Please join the Forum on Contemporary Europe for a first assessment of the September 27 German elections by FSI Senior Fellow Josef Joffe.

Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, and was previously columnist/editorial page editor of Sddeutsche Zeitung (1985-2000). Abroad, his essays and reviews have appeared in: New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Prospect (London), Commentaire (Paris). Regular contributor to the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post; Time and Newsweek.  In 2005, he co-founded the foreign policy journal "The American Interest" in Washington (with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Francis Fukuyama).

His most recent book is Überpower: America's Imperial Temptation (2006, translated into German and French). His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, International Security, The American Interest and Foreign Policy as well as in professional journals in Germany, Britain and France. He is the author of The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance, The Future of International Politics: The Great Powers; co-author of Eroding Empire: Western Relations With Eastern Europe.

Event Synopsis:

As Professor Joffe describes, political scientists predicting the outcome of the recent German elections based on economic factors were surprised by the victory of the Center Right, expecting a "Red-Red-Green" (Social Democrats-Left-Green Party) coalition instead of Merkel's "Black-Yellow" (Christian Democrats and Free Democrat) coalition party. He sees the outcome more as a loss for the Social Democrats, Lefts, and Greens - who should have done better in tough economic times, and capitalized on left-leaning ideology in Germany - than as a decisive victory for the winners.  He disagrees with the New York Times' declaration of a "mandate for change" in Germany for several reasons:

1. The proportional representation party system based on coalitions rather than majorities makes it impossible to enact wholesale change
2. The "stalemate system" features too many centers of power and makes change difficult
3. Germans like these features of their political system too much to change them

Professor Joffe asserts that the outcome of the elections is a good one for Germany. A victory by the "Red-Red-Green" coalition would have brought about years of instability under a grand coalition that would be characterized by high taxes and spending, pacifism, and the status quo, and which would soon have broken down. In the coming years, Joffe predicts a medium-term exit of German troops from Afghanistan, resistance of US calls for more troops in the Middle East, a pro-Israel stance, and little to no change in domestic policy.  He believes there should be greater focus on preventing the collapse of social support programs, but admits this does not fit into the electoral cycle of domestic politics and will likely be overlooked.

In conclusion, Joffe views the election outcome as the best possible one given alternatives, and as a message to Angela Merkel that Germans are realistic and want German politicians to be less timid.

A discussion session following the talk addressed such issues as: Will Germany revise its position toward Turkey's EU integration under Merkel's leadership? Will the election outcome affect the competitive position of German business? How are rising debt levels in Europe felt by Germany? How do the German people feel about their economic situation and competitiveness?

Sean Yom finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Government at Harvard University in June 2009, with a dissertation entitled "Iron Fists in Silk Gloves: Building Political Regimes in the Middle East." His primary research explores the origins and durability of authoritarian regimes in this region. His work contends that initial social conflicts riven by strategic Western interventions shaped the social coalitions constructed by autocratic incumbents to consolidate power in the mid-twentieth century--early choices that ultimately shaped the institutional carapaces and political fates of these governments. While at CDDRL, he will revise the dissertation in preparation for book publication, with a focus on expanding the theory to cover other post-colonial regions and states. His other research interests encompass contemporary political reforms in the Arab world, the historical architecture of Persian Gulf security, and US democracy promotion in the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Democracy, Middle East Report, Arab Studies Quarterly, and Arab Studies Journal.

"I think that, by and large, the managers wouldn't know a good technique if it hit them in the face." The prominent computer scientist Alan Perlis spoke these words at a second NATO-sponsored Software Engineering conference in 1969. He underscored a conflict that would persist in the decade that followed that ill-tempered meeting, as computer professionals organized in the name of "software engineering," many sponsored by the U.S. defense department. Yet software cost overruns are frequent, and glitches occasionally turn deadly, leading many to argue that "software engineering" is not yet worthy of the name.
 
How should we understand the emergence of software engineering: the agendas of its proponents, sources of controversy, and its relationship to diverse defense department interests, including security, reliability, and timeliness, and costs? This chapter-in-progress addresses this question using both qualitative historical materials and social network data. The Defense Department's interest in software research was nurtured by budgetary cuts that followed anti-war protests in the early 1970, making economics a dominant, if controversial theme in "software engineering" research. Debates about the meaning and direction of software engineering often invoked binary divisions, between managers and technical people, industrialists and academics, pragmatists and theoreticians. After describing these debates from the ground up, I use network analysis to provide bird's eye view: to what extent were commonly evoked dualisms reflected in practices of publication, and how did this change as the field became institutionalized? More broadly, can network analysis contribute meaningfully to a historical account employing "thick description," and if so how?

Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2004 she completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988.

As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

Eric Roberts, after receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1980, taught at Wellesley College from 1980-85, where he chaired the Computer Science Department. From 1985-90, he was a member of the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California, where he conducted computer science research, focusing on programming tools for multiprocessor architectures. In September 1990, Roberts joined the Stanford faculty, where he is now Professor of Computer Science and the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

From 1990 to 2002, Professor Roberts was Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Computer Science. In that capacity, he was the principal architect of Stanford’s introductory programming sequence, which for many years held the distinction of being the largest course at Stanford. He has also written four computer science textbooks that are used at many colleges and universities throughout the world. His research focuses on computer science education, particularly for underserved communities. From 1998 to 2005, Roberts was Principal Investigator for the Bermuda Project, which developed the computer science curriculum for Bermuda’s public secondary schools.

Martha Crenshaw will present a research project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," recently funded by NSF.

The purpose of the project is to identify patterns in the evolution of organizations that practice terrorism, specify the causes and consequences of these patterns, and analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its cohort in a comprehensive comparative framework.

The project analyzes the organizational structure of different families of organizations and traces their relationships over time. It will produce a series of dynamic maps of the architecture of violent and non-violent opposition groups operating in the same conflict theater.

It will also identify common patterns of organizational evolution, as groups form, split, merge, collaborate, compete, shift ideological direction, adopt or renounce terrorism, grow, shrink, and decline. Models based on comparisons of historical genealogies of terrorism will be applied to the case of Al Qaeda and its affiliates and associates, including the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban. Theories generated from the study will thus shed light on an important and constantly evolving national security threat.

The project will also identify or develop computer software to assemble, organize, and display information about organizations and their interactions over time.

Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI and a professor of political science by courtesy. She was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought and professor of government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., from 1974 to 2007. Her current research focuses on innovation in terrorist campaigns, the distinction between "old" and "new" terrorism, why the United States is the target of terrorism, and the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies.

She has written extensively on the issue of political terrorism; her first article, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1972. Her recent work includes "Terrorism, Strategies, and Grand Strategies," in Attacking Terrorism (Georgetown University Press), "Terrorism and Global Security," in Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (United States Institute of Peace Press), and "Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay," in the journal Security Studies. She is also the editor of a projected volume, The Consequences of Counterterrorist Policies in Democracies, for the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

She served on the Executive Board of Women in International Security and chaired the American Political Science Association (APSA) Task Force on Political Violence and Terrorism. She has also served on the Council of the APSA and is a former President and Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). In 2004 ISPP awarded her its Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution and in 2005 the Jeanne Knutson award for service to the society. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security, Orbis, Political Psychology, Security Studies, and Terrorism and Political Violence. She coordinated the working group on political explanations of terrorism for the 2005 Club de Madrid International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. She is a lead investigator with the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, funded by the Department of Homeland Security. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005-2006. She served on the Committee on Law and Justice and the Committee on Determining Basic Research Needs to Interrupt the Improvised Explosive Device Delivery Chain of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science. She was a senior fellow at the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City for 2006-2007.