Stanford University

Earthquake Alert: Warning before shaking using smartphones

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Abstract: Today, 100 people get an alert before earthquakes in California.  Recent legislation says everyone should get a warning.  In the future, your phone will detect earthquakes.  In the era of big data and the Internet of Things, how can seismology harness new technologies both for the purpose of science, and to reduce the impact of future disasters around the world?  In this seminar, we will discuss the current status of real-time earthquake information using existing seismic and emerging geodetic networks.  We will also explore on what might be possible in the near future as the quality and number of sensors in consumer electronics increase by orders of magnitude.

About the Speaker: Richard Allen is the Director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, a Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley.  He is an expert in earthquake alerting systems, developing methodologies to detect earthquakes and issue warnings prior to shaking.  His group uses seismic and GPS sensing networks, and is experimenting with the use of smartphones.  Testing of a warning system for the US west coast is currently under way.  Allen’s group also uses geophysical sensing networks to image the internal 3D structure of the Earth and constrain the driving forces responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes and other deformation of the Earth’s surface.  His research has been featured in Science, Nature, Scientific American, the New York Times and dozens of other media outlets around the world.  He has a BA from Cambridge University, a PhD from Princeton University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech.

Richard Allen Professor, Dept. Earth & Planetary Science Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, UC Berkeley
Seminars

From Bhumibol to Vajiralongkorn: Neo-Royalist Ideology and the Future of the Thai Monarchy

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Prof. Pavin will explain the concept of “neo-royalism” that Thai royalists have promoted; relate it to the present twilight of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s long reign; and use it to forecast the future of the royal institution in Thailand. Pavin will assess the prospects of the king-in-waiting, Vajiralongkorn, and imagine the position of a new monarch in a new political environment. He will portray “neo-royalism” as a dangerous entrapment for Bhumibol’s successor and for the monarchy itself. The undemocratic nature of royal power is incompatible with the country’s changing political landscape. If Vajiralongkorn inherits the throne, he may try to consolidate top-down power, risking failure and rejection. Alternatively, he could reform the monarchy by placing it clearly within constitutional bounds. Recent evidence suggests that he may play an activist role.

pavin4x6
Pavin Chachavalpongpun is an associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Kyoto University. His many publications include Reinventing Thailand: Thaksin and His Foreign Policy (2010) and A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations (2005), and he is chief editor of the multilingual on-line Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.  His PhD is from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies.

Following Pavin’s fierce criticism of the May 2014 military coup in Thailand, the junta twice summoned him to Bangkok. He did not comply; instead, he reaffirmed his opposition to the coup. A warrant was eventually issued for his arrest, his Thai passport was revoked, and he was obliged to apply for refugee status in Japan.

Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3rd Floor central

616 Serra Street

Stanford, CA 94305

Pavin Chachavalpongpun 2015-16 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Seminars

When Democracies Deliver: Governance Reform in Argentina and Brazil

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Abstract:

Scholars of governance reforms in developing countries often argue that the surest way to address the maladies of the state—corruption, cronyism, inefficiency, and red tape—is swift, dramatic change enacted by political leaders during moments of upheaval. This research finds that a very different type of change is not only possible but also more effective and enduring. A comparison of attempts to increase accountability, transparency, and institutional strength in Brazil and Argentina demonstrates that incremental changes sequenced over time in response to failings in previous policy provide two crucial advantages over wholesale and rapid overhauls of the state: (1) continual adjustments and modifications benefit from learning; and (2) an incremental approach makes reform more durable and helps preserve bureaucratic autonomy.

 

Speaker Bio:

bersch 1
Katherine Bersch is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Her research is broadly focused on democratic quality in developing countries, with an emphasis on governance reform and state capacity in Latin America. She employs a range of research methods to understand the political conditions under which policies designed to reduce corruption, increase transparency, and enhance accountability are successful and durable. Bersch’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Politics, the European Journal of Development Research, Information Polity, and in Miguel Centeno, Atul Kohli, and Deborah Yashar's edited volume with Dinsha Mistree, States in the Developing World. Her research on state capacity with Sérgio Praça and Matthew M. Taylor recently won the LAPIS Best Paper Award from the Latin American Studies Association. Bersch received her PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Katherine Bersch Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University
Seminars

