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.

Competitiveness, Economic Development and Strategy: Going Beyond GDP as Measure of Human Well Being

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Co-sponsored by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and US-Asia Technology Management Center

We need alternative metrics to complement GDP in order to get a more comprehensive view of development and ensure informed policy making that doesn’t exclusively prioritize economic growth. As a step in this direction, India is also beginning to focus on the ease of living of its citizens. Ease of living is the next step in the development strategy for India, following the push towards ease of doing business that the country has achieved over the last few years. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has developed the Ease of Living Index to measuring quality of life of its citizens across Indian cities, as well as economic ability and sustainability. It is as well expected to evolve into a measurement tool to be adopted across districts. The end goal is to have a more just and equitable society that is economically thriving and offering citizens a meaningful quality of life. The talk will focus on how we can bridge the divide between economic objectives and social objectives.

Amit Kapoor
Amit Kapoor, PhD  In addition to the roles listed above, Dr. Kapoor is also president of India Council on Competitiveness, and chair for the Social Progress Imperative & Shared Value Initiative in India. He is also affiliate faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness & Value Based Health Care Delivery courses of Harvard Business School’s Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, and an instructor with Harvard Business Publishing in the area of Strategy, Competitiveness and Business Models.

Amit is the author of bestsellers Riding the Tiger: How to Execute Business Strategy in India (Random Business) and The Age of Awakening: The Story of the Indian Economy Since Independence (Penguin Books), and editor-in-chief of the quarterly thought leadership magazine Thinkers.

For his full biography, visit amitkapoor.com.

Amit Kapoor, PhD, <i>Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; Visiting Scholar at Stanford University</i>
Seminars
South Asia Colloquia

CANCELED: Human Rights in North Korea Policy: Human Rights and Security are not in Conflict

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THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED
In keeping with Stanford University's guidance to event hosts

 

Over the last three years, the United States has done an about-face in terms of engaging North Korea on human rights. Some have argued that if we are to make progress on denuclearization with North Korea, we cannot press Pyongyang on human rights issues because we must develop a cooperative relationship. Raising human rights abuses will only make it more difficult to deal with security issues they argue. On the other hand, Ambassador King believes that human rights are not an issue that we raise after we have achieved our security goals. It is not just the right thing to do, it is an important and critical part of achieving real progress with North Korea on security issues and it is key to a better relationship between Washington and Pyongyang. Internal pressure from the North Korean elites and the public is necessary for positive change on security issues by the North, and this will only come about if there is progress on human rights.  Furthermore, North Korea, like all UN member states, has agreed to observe UN human rights obligations. If the North fails to carry out its commitments on human rights, what assurance do we have that it will fulfill security obligations it accepts?

robert king
Ambassador Robert King is former Special Envoy for North Korean human rights issues at the Department of State (2009-2017).  Since leaving that position, he has been senior advisor to the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI), and a board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) in Washington, D.C.  Previously, Ambassador King served for 25 years on Capitol Hill (1983-2008) as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California), and staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2001-2008). Most recently, he was a 2019-20 Koret Fellow for the fall quarter at Stanford University.

This public event is part of the 12th annual Koret Workshop, "The Role of Human Rights in Policy Toward North Korea," and open to the general public with registration.

The event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Advisory on Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

In accordance with university guidelines, if you (or a spouse/housemate) have returned from travel to mainland China or South Korea in the last 14 days, we ask that you DO NOT come to campus until 14 days have passed since your return date and you remain symptom-free. For more information and updates, please refer to Stanford's Environmental Health & Safety website.

 

Robert R. King Former Special Envoy for North Korean Human Right Issues
Seminars
Koret Workshop

CANCELED: The Role of Human Rights in Policy Toward North Korea

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THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED  
In keeping with Stanford University's guidance to event hosts

The 12th Annual Koret Workshop

The workshop will consist of three sessions:

Session 1: Human Rights and Denuclearization of North Korea--Help or Hinderance?

Session 2: The Role of U.N. in Generating Changes in North Korea Human Rights

Session 3: Freedom of Information: How Access to Information is Changing North Korea

NOTE: During the conference, a keynote address will be open to the general public. Please register for the public session here.

