---Note: This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Department of History---

The scope of official secrecy is rapidly expanding. The sheer scale of the national security state, the growth of electronic media, and the power that still comes from compartmentalizing information means that the government is only releasing a tenth as many pages of classified information as it produces. Hundreds of millions of secret documents are piling up, raising doubts about how we will be able to reconstruct the past and ensure government accountability. But historians are now teaming up with data scientists to analyze the millions of documents that are being released. Since these were among the first official documents produced and stored on computers, we can use techniques like natural language processing and machine-learning. It may now be possible to make out the broad patterns of official secrecy, attribute authorship to anonymous documents, and perhaps even predict the content of redacted text. But the political and ethical questions remain: what does the public need to know, and when do they need to know it?

About the speaker: Matthew Connelly is professor of history at Columbia University. His publications include A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002), and Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (2008). He has written research articles in Comparative Studies in Society and History, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, The American Historical Review, The Review francaise d'histoire d'Outre-mer, and Past & Present. He has also published commentary on international affairs in The Atlantic Monthly, The Wilson Quarterly, and The National Interest. He directs the University Seminar on Big Data and Digital Scholarship, the dual masters program with the LSE in International and World History, and the Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, a research program on the history and future of planetary threats. He received his B.A. from Columbia (1990) and his Ph.D. from Yale (1998).

Grant Miller will discuss the results of his SAPARC-funded research in rural China, supplementing a large NIH-funded project about pay-for-performance to improve health. The research was designed to test the effect of offering school principals small incentives for anemia reduction on the health and academic performance of primary school students – potentially leading to substantially more cost-effective health policies.

Grant Miller, PHD, MPP, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine, a Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy/Primary Care and Outcomes Research, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He is also a Faculty Fellow of the Stanford Center for International Development and a Faculty Affiliate of the Stanford Center for Latin American Studies. His primary areas of interest are health and development economics and economic demography.

Miller's current research focuses broadly on behavioral obstacles to health improvement in developing countries. One line of studies investigates household decision-making underlying puzzlingly low adoption rates of highly efficacious health technologies (like point-of-use drinking water disinfectants and improved cookstoves) in many poor countries. Another vein of research investigates misaligned macro- and micro-level incentives governing the supply of health technologies and services. He has conducted these and other research projects at institutions including the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Urban Institute, and the University of California-San Francisco's Institute for Health Policy Studies. He received a BA in psychology from Yale College, a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a PhD in health policy/economics also from Harvard.

Adopting a child, as an alternative to bearing a child, is a widely accepted means of creating a family in America today. By contrast, it is surprisingly uncommon for married couples in Japan to adopt an infant and raise the child “as their own.” In my estimates, the rate of unrelated child adoption per 10,000 births in recent years was about 170 in the U.S. and 6 in Japan. In this study, I use a framework of family economics to examine the evolution of child adoption in the U.S. and Japan from 1950 to 2010. I compile historical statistics to compare the trends in child adoption and explore demand-side, supply-side, and institutional factors underlying the observed trends. I find that, in the U.S., there has been an “excess demand” for adoptable infants throughout the postwar period and thus the trends were essentially driven by the availability of infants relinquished for adoption. Due to large supply shocks, the composition of child adoption in the U.S. has changed greatly from domestic infant adoption to the adoption of foreign infants and foster-care children since the 1970s. It is much harder to explain the adoption trends in Japan, however, which exhibit a persistent and continuous decline over the last five decades. Taking advantage of the major legal reform that took place in 1988, I test a demand-side theory of child adoption and examine what motivated parents to adopt children in Japan. Finally, I discuss a role of child adoption in improving children’s welfare.

Chiaki Moriguchi is a professor at the Institute of Economic Research of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. She received a BA from Kyoto University, an MA from Osaka University, and a PhD from Stanford University, all in economics. She was an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, prior to joining Hitotsubashi University in 2009. Her main research fields are comparative economic history, comparative institutional analysis, and the economics of family. She has worked on the comparative historical analysis of employment systems, income inequality, and family formation in Japan and the U.S. Her research has appeared in Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic History, and Industrial and Labor Relations Review. She is a recipient of the 2011 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Prize.  

Roundtable on Democracy Promotion

Future Directions for Canadian Democracy Promotion

Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law

Stanford University

16 April 2013

Agenda

9:00-9:45 Introductions

Purpose of roundtable and introduction of participants: Larry Diamond and Chris MacLennanOverview presentation on Canada’s experience with democracy promotion since the 1990s: Chris MacLennan

9:45-11:00 Democratization – Latest thinking on democracy, democratization and governance

Key Questions: What is the most recent thinking on democratization – how and why do democratic transitions happen; why do democracies fail; and, why do authoritarian regimes survive and thrive? What is the relationship between good governance and democracy?Lead Discussant: (TBC) to introduce session and offer initial thoughts on current state of democratization scholarship (5-10 minutes).

11:00:11:15 Break

11:15-12:30 Democracy Assistance – What donors can and should be doing to aid democratic transitions

Key Questions: What are the most effective ways to advance democracy through the use of international development assistance (types of programs / instruments, choice of countries, etc.)? Is a focus on governance capacity building enough or are the more political aspects of democracy building necessary?Lead Discussants: Richard Youngs (TBC) (European approaches) and David Yang (TBC) (US approaches) to introduce session and offer initial thoughts from their respective viewpoints (5-10 minutes each).

