Small scale power generation technologies (distributed generation) have the potential to significantly contribute to solving the rural electricity access problem in the developing world. This paper presents results from case studies in Brazil (part of a larger three country study) and shows that differences in business models and the influence of institutions are important factors for understanding success and failure in rural electrification and the contribution rural electrification can play in rural development. 

In their column on National Review on June 24, 2008 called “10 Concerns about Barack Obama,” William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, begin their list of attacks on Senator Obama by writing that “Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history.” In arguing against any engagement with Iran, William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn point out that “Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirely of his first term in office.”

This statement is factually correct. And there was most certainly a big debate within Reagan Administration about whether to talk with the leaders of the Evil Empire. However, Bennett and Leibsohn imply in their piece that this debate was only resolved after the Soviet Union met some preconditions to talks and changed internally, that is after, as they write, that Reagan “was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of leader – after Perestroika, not before.”

In fact, the debate about engaging the evil empire was resolved three years before Reagan met with Gorbachev. The debate and the resolution in favor of talking to the leaders of the evil empires is meticulously chronicled in George’s Shultz’s memoir, Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy , Power, and the Victory of the American Ideal (1993). Just the title of Chapter 25, "Realistic Reengagement with the Soviets," underscores how misleading the Bennett and Leibsohn rendition of history is.

When they first came to Washington, many foreign policy advisors within Reagan administration advocated the Bennett and Leibsohn position and did not want to have any contact with the Soviets, even though every American president since the recognition to the USSR in 1933 had met with their Soviet counterparts. When George Shultz became Secretary of State in 1982, he began to challenge this policy of disengagement, arguing that the United States needed to engage both the Soviet leaders but also Soviet society. As he writes in his memoirs about the start of the New Year in 1983, “I wanted to develop a strategy for a new start with the Soviet Union. I felt we had to try to turn the relationship around: away from confrontation and towards real problem solving.” (p. 159) Shultz is writing about his thinking two years before Gorbachev comes to power.

Shultz’s idea for a turn towards engagement met resistance in the Reagan administration. Again, from his memoirs: “I knew the president’s White House staff would oppose such engagement. There was lots of powerful opposition around town to any efforts to bridge the chasm separating Moscow and Washington.” After listing the opponents to direct negotiations, which included Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and CIA head Bill Casey, Shultz affirmed that “I was determined not to hang back from engaging the Soviets because of fears that the ‘Soviet wins negotiations’.” (p. 159). Sound familiar? Instead the word, Iranians, for Soviets and you capture the essence of the debate today.

Shultz, as we all know, won this debate, convincing Reagan about the need to start talking directly to the Soviets (again well before Gorbachev came on to the scene). A subtitle of Chapter 12 of Shultz’s memoir is A President Ready to Engage. (p. 163). In early February 1983, Shultz even floats the idea of meeting directly with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin for a private chat, to which Reagan responds, “Great”, and then adds “I don’t intend to engage in a detailed exchange with Dobrynin , but I do tell him that if Andropov is wiling to do business, so am I” (p. 164). (Remember Andropov died in 1983 and his successor, Chernenko, also did not serve long as the Soviet leader before dying in 1985. from 1983-1985, there was a real crisis of leadership inside the Soviet Union, a factor that contributed to the lack of direct talks at the highest levels). Speed forwarding again to today’s Iran debate, which presidential candidate sounds more like Reagan?

Shultz’s approach toward engaging the Soviets offers another profound lesson for today’s Iran debate. Shultz never let the negotiations focus just on arms control. That played o the Soviet’s strengths. Rather, he insisted on an expanded agenda that always included human rights and democracy. Again, from his memoirs, "We were determined not to allow the Soviets to focus our negotiations simply on matters of arms control. So we continuously adhered to a broad agenda: human rights, regional issues, arms control, and bilateral issues." (p.267). This same approach is needed for dealing with the Iranian regime today.

