Political Science has very few "accepted truths." One of the most prominent is the claim that countries endowed with natural resources, particularly mineral wealth, are doomed to suffer from poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, weak states, and authoritarian regimes - often referred to as the "resource curse." This claim, however, is not without its critics. In recent years, a few scholars have contended that the resource curse is essentially a myth. Rather, the main culprit is the absence of viable political, economic, and social institutions, such as secure property rights and an effective bureaucracy. Yet, their emphasis on the importance of strong institutions is entirely consistent with the conventional wisdom that they are challenging. The main point of departure between these two bodies of literature is whether weak institutions are endogenous to resource wealth, and thus, inevitable in mineral rich states, or exogenous, and thus, can account for the variation in performance across these states. The experience of the Soviet successor states, which consist of both mineral rich and mineral poor countries, provides a unique opportunity to assess the relationship between mineral wealth and institutional capacity, and, in doing so, to consider whether there is in fact a resource curse.

About the speaker:

Pauline Jones Luong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998 and was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies from 1998-1999 and 2001-2002. Her primary research interests include: the rise and impact on emerging institutions; identity and conflict; and the political economy of market reform. Her area of focus is the former Soviet Union, particularly the Russian Federation and the newly independent Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan). She has published a number of articles and books. Her books include Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and an edited volume entitled The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Cornell University Press, 2003)

The speaker, Macartan Humphreys, is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University and a visiting professor at CISAC. He is a research scholar at the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute at Columbia and a member of the Millennium Development goals project poverty task force, where he works on conflict and development issues. Overall his research is on African political economy and formal political theory. His dissertation on the politics of factions developed game theoretic models of conflict and cooperation between internally divided groups. More recent research focuses on rebellions in West Africa, where he has undertaken field research in the Casamance, Mali, and Sierra Leone. Ongoing research now includes experimental work on ethnic politics, econometric work on natural resource conflicts, game theoretic work on ethnic politics and large N survey work of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone. Humphreys' work is motivated by concerns over the linkages between politics, conflict and human development. He received his PhD in government from Harvard in 2003 and his MPhil in economics from Oxford in 2000.

The respondent, David Patel, is a 2006-2007 predoctoral fellow at CDDRL (fall quarter) and CISAC (winter and spring quarters). He is completing a dissertation looking at questions of religious organization and collective action in the Middle East, with a theoretical focus on the relationship of organization and information in particular. Empirically, his study looks at Islamic institutions and their role in political action in a wide range of settings including 7th century garrison cities of the early Islamic empire, through the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Patel has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East over the last several years, including extended visits to Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, and Iraq, where he spent seven months in Basra conducting research beginning in the fall of 2003. He works with David Laitin, Jim Fearon, and Avner Greif at Stanford. In fall 2007 he will join the faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor of political science.

Enloe and Painted Crow will discuss the implications of the militarization of women's lives in the context of the increasing escalation of US militarism. They will also dialogue about their views on various approaches to peace, bringing to bear their respective experiences as feminist-scholar and former-woman soldier. There will be an opportunity for audience members to participate in the roundtable discussion.

Cynthia Enloe

Cynthia Enloe, who grew up on Long Island and received a Ph.D. from the University of California/Berkeley, has served as chair of Clark's Government Department and Director of Women's Studies. Professor Enloe is currently a Research Professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE) and teaches the intensive seven-week seminar, "Gender, Militarization, and Development." She has been awarded Clarks "Outstanding Teacher of the Year" three times and has been named the University Senior Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship.

Enloe's feminist teaching and research has focused on the interplay of women's politics in the national and international arenas, with special attention to how women's labor is made cheap in globalized factories (especially sneaker factories) and how women's emotional and physical labor has been used to support governments' war-waging policies-- and how many women have tried to resist both of those efforts. Racial, class, ethnic, and national identities and pressures shaping ideas about femininities and masculinities have been common threads throughout her studies.

In recent years, Enloe has been invited to lecture and give special seminars on feminism, militarization, and globalization in Japan, Korea, Turkey, Canada, Britain and numerous colleges across the U.S. She has written for Ms. Magazine and Village Voice and has appeared on National Public Radio and the BBC. She serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals, including Signs and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Among her nine books are: The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (1993), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (2000 ), and The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire , (2004).

Eli Painted Crow

Eli Painted Crow, of the Yaqui Nation in Tucson, Arizona, is a mother of two sons who served in the military and has seven grandchildren. An army veteran of 22 years, she retired at the rank of Sergeant First Class E-7. She served assignments in Honduras in 1988 as an interpreter and communications specialist and in Kuwait and Iraq in 2004 as a Training NCO, Transportation NCO and Support Operations Sergeant.

