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Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a former Russian businessman and political prisoner of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Prior to his arrest in 2003, Khodorkovsky was the head of Yukos, one of Russia’s largest oil producers, and an increasingly outspoken critic of corruption in Russian life. He began funding opposition parties and established Open Russia, a non-governmental organization promoting a strong civil society. Khodorkovsky was one of the pioneers of Internet in Russia. His company Yukos incubated numerous successful Internet entrepreneurs and investors. He financed educating Russian teachers on new technologies, computerization of schools and broadband Internet connection for schools and libraries in Russian regions. Khodorkovsky was arrested and charged with fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced to nine years in prison, which was prolonged to eleven years after the second trial. Khodorkovsky, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was released in December 2013. Following his release he declared that he will support political prisoners and civil society in Russia. In September 2014 Khodorkovsky re-launched Open Russia as a movement aiming to unite pro-Western Russian citizens. 

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About the Speaker: Lieutenant General (retired) Khalid Kidwai is advisor to Pakistan’s National Command Authority and pioneer Director General of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which he headed for an unprecedented 15 years. He is one of the most decorated generals in Pakistan and was awarded the highest civil award Nishan-i-Imtiaz, as well as Hilal-i-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Military). Winner of the Sword of Honor at Pakistan’s Military Academy, he later saw frontline combat action in erstwhile East Pakistan and was a prisoner of war in Pakistan’s 1971 war with India. General Kidwai conceived, articulated, and executed Pakistan’s nuclear policy and deterrence doctrines into a tangible and robust nuclear force structure. General Kidwai is also the architect of Pakistan’s civilian Nuclear Energy Program and National Space Program.

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on issues of rule of law, security, and governance in post-conflict countries, fragile states, and states in transition. As the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project, she spent nearly a decade leading a movement of national security, political, and military leaders working to promote people and policies that strengthen security, stability, rights, and human dignity in America and around the world.  Kleinfeld has consulted on rule of law reform for the World Bank, the European Union, the OECD, the Open Society Institute, and other institutions, and has briefed multiple U.S. government agencies. She is the author of Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform (Carnegie, 2012).

This event is part of the Governance and the Rule of Law series being hosting jointly by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford's School of Law.

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Anders Aslund has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2006. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He examines the economic policy of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, as well as focuses on the broader implications of economic transition. He worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1994 to 2005, first as a senior associate and then from 2003 as director of the Russian and Eurasian Program. He also worked at the Brookings Institution and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia in 1991–94 and Ukraine in 1994–97. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics. He has worked as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary professor of the Kyrgyz National University. He is chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw, and of the Scientific Council of the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT).

Increasingly in scholarly descriptions of state responses to power ascendancy, the classic distinction between “balancing” and “bandwagoning” has been superseded by the less dichotomous term “hedging” as a name for what is really going on. Few, however, have tried to clarify what distinguishes hedging from other strategies, what causes weaker states to hedge, and why they hedge in different ways.

Prof. Kuik will focus on Southeast Asian states’ responses to China.  Hedging occurs, he will argue, when one country pursues contradictory policies toward two or more competing powers in order to prepare a fallback position should circumstances change.  Hedging is likely when two conditions are present:  when threats are neither immediate nor straightforward, and when sources of vital support are uncertain.  At the domestic level, hedging is often the most viable approach because its contradictory attributes allow ruling elites to optimize multiple policy tradeoffs and thereby to enhance their legitimacy at home.  The hedging behaviors of ruling elites are a function of their respective strategies of legitimation.  

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Speaker Bio

Tshering Tobgay is a Bhutanese politician who has been Prime Minister of Bhutan since 2013. He is also leader of the People’s Democratic Party and was Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly from March 2008 to April 2013. Tobgay co-founded the People’s Democratic Party and was responsible for establishing the Party as Bhutan’s first registered political party. Prior to politics, Tobgay was a civil servant, beginning his career in 1991 with the Technical and Vocational Education Section under the Department of Education. In 1998 he established and headed the National Technical Training Authority and served as a director in the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources from 2003 to 2007.

Tobgay received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering in 1990 and later received a master’s in public administration from Harvard University in 2004. He received his secondary schooling in India, at Dr. Graham’s Homes School in the city of Kalimpong, near Darjeeling, in the eastern Himalayas.

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Abstract:

Billions of citizens around the world are frustrated with their governments. Political leaders struggle to honour their promises and officials find it near impossible to translate ideas into action. The result? High taxes, but poor outcomes. Cynicism, not just with government, but with the political process. Why is this? How could this vicious spiral be reversed? Michael Barber’s ground-breaking book draws on his experience of working for and with government leaders the world over to present a blueprint for how to run a government, delivering much better results for citizens without excessive taxes. The first book to bring a global perspective to this issue, and using contemporary cases from every continent alongside classic examples from history, anecdote and hard evidence, Barber makes a compelling case for a new approach, arguing that, without massive improvements in delivery, trust in government, already low, will fall further putting democracy at risk.

Speaker Bio:

Sir Michael Barber

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Ernst Röhm (1887-1934) was an early member of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s closest friend.  As head of the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung), Röhm was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, at least until his execution during the “Night of Long Knives” in the summer of 1934.  Röhm was also openly homosexual.   This talk considers Röhm’s rise, the disclosure of his homosexuality in 1931 in two widely-publicized trials (for violation of the anti-sodomy statute), his role in the consolidation of Nazi control, and his downfall.  The talk also considers how Hans Blüher’s theory of the Männerbund (male association) might help analyze not only Röhm and the Nazis but also contribute more broadly to the historical sociology of nationalist revolution.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, The Europe Center and the Department of German Studies.