The annual Koret Workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Conferences
Koret Workshop

“Crazy Rich Asians”? Southeast Asia's Billionaires and Their Business Empires in the Age of China's Rise

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The hit movie Crazy Rich Asians shone a light on the extreme wealth of Southeast Asia's ethnically Chinese ultra-wealthy, who have long topped billionaire rankings and dominated stock-markets around the region. Sometimes dubbed “the Asian godfathers,” these successful tycoons are famed both their sharp commercial savvy and their association with chronic crony capitalism. In this talk, however, author James Crabtree will suggest that role of the region's mega-wealthy industrialists is now changing in interesting ways, notably due to the economic rise of China itself, which presents major business opportunities but also tricky political challenges for Southeast Asia's commercial titans.

james crabtree profile picture 4x4
James Crabtree is a Singapore-based author and journalist, a columnist for Nikkei Asian Review, and a fellow in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House in London. His best-selling 2018 book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, was short-listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. Prior to his position at NUS, James worked for the FT, most recently as its bureau chief in Mumbai, India. Publications for which he has written include The New York Times, The Economist, Wired, and Foreign Policy. Before becoming a journalist, he was an advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, worked for think tanks in London and Washington DC, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Download pdf
James Crabtree Associate Professor of Practice, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Seminars

CANCELED: Gandhi's Gift: Successful Mass Nonviolence and India's Decolonization

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IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE:

In keeping with Stanford University's March 3 message to the campus community on COVID-19 and current recommendations of the CDC, the Asia-Pacific Research Center is electing to postpone this event until further notice. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we do our best to keep our community healthy and well. 

 

Co-sponsored by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and Center for South Asia (CSA).

When does mass nonviolent mobilization for political change occur, what prevents it from degenerating into violence, and when does it succeed in extracting concessions? We examine these questions in the context of India's movement for independence from Britain, and point to the key roles played by economic shocks and organization in the success of nonviolence.

Rikhil Bhavnani

Rikhil R. Bhavnani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a faculty affiliate at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Elections Research Center and the Center for South Asia.

Professor Bhavnani’s research and teaching focus on inequalities in political representation, the political economy of migration, and the political economy of development. His research is particularly concerned with causal identification, and is focused on South Asia. Bhavnani is the co-author, with Bethany Lacina, of a book on the backlash against within-country migration across the developing world, published by Cambridge University Press. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, World Politics, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and other outlets. 

Prior to starting at UW–Madison, Professor Bhavnani was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He has worked at the Center for Global Development and the International Monetary Fund, and received a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University, and a BA in political science and economics from Yale University.

Rikhil Bhavnani, <i>Associate Professor, Department of Political Science</i> University of Wisconsin–Madison
Seminars
South Asia Colloquia

Victor Cha

Shorenstein APARCStanford UniversityEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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Koret Fellow, 2019-20
Visiting Scholar at APARC, Winter 2020
victor_cha-koret_fellow.jpg Ph.D.

Victor Cha, professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Korea Program as the Koret Fellow for the winter quarter of 2020. He is the author of five books, including The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Harper Collins, 2012) and Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). He holds Georgetown's Dean's Award for teaching for 2010, the Distinguished Research Award for 2011, and a Distinguished Principal Investigator Award for 2016.

Professor Cha left the White House in 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he was responsible for Japan, the Korean peninsula, Australia/New Zealand, and Pacific Island affairs. He serves as Senior Advisor at CSIS, and is a non-resident Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University, M.A. from the University of Oxford, and MIA and B.A. from Columbia University.

The Decline of the “Singapore Model” and the Fate of Authoritarian Reformism in China

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In the eyes of China’s neo-authoritarian reformers, Singapore, despite being a tiny city-state, long exemplified a state of affairs for which the PRC should strive: resilient authoritarianism alongside but unweakened by liberalizing steps conducive to economic growth.  On behalf of Beijing’s effort to learn from Singapore, tens of thousands of officials visited the city-state and thousands of articles and books were written about it. Today, however, Xi Jiinping has derided foreign templates and relegated adopting the “Singapore model” to a path not taken by China’s current hard-line leadership and unavailable for authoritarian reformers to pursue. Although the demotion was triggered by Xi’s anti-reformism and China’s rise, Singapore’s loss of “model” character was also path-dependent. Chinese academics studying Singapore had long misunderstood fundamental institutional differences between the two countries that went back to the city-state’s colonial past and China’s Stalinist-Maoist revolution. Efforts to model reforms on the Singaporean “state-party” ran into the prerogatives of the Chinese party-state. Proposals to strengthen market forces, impose limited legal constraints on the party, and introduce semi-competitive elections were seen as threatening the institutional foundations of the CPC. Moreover, despite a (partial) revival of Confucianism in China that imitated the city-state’s attraction to “Asian values,” Singapore’s neo-liberal “pragmatism” and multi-racialism contradicted the CPC’s self-portrayal as an engine of Marxist socialism embodying the Han-Chinese nation.

mark thompson 0120
Mark R. Thompson heads the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. He is president of the Hong Kong Political Science Association (HKPSA) and a former president of the Asian Political and International Studies Association (2013-14). A comparativist specializing in Southeast Asian politics, his publications include China’s “Singapore Model” and Authoritarian Learning, ed. with Stephan Ortmann (forthcoming 2020); Authoritarian Modernism in East Asia (2019); The Routledge Handbook of the Contemporary Philippines, ed. with Eric Batalla (2018); Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia, ed. with Claudia Derichs (2014); Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (2004); and The Anti-Marcos Struggle (1995).