Finally, Shultz never saw negotiations or expanding contacts with Soviets and Americans as a concession to Moscow or a signal of legitimacy for the communist dictatorship. In the debate about opening consulates in both countries – a move that some hardliners at the time saw as a sign of weakness – Shultz firmly supported the idea as a change in the American national interest. As he quotes from a memorandum that he wrote in 1982, "I believe the next step on our part should be to propose the negotiation of a new U.S.-Soviet cultural agreement and the opening of U.S. and Soviet consulates in Kiev and New York...Both of these proposals will sound good to the Soviets, but are unambiguously in our interest when examined from a hard headed American viewpoint."(p. 275). Exactly the same could be said about Iran today.

Historical analogies can only go far. Many dimensions of U.S.-Iranians relations differ radically from Cold War relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But when observers do roll them out, getting the facts right should be precondition to the substantive date about their relevance.

WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leading global development experts today called on Congress and the President to elevate development as a key component of the U.S. foreign assistance system to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The international and domestic challenges of the 21st century -- including transnational threats such as economic instability, terrorism, climate change, and disease -- cannot be met with a foreign assistance apparatus created to confront the challenges of the 20th century, said the experts in a report released today. The report, New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century, contains various proposals of this coalition of experts, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN).

Foreign assistance and other investments in developing countries are vital tools for strengthening U.S. foreign policy, restoring American global leadership, and fighting global poverty, said MFAN co-chair Steve Radelet of the Center for Global Development. Foreign policy experts on both sides of the political aisle now recognize the importance of strong foreign assistance programs. But they also recognize that our foreign assistance programs are out of date and badly in need of modernization to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The report lays out the importance of foreign assistance as a foreign policy tool which includes defense, diplomacy, and development. It makes the case that it is in the countrys national interest to elevate development assistance and makes specific recommendations such as better accountability, a national strategy for the coordination of the entire U.S. foreign assistance system, and making development a sustainable piece of Americas long-term investments overseas.

"By giving development a seat at the foreign policy table we can narrow the gap between the world's haves and have nots, tackle the challenges posed by climate change, the global food crisis, and the world's weak and failing states and, most importantly, strengthen the moral foundation from which we lead, said MFAN co-chair Gayle Smith of the Center for American Progress.

The report was released today during the launch of MFAN in Congress. Speakers included Rep. Howard L. Berman, chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Nita Lowey, chair, State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee; and Sen. Chuck Hagel, member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Members of MFAN include: Steve Radelet (Center for Global Development), Gayle Smith (Center for American Progress), Brian Atwood (Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota), David Beckmann (Bread for the World), Lael Brainard (Brookings Institution), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution, Stanford University), Sam Worthington (Interaction), Francis Fukuyama (The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University), Carol Lancaster (Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University), George Ingram (Academy for Educational Development), Larry Nowels, Charles MacCormack (Save the Children), Michael A. McFaul (Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University), Ray Offenheiser (Oxfam America), Stewart Patrick (Council on Foreign Relations), and William Reese (International Youth Foundation).

Just look at the number of construction cranes around you and you’ll immediately know that you have landed in a petrostate. What’s special about the Caspian oil giant Kazakhstan is the fact that there are two types of cranes—the idle ones and the busy ones. This becomes nowhere more apparent than in the country’s new capital Astana. The idle cranes stand on private construction sites and the busy ones on public construction sites.

Kazakhstan is probably one of the countries worst hit by the global credit crunch. After years of aggressive borrowing on international markets Kazakh banks have had to pull the plug on many domestic projects after their own cash stream evaporated and it became clear that they would need to settle most of the $14 billion in scheduled principal repayments on external debt this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been warning about the unsustainability of the ever growing debt ratio for the past two years, but to little avail. Growth rates above 9 percent for the past seven years and great future prospects thanks to ever expanding oil production earned Kazakhstan a credit rating of “stable” from Standard & Poor's rating agency. Now, the bubble burst, the S&P rating turned “negative”, and the private cranes stopped.