Was There a German Nuclear Question? A Critical Reappraisal

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Abstract: Many scholars contend that there was a specific German nuclear question. To them, asking the question “Was there a German nuclear question?” may be surprising and odd. In their view, there is no question that Bonn actively sought to transform non-nuclear West Germany into an atomic power and that Bonn had the capability to do it. This view is related to the late 1950s and early 1960s in particular. Most accounts do not address the question whether the postulated objective of Bonn’s nuclear policy remained the same throughout the 1960s. Furthermore, this narrative has led many scholars to believe that the German nuclear question came to an end when West Germany acceded to the NPT by signing the treaty in late 1969 after a change of government which heralded the beginning of Bonn’s ‘New Ostpolitik’. I will present a different narrative. Based on an historical approach and on new archival material, I will reappraise this complicated topic by introducing the analytical concept of West Germany’s limited nuclear revisionism. Thereby, I will postulate that the NPT had no nonproliferation effect regarding West Germany. And I will propose another understanding of the question whether there was a German nuclear question.

About the Speaker: Andreas Lutsch is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. In August 2015 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in history at the University of Mainz, Germany. His dissertation offers a new interpretation of West Germany’s nuclear policy during the 1960s and 1970s - from the controversy about the Non-Proliferation Treaty since the early 1960s until the agreement on NATO’s dual track decision in 1979. The dissertation is based on printed and edited sources and on multi-archival research in Germany, the U.S., the UK and Belgium, thus making use of recently declassified files. Besides completing the book manuscript, Andreas is engaged in a research project on the historical management of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence regarding NATO Europe. Andreas analyzes whether, why and to what extent mechanisms of nuclear consultation were important as tools of extended deterrence management. A previous research fellow at the University of Mainz, Germany, Andreas is an Assistant Professor (on leave in the academic year 2015-16) at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He organized three workshops for PhD students and postdocs and is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP).

 

Was There a German Nuclear Question? A Critical Reappraisal
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Was There a German Nuclear Question? A Critical Reappraisal
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Andreas Lutsch Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow CISAC
Seminars

Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts

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Abstract:

Twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the democratic ascendency of the post-Soviet era is under severe challenge. While fragile democracies in Eastern Europe, Africa, and East Asia face renewed threats, the world has witnessed the failed democratic promises of the Arab Spring. What lessons can be drawn from these struggles? What conditions or institutions are needed to prevent the collapse of democracy? Embattled democracy is the subject matter of a new book, Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts. This book argues that the most distinctive antidote to authoritarianism in the post-1989 period is the presence of strong constitutional courts. A signature feature of the third wave of democratization, these courts serve as a bulwark against vulnerability to external threats as well as a catalyst for the internal consolidation of power. Particularly in societies still riven by deep divisions of race, religion, or national background, courts have become pivotal actors in allowing democracy to take root.

 

Speaker Bio:

samuel issacharoff
Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. His research addresses the law of the political process and constitutional law, as well as issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation and class actions). He is a co-author of the seminal Law of Democracy casebook and recently served as the Reporter for the Project on Aggregate Litigation of the American Law Institute. Professor Issacharoff is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Samuel Issacharoff Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law
Seminars
American Democracy Events

Of Paradigms, Politics and Principles: The 2016 Taiwan Elections and Implications for China’s Security Strategy and Cross-Strait Relations

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Sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project and the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)

Abstract

During the recent meeting between PRC President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, the “1992 One China Consensus” served as a mutually acceptable paradigm for maintaining “peaceful and stable” conditions across the Taiwan Strait.  For Xi Jinping, the warmth of the visit thinly veiled a message to Taiwan’s leaders and electorate, as well as to onlookers in Washington.  Chinese officials and media clearly link the talks and confirmation of the 1992 Consensus to “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—a concept that is increasingly unpalatable to many in Taiwan.  Xi hopes to keep DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (and perhaps even future KMT leaders) in the 1992 Consensus “box” and to co-opt the U.S. in this effort, but perhaps underestimates the political transformation underway on Taiwan. 

The Xi administration has also hardened its position regarding “core interests” such as Taiwan, embodied in a “bottom line principle” policy directive that eschews compromise.  Although many commentators and most officials across the region have shied away from stating that the PRC and Taiwan are at the crossroads of crisis, the collision of political transformation on Taiwan and the PRC’s “bottom line principle” will challenge the fragile foundations of peaceful cross-Strait co-existence.  Changes in the regional balance of military power brought about by a more muscular People’s Liberation Army compounds the potential for increased friction, providing Beijing with more credible options for coercion and deterrence.

