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Foreign Policy

Latvia in Crisis: Where is a Way Out of It?

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Latvia is a country that has come through a crisis before; can it do it again? Professor Stranga examines the current crisis in Latvia, a country much evolved over the past 50 years. He focuses on a variety of social, economic, and political factors in assessing how Latvia can move forward.

Synopsis

Prof. Stranga begins by examining what he calls Latvia’s “first great crisis” from 1929-1933. At the time, Latvia was a democracy, a member of the League of Nations, but critically had no security guarantees and was stuck between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Prof. Stranga explains that this crisis was overcome by the dictatorship of Karlis Ulmanis, whose regime lasted from 1934 until the Nazi occupation. Those years were seen as the ‘Golden Years,’ times of economic flourishing and national freedom from occupation. Prof. Stranga reveals this period had long lasting effects on the national psyche of Latvia.

To Prof. Stranga, Latvia is in a very different situation today. He argues that these are times of very limited sovereignty, particularly for his country. Prof. Stranga explains that this is mainly due to Latvia’s dependence on the EU, NATO, and the IMF which provide economic and military security. Prof. Stranga identifies the effects of Karlis Ulmanis’ regime as the perception in Latvia that a ‘strong man’ is needed to guide Latvia out of its current crisis. However, the necessity for Latvia to remain a democracy is made clear by the help it receives from the organizations mentioned above.

Although the help is clearly needed, Prof. Stranga feels that its consequences are often very painful. The IMF’s conditions for essentially saving Latvia’s economy include cutbacks in medical assistance and a reduction of teachers and schools, facets of public life deeply engrained in Latvia’s culture. In addition, Prof. Stranga examines the question of energy security. He looks particularly at Latvia’s absolute dependence on Russia exhibited by the fact that Gazprom’s first foreign office is in Latvia, and the fact that this has perhaps hindered Latvia’s progress.

At the same time, it seems clear that Prof. Stranga sees this crisis also as an opportunity. Firstly, he argues that now is probably the time to not be shy but to look for alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy, something Prof. Stranga further discussed when answering questions. Moreover, Prof. Stranga believes there are too many bureaucratic positions, and the crisis is an opportunity to cut these off and direct funding elsewhere. In addition, he feels the crisis is a chance to reconstruct exports. In particular, Prof. Stranga would like to see Latvia leaning more towards innovation rather than timber or agriculture. Finally, Prof. Stranga addresses Latvia’s issue of an internally divided society, particularly between Latvians and Russian speakers. He analyzes Latvian Russians’ diminishing impact as Russia’s economy falters but also expresses concern at the fact that Russian influence in Latvia seems to be heavily dependent on Russia’s economic state.

Prof. Stranga kindly takes the time to briefly answer a few questions and raises several issues in the process. Prof. Stranga cites Latvia's population reduction as perhaps the "greatest" problem it faces. However, he feels reassured by the help of the friendly states of Scandinavia and other organizations across the world. At the same time, Prof. Stranga explains such organizations are not having an entirely positive impact. In particular, he argues against the "inhuman" approach of solely focusing on cutting back capital of the IMF which he feels is an assault on Latvian life.

About the speaker

Aivars Stranga is professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Latvia. He is the author of seven monographs and more than 150 scholarly and general publications on Latvian domestic and foreign policy andinternational relations between 1918 and 1940, and Latvian foreign policy from 1991 to 2000. Professor Stranga was a distinguished visiting professor at Stanford in 2003, teaching courses on Baltic History and the History of the Holocaust in the Baltics.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of History, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

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Aivars Stranga Professor of History Speaker University of Latvia
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Latvia and Russia: Battles Around History

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Aivars Stranga is professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Latvia. He is the author of seven monographs and more than 150 scholarly and general publications on Latvian domestic and foreign policy andinternational relations between 1918 and 1940, and Latvian foreign policy from 1991 to 2000. Professor Stranga was a distinguished visiting professor at Stanford in 2003, teaching courses on Baltic History and the History of the Holocaust in the Baltics.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of History, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

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Aivars Stranga Professor of History Speaker University of Latvia
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A Stake in the Heart of Lipset's Law? Indonesia versus Modernization Theory

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Seymour Martin Lipset famously claimed that the more well-to-do a nation is, the greater the chance that it will sustain democracy.  This "law" fits the experience of several countries in Northeast and Southeast Asia.  Formerly authoritarian South Korea and Taiwan grew rich and became stable democracies with active civil societies, as Lipset would have expected.  His "law" fits the Philippines and Thailand as well- -poor countries with tenuous holds on democracy where uncivil societies have mobilized to defend elite hegemony against mass-based electoral challenges.

The case of Indonesia, in contrast, limits Lipset's Law.  Poor yet stably democratic, Indonesia is free of regime-threatening social conflicts.  Arguably, despite its poverty, its democracy is already consolidated.  India's record of sustaining democracy is another case in point.  These poor yet successfully democratic polities amount to large stakes in the heart of modernization theory.

Prof. Thompson will contend that Indonesia's democracy is neither middle-class-based nor dominated by big business, but is instead still characterized by traditional cross-cutting ethno-religious cleavages that limit the impact of money politics, reduce the risk of populism, foster elite consensus, and thereby encourage democratic stability. He will link his argument not only to Lipset's Law but to the intellectual legacies of Alexis de Tocqueville, Antonio Gramsci, and Barrington Moore among other students of democracy and modernity.

Mark R. Thompson is a professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.  A Chicago native, he took his first degree in religious studies at Brown University followed by postgraduate work at Cambridge University and the University of the Philippines.  Fascinated by Philippine people power, he wrote his dissertation at Yale University on the anti-Marcos struggle (Yale University Press, 1996).  After moving to Germany, he witnessed popular uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe, inspiring him to conceptualize democratic revolutions in essays later published as a book (Routledge, 2004).  He is in residence at Stanford from February through April 2009.

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Mark Thompson

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Professor Thompson builds on Barrington Moore's insight that there are different "paths to the modern" world. Thompson's manuscript explores alternatives to the familiar South Korean-and Taiwan-based model of "late democratization." According to that model, political pluralism follows a formative period of economic growth during which labor is demobilized and big business, religious leaders, and professionals depend upon and are co-opted by the state.

Thompson argues that even when these preconditions are in place, democratization need not follow. Singapore is an illuminating case in point. The autocratic growth model pays insufficient attention to politics, including the sometimes crucial role of student activists in challenging developmental authoritarianism and triggering a democratic transition, as in Indonesia. As political actors, students (rather than a progressive bourgeoisie) may fill the oppositional vacuum created by the preconditions that characterized predemocratic South Korean and Taiwan.

In his critique of Northeast Asian-style, post-authoritarian "late democratization" and its emphasis on economic growth as the driver of political change, Professor Thompson uses evidence drawn from paired comparisons of Vietnam with China, Hong Kong with Singapore, and between South Korea and Taiwan on the one hand and other major Southeast Asian cases on the other.

Mark R. Thompson is a professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.  A Chicago native, he took his first degree in religious studies at Brown University followed by postgraduate work at Cambridge University and the University of the Philippines.  Fascinated by Philippine people power, he wrote his dissertation at Yale University on the anti-Marcos struggle (Yale University Press, 1996). After moving to Germany, he witnessed popular uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe, inspiring him to conceptualize democratic revolutions in essays later published as a book (Routledge, 2004).  He is in residence at Stanford as Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies from February through April 2009.

Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Mark Thompson 2008-09 Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies Speaker Stanford University
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March 2009 Dispatch - Venture Capital in China and India - A Comparison

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Martin Kenney
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Venture capital (VC) investment provides a unique mechanism for gauging the technological and entrepreneurial sophistication of a national economy. It is no surprise, then, that the two giants of Asia—China and India—have rapidly become important destinations for VC investment. The latest data available from Ernst & Young reveals an astonishing development: China received more VC investment than any nation except the United States. India, though lagging behind China, still received $862 million. To compare, over $30 billion in VC money was invested in the United States in 2007; $823 million was invested in Canada. Clearly, China and India are becoming nodes for the global VC practice. Many of the largest and most prestigious Silicon Valley VC firms have established significant presences in both nations.

China and India differ in many ways, but with respect to the development of VC they share important characteristics. Until late 2008, both nations had rapidly growing consumer economies. The Chinese and Indian governments and populations both agree that education—and particularly engineering—is critical to their future. Both China and India are leaders in sending their graduate students abroad, which has created a pool of well-trained nationals overseas who can advise their peers at home, or even return home themselves to set up new ventures. Many of these Chinese and Indian nationals have worked in U.S. sciences and engineering-based firms. Such professional experience, especially during the last two decades, has laid the basis for successful technology-based entrepreneurship, and the growth in VC that accompanies it.

When VC investing is viewed globally, U.S. dominance is unquestioned. In the United States, 30–35 percent of all VC-financed firms are located in the San Francisco Bay area. Another 10–12 percent are located in the Boston and New York areas, respectively. In India and China, VC investments are similarly concentrated, and generally occur in locations with the greatest concentrations of highly educated persons. As Table 1 indicates, the investment concentration is remarkable. Forty percent of all the VC-funded firms are located in Beijing, 26 percent are in Shanghai, and the Southern Chinese triangle of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong accounts for another 14 percent. VC investment in China is even more concentrated than in the United States.

Table 1 VC Investments in China and India by City, 2004–2007
(more than 5 investments per city)

Chinese City    Number of Firms    Percent    Indian City    Number of Firms    Percent
Beijing                   213                  40          Bangalore           55                    38
Shanghai               137                  26          Mumbai              31                    21
Shenzhen                36                    7          Chennai             21                     14
Hong Kong              19                    4          New Delhi           16                    11
Guangzhou             16                    3           Hyderabad          11                     8
Hangzhou               13                    2           Pune                   8                      5
Nanjing                  11                    2             n/a       
Suzhou                    9                    2             n/a       
Wuhan                     7                    1             n/a       
Others                   66                   13           Others                4                      3
Unknown                  1                    0          Unknown             0                       0
Total                      528               100            Total                146                  100
Binational                9                    2          Binational             45                    31


VC-backed startups in India, though more diffuse in terms of the top six, are more concentrated overall. Three city regions—Bangalore (38 percent), Mumbai (21 percent), and Chennai (14 percent)—attract the largest investment. However, when including Delhi (11 percent), Hyderabad (8 percent), and Pune (5 percent), these six cities account for an even greater percentage of overall VC investment. The most technology-oriented cities in both nations, Beijing and Bangalore, have received approximately 40 percent of all VC investment. The second largest recipients are Shanghai and Mumbai, which are also the financial capitals.

In China, an enormous economy growing at nearly 10 percent per year even as it emerges from a socialist past, there are significant opportunities in infrastructure development and in supplying the burgeoning underserved consumer market. In a recent Ernst & Young report, Fan Zhang, one of the founding managing partners of Sequoia Capital China, was quoted as saying that “one of the factors that attracted Sequoia Capital to China is the country’s booming consumer market that provides an opportunity to create companies to define certain sectors and fill the need for strong brands, not only in technology but also tech-related consumer services and more traditional industries.”

Zhang is correct—VC investing in China does not directly compete with U.S. firms seeking VC investment. Table 2 shows the fields that VC firms are targeting in China. The table is divided into two binary categories—whether the firm receiving the investment targets the domestic or the global market across a variety of industries, and whether a given firm is in a high technology or non-high technology sector. Chinese firms, even those in technology-based fields, overwhelmingly target the domestic market (87 percent). The Internet has given rise to the largest number of VC startups, nearly all of which are focused on the Sinophone market. Two other key areas—software (10 percent) and mobile phone applications (10 percent)—also cater almost exclusively to the Chinese market. This domestic focus suggests that it will be quite some time before VC-backed Chinese firms threaten counterpart firms in the United States. A possible exception may be semiconductor design, where there are some Chinese startups. Though few Chinese VC-financed firms are likely to be directly competitive with U.S. firms in global markets, many of these Chinese firms compete ferociously against U.S. multinationals trying to make their own inroads into the Chinese domestic market.

Table 2 VC Investments in China and India by Sector and Market, 2004–2007

                                         India                               China
Sector                      Domestic*    Global         Domestic **    Global

Semiconductors               0               7                  22                20
Internet                        16               3                144                  2
Software                         2             14                  55                  4
Communications              1               4                  23                  9
Services                          4             53                  28                  9
Mobile phone                   7              5                   51                  1
Media                             2              0                    35                 0
Healthcare                      1               4                   26                 4
Retail                             1               1                   19                  0
Miscellaneous                  2               0                  20                  2
Components                    0               0                   2                   1
Energy                            0               0                   6                   8
Environment                    0               0                   5                   1
Manufacturing                  0               0                 25                  6
Total                              34             91                461                67

 

* Domestic firms are identified as those that made no apparent attempt to serve overseas markets.

The profile of Indian firms differs from those in China. First, Indian firms are internationally oriented (73 percent); only 27 percent focus on the domestic market. With respect to sector concentration, VC investing in India favors the services sector (46 percent) and software (13 percent). This is not surprising, given India’s well-known comparative advantage in these arenas. Unlike most VC-backed companies in China, many Indian firms may well create competition for U.S. service firms, despite the less developed nature of the Indian economy as a whole.