The busy cranes—in contrast—run 24/7. No effort is spared to make sure that the fancy new government building, the pavement, the flower-adorned square will be finished in time for the highlight of the year: the birthday of both the President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the capital on July 6 (their 68^th and 10^th, respectively). This simultaneity is no coincident. Astana is largely Nazarbayev’s creation. It was him who anointed the city in the middle-of-nowhere the new capital of the young Republic, who chose its no-nonsense name (“Astana” literally means “capital”), and who caused its population to triple. The upcoming celebrations almost turned into a Nursultan & Nursultan party. If Mr. Sat Tokpakbaye and his fellow parliamentarians had gotten their way, the capital would yet again have undergone a name change—this time to honor its creator more explicitly by endowing it with the President’s first name (there is already an oil field named after him). But out in his modesty, the President declined. With his proposal Mr. Tokpakbayev, achieved the near-impossible: to distinguish himself by loyalty in a Parliament whose members all come from the same Nur-Otan party.

The idle and the busy cranes both stand for different answers to petrostates’ most burning policy question—how to best use the ballooning governmental revenues from the thriving oil and gas sector. Save or spend?—is the 500 billion dollar question (to take the value OPEC earned from net oil export in 2007). Kazakhstan, like 23 other oil and gas producing countries, followed the IMF’s advice and established an oil fund with the goal of sterilizing, stabilizing, and saving governmental oil revenues. The so-called National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NFRK) has accumulated more than $26 billion in the eight years since inception, and the total value of all oil-related funds around the world is estimated to surpass the astronomical sum of $2.300 trillion. While the theoretical logic underlying the creation of oil funds is compelling, their actual track record in achieving macroeconomic stability and fair intergenerational income distribution is more mixed. As a number of recent studies demonstrate (e.g. Shabsigh and Ilahi 2007; Usui 2007), oil funds are no substitute for the strengthening of all institutions involved in the revenue management and budgeting process. Strong expenditure and deficit control mechanisms are indispensable because such richly endowed funds make it easier for the government to borrow money on international financial markets whereby the fund acts--explicitly or implicitly—as a collateral, which in turn undermines the fiscal prudence that the fund was meant to ensure in the first place. More indirectly, the accumulation of large sums of money creates a moral hazard problem also with respect to private sector spending. The temptation is huge for private (and state-owned) companies to take overly risky decisions in the hope that the oil fund will bail them out in case their speculations turn sour. When oil fund assets correspond to more than a quarter of the country’s GDP—as it is the case in Kazakhstan—this temptation is hard to resist. Recent demands by Kazakh banks to dip into the NFRK for alleviating their liquidity problems provide just one case in point, and the national oil company KazMunaiGas may soon follow suit.

However, spending, rather than saving, does not provide a panacea either and is fraught with its very own set of problems.

First, governments of oil rich countries faces a challenge similar to that of rich parents who want to raise their children to become productive members of society. As the US billionaire investor Warren Buffet was once quoted saying: “a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.” Political scientists refer to this concern as the risk of a growing “rentier mentality” (Beblawi 1990), i.e. the tendency of citizens in petrostates to expect the government to solve all their problems rather than relying on their own initiative. The resulting societal dependency may actually suit governments very well since who will bite the hand that feeds him/her? Innovation and entrepreneurship are undermined and undemocratic structures perpetuated. Second, pro-cyclical spending of highly volatile oil revenues results in a series of negative macroeconomic consequences ranging from soaring inflation, exchange rate appreciation, and a further accentuation of the crowding-out of private investments. Finally, a massive explosion in government revenues (e.g. the newly introduced oil export tariff alone is expected to add another $1.5 billion per year) makes it close to impossible for the governmental apparatus to identify and supervise a sufficient number of new spending projects with a satisfactory social return. The floodgates are wide open to white elephant projects, mismanagement, and corruption.

