Abstract:

Professor Schuck's new book first identifies the endemic  ineffectiveness of much federal domestic policy as a major cause of public disaffection with Washington.  This disaffection has grown along with the size and ambition of federal programs and  now threatens the very legitimacy of our polity.  Synthesizing a vast amount of social science evidence and analysis,  he argues that this widespread policy failure has little to do with which party dominates Congress and the White house but instead reflects the systemic, structural, institutional obstacles to effective policy.  These deep obstacles to coherent policymaking include our political culture, political actors' perverse incentives, voters' collective irrationality, policymakers' poor information, the government's inherent inflexibility and lack of credibility, the effect of dynamic markets on policy coherence, the inherent limits of law as a policy instrument, a deviant implementation process, and a deteriorating bureaucracy.  Those policies that have succeeded help to explain why most policies fail. Professor Schuck proposes a variety of remedies to reduce government's failure rate.

Speaker Bio:

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Emeritus at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.  He has held the Baldwin professorship since 1984, and also served as Deputy Dean of the Law School. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 1979, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1977-79), Director of the Washington Office of Consumers Union (1972-77), and consultant to the Center for Study of Responsive Law (1971-72).  He also practiced law in New York City (1965-68) and holds degrees from Cornell (B.A. 1962), Harvard Law School (J.D. 1965), N.Y.U. Law School (Ll.M. in International Law 1966), and Harvard University (M.A. in Government 1969). 

His major fields of teaching and research are tort law; immigration, citizenship, and refugee law; groups, diversity, and law; and administrative law. He has published hundreds of articles on these and a broad range of other public policy topics in a wide variety of scholarly and popular journals.  His newest book is Why Government Fails So Often, and How It Can Do Better (April 2014).  Earlier books include Understanding America: The Anatomy of An Exceptional Nation (2008) (co-editor with James Q. Wilson; Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples (2006)(with Richard J. Zeckhauser); Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics (2006); Immigration Stories (co-editor with David A. Martin, 2005); Foundations of Administrative Law (editor, 2d ed., 2004)  Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance (Harvard/Belknap, 2003); The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance (2000); Citizens, Strangers, and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship (1998); and Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany (co-editor with Rainer Munz, 1998); Tort Law and the Public Interest: Competition, Innovation, and Consumer Welfare (editor, 1991); Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts (1987); Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Policy (with Rogers M. Smith, 1985); Suing Government: Citizen Remedies for Official Wrongs (1983); and The Judiciary Committees (1974). He is a contributing editor of The American Lawyer.

Abstract:

Around the world, public health interventions have dramatically changed the life chances of millions. Life expectancy has increased, and fewer children die prematurely at an early age. However, health performance is characterized by large inequalities. Patients are often treated with little dignity, particularly when they are poor. And health systems tend to be relatively unaccountable to citizens. The project “The Governance of Public Health in Mexico” seeks to offer citizens, researchers and policy makers a set of tools that may enable them to evaluate, visualize and interpret the performance of the Mexican health system from a bottom up accountability perspective. The presentation will center around the development of a municipal dashboard that allows for the measurement of the relative performance of local governments in health, and the use of visualization tools to understand the epidemiological profiles of municipalities, based on the methodology of the Global Burden of Disease.

Speaker Bio:

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C. from 1997-1999. His work has primarily focused on federalism and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His forthcoming book is entitled Strategies of Vote Buying: Democracy, Clientelism and Poverty Relief in Mexico (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni).

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The US-Japan alliance is the longest, most stable, and most indispensable alliance in the modern history of East Asia.  It has served as the foundation for the region's security structure for well over a half-century.  However, with China's emergence as a rising economic and military power, and given territorial disputes involving China, Japan, and South Korea, and with escalating nationalistic rhetoric and fundamental disagreements over historical interpretations of the Pacific War, the United States and Japan are now facing worrisome tensions and strains that could undermine the solidarity of the US-Japan alliance.  Is the time-tested US-Japan alliance capable of managing both the shifts in the regional balance of power, and the threat of conflict over disputed territories, and the rising thermometer of nationalistic sentiments?   

Ambassador Ryozo Kato, former Ambassador of Japan to the United States from 2001 - 08, the longest tenure of any Japanese Ambassador to the United States, and former Commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball from 2008 - 2013, has had a long and distinguished career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Japanese Government. A graduate of Tokyo University Faculty of Law and Yale Law School, he served his country in Australia, Egypt, and the United States, in addition to multiple global assignments within the Ministry in Tokyo.

Positions which Ambassador Kato served in the United States include the Third Secretary in the Embassy (1967–1969), Minister in the Embassy (1987–1990), and Consul-General in San Francisco (1992–1994). He returned to Japan to serve as the Director-General of the Asian Affairs Bureau (1995–1997) and the Deputy-General of the Foreign Policy Bureau (1997–1999). After serving as the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs (1999–2001), he was appointed the Ambassador of Japan to the United States of America from 2001 to 2008. He has been recognized and respected on both sides of the Pacific for his outstanding understanding of the issues and his clarity in direction to resolve them.