One prominent feature of South Korea, as well as other countries in East Asia, is citizens’ strong preference to work for large conglomerates or the government, as opposed to startups or small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Relative to the United States, choosing entrepreneurship or working for a young firm are less desired in Korea, especially among highly skilled individuals. This talk will examine how beliefs about corruption and trust in institutions affect an individual’s occupational preferences. A main challenge of examining personal beliefs and their impact on occupational preference is their relation to a host of other individual characteristics such as willingness to accept risk, optimism, patience, education level and family background. Center Fellow Yong Suk Lee will discuss his research on this area, including his focus on the events surrounding the impeachment of South Korea's previous president, Park Geun Hye, and his surveys of South Koreans before the impeachment rulings by the constitutional court and after impeachment. He will talk about (1) whether the impeachment process changed beliefs in the rule of law and societal trust; and (2) whether and how any change in beliefs and trust affect occupational preference. 

Abstract: Both the academic and policy making worlds have been dominated by three explanations for development, understood broadly as democratization and rising levels of per capita income. The first argument is modernization theory which assumes that if polities are provided with adequate resources, especially investment, they will develop. The second argument is institutional capacity approaches which focus on the ability of the state to maintain order. The third argument is rational choice institutionalism which sees deveopment as a rare event resulting from the self interested calculations of elites.  Happenstance and path-dependence play major roles for rational choice instititoinalism. All three of these approaches suffer from major gaps. All three, however, are consistent with the view that external state-building efforts will only be successful if the objectives of external and internal elites are complmentary. This suggests that for most polities the best that external actors can accomplish is Good Enough Governance: security, some service provision, some economic growth.

About the Speaker: Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

South Korea's persistent economic growth combined with a democratic political system has transformed the country into a developed nation. While research has often highlighted the role of industrial policies, technological growth and international trade as imperative to Korea’s developmental success, this talk will instead focus on the role that human capital has played. Professor Ju-Ho Lee will discuss how the accumulation of human capital has aided Korea’s transformation and examine the policies, strategies and challenges that the country faces into the future.

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Professor Lee received his BA and MA from Seoul National University, and PhD from Cornell University, all in economics.

This lunch time keynote address is part of the ninth annual Koret Workshop, "Korea's Migrants: From Homogeneity to Diversity," and open to the general public.

This event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Abstract:

Within the last fifteen years, nine multilateral development banks (MDBs) have established internal accountability offices (IAOs).  These IAOs, the most well-known of which is the World Bank Inspection Panel, allow communities within borrowing states to bring complaints against MDBs if loan programs cause them harm and violate MDB policies.  The IAOs have been touted as effective fire-alarm mechanisms and remedies to the democratic deficit problem; they have also been criticized as broadly ineffective and toothless.  What explains the variation in IAO impact and efficacy?  I argue that borrowing states significantly constrain the impact of MDB IAOs and that borrowing state influence varies depending on regime type.  Democratic borrowing states will be more willing to absorb the potential costs associated with MDB IAOs—including program changes and possible program termination—than will autocratic states.  The argument is supported with quantitative evidence from a new dataset of all complaints filed through 2015.

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Dr. Brett Carter is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California and co-PI of the Lab on Non-Democratic Politics. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was a Graduate Fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was previously a fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, as well as the Hoover Institution. His research focuses on autocratic politics in the Information Age. He is currently working on three book projects: one on autocratic survival in Post-Cold War Africa, one on autocratic propaganda, and one that exploits the Foreign Agents Registration Act to explore the role of autocratic money in American politics.

Abstract:

Duncan Green, Oxfam Strategic Adviser and LSE Professor of Practice in International Development, introduces the arguments of his new book, How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016). How Change Happens explores how political and social change takes place, and the role of individuals and organizations in influencing that change. He discusses the challenges that 'systems thinking' creates for traditional aid practices, and how a 'power and systems approach' requires activists, whether in campaigns, companies or governments, to fundamentally rethink the way they understand the world and try to influence it.