This talk will consider the politics and principles involved in cross-Taiwan Strait relations in light of the upcoming 2016 Taiwan elections and the policies of the Xi Jinping administration; and will discuss some of the possible implications for China’s national security policy, regional stability, and the future of cross-Strait relations.

Bio

Cortez Cooper
Mr. Cortez A. Cooper III joined RAND in April 2009, providing assessments of security challenges across political, military, economic, cultural, and informational arenas for a broad range of U.S. government clients.  Prior to joining RAND, Mr. Cooper was the Director of the East Asia Studies Center for Hicks and Associates, Inc.  He has also served in the U.S. Navy Executive Service as the Senior Analyst for the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific, U.S. Pacific Command.  As the senior intelligence analyst and Asia regional specialist in the Pacific Theater, he advised Pacific Command leadership on trends and developments in the Command’s area of responsibility.  Before his Hawaii assignment, Mr. Cooper was a Senior Analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc., specializing in Asia-Pacific political-military affairs.  Mr. Cooper’s 20 years of military service included assignments as both an Army Signal Corps Officer and a China Foreign Area Officer.  In addition to numerous military decorations, the Secretary of Defense awarded Mr. Cooper with the Exceptional Civilian Service Award in 2001.

2016 Taiwan Elections and Implications for Cross-Strait and Regional Security
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Cortez Cooper Senior International Policy Analyst RAND Corporation
Seminars

Liberal Taiwan versus Illiberal South Korea: The Divergent Paths of Electoral Campaign Regulation

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Abstract:

Both South Korea and Taiwan are considered consolidated democracies, but the two countries have developed very different sets of electoral campaign regulations. While both countries had highly restrictive election laws during their authoritarian eras, they have diverged after democratic transition. South Korea still restricts campaigning activities, including banning door-to-door canvassing, prohibiting pre-official period campaigning, and restricting the quantity and content of literature. Taiwan has removed most campaigning restrictions, except for finance regulations. This study explores the causes of these divergent trajectories through comparative historical process tracing, using both archival and secondary sources. The preliminary findings suggest that the incumbency advantage and the containment of the leftist or opposition parties were the primary causes of regulation under the soft and hard authoritarian regimes of South Korea and Taiwan. The key difference was that the main opposition party as well as the ruling party in South Korea enjoyed the incumbency advantage but that opposition forces in Taiwan did not. As a result, the opposition in Taiwan fought for liberalization of campaign regulations, but that in South Korea did not. Democratization in Taiwan was accompanied by successive liberalizations in campaign regulation, but in South Korea the incumbent legislators affiliated with the ruling and opposition parties were both interested in limiting campaigning opportunities for electoral challengers.

 

Bio:

Dr. Jong-sung You is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. His research interests include comparative politics and the political economy of inequality, corruption, social trust, and freedom of expression. He conducts both cross-national quantitative studies and qualitative case studies, focusing on Korea and East Asia. He recently published a book entitled Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared with Cambridge University Press. His publications have appeared at American Sociological Review, Political Psychology, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Asian Perspective, Trends and Prospects, and Korean Journal of International Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and taught at UC San Diego. Before pursuing an academic career, he fought for democracy and social justice in South Korea.

 

 

Jong-sung You Senior Lecturer College of Asia and the Pacific, Australia National University
Seminars

The Sunflower Movement and the Future of Taiwan's Political Culture

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Abstract 
Based on first-hand participant-observation, this talk will examine the culture, politics, and spatiality of the Sunflower Movement. Taiwan's most significant social movement in decades, the Sunflower Movement not only blocked the passage of a major trade deal with China, but reshaped popular discourse and redirected Taiwan's political and cultural trajectory. It re-energized student and civil society, precipitated the historic defeat of the KMT in the 2014 local elections, and prefigured the DPP's strong position coming into the 2016 presidential and legislative election season.
 
The primary spatial tactic of the Sunflowers-- occupation of a government building-- was so successful that a series of protests in the summer of 2015 by high school students was partly conceived and represented as a "second Sunflower Movement". These students, protesting "China-centric" curriculum changes, attempted to occupy the Ministry of Education building. Thwarted by police, these students settled for the front courtyard, where a Sunflower-style pattern of encampments and performances emerged. While this movement did not galvanize the wider public as dramatically as its predecessor, it did demonstrate the staying power of the Sunflower Movement and its occupation tactics for an even younger cohort of activists.
 