The Kazakh government is acutely aware of this dilemma. Like all other oil producing nations around the world, Kazakhstan is desperately trying to navigate safely between Scylla (saving) and Charybdis (saving). As a possible solution to this dilemma a number of scholars and activists are now proposing the direct distribution of oil revenues to all citizens (and thus the ultimate owners of a country’s natural resource endowment), thereby empowering them to decide for themselves how they want to spend the monetized share of their subsoil assets.

The only real world examples of direct distribution arrangements can be found in the US state Alaska and the Canadian province Alberta. This option has also been proposed for Nigeria (Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian 2003), Iraq (Birdsall and Subramanian 2003; Palley 2003; Sandbu 2006), and Kazakhstan (Makmutova 2008).

While direct distribution arrangements may mitigate some of the problems highlighted above, they have to be greeted with some degree of caution. High levels of corruption and patronage-driven politics not only undermine the effectiveness of top-down development projects but can also jeopardize the fair distribution of oil revenues. Furthermore, even if every entitled citizen does receive his or her share of oil revenues, the long-term impact on a country’s economic development may be small or possibly even negative because of increased inflation and spending on unproductive goods and services imported from abroad. These considerations are not of particular relevance in the two existing examples of direct distribution of oil revenues. Alaska and Alberta both enjoy a relatively good record in fighting corruption and in observing the rule of law. They are both part of a larger, highly developed economy which helps to mitigate inflationary pressure and the risk that citizens will spend most of their additional income on goods imported from abroad. But the picture looks very different in most other oil dependent countries.

One possibility for addressing the risk that directly distributed oil revenues will be spent unproductively is to combine the direct distribution scheme with certain conditions that are intended to encourage citizens to invest in ways that boost their own productivity. This approach has so far not been discussed in academic or policy circles, but the conditional distribution of oil revenues (CDOR) offers the potentials of marrying the merits of two programs that are generally considered to be successful, namely the direct distribution of oil revenues and conditional cash transfer programs employed throughout the world to fight poverty in a more targeted and bottom-up fashion. A whole range of different design options are compatible with this overarching concept. CDOR schemes do not have to adopt the exclusive pro-poor focus of conditional cash transfer programs. In fact, both in Alaska and in Alberta oil revenues are deliberately distributed in an income-blind manner, staying true to the logic that citizens are entitled to a share of oil revenues in their capacity as the ultimate owners of these resources. Also in contrast to most existing conditional cash transfer programs (e.g. Oportunidades in Mexico), the conditions attached to the direct distribution of oil revenues would probably be primarily linked to the use of these revenues rather than some pre-qualifying behavior (e.g. taking infants to regular health check-ups). Eligible spending areas would be selected based on their potential to maximize productivity gains and could include education, health, energy efficiency, start-up capital for small enterprises. Additional design options worth examining include the saving and pooling of CDOR money, which would allow citizens to realize a medium to larger scale common project within the approved spending priorities. For instance, the most promising strategy for greater productivity in Kazakhstan’s agricultural sector lies in the creation of larger units (co-operatives, publicly traded agricultural complexes), and specific incentives may therefore be built into the CDOR scheme to promote such a move away from subsistence farming.

The conditional distribution of oil revenues under any of these design options presents a promising discussion platform for a new initiative the World Bank announced in April 2008—tentatively labeled EITI++. This initiative is meant to help resource rich countries to “manage and transform their natural resource wealth into long-term economic growth that spreads the benefits more fairly among their people”, by focusing not only on the transfer of oil revenues from companies to governments (as does the “original” Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) of 2002) but also on the generation, management, and distribution of oil revenues. The transparency mechanism of double disclosure pioneered by EITI could thereby be used to ensure that all citizens receive the share of oil revenues they are entitled to. Transparency could be further enhanced by tools currently developed by the Google Foundation’s Inform & Empower program.

The implementation of the CDOR scheme could build directly upon the experience gained under conditional cash transfer schemes, including the scientific testing of its effectiveness in a randomized experiment setting. The bottom-up development philosophy underlying the conditional distribution of oil revenues ties nicely in with other approaches to strengthen the consumers of public goods and services that have gained currency over the past decade (e.g. vouchers for health and education services).