The Pinochet Case

Patricio Guzman's The Pinochet Case investigates the legal origins of the case against Augusto Pinochet, the general who overthrew President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973. This documentary follows the legal cases that ultimately led to Pinochet being arrested and tried for his crimes against humanity committed over the 25 years that he ruled Chile.

Carlos Castresana received his law degree in 1979 from Complutense University, Madrid, Spain. He served as a District and Examine Judge, and Court Magistrate for a number of years, before becoming a member of the Public Prosecutors of Spain, where he worked in the Anti-drug and Anti-corruption Special Offices. In 2005, he was appointed Prosecutor of the Supreme Court. He was also a professor of criminal law at the University Carlos III, Madrid.

Mr. Castresana authored the formal complaint and subsequent reports in the Pinochet Case before the Audiencia Nacional in Spain. He has served as an expert in international legal cooperation and other issues in Europe and Latin America, under appointment of the United Nations, European Union, and Council of Europe. He received the Human Rights National Award in Spain in 1997, was awarded the Doctorate Honoris causa from the Guadalajara University, Mexico in 2003, and the Certificate of Honor from the City and County of San Francisco in 2004. Mr. Castresana teaches courses on human rights in Latin America and international criminal law and is coordinator of Project H32, in the United Nation's Office of Narcotics and Crime in Monterrey, Mexico.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo was unanimously elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on April 21, 2003. Between 1984 and 1992, as a prosecutor in Argentina, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was involved in precedent-setting prosecutions of top military commanders for mass killings and other large scale human rights abuses.

He was assistant prosecutor in the "Military Junta" trial against Army commanders accused of masterminding the "dirty war," and other cases of human rights violations by the Argentine military. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was the prosecutor in charge of the extradition from investigation and prosecution of guerrilla leaders and of those responsible for two military rebellions in Argentina. He also took part in the case against Army commanders accused of malpractice during the Malvinas/Falklands war, as well as in dozens of major cases of corruption.

In 1992, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo resigned as Chief Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires, and established a private law firm, Moreno-Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specializes in corruption control programs for large firms and organizations, criminal and human rights law. Until his election as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo worked as lawyer and as Private Inspector General for large companies. He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists' protection and freedom of expression.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also worked with various local, regional, and international NGO's. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean. The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also served as member of the Advisory Board of the "Project on Justice in Times of Transition" and "New Tactics on Human Rights."

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo has been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

Vivek Chibber is an associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, his M.A. in sociology in 1991 from the University of Wisconsin and his B.A. in political science in 1987 from Northwestern University.

His recent publications include: "The Good Empire," The Boston Review, February/March 2005; "From Class Compromise to Class Accommodation: Labor's Incorporation into the Indian Political Economy", Social Movements and Poverty in India, Mary Katzenstein and Raka Ray eds. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); "The Return of Imperialism to Social Science", Archives de Europeenes de Sociologie-The European Journal of Sociology, December, 2004; "Reviving the Developmental State? The Myth of the 'National Bourgeoisie'," Socialist Register 2005.

His research focuses on economic sociology; sociology of development; Marxian theory; political sociology; comparative-historical sociology; social theory.

Dr. Chibber's talk is the fifth seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

Rajmohan Gandhi, the author of Mohandas, a major new biography on his grandfather the Mahatma, is currently a visiting professor in the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and faculty director of Global Crossroads, a learning and living community at the University of Illinois.

He is a jury member for the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, and co-chair, Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, Gurgaon, India. A former member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament), he led the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1990. He is a commentator in the Indian media, and the author of several books. In 2002 he received the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters) Award for his Rajaji: A Life, a biography of Chakravarti Rajagoplachari (1878-1972), leading figure in India's freedom movement and Governor General of free India, 1948-50.

In 2004 he received the International Humanitarian Award (Human Rights) from the City of Champaign and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Calgary and an honorary doctorate of philosophy from Obirin University, Tokyo.

His new book, Mohandas: a True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire, has just been published by Viking/Penguin India. Other books by Gandhi include Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns (Penguin 2004); Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History (Penguin, 1999); The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi (Penguin, 1995); Patel: A Life, a Biography of Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950), Deputy Prime Minister of India, 1947-50 (Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1990); and Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter (SUNY, 1987).

Dr. Gandhi's talk is the fourth seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

This seminar is co-sponsored by Stanford's new Center for South Asia, which is part

of the School of Humanities Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies.