FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Internationalization, Corporate Governance, and Global Competitiveness: A Study of Entrepreneurial Firms in the Pearl River Delta
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Conceiving NATO as a democracy promoter: A Realist Foreign Policy Explanation
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Abstract:
NATO since the end of the Cold War has emphasized democracy as political rationale both in rhetoric and in action, not only with regards to enlargement and partnership policies but also, increasingly, in its approach to out-of-area missions and state-building. While enlargement, and thus the ability to promote democratic change is consolidating in the Western Balkans, NATO faces considerable challenges to its political agenda both in Afghanistan and in its Eastern neighborhood. The interesting question is: what drives an organization like NATO (after all, a collective defense alliance) to assume such ‘soft’ security responsibilities in face of these challenges? NATO represents an interesting amalgam of interests and motivations that can possibly explain democratization as a political rationale and how it has come to vary over time. The seminar has both an empirical and a theoretical goal: to introduce NATO as a case contributing to existing studies on Western democracy promotion that tend to focus predominantly on either the U.S. or the E.U.; and to offer a realist foreign policy explanation to democracy promotion in contrast to the dominant liberalist or constructivist literature on the issue.
Speaker Bio:
Henrik Boesen Lindbo Larsen is a CDDRL visiting researcher 2011-12, while researching on his PhD project titled NATO Democracy Promotion: the Geopolitical Effects of Declining Hegemonic Power. He expects to obtain his PhD from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in 2013.
Henrik Larsen’s PhD project views democracy promotion as a policy resulting from power transitions as mediated through the predominant narratives of great powers. It distinguishes between two main types of democracy promotion, the ability to attract (enlargement, partnerships) and the ability to impose (out-of-area missions, state-building). NATO’s external policies are increasingly pursued with a lower intensity and/or with a stronger geographical demarcation.
Prior to his PhD studies, Henrik Larsen held temporary positions for the UNHCR in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congoand with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark working with Russia & the Eastern neighborhood. He holds an MSc in political science from the University of Aarhus complemented with studies at the University of Montreal, Sciences Po Paris and the University of Geneva. He has been a research intern at École Militaire in Paris and he is member of the Danish roster for election observation missions for the OSCE and the EU.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Henrik Larsen
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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hlarsen@stanford.edu
Visiting Researcher
Henrik Boesen Lindbo Larsen is a CDDRL visiting researcher 2011-12, while researching on his PhD project titled NATO Democracy Promotion: the Geopolitical Effects of Declining Hegemonic Power. He expects to obtain his PhD from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in 2013.
Henrik Larsen’s PhD project views democracy promotion as a policy resulting from power transitions as mediated through the predominant narratives of great powers. It distinguishes between two main types of democracy promotion, the ability to attract (enlargement, partnerships) and the ability to impose (out-of-area missions, state-building). NATO’s external policies are increasingly pursued with a lower intensity and/or with a stronger geographical demarcation.
Prior to his PhD studies, Henrik Larsen held temporary positions for the UNHCR in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congoand with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark working with Russia & the Eastern neighborhood. He holds an MSc in political science from the University of Aarhus complemented with studies at the University of Montreal, Sciences Po Paris and the University of Geneva. He has been a research intern at École Militaire in Paris and he is member of the Danish roster for election observation missions for the OSCE and the EU.
Publications
- "Libya: Beyond Regime Change”, DIIS Policy Brief, October 2011.
- "Cooperative Security: Waning Influence in the Eastern Neighbourhood" in Rynning, S. & Ringsmose, J. (eds.), NATO’s New Strategic Concept: A Comprehensive Assessment, DIIS Report 2011: 02.
- "The Russo-Georgian War and Beyond: towards a European Great Power Concert", DIIS Working Paper 2009: 32 (a revised version currently under peer review).
- "Le Danemark dans la politique européenne de sécurité et de défense: dérogation, autonomie et influence" (Denmarkin the European Security and Defense Policy: Exemption, Autonomy and Influence) (2008), Revue Stratégique vol. 91-92.
Seminars
Helen Nissenbaum evaluates concerns about online privacy
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New York University Professor Helen Nissenbaum outlined her approach to evaluating concerns about pervasive loss of online privacy at the March 8 Liberation Technology Seminar. Nissenbaum discussed how moral and political imperatives have struggled to keep up with technology, creating a tension between technical affordance and informational norms. She argued that privacy is never complete and that there cannot be a meaningful universal rule to guide the protection of privacy across all online contexts. Nissenbaum argued that a productive approach to evaluating what kinds of privacy norms should be adopted will take into account the context.
The predominant approach to online privacy is that the privacy policy should be transparent, voluntary for the user, and enforceable when a privacy policy has been made available. Nissenbaum argues that corporations have adopted such practices in order to gain a better understanding of their communities, but these practices have not worked. They are not effective because of the “transparency paradox,” which is the tension between divulging privacy practices in great detail and providing a policy users will actually read. Nissenbaum suggested that online privacy policies should be used only in grey areas, where they reveal the unexpected and advocate for a contextual approach to online privacy in the general case.
Her proposed alternative considers online privacy in light of informational norms. Technology has totally disrupted the flow of obtaining, utilizing, and distributing information. We live in social spheres, characterized by canonical activities and expectations that govern how people act. We are accustomed to informational norms that dictate information flow between people acting in certain capacities. We expect certain transmission principles to dictate the terms of information flow from one party to the next.
Drawing on this philosophy of privacy, Nissenbaum argued that contextual integrity is breached when actions or practices violate informational norms. She argued that we should respect these norms because they help us appreciate the value of privacy—it prevents harm and risk, limits unfair discrimination, support freedoms, and promotes autonomy and social integrity. In conclusion, she argued that we should evaluate disruptive or novel flow patterns, testing new practices against ethical, political, and internal standards. Technology reveals issues that have never been confronted before however, we have the ethical resources to handle them appropriately.
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Joshua Blumenstock explores economic shock impacts using “big data”
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During the Liberation Technology Seminar on March 1, Joshua Blumenstock, a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information, demonstrated the use of “big data” to explore the economic impact of mobile phone technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Blumenstock focused on a project in Rwanda, which leverages an enormous database of phone calls, text messages, and mobile money transfers. Using this data, he studies the patterns of remittances through mobile phones and explores if this new mechanism can serve as an effective social insurance during economic shocks. He hopes that this new data will provide insight into socioeconomic behavior, and improve policy and welfare in developing economies.
He argued that mobile money has quickly gained prominence in areas with very little formal banking, and it is used to send phone credit, make purchases and withdraw cash. On average, 200 million dollars are sent a day in Kenya alone through this mechanism, indicating the huge potential for such transfers in developing economies.
His data indicates that money is sent in response to shocks, supporting the hypothesis that phone-based technologies can enable risk-sharing. Blumenstock uses in situ evidence to explore the motives for this pro-social behavior. He used phone data from 1.4 million individuals over a period of 4 years to investigate how much money is sent, why it is sent and who benefits. He found that mobile money transfers have a highly reciprocal component and that most transfers go to the elite. In light of this evidence, Blumenstock concluded that while phones have had a positive impact on the lives of some people in times of crisis, the benefits of mobile technologies may not be reaching those with the greatest need.
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