With this sketch of a conditional distribution of oil revenues scheme in my pocket (and and unconditional love for the kicking baby in my belly) I navigated my way through yet another construction site to see Mr. Kuandyk Bishimbayev, one of Kazakhstan’s young and rising stars (now the head of the so-called “Division of Socio-Economic Monitoring” within the Presidential Administration). During our meeting I got the impression that my enthusiasm for this novel approach to oil revenue management proved contagious, and since my return to Stanford I have rolled out my networking machinery to spread the virus among my academic colleagues. The time is certainly ripe. With oil prices set to remain high for the foreseeable future Kazakhstan and all other petrostates cannot afford to miss this historic opportunity to promote the diversification of their economies and to create the foundation for a future where oil may lose its dominant position to alternative sources of energy.

The failure of Irish voters to ratify the Lisbon Treaty points to a problem for Europe that goes far beyond that specific referendum. The vote in Ireland, coupled with the rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 of the now failed European Constitution, provides indisputable proof that many European citizens are strongly suspicious of the European Union and that European leaders must take strong action to remedy the misperceptions of those citizens. There are a variety of reasons why voters rejected the Constitution and now the Lisbon Treaty that have been commented on extensively. But as an outsider, I would submit that the most significant underlying reasons for rejection were a lack of understanding of the EU as an institution, the perception of its "unaccountability" and a resulting lack of loyalty to the EU as an entity. Speaking as a friend of Europe and as a strong proponent of transatlantic relations, I believe that these are the major issues that European leaders must address. The EU must have a "face" to which Europeans can relate. The chickens have finally come home to roost. If the EU is to move forward and deal with the challenges of the future, it can afford no longer to be viewed by much of the public, albeit unfairly, as a "mindless" bureaucracy running people's lives from Brussels.

European leaders must think about and be able to provide understandable answers to the most basic questions. What is the EU? How many Europeans can answer that question? Is the EU the equivalent of a nation-state with full sovereignty? Clearly not. Is it some kind of supra-national organisation where members have agreed to share sovereignty in agreed upon areas? That is a start but can it be articulated in a simple understandable way? Do Europeans have any idea as to how decisions are made within the EU? How many Europeans understand the "qualified majority" voting system? It would take a mathematics major to understand how votes are calculated, let alone the multiple layers of decision-making. Is there a simple way to explain how the EU is accountable to European citizenry? How does the EU serve the common good? If the EU remains a mystery to many Europeans, there should be little mystery as to why voters are uncomfortable expanding its powers. It is no wonder that when voters think that they are facing a choice between "national sovereignty" and surrendering sovereignty to a little-understood institution that may impinge on their perceived security, they will vote for "national sovereignty".

If the EU is so little understood in Europe, one can only imagine the lack of understanding among Americans. When I was nominated in 1999 by President Clinton to be the United States Ambassador to the European Union, the most common questions that were asked by my friends were: What is the EU? Isn't that the economic organisation in Europe? Or are you our first ambassador to the EU?

One can also understand why American policymakers, whichever party is in power, have often been reluctant to deal with the EU as an entity and retreat to working through member states. Over recent years US administrations have better recognised the need to work with the EU, and the US and EU have accomplished much working together. But still too often policymakers have become befuddled and frustrated in dealing with the EU. So, for example, even with the ups and downs of the US-French relationship, some US policymakers are more comfortable dealing with France than with the EU because there is a history to the relationship. We have been working with France for over 200 years. There is a texture to the relationship that does not exist with the EU. Until that texture begins to develop, policymakers will often tend to look first to the member states.

Ironically, the Lisbon Treaty would begin to put a face on the EU. The EU would have a president with a set term and a single person responsible for the implementation of EU foreign policy. The treaties upon which the EU is based would be incorporated into a single document. More efficient procedures to deal with an enlarged EU would be put in place. From an American standpoint the treaty should enhance US-European co-operation in areas of vital common interest.

But for the Lisbon Treaty to be ultimately ratified in Ireland and to be accepted by citizens in the other member states even though a referendum is not required in those states, Europe needs to get back to the basics and leaders must be able to explain what the EU is, how the EU is accountable to Europe's citizens and why the Treaty is in the interests of all Europeans.

Ambassador Richard L. Morningstar served as Ambassador to the European Union from 1999-2001. He is a Senior Director at Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Interest in democracy, economic development, and the rule of law is clearly on the rise. Just as global attention in 2005 remained riveted on establishing and protecting the fundamentals of democracy in transitioning societies—the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, the constitutional vote in Iraq, the threat to civil liberties in Russia—these issues took on increasing prominence on the Stanford campus, for policymakers and students alike.

STANFORD SUMMER FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Freeman Spogli Institute’s newest research center, hosted its first annual Summer Fellows Program on campus in August. This innovative program is designed to help emerging and established leaders of transitioning countries in their efforts to create the fundamental institutions of democracy, fight the pernicious problem of corruption, improve governance at all levels of society, and strengthen prospects for sustainable economic development. In contrast to other programs of democracy promotion, which seek to transfer ready-made models to countries in transition, the Stanford program provides a comparative perspective on the evolution of established democratic practices, as well as theoretical and practical background on issues of democracy and good governance, to assist with needed economic, political, and judicial reform.

The three-week 2005 leadership seminar attracted 32 participants from 28 countries for specialized teaching, training, and outreach, including leaders from the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and parts of the former Soviet Union, whose stability is so vital to the international system. The curriculum draws on the combined expertise of Stanford scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, economics, law, sociology, and business and emphasizes the dynamic linkages among democratization, economic development, and the rule of law in transitioning countries.

DEMOCRACY, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE RULE OF LAW

In the fall quarter of 2005, a new undergraduate course, titled %course1% (PS/IR 114D), examining the dynamic and interactive linkages among democratic institutions, economic development, and the framework of law proved to be an all-star attraction for Stanford students. Conceived by the research faculty and staff at CDDRL as an important introduction to fundamental concepts and team-taught by a number of prominent Stanford scholars—including University President Emeritus Gerhard Casper (Stanford Law School), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution), CDDRL Director Michael A. McFaul (Hoover Institution and Department of Political Science), and Peter B. Henry (Graduate School of Business), the course attracted a record number of students this fall. Encina Columns recently interviewed Kathryn Stoner, associate director of research and senior research scholar at CDDRL, the course convener, to glean a few highlights.

Q. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO OFFER THE COURSE AT THIS TIME?

A. CDDRL research staff and faculty decided to offer the course in the fall of 2005 as a launch for what we hope will become an honors program. We wanted to use PS/IR 114D as a gateway course into other courses taught by our faculty, as well. For example, Larry Diamond teaches a very popular course on democracy, and we thought our course would be a good way to introduce undergraduates to some of the basic themes of that course, while also introducing them to connections between democracy and economic development and the interplay of these with the rule of law.

Q. DID YOU ENVISION A QUARTER-LONG OR YEAR-LONG COURSE? WHY?

A. The course was always envisioned as just a quarter-long course. This is to provide a launch into the menu of other courses that are offered by our faculty.

Q. WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE STUDENT RESPONSE?

A. We were very surprised to have 130 students in the course this fall. We ran the course as a “beta test” in the spring of 2005 with just 25 students, but apparently the buzz among undergraduates was good and our enrollment numbers jumped in September when we offered the course again. The political science department was caught a little off guard and we had to hustle to find enough teaching assistants to staff the course.

Q. WHO WERE YOUR MAIN LECTURERS AND WHAT WERE THEIR TOPICS?

A. We had 13 lecturers in all including Gerhard Casper, on what rule of law means and why people choose to follow law or not; Larry Diamond, on meanings of democracy and Iraq; Avner Greif, on how economic institutions are established historically; and Jeremy M. Weinstein, on international aid and development in Africa, to name but a few.

Q. WHAT TOPICAL THEMES HAVE YOU EXPLORED WITH YOUR STUDENTS?

A. The Iraq lecture by Larry Diamond was particularly topical and the students clearly learned a lot from him. They also enjoyed Jeremy Weinstein’s lecture on debates on aid policy in Africa. He set it up in an engaging way so that students had to decide whether “conditionality” was a good idea in providing aid to Africa or not.

Q. DID YOU FIND THAT PARTICULAR ISSUES HAD SPECIAL "RESONANCE" FOR STANFORD STUDENTS?

A. I think that there is growing interest among Stanford undergraduates in how democracy can be promoted and to what extent the United States should be involved in this project. Many students in our course are interested in doing some sort of work in the development field, so they wanted to explore cases of when democracies have become consolidated versus situations where they slid back into dictatorship. They are also particularly interested in when or whether force is appropriate in promoting or establishing democracy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, for example.

Q. WHAT PROVED MOST GRATIFYING TO YOU? DID YOU GAIN NEW INSIGHT?

A. I always gain new insights when I interact with smart students who are deeply interested and engaged in these issues. I also find it a real privilege to actually sit down and listen to my colleagues deliver lectures on areas of their expertise. That is truly a treat.

Q. WHAT'S NEXT? WILL YOU OFFER THIS COURSE AGAIN?

A. Yes, we intend to offer the course every fall quarter. We are also currently planning to launch an honors program, perhaps this spring. As part of that we will offer a seminar for juniors interested in writing theses on the general themes of democracy, development, and the rule of law in the developing world.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s inauguration as the president of Liberia marks a watershed in the country’s tumultuous history.

Twenty-five years of misrule and civil war under Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, and successive interim governments have left the country in ruins. Nearly 300,000 Liberians lost their lives, average income is one-eighth what it was in 1980, and large majorities of the population subsist in dire poverty.

Since United Nations and U.S. troops ousted Taylor in 2003, a fragile peace has taken hold, supported by 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers. With free and peaceful elections under their belts, Liberians are feeling new optimism and hope. Markets here are bustling, stores are freshly painted and open for business, and newspapers and radios feature lively debate.

The new government is a clear break from a past characterized by rule by force, extensive corruption, and a culture of impunity. Sirleaf, the first African woman elected head of state, has been an outspoken champion of accountability, transparency, and good governance for decades, a stance that landed her in jail twice and was a hallmark of her opposition to past governments and campaign for the presidency.

Already change is under way. She has instituted a code of conduct and full financial disclosure for senior officials, and endorsed a program that will install internationally recruited financial controllers in several state enterprises and create a strong anticorruption commission. Her government plans to publish financial accounts on the Web, make it easier for whistleblowers to report infractions, and rewrite Liberia’s outdated constitution to firmly establish participatory democracy, decentralize power, and install robust checks on the executive.

Recovery from deep conflict in Africa is not easy, but we know it is possible. Mozambique was destroyed by civil war in the 1980s, but its democratically elected government led the way to peace, stability, and a doubling of income in a dozen years. Sierra Leone suffered a blood bath in the 1990s, but the 1999 peace agreement and 2001 elections brought stability and economic growth of 7 percent a year. Rwanda’s genocide was followed by a recovery that few could have imagined.

But Sirleaf faces a daunting task. Liberia’s recovery will depend mainly on Liberians themselves, but it will require strong international support, just as in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda.

West Africa’s civil wars have spawned widespread smuggling of diamonds, transshipment of drugs, and easy money laundering opportunities for global terrorist groups. Liberia’s historic moment provides the U.S. administration a chance to show it is serious about supporting nascent democracies, creating stability in a volatile region, and providing economic opportunities for Africa’s poorest countries.

First, the United States must continue its crucial role in the demobilization of combatants and commit to long-term rebuilding of Liberia’s police and army. The new government must be able to maintain and enhance security to begin to recover.

Second, the administration should support rapid and comprehensive forgiveness of Liberia’s debts, which were mainly undertaken and wasted by the rapacious Doe government. It makes no more sense to stick today’s Liberians with the bill, including 20 years of accumulated interest, than to force today’s Iraqis to pay Saddam Hussein’s bills.

Third, and perhaps most urgent, Congress should approve supplemental funding of $50 million to $100 million to support the new government. Unfortunately, Congress recently cut the administration’s initial request for Liberia, a short-sighted step that sent the wrong signal to a struggling democracy and old ally at a crucial turning point. These funds would build critical infrastructure, put kids back into schools, and continue vital training for security forces. It would give Liberians their best chance of securing peace and basic freedoms.

Four years after the ouster of the extremist Taliban government , Afghanistan is moving ahead but needs investment and expertise to recover from 30 years of war, the country’s ambassador to the United States said during a Nov. 14 luncheon at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“Afghanistan has come a long way but the journey has just started,” said Said Tayeb Jawad, a former exile who returned to work for his homeland in 2002. The one-time San Francisco-based legal consultant was named Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington two years ago by then-Interim President Hamid Karzai. “We would like to join the family of nations once again and stand on our own feet as soon as possible,” he said.

In an address to about 100 faculty, students, staff, and donors, Jawad spoke of his country’s strategic role in the war on terrorism. “Global security is one concept,” he said. “In order to fight terrorism effectively, better investment in Afghanistan is needed to stabilize the country and make [it] a safer place for Afghans and, therefore, global security.”

Afghanistan has established all the institutions needed for the emergence of a civil society, Jawad said. A new constitution was approved in January 2004, presidential elections took place in October of that year, and elections for a new parliament were held two months ago. “The constitution we have adopted is the most liberal in the region,” he said. Although problems abound—Afghanistan is the poorest country in Asia, only 6 percent of its residents have access to electricity and only 22 percent have clean water—the ambassador expressed hope for the future. About 3.6 million refugees have returned home, he said, and 86 percent of Afghans think they are better off today than four years ago, according to an Asia Foundation survey.

Émigrés are the leading investors in the country, Jawad said, noting that an Afghan American recently pumped $150 million into the country’s nascent cell phone system. Many others, including Jawad himself, have heeded President Karzai’s call for émigré professionals to aid their homeland. Other international expertise is also moving in: Eleven foreign banks have opened for business and 60,000 skilled workers from Pakistan and Iran have moved to Kabul. “We are trying to reconnect the country by building roads and the communication system,” Jawad said. “Reconnecting the country is important for national unity but also for the fight against terrorism and narcotics.”

Tackling the profitable opium trade is a top challenge facing the government and its greatest obstacle to national reconstruction, Jawad said. “Its proceeds feed into terrorism and lawlessness,” he said. In the past, horticulture comprised 70 percent of Afghanistan’s exports. But 30 years of war decimated a generation of farmers and destroyed traditional farming. “If you have a vineyard or orchard, you have to have a prospect of 10 years,” the ambassador said. “If you don’t have a sense of hope, you grow poppy seeds. It takes three months to harvest poppy. You can put it in a bag, take it with you and become a refugee again.”

While terrorists and the Taliban are defeated in Afghanistan, Jawad said, they are not eliminated and they continue to attack what he described as soft targets: schools and mosques and aid workers. But in the last two days, a U.S. soldier and NATO peacekeepers were killed in attacks, which police blame on al-Qaida. To help counter this, efforts are under way to build a trained national army and police force. More than 36,000 soldiers already have been trained. While the country is grateful for foreign military assistance, the ambassador said, “It’s our job to defend our country.”

The country’s leadership also allowed lower-ranking Taliban to join the government; three former officials have been elected to the new parliament. “This was a decision that was difficult to take,” Jawad said. “But we want to deny terrorists a recruiting ground. We are trying to pursue a policy of reconciliation. We cannot afford to have another circle of violence and another circle of revenge.”

At the end of the address, FSI Director Coit D. Blacker reiterated a formal statement initially made in August inviting President Karzai to visit Stanford.