Abstract: Do states plan their grand strategies, or does grand strategy emerge in an ad hoc fashion as individual foreign policy decisions accumulate over time? The existing literature rests on the assumption, which has yet to be examined empirically, that grand strategies form according to an emergence model of grand strategy formation. This project tests that assumption by developing an original planning model and testing it on a “least-likely” case: the U.S. response to China’s rise after 9/11. This is a period in which the planning capacity of the Executive was severely taxed by the simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If, during that time, the U.S. formulated and enacted a long-term, integrated, and holistic (“grand”) plan in response to China’s rise, significant doubt would be cast on the assumed emergence model. Contrary to the expectations of the emergence model, this research finds that the U.S. developed a long-term military-diplomatic strategy in response to China’s rise, and that this strategy was substantially enacted as planned. This finding suggests that long-term plans govern U.S. behavior far more than is assumed in the scholarly literature. It also challenges the common belief among policy commentators that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq distracted the U.S. from attending to China’s rise. The findings of this research were not, however, wholly positive. Foreign economic policy and nuclear strategy were not fully integrated with the military-diplomatic strategy, indicating the existence of some serious stove-pipes in U.S. planning processes.

About the Speaker: Dr. Nina Silove is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on grand strategy, strategic planning, and U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. She holds a DPhil (PhD) in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a degree in law with first class honors from the University of Technology, Sydney, where she also received the Alumni Association Achievement Award for Contribution to the University. Previously, Dr. Silove was a Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a visiting Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and the Tutor for International Politics in Diplomatic Studies at the University of Oxford.

Abstract:

Both South Korea and Taiwan are considered consolidated democracies, but the two countries have developed very different sets of electoral campaign regulations. While both countries had highly restrictive election laws during their authoritarian eras, they have diverged after democratic transition. South Korea still restricts campaigning activities, including banning door-to-door canvassing, prohibiting pre-official period campaigning, and restricting the quantity and content of literature. Taiwan has removed most campaigning restrictions, except for finance regulations. This study explores the causes of these divergent trajectories through comparative historical process tracing, using both archival and secondary sources. The preliminary findings suggest that the incumbency advantage and the containment of the leftist or opposition parties were the primary causes of regulation under the soft and hard authoritarian regimes of South Korea and Taiwan. The key difference was that the main opposition party as well as the ruling party in South Korea enjoyed the incumbency advantage but that opposition forces in Taiwan did not. As a result, the opposition in Taiwan fought for liberalization of campaign regulations, but that in South Korea did not. Democratization in Taiwan was accompanied by successive liberalizations in campaign regulation, but in South Korea the incumbent legislators affiliated with the ruling and opposition parties were both interested in limiting campaigning opportunities for electoral challengers.

Bio:

Dr. Jong-sung You is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. His research interests include comparative politics and the political economy of inequality, corruption, social trust, and freedom of expression. He conducts both cross-national quantitative studies and qualitative case studies, focusing on Korea and East Asia. He recently published a book entitled Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared with Cambridge University Press. His publications have appeared at American Sociological Review, Political Psychology, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Asian Perspective, Trends and Prospects, and Korean Journal of International Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and taught at UC San Diego. Before pursuing an academic career, he fought for democracy and social justice in South Korea.

More than 46 million Americans live in poverty and high rates of food insecurity and obesity are also a persistent concern. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, occupies a central role in the U.S. safety net as the only universal aid program for low income individuals. In this talk, Professor Hilary Hoynes will review the evidence on the two  goals of SNAP: providing income support and improving nutrition. Professor Hoynes will discuss the trends in poverty and inequality in the U.S, and how SNAP affects poverty overall and particularly in the Great Recession. Additionally, she will review the evidence on the impact of SNAP on food insecurity and health. This will include new evidence on how access to social safety net programs in early life affect health and human capital outcomes in adulthood. 

Hilary Hoynes is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics and holds the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities. She is the co-editor of the leading journal in economics, American Economic Review. Hoynes received her undergraduate degree from Colby College and her PhD from Stanford University.

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Hoynes is an economist and specializes in the study of poverty, inequality, and the impacts of government tax and transfer programs on low income families. Current projects include evaluating the impact of the Great Recession across demographic groups, examining the impact of Head Start on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, examining the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit on infant health, and estimating impacts of U.S. food and nutrition programs on labor supply, health and human capital accumulation.

In addition to her faculty appointment, Hoynes has research affiliations at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She sits on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and previously has sat on the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program and the Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation, Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Prior to joining the Goldman School she was a Professor of Economics at UC Davis.