Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

New Dynamic Triangle-Taiwan, US, and China: A Conversation

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In this conversation, Taiwan's Representative to the United States, Jason Yuan, and Director of CDDRL, Larry Diamond, will talk about a variety of issues associated with the triangular relationship among Taiwan, China, and the United States.

Mr. Jason Yuan took office as Republic of China’s (Taiwan) Representative to the United States in August, 2008. Representative Yuan is a career diplomat who began his government career in 1974 as an acting naval attaché for the Embassy of the Republic of China in the United States. After then, he has been Deputy Director and Director of Congressional Liaison Division for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, Director General of Department of North American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada. He has also served as Ambassador to Panama, and Director General of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. Prior to the current post, Representative Yuan was Representative of Kuomintang-People First Party (KMT-PFP Alliance) to the United States.

Representative Yuan obtained his MA in Business and Public Administration from Southeastern University and BA in Chinese Navy Academy (Taiwan).

This is special event within Democracy in Taiwan Program.

Bechtel Conference Center

Jason Yuan Representative Speaker Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the United States

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Director Speaker Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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Frank Wolak, an expert in energy and environmental economics, named director of FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD)

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FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) is pleased to announce the selection of a new director, Frank Wolak, who is Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and FSI Senior Fellow.  Professor Wolak brings to the post a distinguished record of scholarship and deep policy experience in energy and environmental economics and regulation.

Wolak’s wide-ranging research contributions have examined energy systems both domestically and in emerging markets around the world.  He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for the electricity supply industry in California and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), among other professional affiliations.

PESD founder David G. Victor, Professor of Law and FSI Senior Fellow, stepped down from the director position effective April 1, 2009. PESD Assistant Director Mark C. Thurber will take over as acting director until Wolak assumes the director position on September 1, 2009.

Victor will remain at Stanford as faculty through the end of the summer of 2009, when he will leave to become a full professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at U.C. San Diego, where he will build a research group working on the study of international regulation.
 
“FSI and Stanford are extremely grateful to David Victor for all that he has done to establish PESD and build it into the innovative and influential research program that it is today,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “I know that the entire Stanford community joins me in extending our best wishes to David and in offering a hearty welcome to Frank.”

In a world facing profound transformations in the way energy is generated and used, PESD’s work on how political, economic, and institutional factors combine to shape energy market outcomes meets a critical global research need. For additional information on PESD research interests and platforms, please contact Acting Director Mark Thurber.

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Nuclear Learning Revisited

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Amandeep Singh Gill is a visiting fellow at CISAC. He is a member of the Indian Foreign Service and has served in the Indian Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, the Indian Embassy in Tehran and the High Commission of India in Colombo. At headquarters in New Delhi, he has served twice in the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division of the Ministry of External Affairs from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2008 at critical junctures in India’s nuclear diplomacy. He was a member of the Indian delegation to the Conference on Disarmament during the negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He has also served as an expert on the UN Secretary General’s panels of experts on Small Arms and Light Weapons and on Missiles.

His research priorities include disarmament, arms control and non proliferation, Asian regional security and human security issues.  He is currently working on the interaction of nuclear policies of major states, particularly in Asia.

Before joining the Indian Foreign Service, Amandeep Gill worked as a telecommunications engineer. He retains an abiding interest in the interaction of science, security and politics. He is founder of a non-profit called Farmers First Foundation that seeks to reclaim agriculture for the farmers and demonstrate the viability of integrated agriculture in harmony with nature.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into six languages, most recently into Czech in 2008. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Amandeep Singh Gill CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker

David Holloway

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-1737 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
0820stanford-davidholloway-238-edit.jpg PhD

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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David Holloway Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member; Forum on Contemporary Europe Research Affiliate; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty Commentator
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Can Development Aid Contribute to Social Cohesion? Evidence From a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia

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James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of political science and CISAC affiliated faculty member at Stanford University. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance.

He is presently working on a book manuscript (with David Laitin) on civil war since 1945. Recent publications include “Iraq’s Civil War” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007), “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States” (International Security, Spring 2004), and “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” (APSR, February 2003).

Fearon won the 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, which is "presented annually to a scholar under the age of forty, or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her Doctoral Degree, who is judged to have made, through a body publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research." He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Patrick Johnston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation examines the military effectiveness of civilian targeting in civil wars. He has published articles on the organization of insurgencies, spoiler dynamics in peace processes, and the political economy of civil war in journals such as Security Studies, Civil Wars, Canadian Journal of African Studies, andReview of African Political Economy. Johnston holds a BA in political science from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.

If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

James D. Fearon

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-1314
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Professor of Political Science
rsd26_013_0052a.jpg PhD

James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a Senior Fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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James D. Fearon Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; CISAC Faculty Member Speaker
Patrick Johnston CISAC Predoctoral Fellow Commentator
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Conflict Resolution

End of the World: Sense, Nonsense, and Nuclear War

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Lynn Eden is acting co-director (2008-09) at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972) was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

Fred Turner's research and teaching focus on digital media, journalism and the roles played by media in American cultural history.

Turner is the author of two books, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (2006) andEchoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory (1996; Revised 2nd ed. 2001). His essays have tackled topics ranging from the rise of reality crime television to the role of the Burning Man festival in contemporary new media industries.

Turner's research and writing have received a number of awards, including a PSP Award for Excellence, for the best book in Communication and Cultural Studies published in 2006 from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers; the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics from the Media Ecology Association; the James W. Carey Media Research Award from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research; and both a Best Paper Award and a Book Award Special Mention from the Communication and Information Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. During the 2007-2008 academic year, he was a Leonore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellow in Communication at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Before joining the faculty at Stanford, Turner taught Communication at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also worked as a journalist for ten years. His news stories, features and reviews have appeared in venues ranging from the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine to Nature.

Turner earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego, in 2002. He has also earned a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University and an M.A. in English from Columbia University.

If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar

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Lynn Eden

Not in residence

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Affiliate
rsd15_078_0365a.jpg PhD

Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

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Lynn Eden CISAC Acting Co-Director (2008-09) and Senior Research Scholar Speaker
Fred Turner Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Communicaiton, Stanford University Commentator
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The Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation in Counterinsurgency Campaigns

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Patrick Johnston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation examines the military effectiveness of civilian targeting in civil wars. He has published articles on the organization of insurgencies, spoiler dynamics in peace processes, and the political economy of civil war in journals such as Security Studies, Civil Wars, Canadian Journal of African Studies, andReview of African Political Economy. Johnston holds a BA in political science from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.

Max Abrahms is a PhD candidate at UCLA focusing on the interface of terrorism and international relations theory. Abrahms has published in International Security, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Middle East Policy. Prior to coming to Stanford, Abrahms was a research associate at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; a fellow at Tel Aviv University; a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and a commissioned op-ed writer on Palestinian terrorism for the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared as a terrorism analyst on ABC News, Al-Arabiyya, Al-Hurra, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNN Financial, Fox News, National Public Radio, and PBS. Abrahms is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (summa cum laude) and Oxford University, where he read his MPhil in International Relations.

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Patrick Johnston CISAC Predoctoral Fellow; PhD Candidate, Political Science, Northwestern University Speaker
Max Abrahms CISAC Predoctoral Fellow; PhD Candidate, Political Science, UCLA Commentator
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