Stanford University

Violence

Kim Babiarz

Stanford Health Policy, 615 Crothers way, Room 222, Stanford, CA 94305-6006

(650) 724-5325 (650) 723-1919
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babiarz_2021.jpg MA, PhD

Dr. Babiarz’s research focuses on fertility and family planning programs, infant and maternal health, and the gender dynamics of global health. She has studied human trafficking in China and South East Asia, and currently works on quantitative approaches to issues of human trafficking and child labor in Brazil.  Dr. Babiarz specializes in large-scale program evaluations and quasi-experimental study designs. She holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis (2011).

Sr. Research Scholar, Health Policy
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Experiences in Extremist Groups

As part of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, Martha Crenshaw moderated a discussion with former radicals who discussed lessons learned during their participation in, and emergence from, various extremist movements. They spoke about what led them to violence, why people are attracted to extremist groups, and programs for deradicalization. 

To view or purchase the event video, please visit: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Extremist.

Martha Crenshaw Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Senior Fellow at CISAC and FSI Moderator
Panel Discussions

Policy perspectives from the Obama Administration

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Jeremy M. Weinstein is Associate Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He serves as director of the Center for African Studies, and is an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.

Weinstein recently returned to Stanford after serving as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Among other issues, Weinstein was centrally involved in the development of President Obama’s Policy Directive on Global Development and associated efforts to reform and strengthen USAID, promote economic growth, and increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance across the board; led efforts at the White House to develop a robust international anti-corruption agenda, which included the creation of the G-20 Action Plan on Anti-Corruption, the design and launch of the Open Government Partnership, and the successful legislative passage and subsequent internationalization of a ground-breaking extractive industries disclosure requirement; and played a significant role in developing the Administration’s policy in response to the Arab Spring, including focused work on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and others. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, served as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.

His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review. Selected publications include: “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War” (APSR 2006), which received the Sage Prize and Gregory Luebbert Award, and “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision (APSR 2007), which received the Heinz Eulau Award and the Michael Wallerstein Award. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007. Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

CISAC Conference Room

Jeremy Weinstein Associate Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at FSI Speaker Affiliated faculty member at CDDRL
Seminars

The Terror War and the Ethics of Targeted Killing

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RSVP required. Please do not forward event information. Seating is limited.

In response to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration adopted a policy of targeting the leadership of terror groups believed to be threatening America. The Obama Administration has vastly increased the use of this tactic, described by President Obama as “eliminating our enemies.”  Critics of the practice contend that it violates the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.  Supporters describe it as a variety of legal preemptive attack.  As a just war theorist, Professor Carter is interested in the morality rather than the legality of targeted killing.

In this seminar, he will discuss the ethical questions raised by attacks on the enemy leadership, whether the enemy is a state or a non-state actor.  He will contend that the word “assassination” is almost always the correct one when such a policy is implemented.  Although his hope is to shed light on the ethics of the Terror War, examples will be drawn mostly from other conflicts in history, including World War II, the Civil War, and others more remote in time.  Carter will argue that the Western tradition of just and unjust war is not entirely adequate for analyzing the morality of assassination, and that a degree of updating is therefore needed.

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CISAC Conference Room

Stephen L. Carter William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale and Author of "The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama" Speaker
Seminars

The Global Religious Challenges to the Secular State

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Mark Juergensmeyer is director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than two hundred articles and twenty books, including the recently-released Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, is based on interviews with religious activists around the world--including individuals convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United States--and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. 

One of Juergensmeyer's earlier books, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, covers the rise of religious activism and its confrontation with secular modernity. It was named by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Annenberg Auditorium
Stanford University

Mark Juergensmeyer Professor of Global and International Studies Speaker UC Santa Barbara
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series

2011 Payne Distinguished Lecture: Improving Governance and Combating Drugs

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On October 3, Karl Eikenberry, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, will deliver this year's inaugural Payne Distinguished Lecture at Cemex Auditorium at the Knight Management Center.

The public address will be given in conjunction with a private, two-day conference that will bring to Stanford an international group of political scientists, economists, lawyers, policy-makers, and military experts to examine from a comparative perspective problems of violence, organized crime, and governance in Mexico. 

