Stanford University

Tricks of the Trade: Writing for International Security

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Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal International Security, and co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, BCSIA Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author of the recent monograph, War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002) and a frequent contributor to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Miller is editor or co-editor of some two dozen books, including, most recently, Offense, Defense, and War (October 2004), The Russian Military: Power and Policy (September 2004), Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict- Revised Edition (2001), and The Rise of China (2000).

 

Miller is the co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council of International Pugwash, the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy). He is a former member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Within Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Miller serves on the steering committees of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and of the Harvard Ukrainian Project.

Suggested readings for the seminar:

 

(1) Teresa Johnson, "Writing for International Security: A Contributor's Guide." International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 171-180.

(2) For a critical view of the journal: Hugh Gusterson, "Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security," in Jutta Weldes, et al., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 319-345.

(3) For a survey of the evolution of the journal: Steven Miller, "International Security at 25: From One World to Another," International Security, Vol 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 5-39.

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Steven E. Miller Editor in Chief, International Security, and Director, International Security Program Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Seminars

South Asia's Mid-Level Stability Problem: Why the Stability/Instability Paradox Does Not Explain Indo-Pakistani Conventional Conflict

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Paul Kapur is a visiting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He is on leave from Claremont McKenna College, where he is an assistant professor of government. At CISAC, Kapur is writing a book manuscript on nuclear proliferation's effects on conventional military stability in South Asia. Kapur received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

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Paul Kapur Assistant Professor of Government Speaker Claremont McKenna College
Seminars
Strengthening Security and Stability in South Asia

Do Conflict Prevention Measures Matter?

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Professor Peter Wallensteen of Uppsala University in Sweden will deliver a talk on the efficacy of conflict prevention strategies in the developing world. Wallensteen has served as an advisor to the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, Appointed by Secretary General of the United Nations.

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Peter Wallensteen Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research Uppsala University, Sweden
Seminars

Forms of Property Rights: Oligarchic Versus Democratic Societies

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Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Economic Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He is also affiliated with the National Bureau Economic Research, Center for Economic Performance, and Center for Economic Policy Research.

His work has been published in leading scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal Economics and Review of Economic Studies to name a few. Daron Acemoglu's research covers a wide range of areas within economics, including political economy, economic development and growth, human capital theory, growth theory, technical change, and search theory. Acemoglu is also the editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, and associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth.

Abstract of paper presented in this research seminar

This paper develops a model where there is a trade-off between the enforcement of the property rights of different groups. An "oligarchic" society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights, but also tends to erect significant entry barriers, violating the property rights of future producers. Democracy, where political power is more widely diffused, imposes redistributive taxes on the producers, but tends to avoid entry barriers. When taxes in democracy are high and the distortions caused by entry barriers are low, an oligarchic society achieves greater efficiency. Nevertheless, because comparative advantage in entrepreneurship shifts away from the incumbents, the inefficiency created by entry barriers in oligarchy deteriorates over time. The typical pattern is therefore one of the rise and decline of oligarchic societies: of two otherwise identical societies, the one with an oligarchic organization will first become richer, but later fall behind the democratic society. I also discuss how democratic societies may be better able to take advantage of new technologies, how an oligarchic society might transition to democracy because of within-elite conflict, and how the unequal distribution of income in oligarchy supports the oligarchic institutions and may keep them in place even when they become significantly costly to society.

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Daron Acemoglu Professor of Economics MIT
Seminars

Escaping the Resource Curse? A Look at Nigeria

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Professor Tom Heller of Stanford University Law School and CDDRL's Program on Rule of Law will speak on his current research.

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Thomas C. Heller

Crown Quad rm 329
Stanford, California 94305-8610

(650) 723-7650 (650) 725-0253
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Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus
THeller.jpg LLB

An expert in international law and legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. He has created innovative courses on the role of law in transitional and developing economies, as well as the comparative study of law in developed economies. He co-directs the law school’s Rule of Law Program, as well as the Stanford Program in International Law. Professor Heller has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, and Hong Kong University, and has served as the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is now a senior fellow.

Professor Heller is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an attorney-advisor to the governments of Chile and Colombia.

FSI Senior Fellow and Woods Institute Senior Fellow by courtesy
Thomas C. Heller Professor Stanford Law School and CDDRL
Seminars

The Village Phone Program in Africa

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Tim Wood Program Manager, Village Phone Program Grameen Foundation Technology Center
Seminars

The Natural State and the Political-Economy of Non-Development.

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Barry Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He served as chair of the Political Science Department from 1996 to 2001. He is also a professor of economics, by courtesy, at Stanford.Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. Weingast authored (with Robert Bates, Avner Grief, Margaret Levi, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal) Analytic Narratives, published in 1998. Weingast is editor, with Kenneth A. Shepsle, of Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions (University of Michigan Press, 1995). His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy.

Douglass C. North was the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is currently the Hoover Institution's Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow. His 1990 Cambridge University Press Book, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, is a staple in graduate courses in political economy around the world. North's current research activities include research on property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, a theory of the state, the free rider problem, ideology, growth of government, economic and social change, and a theory of institutional change.

John Wallis is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of American Economic Growth and Standards of Living Before the Civil War, with Robert Gallman, NBER, University of Chicago Press, 1992, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on American economic history.

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Barry Weingast Professor of Political Science Stanford University
Douglass North Hoover Senior Fellow Stanford University
John Wallis Professor of Economics University of Maryland
Seminars

Reflections on Iraq's Political Transition

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Feisal Istrabadi is the Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations, and one of Iraq's most important constitutional thinkers. He was one of the principal legal drafters of Iraq's interim constitution (adopted on March 8 of 2004) and the lead author of its Bill of Fundamental Rights. During 2002-2003 he was a member of the Democratic Principles Working Group and the Transitional Justice Working Group of the Future of Iraq project. A native of Iraq, he was schooled in the United States and practiced law in the central United States for fifteen years, with extensive trial and appellate court experience. He holds Bachelor's of Science and Doctor of Jurisprudence degrees from Indiana University, and has been a senior fellow at the International Human Rights Law Institute, College of Law, DePaul University, Chicago.

He will be speaking about his experiences in drafting the Iraqi interim constitution as well as the current political situation in Iraq.

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Feisal Istrabadi Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations
Seminars
Program on Democracy - Completed
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