Stanford University
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The Pinochet Effect: Political and Economic Consequences of Chile's Authoritarian Experience and Democratic Transition.
Agricultural trade has generated more than its share of disputes in the past fifty years. Lack of a clear structure of rules to constrain government activity in these markets, coupled with the particularly sensitive nature of trade in basic foodstuffs, has been the main cause of this disproportion. New rules agreed in the Uruguay Round provided an improved framework for government policy in this area, and a temporary exemption was given to certain subsidies from challenge in the WTO (the Peace Clause). However, the expiry of the Peace Clause in 2003 and a growing willingness on the part of exporters to challenge domestic farm programs in other countries through action under the Dispute Settlement Understanding has once again stirred the agricultural pot. Now trade disputes are frequently leading to litigation, encouraged by the slow progress in the Doha Round of trade negotiations. In particular, the scope for domestic subsidies, under the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, has increasingly become the subject of litigation. Countries may have to further modify their domestic policies so as to reduce their vulnerability to challenge in the WTO.
Stanford president emeritus Gerhard Casper, the Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education, professor of law, and FSI Senior Fellow was invited by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to give the Henry LaBarre Jayne lecture in November. Casper's lecture, titled "A Young Man from 'ultima Thule' Visits Jefferson: Alexander von Humboldt in Philadelphia and Washington," addressed a remarkable meeting between the German naturalist and explorer and the American president. In medieval geographies, "ultima Thule" denoted any distant place located beyond the borders of the known world and was Humboldt's ironic way of referring to 19th century Prussia. Von Humboldt, who was the younger brother of the Prussian minister and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, traveled extensively in South America and published a widely read series of volumes chronicling his adventures over the next 21 years.
As Casper notes, Jefferson's reputation among contemporaries for his lifelong and far-reaching pursuit of scientific, technical, and architectural interests was not restricted to the United States. Von Humboldt was a great admirer of Jefferson, the American Republic, and its advocacy of human rights, freedom, and democracy. His own interests in these subjects, along with his extensive travels in South America, led him to seek out a meeting with the American president. In June 1804, Jefferson hosted a lively dinner at the President's House for von Humboldt, his travel companions, and a number of new acquaintances from Philadelphia, where guests had a lively discussion of natural history, the improvements of daily life, and the customs of different nations.
Jefferson's reputation among contemporaries for his lifelong and far-reaching pursuit of scientific, technical, and architectural interests was not restricted to the United States. Von Humboldt was a great admirer of Jefferson, the American Republic, and its advocacy of human rights, freedom, and democracy. His own interests in these subjects, along with his extensive travels in South America, led him to seek out a meeting with the American president. In June 1804, Jefferson hosted a lively dinner at the President's House for von Humboldt, his travel companions, and a number of new acquaintances from Philadelphia, where guests had a lively discussion of natural history, the improvements of daily life, and the customs of different nations.
Gerhard Casper is president emeritus of Stanford University. He is the Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education at Stanford; a professor of law; a professor of political science, by courtesy; and a senior fellow at FSI. He has written and taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence. From 1977 to 1991, he was an editor of The Supreme Court Review.
American Philosophical Society
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
FSI
Stanford University
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Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Gerhard Casper was Stanford University’s ninth president. He is the Peter and Helen Bing Professor, emeritus, a professor of law, emeritus, and a professor of political science (by courtesy), emeritus, and a senior fellow at both FSI and SIEPR. From July 2015 to July 2016, he served as president (ad interim) of the American Academy in Berlin. He has written and taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence. From 1977 to 1991, he was an editor of The Supreme Court Review.
Casper was the president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000 and served as director of FSI from September 2012 through June 2013. Before coming to Stanford, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School (starting in 1966), served as dean of the law school from 1979 to 1987, and served as provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. From 1964 to 1966, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
His books include a monograph on legal realism (Berlin, 1967), an empirical study of the workload of the U.S. Supreme Court (Chicago, 1976, with Richard A. Posner), as well as Separating Power (Cambridge, MA, 1997) about practices concerning the separation of powers at the end of the 18th century in the United States. From his experiences as the president of Stanford, he wrote Cares of the University (1997). His most recent book, The Winds of Freedom—Addressing Challenges to the University, was published by Yale University Press in February 2014. He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and occasional papers.
He has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute (1977), the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1980), the Order pour le mérite for the Sciences and Arts (1993), and the American Philosophical Society (1996). From 2000-2008, he served as a successor trustee of Yale University; from 2007-2014, as a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development; and from 2008-2016, as a trustee of the Terra Foundation for American Art. He is a member of international advisory councils at the Israel Democracy Institute (chairman since 2014), the European University at St. Petersburg, and Koç University, Istanbul.
Born in Germany in 1937, he studied law at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg; in 1961, he earned his first law degree. He attended Yale Law School, obtaining his Master of Laws degree in 1962, and then returned to Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1964. He immigrated to the United States in 1964. He has been awarded honorary doctorates, most recently in law from both Yale University and Bard College, and in philosophy from both Uppsala University and the Central European University.
In 2009-2010, the Program on Human Rights will partner with FCE and DLCL to launch part 2 of the Contemporary History and the Future of Memory series by adding "Reconciliation" to the mission. This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause. The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic. Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States. While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing. The "History, Memory, and Reconciliation" series will explore these issues.
The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.
The Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America is a policy-oriented research initiative of the Global Center for Development and Democracy, which was founded by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo in 2006. Authored by a taskforce of 20 former Latin American Presidents, as well as development experts from academia, the private sector, and multi-lateral organizations, the Social Agenda comprises 16 pressing social issues and 63 specific public and private policy recommendations to the region's current heads of state.