Cemex Auditorium
Zambrano Hall
Knight Management Center

641 Knight Way, Stanford, California 94305

Karl Eikenberry Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Retired U.S. Army Lt. General Speaker
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar Speaker Center for International Security and Cooperation

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

Vidal Romero

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Associate Professor 2012-13
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Vidal Romero is a 2012-2013 visiting associate professor at CDDRL. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University. Romero’s research is focused on drug-related crime and violence. Romero investigates into citizens’ perceptions of crime and violence and how a climate of insecurity affects individuals’ well-being, their support of crime fighting efforts and their assessment of authorities’ performance. His work also investigates into the determinants of violence and the type of relationship between the State, criminal organizations and citizens. Much of his work is based on econometric and experimental methods implemented in different surveys that he has co-designed. During his stay at CDDRL, he will work on exploring the determinants of crime and violence in Mexico and its effects on Unites States domestic security. 

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Violence, Drugs and Governance: Mexican Security in Comparative Perspective Conference

The conference will bring together a multidisciplinary group of political scientists, economists, and lawyers, together with policy makers and military experts in Mexico and the United States, seeking to provide better answers about how to confront drug-related violence and strengthen the rule of law and state capacity in Mexico.

While the focus is on Mexico, we believe that sharing research strategies and findings from other settings, notably Colombia, Brazil, and Afghanistan, will contribute to the debate on the current state and future trajectory of Mexico’s situation.

The conference seeks to foster an exchange of ideas based on the analysis of various actors in contentious environments, including, but not limited to, drug trafficking organizations. Examining the mechanisms behind the violence in Mexico from a comparative perspective will bring us closer to developing constructive policy recommendations to reduce violence in Mexico.

Mr. Karl Eikenberry will deliver a keynote address at the end of the day on Thurs., Oct. 3rd, and that part of the event will be open to the public.

Stanford University

Mr. Karl Eikenberry Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Keynote Speaker
Mr. Arturo Sarukhán Ambassador of Mexico to the United States Keynote Speaker
Mr. Alejandro Poiré Secretario Técnico del Consejo de Seguridad Nacional and Government Spokesman for Security Issues Keynote Speaker Government of Mexico
Mr. José Mariano Beltrame Secretary of Security for the State of Rio de Janeiro Keynote Speaker
Mr. Alejandro Martí Mexican businessman Keynote Speaker
Conferences

Violence, Drugs and Governance: Mexican Security in Comparative Perspective

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On October 3-4, 2011, the Stanford University Program on Poverty and Governance at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, in conjunction with the Center for Latin American Studies, the Stanford Law School, and the Bill Lane Center for the American West, hosted a conference to discuss the problem of violence, organized criminal activity, and governance. In particular, the conference focused on growing concerns about Mexican security. Participants examined the issue from a comparative perspective, drawing lessons from the experience of Afghanistan, Colombia, and other countries that have grappled with similar challenges.

Among other topics, the conference explored the root causes of the dramatic upswing in violence in Mexico in recent years, compared those problems to chronic violence and illicit activity in other countries, and considered potential solutions that could reduce the risk of violence in the future. The conference was held at Stanford University in the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall. Participants included scholars and doctoral candidates from the United States, Mexico, Colombia, and Germany, representatives from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury, and the Mexican Embassy.

Context of the Problem

Crime and violence pose a serious challenge to Mexico. According to one of the participants, between January 2007 and December 2010, official statistics confirm that approximately 40,000 homicides have occurred. The problem appears to be growing worse, with 2011 on pace to become the most violent year on record.

The rising violence in Mexico has resulted in a sharply heightened sense of fear among citizens, who now feel the presence of cartels in their every day lives. The use of extortion and kidnapping by cartels combined with a lack of trust in security forces terrorizes the population and makes them feel like they have no where to turn. Despite this fact, crime rates in Mexico remain lower than in other parts of Latin America. Venezuela, for example, has among the highest homicide rates in the world. Yet the pervasive infiltration of cartels into public life gives Mexicans a heightened sense of the severity of violent crime in their own country.

