Abstract: A largely dysfunctional American immigration system is only poorly explained by simple depictions of the political economy of lawmaking on this issue, blaming factors such as deliberate economic policy choices, longstanding public attitudes, explicit presidential decisions, or general gridlock. Instead, the structure of immigration law emerges from intersecting effects of three separate dynamics — statutory compromises rooted in the political economy of lawmaking, organizational practices reflecting the political economy of implementation, and public reactions implicating the responses of policy elites and the larger public to each other. Together, these factors help constitute an immigration status quo characterized by intense public concern, continuing legal controversies, and powerful obstacles to change. (1) Particularly since 1986, American immigration statutes have created a legal arrangement essentially built to fail, giving authorities regulatory responsibilities that were all but impossible to achieve under existing law. (2) Implementation has been characterized by organizational fragmentation, with policy changes involving one agency producing externalities not owned by that agency, and limited presidential power to change enforcement or implementation. And (3) the interplay of unrealistic statutory goals, enforcement, and growing public concern engenders a polarizing implementation dynamic, where agencies’ incapacity to enforce existing law tends to spur polarized political responses producing legislation that further exacerbates agency difficulties in meeting public expectations.
The resulting process over the last few decades persistently favored expansion in the provision of border enforcement resources. This development is widely supported or at least tolerated by most political actors, even though it fails to address the core institutional problems of the status quo. Beyond what these developments tell us about immigration, they also reveal much about (a) how statutory entrenchment in the United States is affected by political cycles capable of eroding the legitimacy of public agencies, and (b) how powerful nation-states control, in limited but nonetheless significant ways, the transnational flows affecting their well-being and security.
Sami Ben Gharbia Tunisian political activist, Foreign Policy Top 100 Thinker
Professor Allen Weiner Co-Director of Stanford Univeristy Center on International Conflict and Negotiation Thomas T. Riley Former Ambassador to Morocco
Radwan Masmoudi Founder and President of the Center of the Study of Islam & Democracy
The "spirit of democracy" has recently been undermined in several African countries as authoritarian methods have been the preferred approach. In countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger and Gabon political change has come through the following means; military interventions ousting former presidents clinging to power after their terms; violently repressed popular unrests leading to power-sharing solutions, or former presidents being replaced by their sons. In few countries such as Guinea, free elections were organized after several decades of dictatorship.
In this seminar, CDDRL Post-Doctoral Fellow Landry Signé will examine what makes certain countries adopt and consolidate liberal or electoral democracies when others stay authoritarian - whether competitive, hegemonic or politically closed. Signé will analyze the transformations of political regimes and democratization in the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over the two last decades contrasting various political trajectories, comparing results between successful and failed countries, and exploring the conditions that create, maintain and sustain democracies.
Speaker Bio:
Landry Signé is a recipient of the 2011-2013 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is working on a project entitled “The Efficiency of the Political Responses to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis in Africa: Does the Political Regime and Economic Structure Matter?”. He completed his PhD in Political Science (2010), with the Award of Excellence, at the University of Montreal, and has been bestowed the Award for Best International PhD Dissertation of 2011 by the Center for International Studies and Research (CÉRIUM). His dissertation is entitled “Political Innovation: The Role of the International, Regional and National Actors in the Economic Development of Africa”.
Prior to joining the CDDRL, Dr. Signé was a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on African Studies, lecturer on Emerging African Markets: Strategies, Investments and Government Affairs at the Stanford Continuing Studies, founding president of a Canadian corporation specialized in public affairs and business development, part-time professor and lecturer in political science at Ottawa University and the University of Montreal, administrator at the United Nations Association of Canada-Greater Montréal, and president of the Political Commission of Montreal-CJ. He has worked or interned at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, the Senate of France, the National Assembly of Cameroon, and the French Distributor, Casino Group. He studied Political Science, International Relations, Communication and Business at the University of Montreal, Lyon 3 University, Sciences Po Paris, Sandar Institute, Stanford Continuing Studies, and McGill University.
Professor Landry Signé is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Center for African Studies, founding chairman of the award-winning Global Network for Africa’s Prosperity, special adviser to world leaders on international and African affairs, full professor and senior adviser on international affairs to the chancellor and provost at UAA, and partner and chief strategist at a small African-focused emerging markets strategic management, investment, and government affairs firm. He has been recognized as a World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, Andrew Carnegie fellow as one of the “most creative thinkers,” Woodrow Wilson Public Policy fellow, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons in the World, Private Investors for Africa Fellow, and Tutu Fellow who “drives the transformation of Africa,” among others. Previously, Landry was founding president of a business strategy and development firm based in Montreal and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. He has also served on the board of organizations such as AMPION Catalyst for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa, Citizens Governance Initiative, and the United Nations Association of Canada–Montreal, and was appointed by a United Nations Under-Secretary-General to serve on the Global Network on Digital Technologies for Sustainable Urbanization. He is the author of numerous key academic and policy publications on African and global affairs, with a special interest in the political economy of growth, development and governance; the politics of economic reform, foreign aid, and regional integration; entrepreneurship, non-market and business strategies in emerging and frontier countries; institutional change, political regimes, and post-conflict reconstruction; state capacity and policy implementation. Professor Signé received the fastest tenure and promotion to the highest rank of full professor of political science in the history of United States universities, for a scholar who started at an entry-level position in the discipline. He is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and presenter at conferences worldwide, engaging a broad variety of business, policy, academic, and civil society audiences. He has won more than 60 prestigious awards and distinctions from four continents and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Harvard International Review. Professor Signé was educated in Cameroon (with honors and distinction), in France (valedictorian and salutatorian), earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Montreal (Award of Excellence and Award for the Best International PhD Dissertation), and completed his Postdoctoral Studies at Stanford University (Banting fellowship for best and brightest researchers). He has also completed executive leadership programs at the University of Oxford Said School of Business (Tutu fellowship) and Harvard Kennedy School (World Economic Forum fellowship).
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-1314
0
jfearon@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Professor of Political Science
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PhD
James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a Senior Fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
James Fearon
Professor of Political Science and Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University
Commentator
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 723-1737
(650) 723-0089
0
David.Holloway@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
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PhD
David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.
Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.
Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
David Holloway
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History; FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member; Europe Center Research Affiliate; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
Speaker
Theodore Postol
Professor of Science, Technology and International Security, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Commentator
Stanford opened a research and education center at China’s Peking University, strengthening an already close academic bond and building a stronger tie to one of the world’s fastest-growing countries.
“Globalization is the defining characteristic of the 21st Century,” Stanford President John Hennessy said during an opening ceremony on March 21 that drew hundreds of academics, donors and government officials to the opening of the Stanford Center at Peking University.
“It is increasingly important for our students to understand what it means to be citizens of the world, to bring a more international perspective, to be able to communicate with others from different backgrounds or with different expertise,” he said. “Both Peking University and Stanford are stepping up to that challenge and moving to become more global institutions to address the challenges of this century. This new center exemplifies that.”
"It is increasingly important for our students to understand what it means to be citizens of the world, to bring a more international perspective, to be able to communicate with others from different backgrounds or with different expertise," Stanford President John Hennessy said at the opening of SCPKU.
Designed as a resource for the entire Stanford community and administered by the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, 10 programs and departments – including the School of Medicine’s Asian Liver Center, the Bing Overseas Studies Program and the Rural Education Action Project – will locate operations at SCPKU.
FSI faculty already doing research in China showcased their work during conferences held in conjunction with the opening of the center.
The new building is available to the several hundred Stanford scholars studying, researching and conducting university activities in China each year. It also offers the opportunity for Stanford faculty to work with academics from Peking University and other universities throughout China.
“Stanford is one of the most valued partners of Peking University,” PKU President Zhou Qifeng said. “The center will create more opportunities through collaborative research, student and faculty exchange programs, joint teaching and other activities.”
The center makes Stanford the first American university to construct a building for its use on a major Chinese university campus. SCPKU will allow current educational programs to expand, but will not grant Stanford degrees.
The center’s distinctiveness is reflected in the building that houses it – a 36,000-square-foot structure that combines Chinese and Western architecture. The courtyard building was constructed with interlocking mortise-and-tenon joinery – a classic Chinese technique that eliminates the need for nails or glue.
Hand-painted scenes depicting typical Chinese landscapes and views from Stanford’s campus are featured on the building beams. At the point where beams and columns meet, artists added Chinese symbols for teaching, learning and scholarship.
State-of-the-art classrooms, conference rooms and meeting spaces fill out the two floors below the courtyard. Skylights, interior gardens and a reflecting pool invoke a natural setting.
The melding of styles brings as much substance as symbolism.
The SCPKU opening drew hundreds of academics, donors and government officials.
SCPKU “marks a new era of collaboration between two outstanding universities,” Gary Locke, the U.S. ambassador to China, said during the opening ceremony. “It also represents a new bridge of understanding between our nations – and most importantly – our peoples.
“There are virtually no problems in the world today that cannot be solved if the people – the scientists and engineers, and the business people – of the United States and China join together,” Locke said. “And this center will help make that happen.”
Stanford’s relationship with China dates to the late 1970s, when the university began accepting Chinese graduate students. Students from China have accounted for the largest number of Stanford’s foreign graduate students for the past decade, with about 600 enrolled last year.
Those scholars are part of the 160,000 Chinese students studying in American colleges and universities every year, a number that eclipses the 16,000 American students taking classes in China, Locke said.
“We have to know much more about each other’s cultures, customs, traditions, values and languages so we can build a mutual trust and understanding that will allow us to face all of the challenges we face,” he said. “The way to build that trust starts with building people-to-people interactions. It starts with more student exchanges…and it most certainly starts with the Stanford center here at Peking University.”
Over the last 30 years, Stanford’s bond with Peking University has grown from an initial collaboration between the schools’ Asian language departments to a wide range of joint research and academic exchanges.
In 2004, Stanford’s undergraduate study abroad and internship programs began at Peking University. The study abroad program continues to be managed by the Bing Overseas Studies Program, which hosts roughly 60 undergraduates every year on the Peking University campus. The internship programs are coordinated by the International, Comparative, and Area Studies Program.
The overseas studies program offers a broad curriculum taught by a Stanford faculty-in-residence who spends a 10-week quarter with the students in Beijing. A range of topical and language courses are taught by Peking University faculty.
“The new center at PKU allows us to continue this dynamic program in a new environment designed to encourage interaction across disciplines and with graduate students and faculty from both universities,” said Irene Kennedy, the program’s executive director. “We also plan to continue supporting and developing interactions between Stanford and PKU students through language partnering and by including Chinese students in classes taught by Stanford faculty and associated field trips.”
Jean Oi and Andrew Walder – both senior fellows at the Freeman Spogli Institute – began building on that relationship in 2006 by envisioning a way to bolster Stanford research, teaching, training and outreach activities in China. Their ideas led to the creation of SCPKU and several new academic programs, including a law school exchange program.
The $7 million project is funded entirely from gifts made to the Stanford International Initiative. The lead donor was the charitable foundation of the family of Chien Lee, a Hong Kong-based private investor and Stanford emeritus trustee who received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the university in 1975 and his MBA from the Graduate School of Business four years later.
The SCPKU building is named for his father, the late Lee Jung Sen, who attended Peking University in the mid-1930s when it was Yenching University. Lee’s mother, Leatrice Lowe Lee, graduated from Stanford in 1945.
A bust of Lee Jung Sen sits in SCPKU’s courtyard, one level above the modern facility and surrounded by the more familiar, traditional Chinese architecture.
Imagine you are on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) and a naval dispute breaks out on the Korean Peninsula while you are at home celebrating Thanksgiving. You have just three hours to prepare a detailed memorandum summarizing the situation and offering recommendations for how the United States should respond.
This is a major responsibility with a large number of interrelated issues that must be taken into account—how would you proceed?
Stanford students in the winter quarter course U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia (IPS 244) had the opportunity to step into the challenging role of the NSC senior director for Asia and consider such a security situation. They wrote and presented memoranda on this and an East Asia trade crisis scenario in class, as well as a final memorandum to the president proposing a China policy for his second term. The assignments required students to consider a wide range of global, regional, and domestic factors—many pulled directly from current global events.
Each member of the team of Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) Asia experts teaching the course drew on decades of related expertise to write the scenarios.
Michael H. Armacost, the Center’s Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, previously served on the NSC, in the Defense Department, as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Japan, and as undersecretary of state for political affairs.
Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider, an Asia history expert, spent over 30 years as a journalist reporting on international affairs and security issues, including working as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Korea, India, and Russia.
