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Institutions and Organizations

An Army Like No Other: The Origins of Military Culture

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

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Gil-li Vardi

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Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

Gil-li Vardi Visiting Scholar, CISAC; Lecturer, Department of History, Stanford; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Speaker
Joel Beinin Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford Commentator
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Dealing with Terrorism

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The problems of terrorism and counterterrorism are closely related to other themes stressed in this volume: sovereignty; state building, nation building, and peacebuilding; norms; responsibility to prevent and protect; legitimacy of the use of force; failed, failing, and fragile states; and democratic transitions. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the threat of terrorism emanated principally from proponents of radical Islamism, as it did during the first decade. Finding an effective response remained a challenge. Although terrorism receded as a global threat, it contributed to state failure and civil war and continued to provoke military intervention from targeted states. 

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Explaining Dominance: The Sources of Long-Lived One-Party Rule in Electorally Contested Regimes

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Abstract:

Why do some ruling parties last in power for decades despite facing regular, contested elections?  Well-known examples include the PRI in Mexico, the LDP in Japan, the PAP in Singapore, and the ANC in South Africa. The existence of these long-lived “dominant parties” raises normative concerns: can we really call these regimes democratic if there is never, or rarely, ruling party turnover? They also present a theoretical puzzle: if opposition parties are able to contest elections that decide who rules, why do they consistently fail to win? In this talk, I approach these questions by focusing on variation in ruling party duration.  Drawing on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence, I show that “dominant” parties are typically the first to hold office in a new regime, and often have played a central role in founding it.  As a consequence, these ruling parties frequently start out with enormous electoral advantages over their competitors in the party system, including a strong party “brand,” a disciplined and well-resourced party organization, and the ability to shape and manipulate the rules of competition. These advantages allow them to endure in power by winning consecutive elections for a generation or more.  Only with the erosion of these advantages do elections become more competitive, and the risk of ruling party defeat increases. Once dominant parties are defeated, subsequent partisan competition becomes much more even, and regular rotation in power becomes the norm.  Thus, one-party dominance is best thought of as a kind of temporary “adolescence” on the way to fully consolidated democracy.  

Speaker Bio:

Kharis Templeman received a BA (2002) from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in political science (2012) from the University of Michigan. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.  As a graduate student, he worked in Taipei at the Election Study Center, National Cheng Chi University, and later was a dissertation research fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.  His dissertation examined the development of Taiwan’s competitive party system from a comparative perspective, including a large study of the origins and decline of dominant party systems around the world over the last 60 years.

Current research interests include democratization, party system development in newly-contested regimes, and political institutions, with a regional focus on the new and transitioning democracies of Pacific Asia.  He is currently a regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy project.  Other ongoing collaborations include research on constitutional design for divided societies, on the arms-allies tradeoff in client states, and on intra-tribal voting coordination in elections in Jordan.

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Kharis Templeman Speaker
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Military Operations and National Policies, 1914-1918

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About the Speaker: Hew Strachan has been Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College since 2002, and was Director of the Oxford Program on the Changing Character of War between 2003 and 2012. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Chief of the Defence Staff and on the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board, as well as being a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and member of both the National Committee for the Centenary of the First World War and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is also a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003 and awarded an Hon. D. Univ. by the University of Paisley in 2005. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge and became a specialist adviser to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Tweeddale, and a Brigadier in the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers).

In December 2012, Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of top global thinkers for the year. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honors ceremony.

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Sir Hew Strachan Chichele Professor of History of War Speaker University of Oxford
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State Building Outside-In

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Abstract:
 
There is no consensus in the policy or academic worlds about what kind of interventions are most effective in promoting governance in badly governed polities.   The three major approaches to understanding state development — modernization theory, institutional capacity, and rational choice institutionalism suggest very different approaches.   While modernization theory is most expansive about the possibilities for external action, its record over time is the most problematic.   Rational choice institutionalism, in contrast, suggests that in rent-seeking exclusive orders the opportunities for external actors are limited.  Rational choice institutionalism, however, does not provide a clear mapping of mixed order polities, ones in which the interests of political elites are torn between open access and rent-seeking.
 
Speaker Bio:
 
Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution. From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

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Stephen D. Krasner

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Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0676 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Emeritus
krasner.jpg MA, PhD

Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999), and How to Make Love to a Despot (2020). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999),  Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001), and Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (2009). He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.

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Stephen Krasner Speaker
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Electoral System Reform

On March 14-15, the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, held a workshop on electoral system alternatives in the United States. The workshop brought together a number of scholars of American electoral institutions, practitioners working to implement electoral reforms, and experts on electoral systems reforms in advanced democracies. The workshop examined how different electoral systems options have worked in other countries, and what the implications of similar reforms might be in the United States.