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:30 Canada – Future Directions for Canadian Democracy Promotion

Potential Roles (1:30-2:30)

Key Questions: Is there a particular approach that Canada should take to support democratic development internationally? Should Canada pursue a broad-based approach to democracy promotion (like the US and EU) as it has in the past or should it focus on a specific role or niche internationally? Should Canada adopt a geographic focus (Americas, commonwealth countries, Francophonie) or something targeted to specific democratic challenges (fragile democracies, fragile states, transitioning states)? Is a more political approach required or can Canada maintain a more developmental approach to advancing democracy?Lead Discussant: Robert Miller (TBC) to introduce question and offer initial thoughts (5-10 minutes).

Institutions (2:30-3:30)

Key Questions: What type of institutional arrangements should Canada adopt to undertake democracy promotion? Does Canada need an independent body to advance the more “political” aspects of democracy assistance (e.g., political parties, elections, support to NGOs)? Is a special program needed either focused on democracy assistance or tying development to democracy performance (MCC)?Lead Discussant: Les Campbell (TBC) to introduce question and offer initial thoughts (5-10 minutes).

3:30-4:00 Conclusions and Next Steps

Final Thoughts: AllNext Steps: Chris MacLennan

About the topic: When in late 2009, President Obama ordered the surge of an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan to reverse Taliban momentum, major tenets of the U.S. military counterinsurgency doctrine shaped the resulting campaign plan.  Adages such as "protect the population" and "clear, hold, and build" served to guide civil-military actions.  With the hindsight of four years, however, it seems clear that some of the important assumptions upon which the plan was premised were significantly flawed.  Karl Eikenberry, who served in both senior diplomatic and military posts in Afghanistan, will examine the logic of counterinsurgency doctrine as it was applied during the surge and discuss its strengths and shortcomings.

About the speaker: Karl Eikenberry served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty. Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff. 

Abstract:

The levels of violence in Mexico have dramatically increased in the last few years due to structural changes in the drug trafficking business. The increase in the number of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) fighting over the control of territory and trafficking routes has resulted in a substantial increase in the rates of homicides and other crimes. This study evaluates the economic costs of drug-related violence. We propose electricity consumption as an indicator of the level of municipal economic activity and use two different empirical strategies to test this. To estimate the marginal effect of violence in the rate of homicides (per 100,000 inhabitants) we use an instrumental variable regression created by Mejía, Castillo and Restrepo (2012). For the average municipality, the marginal negative effect of the increase in homicides rates is substantive for earned income and the proportion of business owners, but not for energy consumption. Although negative and statistically significant, the effects are mild for labor participation. We also employ the methodology of synthetic controls to evaluate the effect that inter-narco wars have on local economies. The analysis indicates that the drug wars in those municipalities that saw dramatic increases in violence between 2006 and 2010 significantly reduced their energy consumption in the years after the change occurred, which is interpreted as a significant reduction in GDP per capita for these municipalities.

Speaker Bio:

Gabriela Calderon holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Her research interests include policies that affect gender differences in developing countries, policy evaluation, violence in Latin America and the effect of institutions and governance on the provision of public goods and health/education outcomes. She did her master's degree in economic theory and bachelor's degree in economics at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Currently, in the Program on Poverty and Governance, her research analyzes the way institutions and democracy affect the provision of public goods, and the impact they have on health outcomes like infant mortality trends. She is also studying the effects of government interventions that combat drug-trafficking organizations over violence in Mexico.

Her research has focused on the topics of development, public finance, and the evaluation of public policy programs in Mexico. For example, during the summers of 2009/2010, she conducted a field experiment in Zacatecas, Mexico with Giacomo de Giorgi, an assistant professor from Stanford University, and Jesse Cuhna, a former Stanford student. The main task was to evaluate the impact of financial literacy classes on underprivileged women entrepreneurs in the region. To successfully complete an evaluation in an untreated region, they proposed collaborating with the Mexican NGO CREA on a joint project. They contacted local interviewers, trained them, and identified all women entrepreneurs in the 17 communities, in which we conducted the experiment. Preliminary results suggest that the female entrepreneurs who were randomly assigned to treatment earned higher profits, had larger revenues, and served a greater number of clients. They also found that they were more likely to implement formal accounting techniques.

She has also studied programs that are not randomly assigned as an experiment. For example, she has analyzed the effects of a national policy in Mexico of child care services, called Estancias Infantiles para apoyar a Madres Trabajadoras (EI), using administrative, census and household data. Her empirical research strategy identifies the effects of the program on both the men and women who were eligible for the program. She used time, location and eligibility variation, and considered a major threat to identification of the actual effects: for example, a manufacturer who moves into a municipality at approximately the same time as the EI program and who happens to disproportionately demand the skills of women who were eligible to the program happened to have. To ensure that such scenarios do not affect her results, she chose not triple difference strategy, in which all ineligible people are treated as “controls” for the EI-eligible families. Instead, she employs Synthetic Control Methods, using the same methodology as Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010) to ensure that her control group has the same mix of skills and preferences as the EI-eligible group. She adapted the Synthetic Control Method to analyze repeated cross-sectional household data, which are data that are typically available in developing countries

This lecture is part of the "Iberian Studies Program Lecture Series"

Co-sponsored by the Iberian Studies Program and the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS)

Speaker Bio:

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.

Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952. He 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 from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of a new magazine, The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), and Kansai University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, member of the Board of Governors of the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.