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He was previously Oxfam’s Head of Research, a Visiting Fellow at Notre Dame University, a Senior Policy Adviser on Trade and Development at the Department for International Development (DFID), a Policy Analyst on trade and globalization at CAFOD, the Catholic aid agency for England and Wales and Head of Research and Engagement at the Just Pensions project on socially responsible investment.

Abstract: Under what conditions could the United States control escalation in a conventional conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary? The possibility that a dispute between the U.S. and a nuclear-armed opponent remains a contingency policy-makers and military planners should consider. There is growing work on the pathways to nuclear escalation during a conventional conflict, but less on how these armed disputes could end. This paper will explore some of the conditions that favor successful escalation management and the conditions that could make escalation control extremely difficult. The paper also assesses possible U.S. responses to nuclear use by an adversary.

About the Speaker: Jasen J. Castillo is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University’s George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service. He came to the Bush School after serving on the staff of the Policy Planning Office in the U.S. Department of Defense from 2005 to 2007. Before then, he worked at the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Defense Analysis. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. His publications include: Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014); Nuclear Strategies to Deter Conventional Attacks,” in, New Perspectives on Coercion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Flexible Response Revisited: Assessing Pakistan’s Potential Nuclear Strategies, PM-2383 (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2007); Striking First: Preemptive and Preventive Attack in U.S. National Security Policy (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2004); “Nuclear Terrorism: Why Deterrence Still Matters,” Current History, Vol. 2, No. 668 (2003), Economic Growth and Military Expenditures, MR-112-A, (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2002). His research focuses on U.S. national security policy, especially military effectiveness and nuclear deterrence.

Expected dramatic shifts of foreign policy by leading democracies, including the U.S. and U.K., would shake a future of liberal international order, which has underpinned the stability even after the end of the Cold War. Since Mr. Donald Trump was elected as the 45^th President of the U.S., abovementioned discourse is heard everywhere in Europe and Asia today.

It is not clear, if American leadership and military presence would in fact retreat, how American allies behave and whether they can work together to sustain the order. Among others, Japan has been the exceptionally strong believer of such postwar American leadership. It is doubtful that all American allies and friends share same views, having their own historical context with the U.S. and own ideas on order and principles. Hence, naturally they shall differ in losing the confidence on the durability of American leadership.

A new order will be shaped by many factors, but American allies’ perspectives should not be overlooked. Hegemon’s own reluctance for ruling is surely significant. So is other great power’s revisionism, making use of such strategic opportunities. However, American allies has the potential to shape the fate of the order: if they succeed in acting collectively, it shall underpin the global governance for a while, and ensue the order transformation process in rather slow and peaceful pace. 

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If they fail, it shall not only accelerate the U.S. retrenchment, but invite an emergence of divisive and competitive order. Sahashi shares the findings from the international study project which he leads, and argues the difficulty for US allies to unite themselves and the potential order transformation in the long term.

Ryo Sahashi is Associate Professor of International Politics and Director, Faculty of Law, Kanagawa University, Yokohama, and is leading the newly-launched international joint study “Worldviews on the United States.” From 2014-2015, he served as Visiting Associate Professor, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University.

David Timberman is a political analyst and development practitioner with 30 years of experience analyzing and addressing political, governance and conflict-related challenges, principally in Southeast and South Asia.  As a Visiting Scholar at Stanford/APARC he is working on a book on the contemporary Philippine political economy.  During 2015-2016 he was a Visiting Professor of Political Science at De La Salle University in Manila. He has lived and worked in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore, including experiencing first-hand the democratic transitions in the Philippines (1986-1988) and Indonesia (1998-2001). He has written extensively on political and governance issues in the Philippines and has edited or co-edited multi-author volumes on the Philippines, Cambodia, and economic policy reform in Southeast Asia.