There are no simple answers explaining these developments. Some participants trace the violence back to the 1980s when the United States began working closely with the Colombian government to stem the flow of cocaine across the Caribbean, and to disrupt powerful Colombian criminal organizations. The scholars suggested that the crackdown on those illegal trafficking routes caused the drug trade to divert through Mexico on the way to markets in the United States. These trade routes strengthened Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), thereby altering the landscape and scale of illicit activity in the country.

Some participants also noted the importance of  attributing other factors to explain the growing violence in Mexico, citing four domestic factors. First, the efforts made by President Felipe Calderón of Mexico to crack down on drug-related violence after his inauguration in 2006; second, the fragmentation of Mexican cartels due to the capture or assassination of "kingpins" in the organizations; third, a diversification in the economic incentives of the DTOs; and fourth, the weak status of rule of law in Mexico.

These four explanations are by no means independent of each other, and the endogenous nature of these factors is exactly why it is so difficult to stop the increasing violence in Mexico. Indeed, examining these four factors a bit further makes it clear that they are closely linked. Following his inauguration, President Calderón made violence and drug trafficking top priorities. His strategy was to target and remove the cartel leadership, assuming that breaking the cartels up would make them easier to subdue. The effort had the opposite effect. Capturing and killing cartel kingpins created a power vacuum and splintered the cartels into many smaller, less organized, and more militant gangs. The smaller and less centralized gangs began fighting each other for control of routes and territory. Without centralized control, the groups also became less efficient as cocaine traffickers - a system that had previously thrived from economies of scale. As a result, they began diversifying their revenue streams. Extortion, human trafficking, money laundering, arms trading, and petty crime all became more economical relative to small-scale drug trafficking and dealing, which led the cartels to diversify further still. Though participants heavily debated the directionality of the link between this diversification and gang fractionalization, consensus emerged that dividing up the cartels led to increased violence in Mexico.

The persistent problems of the Mexican legal system have also exerted a huge impact on the ability of the Mexican government to subdue the violence. High rates of corruption within local police forces, due in part to low compensation, means that the police are unreliable as a means to enforce order in municipalities. This has prompted the government to deploy armed forces to try to restore order in some areas. Furthermore, the judicial system in Mexico is weak, with poor judges, a shortage of lawyers, and a backlog that makes due process nothing more than an idealized notion.

Participants also presented evidence that additional factors could have exacerbated the violence. Among them: the global recession, which has reduced economic opportunities, and democratization in the 1990s. But in general, participants concluded that the evidence that either of these factors affected the overall crime situation in Mexico was weak relative to the other factors discussed.

The overall consensus was that any policy initiative made to control violence in Mexico invariably must address the weak rule of law institutions, the economic incentives of the cartels, and the exploding intra- and inter-cartel violence. Successful strategies, moreover, must approach these topics differently than how they have been addressed thus far.

Lessons and Proposals

What can be done to rein in the rising violence? Participants examined a number of successful anti-gang and anti-drug policies in other countries for potential answers. For instance, the Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacifying Police Units or UPP) program in Rio de Janeiro, which started in 2008, consists of proximity policing, gaining the trust of and working with favela populations, and directly engaging with and helping favela children and youth. The program's main goal is to keep organized crime out of favelas, which have been their hideout for decades. The program helped restore law and order, participants said, because of the high effectiveness of proximity policing in high-risk communities, which combined policing with social and public services to increase legitimacy of the program. This dual security approach-using specialized forces during conflict and then proximity policing to maintain daily safety and security in the slums-has been highly successful at maintaining order and controlling police corruption in Rio.

In Colombia, because the violence of a few decades ago seemed to be more a result of a weak state than the presence of drugs, the situation improved when the state's capacity increased. Nevertheless, part of the solution found in the city of Medellín, where the local cartel proved too strong to destroy, was to allow one cartel to have a monopoly. Yet while this trade-off worked in the short-term, once the Medellín Cartel kingpin was captured and extradited with the help of U.S. military aid, violence started to increase again.

U.S. military aid to Colombia also had a drawback as some of the funding was leaked to paramilitary activities. Conference participants said one lesson from this experience is that it is important to invest more in drug interdiction than in eradication, because eradication programs increase the price of drugs, thereby improving trafficking incentives. The most important implication of this is that squeezing the traffickers will only cause them to re-route, not stop. When squeezed out of Colombia and the Caribbean, they re-routed through Mexico. If this occurs in Mexico, traffickers will most likely move into Central America. The issue of drug trafficking cannot be resolved if policymakers ignore Central American republics.