From the Washington, D.C. launch of the Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America:
The Global Center for Development and Democracy, founded and presided over by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, along with The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the National Endowment for Democracy, the Brookings Institution, and the Inter-American Dialogue, is pleased to invite you to join us at the Falk Auditorium at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, November 3, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. for a presentation of The Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America for the Next Twenty Years by Dr. Alejandro Toledo and the following former presidents: Vicente Fox of Mexico; Carlos Mesa, Bolivia; Nicolas Ardito Barletta, Panama; Ricardo Maduro, Honduras; and Vinicio Cerezo, Guatemala.
The Global Center for Development and Democracy has sponsored five Presidential Meetings over the last two years, at which a Presidential Task Force (including 20 former presidents of Latin American countries) has met with leading experts from policy-oriented academia, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and members of civil society to consider the innovative policy research of those experts and to discuss what the former heads of state consider to be the 15 most important social issues facing the region. The conclusions of their research and discussions at these meetings have been synthesized into a report that will be shared with the sitting presidents of Latin American nations at the Ibero-American Summit in Estoril, Portugal, on December 1, 2009 – as well as with President Obama, the Prime Minister of Canada, and the heads of state of the European Union. The report will present specific recommendations for actions to significantly reduce poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, as well as to strengthen democratic institutions in Latin America. The report will also include mechanisms for carrying out a twenty-year program of monitoring the results of the policy initiative.
Full text of the Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America (pdf).
This research project launched in 2009 traces the evolution of militant organizations and the interactions that develop among them over time. Findings have been presented in interactive maps on a separate website.
Twenty years ago, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted "not just the end of the Cold War … but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
He was wrong, of course, as were all the "end of" prophets of the past. Liberal democracy is hardly what inspires current forces like Iranian Khomeinism, global jihadism, the caudillismo of Latin America, or the neo-tsarism of Russia. But what about Europe?
The collapse of the 3.7-meter-tall monster in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989, did bring about—or, more accurately, complete—a momentous transformation of the Old Continent. For the past 2,000 years, Europe had been the source of the best and the worst in human history. It invented practically everything that matters: from Greek philosophy to Roman law, from the Renaissance to the fax machine, from Brunelleschi to Bauhaus. But this was also where the world's deadliest wars erupted, killing tens of millions. It was in Europe that the most murderous ideologies were invented: communism, fascism, and Nazism, complete with the Gulag, the Gestapo, and Auschwitz.
That history truly ended with the Berlin Wall. Gone are the million soldiers who once manned a line running from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and so are thousands of nuclear weapons. The French and Germans no longer fight over Alsace-Lorraine, and it's impossible to imagine another partition of Poland, or mass murder in the name of the Lord, or a flood of refugees like the tens of millions who crisscrossed Europe in the 20th century. Yes, we recently saw ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, but that was a cottage industry compared with what Hitler and Stalin wrought, and it was quickly bankrupted by the U.S. Air Force.
Post-wall Europe, meanwhile, has come to mean peace, social democracy, and the EU Commission, which has made Karl Marx's prediction come true at last: after the final class struggle, "power over men" would yield to the "administration of things." So it has: regulation has replaced revolution, and the welfare state has trumped the warfare state. Marx got only the timing wrong; it would take 140 years from the Communist Manifesto to the fall of the wall.
But the wait was worth it. The wall fell without bloodshed; the Soviet Union was the first empire that died in bed, so to speak, with barely a shot being fired. The Velvet Revolutions that made Europe whole again truly ended European history as we knew it. Traditional revolutions beget counterrevolutions and new rounds of repression and revolt. That cycle was broken in 1989, a miraculous first that bodes so well for the future. Yes, conflict continues in Europe, but not the kind that sets fire to history. Today the clashes are over taxes and spending, zoning and shop-closing hours, the sway of Brussels and the reserve rights of national capitals, abortion and same-sex marriage. Politics hasn't been abolished, but the really touchy items have been safely outsourced to the courts—far from the streets and even from parliaments.
The fall of the wall did not create this brave new world; it sped it up and ratified it. But as a revolution without victims (except for the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was shot, and a few other leaders who served short prison terms), Nov. 9, 1989, deserves a towering monument in every European capital—a marker of something completely new under the European sun. Unlike in 1789, the promise of peace and liberty was truly delivered. Unlike in 1919, when the continent erupted in revolutions that spawned totalitarian counterrevolutions, 1989 brought an end to the worst part of European history. That's not bad when you consider the origins: a flustered East German functionary looking into the TV cameras and announcing, well, yes, as far as he knew, East Berliners could freely cross into the West—right now.
Elsewhere in the world, history continues in its bloody fashion. But if you want to know how to end it nice and smoothly, check out what Europe managed 20 years ago.
Achilles Zaluar is Minister-Counselor of Political Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C. From 2008-09 Zaluar served as Minister-Counselor of Multilateral and International Security Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States. Zaluar has previously held positions as Deputy Head of the Division for United Nations Affairs (DNU), 2003-06, and assistant at the Theory of International Relations Chair of the Rio Branco Institute, 2002-03. From 1997-98 Zaluar served as a member of the team that drafted the position papers and presidential message for Brazil’s accession to the NPT. Zaluar has held posts at the Brazilian Embassy to the U.S, Washington, 2006-present; Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, New York, 1995-98; and the Brazilian Embassy to Paraguay, Asuncion, 1998-2001. In 1993 Zaluar served as secretary of the interagency group that drafted Brazil’s export control law. From 1991 to 1994, he worked on non-proliferation and export control, including Brazil’s relations with the MTCR and NSG control regimes, and US-Brazil issues. Zaluar received a Bachelor in Mathematics at Rio Catholic University in 1985, graduated in Diplomacy from the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, in 1991, and received a Master in Public Administration (MPA/MC) at the Harvard Kennedy School, in 2002.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
