is of greatest utility in assessing the economies of cities and regions in the developing world. In a country like North Korea, a large part of economic activity happens during the evening and night and involves light. For example, lights at night are generated by peoples' consumption of goods and services as well as transportation. And some production activities happen during the evening hours.
"Economists have found that how bright night lights are can predict national and sub-national GDP quite well, especially in countries where GDP data is not reliable," he said.
Lee found that economic sanctions decreased luminosity in the hinterlands, but increased luminosity in urban areas, especially toward the centers. As for whether additional sanctions affected luminosity, he found they increased the urban-rural luminosity gap by about 1 percent. When he examined the more central urban areas, the gap increased by about 2.6 percent.
"The results suggest that the dictatorship countered the effects of sanctions by reallocating resources to the urban areas," Lee said. One could surmise that the economic sanctions do not affect the country's leadership much, he said.
The hinterlands responded to declining economic fortunes by relying more on trade with China near those border areas, Lee added. In fact, the sanctions generated more North Korean migration to China and reliance on Chinese merchants and goods. North Korea's border with China is relatively porous as opposed to its heavily militarized border with South Korea.
'Increasing inequality'
The upshot, Lee said, is that sanctions that fail to change the behavior of an autocratic regime may eventually increase urban-rural inequality.
"Sanctions will likely be inefficient as long as North Korea can maintain powerful centralized control and oppress any discontent that arises due to increasing inequality," he said.
Lee added that sanctions will most likely not deter North Korea's nuclear weapons activities. They have not done so yet, and at this point, North Korea's leaders view sanctions as inconveniences, but not regime-threatening. Plus, even the harshest sanctions would be unlikely to stem the flow of all goods, energy and money into North Korea. Not all countries would go along with draconian trade restrictions that hurt the poorest people the hardest, he said.
"Even if sanctions were imposed to full capacity, the marginalized population would suffer the most," said Lee, adding that he was actually surprised about his project's findings.
"One can always hypothesize a story but to actually find such effect in the data was quite exciting. Frankly, I pursued this project expecting that I wouldn't find any impact of sanctions on lights," he said.
Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
Recently Ma Ying-jeou called upon Xi to finish Deng Xiaoping's revolution and begin the process of moving to a constitutional democracy. Is Taiwan a model of Chinese democracy? How would democratization in China impact the future of ROC-China ties? How would a democratized China affect US interests in the Asia-Pacific?
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. He is also the John A. van Beuren Chair Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. He has also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Blumenthal is the co-author of "An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century" (AEI Press, November 2012).