The Sunflower Movement showed that contingent, street-level, grassroots action can have a major impact on Taiwan's cross-Strait policies, and inspired and trained a new generation of youth activists. But with the likely 2016 presidential win of the DPP, which has attempted to draw support from student activists while presenting a less radical vision to mainstream voters, what's in store for the future of Taiwanese student and civic activism? And with strong evidence of growing Taiwanese national identification and pro-independence sentiment, particularly among youth, what's in store for the future of Taiwan's political culture? 
 

Speaker Bio

Ian Rowen in Legislative Yuan Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.

Ian Rowen is PhD Candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and recent Visiting Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Fudan University. He participated in both the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements and has written about them for The Journal of Asian Studies, The Guardian, and The BBC (Chinese), among other outlets. He has also published about Asian politics and protest in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (forthcoming) and the Annals of Tourism Research. His PhD research, funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, has focused on the political geography of tourism and protest in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. 

 

Presentation Slides

Ian Rowen Doctoral Candidate University of Colorado Dept of Geography
Seminars

Taming the Watchdogs: Political Pressure and Media Self-Censorship In Abe’s Japan

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While Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has emerged as the strongest Japanese leader in a decade, the dark underside of his administration has been widespread accusations of heavy-handed intimidation of the press. Especially in the last year, there have been numerous high-profile cases in which major media organizations have appeared to capitulate to such pressure, often engaging in a preemptive self-censorship known in Japan as jishuku, or “self-restraint.” A close examination of some of these cases reveals that the Abe administration has indeed engaged in an aggressive effort to shape press coverage using both the carrot of access, and the stick of political pressure and unbridled nationalist intimidation. However, much of the blame also belongs in the media organizations themselves, which have appeared unable, at least initially, to resist the administration’s pressure tactics. Indeed, the Abe government has appeared adept at exploiting weaknesses in Japan’s major media that include a competitive obsession with scoops, a heavy dependence on government sources seen in the so-called press club system and the lack of a shared sense of professional ethics and identity. The collapse of political opposition parties, and the strengthening of state secrecy laws during the second Abe administration also play roles. Deeper historical trends will also be considered, including weak notions of civil society and a moral centrality of the state that has its roots in the crash nation-building of the Meiji period.

Martin Fackler is currently Journalist-in-Residence at the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, a Tokyo-based think tank. From 2009 to 2015, he covered Japan and the Korean peninsula as Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times. In 2012, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his and his colleagues' investigative stories on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown that the prize committee said offered a "powerful exploration of serious mistakes concealed by authorities in Japan." Martin is also the author (in Japanese) of the bestseller “Credibility Lost: The Crisis in Japanese Newspaper Journalism after Fukushima,” a critical look at Japanese media coverage of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. In total, he spent a decade in the Tokyo bureau of the New York Times, where he also served as economics correspondent. Before joining the Times in 2005, he worked in Tokyo for the Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News, and in Beijing and Shanghai for AP. He has Masters degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana and in East Asian history from the University of California, Berkeley.

Martin Fackler Journalist-in-Residence at the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation
Seminars
Date Label

Just Enough: The Politics of Accountability for Mass Atrocities

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Abstract: This project looks at the politics of accountability for mass atrocities. In it, I ask why post-atrocity governments often put in place institutions (for instance, kangaroo courts, or powerless investigative commissions) that superficially resemble accountability mechanisms but lack the capacity to deliver justice. I theorize the creation of these institutions as an example of a broader pattern in human rights behavior, which I call “quasi-compliance”. I argue that because international enforcement of human rights norms is uneven, there’s an incentive to gamble on doing just enough to escape penalty. I test this theory on an original cross-national dataset of mass atrocities committed between 1970 and 2014. I find that the characteristics of post-atrocity governments that deliver justice and those that create quasi-compliant accountability institutions are very different. While robust trials and truth commissions are only pursued when domestic politics favors it, quasi-compliant institutions are put in place to deflect international censure for failure to abide by the global accountability norm requiring criminal prosecutions for mass atrocities. I trace the mechanisms underlying quasicompliance in two qualitative case studies, drawing on several months of fieldwork in Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

About the Speaker: Kate Cronin-Furman is a human rights lawyer (J.D. Columbia, 2006) and political scientist (Ph.D. Columbia, 2015). Her research focuses on the interaction between international norms and politics. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Transitional Justice, The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage" blog, The Atlantic, The National Interest, and The New York Times.

Kate Cronin-Furman
Seminars
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