David Straub, associate director of Stanford’s Korean Studies Program, is a former State Department official with long-time expertise in U.S.-Korea relations and North Korea, including participation in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Thomas Fingar, FSI’s Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, is a China expert and has previously held numerous key U.S. intelligence posts, most recently as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He also served as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
In the first assignment, students read about a proposed China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement (FTA). Navigating through a web of regional and domestic issues, they advised on how the United States should respond to an appeal from Japan for certain trade concessions in exchange for its backing out of the FTA. The assignment described complex economic and political conditions in May 2013 after elections in the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and a leadership transition in China. The U.S.-Japan alliance was one of many key factors students took into account.
“It was my great pleasure to participate in this class—it truly broadened my views of U.S. foreign policy toward Northeast Asia. The substantive knowledge presented by both instructors and students during the class will undoubtedly contribute to a much safer, more peaceful, and unified world.” -Heeyoung Kwon, Visiting Scholar, Korea Foundation
The next memorandum assignment described an inter-Korean naval dispute falling in the crucial weeks between the 2012 U.S. and South Korean presidential elections. It narrated the economic and political situation of each country in precise detail, and set the stage for the dispute with real-life events like the 2010 sinking of the South Korean navy ship the Cheonan. Students were asked to consider the possible role China could play in mediating with North Korea, and how U.S. tensions with Iran could limit its involvement in negotiations.
“In IPS 244…no conversation is irrelevant to current events in Northeast Asia…The memo assignments…are so detailed, so current, and so realistic, that even a seasoned diplomat would be challenged by them—I know this because there are seasoned diplomats taking the class.” -Jeffrey Stern, MA Student, International Studies Program
Shorenstein APARC offers U.S. Policy toward Northeast Asia each winter quarter. The diverse mix of students, combined with the “in-the-field” expertise of the instructors, creates a lively and challenging class environment. IPS 244 goes beyond a traditional academic course to create assignments based on real-life events and global conditions, and place students in the position of thinking like a government official. For the many of them that will go on to pursue government careers, the course serves as an important first-step in training for “scenarios” very similar to those they address in class.
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South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (left), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, and Japanese former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at the 2009 East Asia Trilateral Summit.
About the topic:The U.S. military has entered a period of transition. In terms of strategy, the Department of Defense is shifting away from a decade spent fighting two ground wars to a new era in which the United States hopes to spend more time preventing and deterring conflicts and preparing for future challenges. Yet at the same time, the U.S. military faces significant budget cuts in the years ahead. DOD has already released its plans for reducing the Pentagon’s base budget by $487 billion over the next decade, but the Budget Control Act of 2011 will impose an additional $500 billion in cuts on January 1 unless Congress changes the law before then. What are the strategic, military, and financial consequences of these budget cuts? Can DOD implement cuts of this magnitude and still maintain its broad global engagement strategy? Or do they pose unacceptable risks to U.S. national security objectives? This talk draws on ongoing research at the Center for a New American Security to address these questions.
About the Speaker: Nora Bensahel is Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Her current areas of research include stability operations, counterinsurgency, civilian capacity for operations abroad, and coalition and alliance operations. Prior to joining CNAS, Dr. Bensahel served as a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where she teaches M.A. classes and received the Alumni Leadership Council Teaching Award. She also serves on the Executive Board of Women in International Security. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and her B.A. from Cornell University.
CISAC Conference Room
Nora Bensahel
Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security
Speaker
This talk will address a primary foreign policy challenge for independent Ukraine which has been to strike a proper balance between its relations with the West and those with Russia. Today, democratic backsliding is upsetting the balance, which will undermine President Yanukovych’s ability to achieve his professed foreign policy aims.
Steven Pifer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative. He focuses on nuclear arms control, Russia and Ukraine. He has offered commentary on these issues on CNN, Fox News, BBC, National Public Radio and VOA, and his articles have run in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post and Moscow Times, among others.
A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997).
His publications include “Ukraine’s Perilous Balancing Act,” Current History (March 2012), “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” Brookings Arms Control Series (July 2011); “The Next Round: The United States and Nuclear Arms Reductions After New START,” Brookings Arms Control Series (November 2010); “Ukraine’s Geopolitical Choice, 2009,” Eurasian Geography and Economics (July 2009); and “Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009,” Brookings Foreign Policy Paper (January 2009).
Ambassador Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Steve Pifer
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and Director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative
Speaker
"It is increasingly important for our students to understand what it means to be citizens of the world, to bring a more international perspective, to be able to communicate with others from different backgrounds or with different expertise," Stanford President John Hennessy said at the opening of SCPKU.
The SCPKU opening drew hundreds of academics, donors and government officials.
