"American democracy is in trouble, but with a “yes” vote on Question 5 Mainers could do something significant to begin to fix it. By adopting ranked-choice voting, Maine could make its government work better while setting a model of reform for the rest of the country." - writes Larry Diamond, in an OpEd for the http://bangordailynews.com/. Read the whole article here.
The infographic shows the claims presidential candidate Donald Trump made during the first debate versus facts. For the big picture, click here.
OPINION:
By now it should be clear that Donald Trump has not paid federal taxes, probably for many years, hence his reticence to publicly release his income tax returns. This infographic was prepared after the first presidential debate, to provide some back-of-the-envelope calculations of taxes paid by Mexicans in the United States, both documented and undocumented.
Those taxes contribute to the U.S. economy and to the many services, such as schools, clinics and infrastructure that we all enjoy. The infographic also highlights that all evidence suggests NAFTA had a very small (but positive) impact on the U.S. economy and that a repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement would disrupt millions of U.S. jobs that depend on trade with Mexico. Abandoning NAFTA would have cataclysmic effects on the Mexican economy, only adding to migratory pressures. It could even threaten U.S. security by pushing young unemployed Mexicans into illegal activities, such as drug trafficking.
Finally, the infographic highlights one additional element of the presidential debate that received relatively little scrutiny. This relates to the way taxes are in Europe and Latin America using a Value Added Tax (VAT), instead of the system in the United States that depends on state and local sales taxes. American companies are not taxed by Mexico in any protectionist manner. The functioning of VAT is somewhat complex, because it involves paying the tax at the point of sale, but also deducing any taxes paid. VAT rules are what allow American tourists visiting Europe to get a refund on the taxes they paid on the merchandise they take home. Perhaps due to ignorance regarding how VAT collection works, the false asseveration by Trump went largely unchallenged in public debate.
Citizens around the world are concerned about the efficient use of taxes and the likelihood of waste and possible corruption in government spending. A basic premise of living in a political community is that all of us have an obligation to contribute our fair share. We may disagree about what that fair share might be, and whether the rich should pay more than the poor. But there is no question that the Mexicans whom the Republican candidate intends to deport, as well as those legal residents and citizens, contribute far more to our nation than he does. According to many news reports, Trump has not paid federal taxes nor has he contributed personal funds to the charities supported by his foundation. His philosophy regarding solidarity toward others seems to have been expressed quite explicitly during the first debate:
"But I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I am running the company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies."
I believe that anyone running for public service, and the most powerful office in the world, simply cannot make a statement like that. Public servants should not look for the loopholes in the laws, but be held to a higher standard that follows the spirit of the law. Tax codes are created to ensure that all of us contribute to the greater good. Someone running for the presidency of the United States should aim higher than just doing well for his family and private interests.
A U.S. president has obligations toward the people of his nation, before himself or his family. Presidential responsibilities (moral or otherwise) should extend to U.S. allies, such as Mexico, and perhaps even to all the inhabitants of the world. Someone who lies, cheats on his taxes, and does not care for others is simply not fit to become the next President of the United States.
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This infographic was prepared after the first presidential debate, to provide some back-of-the-envelope calculations of taxes paid by Mexicans in the United States
"The deteriorating norms of truthfulness and authority that we’ve seen throughout the 2016 election threaten the long-term integrity of U.S. institutions", says CDDRL Mosbacher director Francis Fukuyama for the Stanford Election 2016 through the Wide Angle project.
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CDDRL Mosbacher director, Francis Fukuyama addressing guests at CDDRL reception in October, 2016
For many years, it seemed as if the German party system was immune to the temptations of right-wing populist parties. This picture changed with the emergence of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). With its initial anti-European, and later strongly anti-Islamic rhetoric, the AfD has become the most successful emerging party in Germany. Just a few months after its foundation in 2013, the AfD received nearly 5% of the votes in the Federal Election and failed to enter the German Bundestag by only a few thousand votes. Today, the AfD is represented in ten out of sixteen German state parliaments, entered the European Parliament and gained several seats in both regional and local elections.
