What visions of neutrality did the Kremlin promote in the Cold War and how has the Russian perception of neutrality changed today?

While Russian aggression against Ukraine has prompted Finland and Sweden to abandon their neutral status and to join NATO, some smaller European states continue to uphold their neutral status. Paying special attention to the Austrian case, the talk will analyze various national traditions of neutral policies in the Cold War and their connection to the Soviet theory of neutrality. It will argue that the ups and downs that linked Soviet relations with neutrals to East-West tension have been replaced by different patterns of Russian behavior.

This event is co-sponsored by Department of German Studies, Department of History, CREEES Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Global Studies

Wolfgang Mueller is Professor of Russian History at the University of Vienna and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has been a visiting fellow at the Universities of Nice and Bern, at Stanford University, and at the Russian Academy of Sciences. His books include Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich 1945–1955 (2005); A Good Example of Peaceful Coexistence? The Soviet Union, Austria, and Neutrality, 1955–1991 (2011); The Revolutions of 1989 (ed. with A. Suppan and M. Gehler 2014); and A Cold War over Austria (with G. Stourzh 2018).

This event has been cancelled. 

We hope to see you at another SCCEI event!

Firm Selection and Growth in Carbon Offset Markets: Evidence from the Clean Development Mechanism in China

Carbon offsets could reduce the global costs of carbon abatement, but there is little evidence on whether they truly reduce emissions. We study carbon offsets sold by manufacturing firms in China under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). We find that offset-selling firms increase carbon emissions by 49% in the four years after starting an offset project, relative to a matched sample of non-applicants. We explain this increase in emissions by jointly modeling the firm decision to propose an offset project and the UN’s decision of whether to approve. In estimates of our model, CDM firms increase emissions due to both the selection of higher-growth firms into project investment (40 pp of the total) and the causal effect of higher efficiency, post-investment, on firm scale and therefore emissions (9 pp).

About the Speaker 
 

Daniel Yi Xu is a Professor of Economics at Duke University and a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on the intersection of productivity, international trade, and industrial organization. Professor Xu’s current research agenda involves the use of large-scale microdata to model and estimate a broad range of dynamic individual firm decisions and to examine how these decisions impact resource allocation, industry performance, and economic growth, particularly in developing and emerging economies.

His most recent work has been published in leading economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Dynamics, and Management Science. Professor Xu is currently a co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics and an associate editor of the RAND Journal of Economics. He previously served as co-editor for the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Development Economics. Additionally, he has been an associate editor for the American Economic Journal: Applied, Economic Journal, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of International Economics, Quantitative Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.
 

A NOTE ON LOCATION

Please join us in-person in the Goldman Conference Room located within Encina Hall on the 4th floor of the East wing.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 

Thomas Olechowski, The Europe Center's Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair, discusses the Austrian-born legal scholar Hans Kelsen, who emigrated to the USA in 1940.

Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), Austria's ‘Founding Constitutional Father’, is still regarded as one of the world's most important legal scholars of the 20th century. His works have been translated into more than 30 languages. Kelsen was one of the most outspoken defenders of democracy and was therefore one of the first professors in Germany to lose his chair in 1933.

In 1940, Kelsen emigrated to the USA and taught first at Harvard and then at Berkeley, where he remained until the end of his life. However, it was here of all places that his teachings on legal theory met with rejection - in stark contrast to Latin America, where they still find enthusiastic supporters today.

Thomas Olechowski holds a chair for Austrian and European Legal History at the University of Vienna, and is managing director of the "Hans Kelsen-Institute", a foundation of the Austrian federal government. In 2020, he wrote a comprehensive biography on Hans Kelsen. In 2025, Olechowski holds the Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at The Europe Center at Stanford University.

About the event: Questions about the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China have dominated international policy discussion for years. But the leading theory of power transitions between a declining hegemon and a rising rival is based exclusively on European examples, such as the Peloponnesian War, as well as the rise of Germany under Bismarck and the Anglo-German rivalry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What lessons does East Asian history offer, for both the power transitions debate and the future of U.S.-China relations?
Examining the rise and fall of East Asian powers over 1,500 years, we point out that East Asia historically has functioned very differently than did Europe; and even today the region has dynamics that are not leading to balancing or competitive behavior. In fact, the East Asian experience underscores domestic risks and constraints on great powers, not relative rise and decline in international competition. The threat of a US-China war from power transition is lower than often recognized, and the East Asian region is more stable than normally recognized.

About the speaker: Xinru Ma is an inaugural research scholar at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab within the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where she leads the research track on U.S.-Asia relations. Her work primarily examines nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security, with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. Her work is published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and edited volumes by Palgrave. Her co-authored book, Beyond Power Transition, is published by Columbia University Press.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

When do imperialism and authoritarianism have long-term political effects? Jan Vogler presents a theoretical framework to answer this question.

The suppression of local self-government is a common feature of imperial rule and centralized authoritarianism. Extant scholarship considers such interventions to be potentially legacy-producing. But under which circumstances do these denials of political autonomy lead to sustained changes in political behavior? We develop a novel framework that elucidates when suppression of local self-rule will or will not produce political legacies. Two factors are crucial: the duration of an intervention and the scope of repression. Enduring interventions characterized by encompassing repression are the most likely to generate persistent changes. Contrariwise, transient episodes characterized by limited repressiveness are unlikely to produce legacies. 

Given our theory's broad character, we conduct empirical analyses in two markedly different settings: Poland, which was split between three major empires, and Brazil, where a military regime installed appointed mayors in certain cities. Our results demonstrate that the suppression of local self-government has varying potential to create legacies.

Jan Vogler is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University. He previously held a position as an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science at the University of Konstanz. His research covers a wide range of topics, including the organization of public bureaucracies, various forms of political and economic competition (in domestic and international settings), historical legacies, structures and perceptions of the EU, and the determinants of democracy and authoritarianism.

Despite its early experiment with manhood suffrage, France was among the last countries in Europe to extend voting rights to women. This talk offers a new parsimonious explanation of French exceptionalism, one that highlights how World War I and its massive death toll contributed to women’s exclusion from politics.

Despite its early experiment with universal manhood suffrage, France was among the last countries in Europe to extend voting rights to women. Existing accounts of this French exceptionalism point to the key role of a group of legislators, the Radicals, who blocked suffrage extension because they believed women would vote for pro-Church parties, undermining Radicals’ vote share and reversing the political victories against the Catholic Church. This account emphasizes legislators’ expected loss under new institutional rules, assuming a pro-Church bias among women. 

In contrast, we emphasize legislators’ expected loss absent a change to the institutional status quo. Doing so highlights the connection between support for women’s suffrage and support for proportional representation, especially among legislators facing electoral loss under existing electoral rules. Not only does our argument better explain legislators’ voting patterns in both the upper and lower chambers, it also highlights how World War I and its massive death toll contributed to women’s exclusion from politics.

Charlotte Cavaille is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Charlotte’s research examines the dynamics of attitudes towards redistributive social policies at a time of rising inequality, fiscal stress, and high levels of immigration. Building on that work, Charlotte also studies the relationship between immigration, the welfare state, and the rise of populism in Western Europe.

REDS: RETHINKING EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY

The REDS Seminar Series aims to deepen the research agenda on the new challenges facing Europe, especially on its eastern flank, and to build intellectual and institutional bridges across Stanford University, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to current global challenges.

REDS is organized by The Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Learn more about REDS and view past seminars here.

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