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.
MED 242: Physicians & Human Rights
Winter 2010 Lecture Series (Axess # 51459)
Monday 12:15-1:05 pm, Alway M106
Lunch served
Alway M106
Encina Columns is the biannual newsletter of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The newsletter, published in the winter and summer, highlights recent news, events, field research, policy analysis, and accomplishments of the institute and its research centers and programs.
In famously beautiful and laconic prose, Jean- Jacques Rousseau presents us a forceful picture of a democratic society, in which we live together as free and equal, and our politics focuses on the common good. In Rousseau: Free Community of Equals Joshua Cohen explains how the values of freedom, equality, and community all work together as parts of the democratic ideal expressed in Rousseau's conception of the ‘society of the general will'. The book also explains Rousseau's anti-Augustinian and anti-Hobbesian idea that we are naturally good, shows why Rousseau thinks it is reasonable for us to endorse that idea, and discusses how our natural goodness might make a free community of equals possible for us. Cohen examines in detail Rousseau's picture of the institutions of a democratic society: why he emphasized the importance of political participation, how he argued against extreme inequalities, and what led him to embrace a civil religion as necessary for the society of the general will. This book provides an analytical and critical appraisal of Rousseau's political thought that, while frank about its limits, also explains its enduring power.
Ethnic Europe examines the increasingly complex ethnic challenges facing the expanding European Union. Essays from eleven experts tackle such issues as labor migration, strains on welfare economies, the durability of local traditions, the effects of globalized cultures, and the role of Islamic diasporas, separatist movements, and threats of terrorism. With Europe now a destination for global immigration, European countries are increasingly alert to the difficult struggle to balance minority rights with social cohesion. In pondering these dilemmas, the contributors to this volume take us from theory, history, and broad views of diasporas, to the particularities of neighborhoods, borderlands, and popular literature and film that have been shaped by the mixing of ethnic cultures.
Milan Svolik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2006.
His current research is in two main areas: i) the politics of authoritarian regimes and ii) the politics of democratic transitions and consolidation. His broader research interests are in comparative and international politics, particularly the political economy of institutions, formal political theory, and statistical methodology.
His research on the politics of authoritarian regimes consists of a series of papers that investigate power-sharing, institutions, leader survival, and accountability in authoritarian regimes. He has also collected original data on leadership change in authoritarian regimes and data on coups d'état across regime types. He is currently incorporating this research into a book manuscript, provisionally entitled The Politics of Authoritarian Rule.
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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room