China and India continue to attract significant VC investment, albeit in different sectors. Today, China is second only to the United States in terms of VC investing, and this is unlikely to change. In China, the preponderance of VC investment is geared to the rapidly growing internal market. The size and unique nature of this market offers entrepreneurs lucrative opportunities to provide “knock-off” U.S. Internet sites for the Chinese market. There are Chinese interpretations of Yahoo!, Google, eBay, Facebook, and Monster.com that service Chinese customers. These firms are self-limited by the language; as such, they do not threaten companies overseas. Moreover, these Chinese companies do not own unique or global class technology that could challenge larger multinational players. It is unclear whether this situation will change over time.

Indian firms differ from Chinese firms in their strong outward orientation. In percentage terms, more Indian than Chinese firms operate in hard-core technology fields. Thus, while China currently enjoys greater VC investment, it is possible that Indian firms may ultimately play a bigger role in the global economy.

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PESD releases new working paper on a climate change policy framework for India

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Varun Rai
David G. Victor
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India has been famous for arguing that it (and the rest of the developing world) should incur no expense in controlling emissions that cause climate change. The West caused the problem and it should clean it up. That argument is increasingly untenable-both in the fundamental arithmetic of climate change, which is a problem that is impossible to solve without developing country participation, and in the political reality that important western partners will increasingly demand more of India and other developing countries. India's own public is also demanding more.

The Indian government has outlined a broad plan for what could be done, but the plan still lacks a strategy to inform which efforts offer the most leverage on warming emissions and which are most credible because they align with India's own interests. This paper offers a framework for that strategy. It suggests that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India's own self-interest, and with three case studies it suggests that leverage on emissions could amount to several hundred million tonnes of CO2 annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030. (For comparison, the Kyoto Protocol has caused worldwide emission reductions of, at most, a couple hundred million tonnes of CO2 per year.) We suggest in addition to identifying self-interest, which is the key concept in the burgeoning literature on "co-benefits" of climate change policy, that it is also important to examine where India and outsiders (e.g., technology providers and donors) have leverage.

One reason that strategies offered to date have remained abstract and difficult to implement is that they are not rooted in a clear understanding of where the Government of India is able to deliver on its promises (and where Indian firms have access to the needed technology and practices). Many ideas are interesting in theory but do not align with the administrative and technological capabilities of the Indian context. As the rest of the world contemplates how to engage with India on the task of controlling emissions it must craft deals that reflect India's interests, capabilities and leverage on emissions. These deals will not be simple to craft, but there are many precedents for such arrangements in other areas of international cooperation, such as in accession agreements to the WTO.

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Management Matters: Firm Level Evidence From Around the Globe

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John Van Reenen has established an international reputation as a scholar of the economics of consequences and causes of innovation. He works on the applied econometrics of industrial organization and labor economics, especially areas relating to productivity growth, management and organizational practices, R&D, anti-trust, intellectual property, policy evaluation and investment decisions.

John Van Reenen has been a full Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance since 2003. He graduated with a First from Cambridge University (Queens College) with the highest mark in a decade before completing a Masters degree (with distinction) from the LSE, and doing his PhD at University College London in 1993. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Professor at University College London. He has published over 40 refereed papers in international journals, including the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He has also been an editor of many journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Industrial Economics, and the Review of Economic Studies. He has served as a senior advisor to the UK Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Health, and the European Commission. Formerly, he was a partner in an economic consultancy company, Lexecon, and Chief Technology Officer in a software start-up. He frequently appears in newspapers, radio, and TV.

John Van Reenen, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and the Denning Visiting Professor in Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, offered an FSI Director’s seminar on March 4, looking at “Management Matters: Firm Level Evidence from Around the World.” Finding a dearth of empirical evidence on international management practices, and how they affect business performance and productivity across firms and across countries, Van Reenen and colleagues Nick Bloom, Christos Genakos, and Rafaella Sadum set out to remedy that deficit.

Van Reenen and colleagues developed a new methodology to measure global management practices, scoring firms in three areas: how well they track what goes on inside their firms, how they set targets and trace outcomes, and how effectively they use incentives to address and reward performance. Drawing on interview data from 5,000 firms in 15 countries across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, the researchers found that better performance is correlated with better management.  U.S. firms had the highest average management practice scores followed by Germany, Sweden, and Japan.

Asking why management practices vary so much, they found that multinational firms and firms operating in highly competitive markets have better management practices, while family owned firms and firms facing extensive labor market regulation have the worst. These four factors accounted for half of the variation in management practice scores across firms and across countries.

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John Van Reenen Denning Visiting Professor in Global Business and the Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Professor of Economics and Director, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics Speaker
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Leadership in Transition: Heterodox Pathways to Good Governance in Post-Suharto Indonesia

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What makes some governments perform better than others? With rising levels of decentralization and local democracy, the focus of "good governance" is increasingly shifting from national to subnational levels. While much of the existing development literature remains preoccupied with formal institutional and society-centered explanations, there is growing evidence that local policy reforms are strongly affected by informal norms and elite-centered processes.

