Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Southeast Asia in the Year of the Horse: Issues and Prospects for 2014-15

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The Year of the Horse will run (so to speak) from 31 January 2014 to 18 February 2015.  Many domestic, regional, and global issues will occupy the attention of Southeast Asian leaders and societies and their counterparts in the US, China, and Japan among other countries.  In conversation with SEAF director Don Emmerson, Ernie Bower will highlight the most important of these policy issues and their implications.  Possible topics may include the repercussions of Chinese muscle-flexing over the East and South China Sea, political strife in Thailand, quinquennial elections in Indonesia, and Myanmar's leadership of ASEAN including the plan to declare an ASEAN Community in 2015. 
 
Ernest Z. Bower is one of America's leading experts on Southeast Asia, founding president and CEO of the business advisory firm BowerGroupAsia, a former president of the US-ASEAN Business Council, and a policy adviser to many private- and public-sector organizations in the US interested in Southeast Asia.  
 

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Ernest Z. Bower Senior Adviser and Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asian Studies Speaker Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC
Seminars

Does Decentralization Lessen or Worsen Poverty? Evidence from Post-‘Big Bang’ Indonesia

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Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Development

Under what conditions is decentralization most likely to foster development and reduce poverty?  Plausible answers include:  a sufficiently committed central government; local checks against corruption; and sufficiently resourced actors able to deliver public services effectively. Indonesia is a good place to explore the explanatory power of these and other propositions, thanks to the country’s diverse local conditions and the rapid and sweeping (“Big Bang”) decentralization that it underwent in the late 1990s.  In his disaggregation of the Indonesian case since then, Dr. Sumarto will examine whether, how, and why poverty alleviation has been helped or hurt by particular economic, social, and political variations in the context and character of local governments across the archipelago.

Sudarno Sumarto was an Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow at APARC in 2009-2010.  In 2001-2009 he was the director of SMERU, a highly regarded independent institute for research and public policy studies in Jakarta.  He has served as a consulting economist for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, among other organizations, and has taught in Indonesia’s leading universities. His latest publication is Explaining Regional Heterogeneity of Poverty:  Evidence from Decentralized Indonesia (co-authored, 2013).  Earlier titles include more than sixty co-authored books, working papers, articles, chapters, and reports on topics such as poverty, decentralization, employment, vulnerability, and economic growth.  His degrees in economics include a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BSc from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga).

Lunch will be served.

Philippines Conference Room

Sudarno Sumarto

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Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow
652666552_jnP6G-L-1.jpg MA, PhD

Sudarno Sumarto is the Shorenstein APARC / Asia Foundation fellow for 2009-10.  He has a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BS from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga), all in economics.  Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC he was the director of SMERU for nearly 10 years. SMERU is an independent institution for research and public policy studies which professionally and proactively provides accurate and timely information, as well as objective analysis on various socioeconomic and poverty issues considered most urgent and relevant for the people of Indonesia. The institute has been at the forefront of the research effort to highlight the impact of government programs and policies, and has actively published and reported its research findings. The work expanded to include other areas of applied and economic research that are of fundamental importance to contemporary development issues. He was also a lecturer at Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Bogor, Indonesia.

Sumarto has contributed to more than sixty co-authored articles, chapters, reports, and working papers, including "Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia," in Beyond Food Production (2007); "Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia," SMERU Working Paper, 2007; "Improving Student Performance in Public Primary Schools in Developing Countries:  Evidence from Indonesia," Education Economics, December 2006; and “The Effects of Location and Sectoral Components of Economic Growth on Poverty: Evidence from Indonesia.” Journal of Development Economics, 89(1), pp. 109-117, May 2009.  As well as conducting research and writing papers, Sumarto has worked closely with the Indonesian government, giving advice on poverty issues and government poverty alleviation programs.

Sumarto has spoken on poverty and development issues in Australia, Chile, Peru, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, among other countries.

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Seminars

Obama Cancels Asia Tour: Will it Hurt US Economic Goals?

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US President Barack Obama's much touted Asian pivot took a hit this past week due to the budget stalemate and government shutdown in Washington. LinkAsia speaks with Stanford University's Donald Emmerson about how Obama's decision not to attend two major summits will impact American economic interests in the region.

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Kishore's World

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"Kishore Mahbubani is well known and well credentialed. The widely published dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore has been listed among the 'top 100 global thinkers' by Foreign Policy magazine not once but thrice—in 2005, 2010, and 2011. In praising one of Mahbubani’s books, Harvard professor Larry Summers stated that 'there is no more thoughtful observer of Asia, the United States, and their interaction than Kishore Mahbubani.'”
 
Thus begins Prof. Emmerson's review article on Mahbubani's writings, including The Great Convergence (2013).  The article continues in a different vein, however, offering a critique instead of praise.  
 
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Journal of Democracy
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Donald K. Emmerson
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