Among other things, the workshop asked:

  • How might plurality elections in single-member districts in the United States skew democratic outcomes? Is there a relationship between the electoral system and the problems we see today, such as ideological and political polarization?
  • What lessons might be drawn from reforms in other countries? Examples include the single-transferable vote (STV) in Ireland, the alternative vote (AV) in Australia, and mixed-member systems in Italy, Japan, and New Zealand;
  • How might we go about reforming American electoral systems -- through local, state, or federal means, and through engagement with which types of political and civil service actors?
  • How has ranked-choice voting (RCV) worked in local experiments in the United States, including in Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; Oakland, CA; and Cambridge, MA?
  • How might electoral systems reforms interact with other proposed political reforms in the United States, including the National Popular Vote for the Electoral College, top-four primaries, and the adoption of redistricting commissions? 

 

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Nick Stephanopoulos: Our Electoral Exceptionalism

 

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Electoral System Reform in the U.S.
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What Explains Indonesia’s Defense Transformation? Beyond Democratic Reform and the “China Threat”

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Since the democratization of Indonesia began in 1998, the country’s military has been undergoing major change. It has significantly altered or is preparing to change its organizational structure, doctrinal precepts, education and training formats, and personnel policies. Partly to acquire advanced weaponry, its budget has more than tripled in the past decade. Why? Is Indonesia preparing to become a regional military power? Answering a growing potential threat from China in the South China Sea? Compensating for the loss of military influence under democratic reform? And how will the military fare under new national leadership following this year’s elections?

Evan A. Laksmana is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Maxwell School, a researcher with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta), and a non-resident German Marshall Fund fellow. He has taught at the Indonesian Defense University (Jakarta) and has held research and visiting positions at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (Singapore) and the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (Honolulu). Journals that have published his work include Asian Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Defence Studies, the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, Harvard Asia Quarterly, and the Journal of Strategic Studies. He tweets @stratbuzz.

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Evan A. Laksmana Fulbright Presidential Scholar, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Speaker Syracuse University
Seminars

Special Seminar

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Audio of this seminar is available. 

This event was co-sponsored with the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.

Robert Mnookin Samuel Williston Professor of Law; Director, Harvard Negotiation Research Project, Harvard University Speaker
Seminars

Why Government Fails So Often, and How It Can Do Better

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Abstract:

Professor Schuck's new book first identifies the endemic  ineffectiveness of much federal domestic policy as a major cause of public disaffection with Washington.  This disaffection has grown along with the size and ambition of federal programs and  now threatens the very legitimacy of our polity.  Synthesizing a vast amount of social science evidence and analysis,  he argues that this widespread policy failure has little to do with which party dominates Congress and the White house but instead reflects the systemic, structural, institutional obstacles to effective policy.  These deep obstacles to coherent policymaking include our political culture, political actors' perverse incentives, voters' collective irrationality, policymakers' poor information, the government's inherent inflexibility and lack of credibility, the effect of dynamic markets on policy coherence, the inherent limits of law as a policy instrument, a deviant implementation process, and a deteriorating bureaucracy.  Those policies that have succeeded help to explain why most policies fail. Professor Schuck proposes a variety of remedies to reduce government's failure rate.

Speaker Bio:

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Emeritus at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.  He has held the Baldwin professorship since 1984, and also served as Deputy Dean of the Law School. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 1979, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1977-79), Director of the Washington Office of Consumers Union (1972-77), and consultant to the Center for Study of Responsive Law (1971-72).  He also practiced law in New York City (1965-68) and holds degrees from Cornell (B.A. 1962), Harvard Law School (J.D. 1965), N.Y.U. Law School (Ll.M. in International Law 1966), and Harvard University (M.A. in Government 1969). 

His major fields of teaching and research are tort law; immigration, citizenship, and refugee law; groups, diversity, and law; and administrative law. He has published hundreds of articles on these and a broad range of other public policy topics in a wide variety of scholarly and popular journals.  His newest book is Why Government Fails So Often, and How It Can Do Better (April 2014).  Earlier books include Understanding America: The Anatomy of An Exceptional Nation (2008) (co-editor with James Q. Wilson; Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples (2006)(with Richard J. Zeckhauser); Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics (2006); Immigration Stories (co-editor with David A. Martin, 2005); Foundations of Administrative Law (editor, 2d ed., 2004)  Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance (Harvard/Belknap, 2003); The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance (2000); Citizens, Strangers, and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship (1998); and Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany (co-editor with Rainer Munz, 1998); Tort Law and the Public Interest: Competition, Innovation, and Consumer Welfare (editor, 1991); Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts (1987); Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Policy (with Rogers M. Smith, 1985); Suing Government: Citizen Remedies for Official Wrongs (1983); and The Judiciary Committees (1974). He is a contributing editor of The American Lawyer.

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Peter Schuck Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Emeritus Speaker Yale University
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