Post-Suharto Indonesia, a country with one of the most pronounced shifts to democratic decentralization anywhere in recent history, is a case in point. Drawing on empirical comparisons across ten districts (comprising 1000 business surveys and 150 interviews), Dr. von Luebke argues that societal pressures are often less significant in explaining policy differences than the quality of local government leadership. In the early transition to democracy, local firms, associations, and district councils continue to be constrained by collective action and political incentive problems. Local government leaders, on the other hand, have wielded historically strong formal and informal powers and stand, for better or worse, at the gateway to local policy reform. Motivated by direct elections and prospective donor funding, some district heads have become catalysts for better governance by introducing informal public-private dialogues, innovative monitoring instruments, and meritocratic promotion schemes. In response to current development debates, these findings highlight the importance of government leadership as an often underestimated policy determinant that can compensate for weak societal checks in periods of transition from authoritarian rule.

Christian von Luebke is completing a book manuscript titled “Heterodox Governance: The Political Economy of Local Policy Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia.”  He has been awarded a 2009-2011 German Science Foundation Fellowship for a follow-up project incorporating cases from the rest of Southeast Asia and China.  In 2001-2006 he worked in rural Indonesia as a technical advisor for the World Bank and the German Development Agency. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University.

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Christian von Luebke

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Christian von Luebke is a political economist with particular interest in democracy, governance, and development in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a research project that gauges institutional and structural effects on political agency in post-Suharto Indonesia and the post-Marcos Philippines. During his German Research Foundation fellowship at Stanford he seeks to finalize a book manuscript on Indonesian governance and democracy and teach a course on contemporary Southeast Asian politics.

Before coming to Stanford, Dr. von Luebke was a research fellow at the Center of Global Political Economy at Waseda (Tokyo), the Institute for Developing Economies (Chiba), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta). He received a JSPS postdoctoral scholarship from the Japan Science Council and a PhD scholarship from the Australian National University.

Between 2001 and 2006, he worked as technical advisor in various parts of rural Indonesia - for both GTZ and the World Bank. In 2007, he joined an international research team at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) analyzing the effects of public-private action on investment and growth.

Dr. von Luebke completed his Ph.D. in 2008 in Political Science at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University. He also holds a Masters in Economics and a B.A. in Business and Political Science from Muenster University.

His research on contemporary Indonesian politics, democratic governance, rural investment, and leadership has been published in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asian Affairs, Asian Economic Journal, and ISEAS. He regularly contributes political analyses on Southeast Asia to Oxford Analytica.

Christian von Luebke 2008-2009 Shorenstein Fellow Speaker Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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NATO expert Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall named to national security posts

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Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a senior research scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been named special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council.

Prior to her appointment, Sherwood-Randall served as a founding senior adviser to the Preventive Defense Project (PDP), a Stanford-Harvard initiative that focuses on security problems and threats. She also was an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We are delighted that President Obama has asked Liz to advise him on European issues critical to our mutual political, military, and economic security, particularly during these challenging economic times," said Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies.

"Liz brings a wealth of experience and knowledge that will help strengthen effective, constructive relationships between this country and our friends and allies in Europe."
- Coit Blacker

This is the second time Sherwood-Randall has served in the executive branch. From 1994 to 1996 during the first Clinton administration, she was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. In this role, she developed and implemented regional security policy toward the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, and also established defense and military relationships. Sherwood-Randall was instrumental in extending NATO's Partnership for Peace program across Eurasia and in building the foundation for cooperation between Russia and NATO in the joint peacekeeping operation in Bosnia. For her work at the Pentagon, she was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal by then-Secretary of Defense William Perry, who now co-directs the PDP at Stanford.

"I am delighted that Liz has been selected for this important job," Perry said. "Her achievements during her tenure at the Pentagon while I was secretary of defense were significant and far-reaching.  I expect in her new role at the National Security Council she will make equally powerful contributions."

From 2007 to 2008, Sherwood-Randall was a member of the Review Panel on Future Directions for Defense Threat Reduction Agency Missions and Capabilities to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. In 2008, she served on the National Security Strategy and Policies Expert Working Group that advised the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which Perry also leads.

Prior to her service in the Department of Defense, Sherwood-Randall was co-founder and associate director of Harvard's Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project. She also has served as chief foreign affairs and defense policy adviser to then Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and as a guest scholar in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. 

Sherwood-Randall earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar in 1981.

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