Several other proposals received attention during the conference. Among them was the suggestion that Mexican policy emulate aspects of the Colombian model by concentrating all efforts toward destroying the single-most violent cartel until it is entirely eliminated, and then progressing on to the next largest and so forth. Theoretically, doing so would systematically destroy the cartels while minimizing their fragmentation.

Participants also suggested that authorities focus on targeting extortion, kidnapping, and other non-drug related economically incentivized crimes committed by the gangs, which could help limit their ability to fragment and diversify. This approach could benefit from careful analysis of efforts to implement community policing strategies that some participants believe to have yielded results in the United States and Brazil. A third proposal with serious implications is to reform the judicial and penal system in Mexico to ensure that incarcerated "narcos" cannot continue operating from within Mexican prisons.

Finally, much discussion was given to the best way to address the demand-side of drug trafficking. While legalizing drugs in the United States was seen as highly unlikely option with very unclear potential results, a participant proposed that policymakers encourage the expansion of rigorous drug treatment programs, such as Hawaii's highly successful Opportunity Probation with Enforcement program. It requires convicted drug offenders on probation to undergo randomized drug tests one to seven times a week, with automatic incarceration for anyone who tests positive or is found to be in violation of their parole.

Conclusion

Daunting problems remain in understanding crime and governance in Latin America. But this conference, among other things, helped highlight areas where further research on drug trafficking, organized crime, violence, and issues of citizen security are still needed. There were also several highly actionable proposals put forth based on programs that have been implemented in other countries in the Western Hemisphere. These initiatives hold promise for helping Mexico deal with its own situation. This conference should serve as a launch pad to encourage and develop research and communication in this area with policy implications for the near future.

 

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Bechtel Conference Center

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar Co-Director Host Center for International Security and Cooperation

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Bruce Jones and Francis Fukuyama on the World Bank's Development Report

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Bruce Jones will present on the World Bank's 2011 World Development Report, on "Conflict, Security and Development." The report, which is the World Bank's flagship annual research product, reviews and challenges previous Bank findings on the causes of conflict and fragility; provides new research findings on strategies for recovery from conflict and violence; and sets out a series of directions for national policy and international institutional reform. Dr. Jones will brief on these, as well as on the politics of research and implementation at the World Bank and the UN.

Dr. Bruce Jones is director and senior fellow of the NYU Center on International Cooperation, and senior fellow and director of the Managing Global Insecurity Program at the Brookings Institution. Currently, his is also the Senior External Advisor for the World Bank's Development Report (WDR) on Conflict, Security and Development. Jones will provide an overview and account of the WDR and will be joined by Dr. Francis Fukuyama who will participate as a discussant on the topic.

In March 2010, Jones was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General as a member of the Senior Advisory Group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities.
Dr. Jones’ research focuses on US policy on global order and transnational threats; on multilateral institutions in peace and security issues; on the role of the United Nations in conflict management and international security; and on global peacekeeping, post-conflict operations and fragile state engagements.

Prior to assuming the Directorship of the Center, Dr. Jones served in several capacities at the United Nations. He was Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary-General during the UN reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was Acting Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. In 2004-2005, he was Deputy Research Director of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. From 2000-2002 he was Special Assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process; and held assignments in the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo, and in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  

Dr. Jones has been interviewed by or cited in US and international media, including the New York Times, LA Times, Globe and Mail, BBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, and Al Jazeera.
Dr. Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics; and was Hamburg Fellow in Conflict Prevention at Stanford University. He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman of Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2009); author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures; Series Editor of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations (Lynne Reinner) and author of several book chapters and journal articles on US strategy, global order, the Middle East, peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, and strategic coordination.

He is Consulting Professor at Stanford University, Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, and Professor by Courtesy at the NYU Department of Politics.

CISAC Conference Room

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen J. Stedman Senior Fellow Moderator Stanford University

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Francis Fukuyama Senior Fellow Panelist Stanford University
Bruce Jones Director and Senior Fellow Speaker NYU Center on International Cooperation
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