Mark Thompson

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-6459 (650) 723-6530
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MarkThompson[1].JPG PhD

Professor Thompson builds on Barrington Moore's insight that there are different "paths to the modern" world. Thompson's manuscript explores alternatives to the familiar South Korean-and Taiwan-based model of "late democratization." According to that model, political pluralism follows a formative period of economic growth during which labor is demobilized and big business, religious leaders, and professionals depend upon and are co-opted by the state.

Thompson argues that even when these preconditions are in place, democratization need not follow. Singapore is an illuminating case in point. The autocratic growth model pays insufficient attention to politics, including the sometimes crucial role of student activists in challenging developmental authoritarianism and triggering a democratic transition, as in Indonesia. As political actors, students (rather than a progressive bourgeoisie) may fill the oppositional vacuum created by the preconditions that characterized predemocratic South Korean and Taiwan.

In his critique of Northeast Asian-style, post-authoritarian "late democratization" and its emphasis on economic growth as the driver of political change, Professor Thompson uses evidence drawn from paired comparisons of Vietnam with China, Hong Kong with Singapore, and between South Korea and Taiwan on the one hand and other major Southeast Asian cases on the other.

Mark R. Thompson is a professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.  A Chicago native, he took his first degree in religious studies at Brown University followed by postgraduate work at Cambridge University and the University of the Philippines.  Fascinated by Philippine people power, he wrote his dissertation at Yale University on the anti-Marcos struggle (Yale University Press, 1996). After moving to Germany, he witnessed popular uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe, inspiring him to conceptualize democratic revolutions in essays later published as a book (Routledge, 2004).  He is in residence at Stanford as Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies from February through April 2009.

Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Head and Professor of Politics, Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong
Seminars

The US, China, and the Technology Cold War: How Washington and Beijing are Shaping the Future of Technology

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IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE: 

In keeping with Stanford University's March 3 message to the campus community on COVID-19 and current recommendations of the CDC, the Asia-Pacific Research Center is electing to make this event available through live stream only. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we do our best to keep our community healthy and well. 

Please join the live stream via Zoom by clicking here at the scheduled time, 4:30 PM, on March 4 to view Adam Segal's talk.

 

Analysts on both sides of the Pacific have described an escalating “technology cold war” between Beijing and Washington. Chinese hackers attack American technology companies and Beijing is reportedly planning on the removal of foreign software and hardware from government offices. Washington is blocking Chinese investments, using punitive measures against Huawei and Chinese surveillance companies, and scrutinizing research collaboration with Chinese universities as well as scientists and students. Both sides believe they are in and have to win a race to dominate 5G, AI, quantum, and other emerging technologies. What are the weapons of the tech cold war, and are the US and China doomed to ever more competition, or can they find common ground for cooperation? What does increasing competition between China and the United States mean for the rest of the world?

Portrait of Adam Segal
Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman Chair in emerging technologies and national security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Segal was the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force reports titled Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge. His most recent book, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age (PublicAffairs, 2016), describes the increasingly contentious geopolitics of cyberspace. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, among others. He currently writes for the blog, “Net Politics.”

 

Image of red flag over the Shanghai Bund
This event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

Adam Segal Director Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program, Council on Foreign Relations
Seminars
The PRC at 70: Past, Present -- and Future?

Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949

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Portrait of M Taylor Fravel
Since 1949, China has adopted nine national military strategies, known as “strategic guidelines.” The strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993 represent major changes in China's military strategy or efforts by the People's Liberation Army to wage war in a new way. This talk examines why major changes in strategy have been pursued at these periods and not at other times, highlighting the role of shifts in the conduct of warfare in the international system and unity among the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Taylor studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia.  His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China's Territorial Disputes (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China's Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019).  His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, Asian Survey, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor, and Contemporary Southeast Asia. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD.  He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.  In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation.  Taylor serves on the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.

 

Image of red flag over the Shanghai Bund

This event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.
 

M. Taylor Fravel Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, MIT
Seminars
The PRC at 70: Past, Present -- and Future?
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