This talk will discuss how the emergence and establishment of the AfD is likely to alter Germany’s party system. Various resources (candidate surveys, election data and party manifestos) are analyzed to shed some light on the AfD’s ideological positioning, its political personnel, and the unequal regional distribution of its electoral success. The talk will conclude with a brief outlook toward the upcoming German Federal Election in 2017 and how a permanent extension of the party system to the extreme right-hand side of the ideological spectrum will narrow the scope for the formation of future government coalitions.
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Markus Tepe is a professor of Political Science (Political System of Germany) at the University of Oldenburg. He holds a doctoral degree from the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) and an MA in Political Science, Public Law and Economic Policy from the University of Münster. His research centers on public policies, political economy, and laboratory experiments in social science research. Currently, he is conducting a research project on need-based justice and redistribution (FOR2104) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Markus is a Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center for 2016-2017.
Markus Tepe
Professor of Political Science
Speaker
University of Oldenburg
This discussion will be based on the authors' recently published book, Taiwan's Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years, Lynne Rienner Publishing (2016).
Abstract
At the end of Chen Shui-bian’s two terms as the president of Taiwan, his tenure was widely viewed as a disappointment, if not an outright failure. Today, the Chen years (2000-2008) are remembered mostly for relentless partisan fighting over cross-Strait relations and national identity questions, prolonged political gridlock, and damaging corruption scandals—as an era that challenged, rather than helped consolidate, Taiwan’s young democracy and squandered most of the promise with which it began.
Yet as Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years documents, this conventional narrative obscures a more complex and more positive story. The chapters here cover the diverse array of ways in which democratic practices were deepened during this period, including the depoliticization of the military and intelligence forces, the ascendance of an independent and professional judicial system, a strengthened commitment to constitutionalism and respect for the rule of law, and the creation of greater space for civil society representatives in the policy-making process. Even the conventional wisdom about unprecedented political polarization during this era is misleading: while elite politics became more divided and acrimonious, mass public opinion on cross-Strait relations and national identity was actually converging.
Not all developments were so positive: strong partisans on both sides of the political divide remained only weakly committed to democratic principles, the reporting of news organizations became more sensationalist and partisan, and the Taiwanese state’s exceptional autonomy from sectoral interests and vaunted capacity for long-term planning deteriorated. But on the whole, the authors argue, these years were not squandered. By the end of the Chen Shui-bian era, Taiwan’s democracy was firmly consolidated.
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-6448
(650) 723-1928
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ldiamond@stanford.edu
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
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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.
Korea Society president Thomas Byrne, retired General Walter "Skip" Sharp, former U.S. commander in Korea, and Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to Korea and William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford's Shorenstein APARC, engage in discussion about the new U.S. president and political, economic and security options on Korea and East Asia.
Panelists:
Thomas J. Byrne joined The Korea Society as its president in 2015. He came to the Society from Moody's Investor Services, where he was Senior Vice President, Regional Manager, Spokesperson, and Director of Analysis for the Sovereign Risk Group in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Before moving to Moody's in 1996, he was the Senior Economist of the Asia Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington, D.C. Byrne holds a master’s degree in international relations with an emphasis on economics from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. Before his graduate work, he served in South Korea for three years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer. He teaches a graduate-level course, Sovereign Risk, at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in Fall 2016.
General Walter “Skip” Sharp was commander of the United Nations Command, ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces in Korea from 2008 to 2011. He also commanded troops in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti and the Multinational Division (North) of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia. He previously had four assignments at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff. He was the deputy director, J5 for Western Hemisphere/Global Transnational Issues; vice director, J8 for Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment; director for Strategic Plans and Policy, J5; and the director of the Joint Staff.
Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, while his father was fighting in the Korean War, General Sharp graduated from West Point in 1974 and was commissioned as an armor officer. He earned a master’s degree in operations research and system analysis from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a graduate of the Army War College. He is consulting for and on the board of directors of several U.S. and Korean companies and The Korea Society. He is involved in Northeast Asia and especially Korea strategy and policy discussions at several think tanks in the Washington, D.C. area.
Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, is the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul. She came to Stanford previously as the 2013-14 Koret Fellow after 35 years as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State.
Stephens' diplomatic career includes chargé d’affaires to India in 2014; acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in 2012; U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011; principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2007; and deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2003 to 2005.
Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra St. Stanford, CA 94305
Encina Hall 616 Serra Street Stanford, CA 94305-6165
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jaakko.merilainen@iies.su.se
Visiting Student Researcher at The Europe Center, 2016-2017
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Jaakko Meriläinen is a Visiting Student Researcher from the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. His primary area of research is Political Economics with empirical emphasis, and he is also interested in Economic and Political History as well as immigration-related questions. Jaakko's current research concerns political careers, economic consequences of political representation, historical development of voting behavior and historical impacts of time saving technologies on women's labor force and political participation.
This event has reached capacity. Please join us to watch the live-stream at this link.
The symposium will focus on the key questions that impact health through the year 2020. How could the 2016 election affect health care in the U.S.? How will payment reform affect health systems, physicians and patients? Are the insurance exchanges viable? What challenges pose the biggest threat to global health? Experts from Stanford and beyond address these topics and more as they discuss the future of health policy.
Lloyd Minor, Dean, Stanford University School of Medicine
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Minor, MD, is a scientist, surgeon and academic leader. He is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, a position he has held since December 2012. Minor leads more than 1,500 faculty and 1,000 students at the oldest medical school in the West and has made precision health — the prevention of disease before it strikes — a hallmark of research, education and patient care at Stanford Medicine.
Bob Kocher,a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Venrock
Bob Kocher
Kocher, MD, is a partner at Venrock who focuses on healthcare IT and services investments and is a consulting professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. He served in the Obama Administration as special assistant to the president for health care and economic policy and was one of the key shapers of the Affordable Care Act.
David Entwistle, President and CEO, Stanford Health Care
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Entwistle joined Stanford Health Care as its President and CEO in July, bringing extensive executive experience at leading academic medical centers. Most recently he served as CEO of the University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics, the only academic medical center in the Intermountain West region. While serving at UUHC, Entwistle received the Modern Healthcare “Up and Comers Award,” for significant contributions in health-care administration, management or policy.
Chris Dawes, President and CEO, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
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Christopher G. Dawes became President and Chief Executive Officer of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford in 1997 after five years of service as Chief Operating Officer. Under his guidance, the hospital, research center and regional medical network has been ranked as one of the best in the nation, as an industry leader in patient safety and innovation in providing a full complement of services for children and expectant mothers.
Panelists:
Marcella Alsan, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
Marcella Alsan’s research focuses on the relationship between health and socioeconomic disparities with a focus on infectious disease. Another vein of research focuses on the microfoundations of antibiotic overuse and resistance. She received a BA degree in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard University, a master’s degree in international public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a medical degree from Loyola University, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. She is board-certified in both internal medicine and infectious disease. She trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, completing the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship in internal medicine. She combined her PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. She currently is an infectious disease specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Palo Alto.
Laurence Baker, Chair of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University
Laurence Baker is an economist interested in the organization and economic performance of the U.S. health-care system, and his research has investigated a range of topics including financial incentives in health care, competition in health-care markets, health insurance and managed care and health-care technology adoption. Baker is a past recipient of the ASHE medal from ASHEcon and the Alice Hersch Award from AcademyHealth. He received his BA from Calvin College, and his MA and PhD in economics from Princeton University.
Eran Bendavid, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
Eran Bendavid is an infectious diseases physician. His research interests involve understanding the relationship between policies and health outcomes in developing countries. He explores how decisions about foreign assistance for health are made, and how those decisions affect the health of those whom assistance aims to serve. Dr. Bendavid is also a disease modeler, and uses that skill to explore issues of resource allocation in low and middle-income countries with cost-effectiveness analyses. His recent research projects include an impact evaluation of the US assistance program for HIV in Africa, and an exploration of the association between drug prices, aid and health outcomes in countries heavily affected by HIV.
Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
Jay Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. Most recently, he has researched the regulation of the viatical-settlements market (a secondary life-insurance market that often targets HIV patients) and summer/winter differences in nutritional outcomes for low-income American families. He is also working on a project examining the labor-market conditions that help determine why some U.S. employers do not provide health insurance.
M. Kate Bundorf, Associate Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
M. Kate Bundorf is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her M.B.A. and M.P.H. degrees from The University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from The Wharton School. She was a Fulbright Lecturer and Visiting Professor at Fudan School of Public Health in Shanghai, China in 2009 and 2010. Her research, which focuses on health insurance markets, has been published in leading economics and health policy journals and has received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She received the 13th Annual Health Care Research Award from The National Institute for Health Care Management in 2007.
David Chan, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
David Chan is a physician and economist whose research focuses on productivity in US health care. His research draws on insights from labor and organizational economics. He is particularly interested in studying what drives physician behavior, how this explains differences in productivity in health care delivery, and what the implications are for the design of health care. He is the recipient of the 2014 NIH Director’s High-Risk, High-Reward Early Independence Award to study the optimal balance of information in health information technology for patient care. David Chan is also an investigator at the Department of Veterans Affairs and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Kathryn M. McDonald, Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University
Kathryn McDonald, MM, is the Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy (CHP) and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR) and a senior scholar at the Centers. She is also Associate Director of the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-based Practice Center (under RAND). Her work focuses on measures and interventions to achieve evidence-based patient-centered healthcare quality and patient safety. Mrs. McDonald has served as a project director and principal investigator on a number of research projects at the Stanford School of Medicine, including the development and ongoing enhancement of the Quality and Patient Safety Indicators for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She has authored numerous peer reviewed articles and government reports, including several with wide enough followership to merit recent updates: Care Coordination Measures Atlas, Closing the Quality Gap, and Patient Safety Practices.
Michelle Mello, Professor of Law and of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University
Michelle Mello is Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. She conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is the author of more than 150 articles and book chapters on the medical malpractice system, medical errors and patient safety, public health law, research ethics, the obesity epidemic, pharmaceuticals, and other topics. From 2000 to 2014, Dr. Mello was a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she directed the School’s Program in Law and Public Health. In 2013-14 she completed a Lab Fellowship at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Dr. Mello teaches courses in torts and public health law. She holds a J.D. from the Yale Law School, a Ph.D. in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a B.A. from Stanford University. In 2013, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine).
Grant Miller, Associate Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
Grant Miller is Director of the Stanford Center for International Development, an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, a Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy/Primary Care and Outcomes Research, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His primary interests are health economics, development economics, and economic demography. As a health and development economist based at the Stanford Medical School, Dr. Miller’s overarching focus is research and teaching aimed at developing more effective health improvement strategies for developing countries. His agenda addresses three major interrelated themes. (1) First, what are the major causes of population health improvement around the world and over time? (2) Second, what are the behavioral underpinnings of the major determinants of population health improvement? (3) Third, how can programs and policies use these behavioral insights to improve population health more effectively?
Douglas K. Owens, Director of the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University
Douglas K. Owens, MD, MS, is the Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., Professor at Stanford University, where he is a professor of medicine. He is director of the Center for Health Policy in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR) in the Department of Medicine. He is a general internist and associate director of the Center for Innovation to Implementation at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. A past member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, he has helped lead the development of national U.S. guidelines on screening for HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and use of aspirin and statins to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Maria Polyakova, Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University
Maria Polyakova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research investigates questions surrounding the role of government in the design and financing of health insurance systems. She is especially interested in the relationships between public policies and individuals’ decision-making in health care and health insurance, as well as in the risk protection and re-distributive aspects of health insurance systems. She received a BA degree in Economics and Mathematics from Yale University and a PhD in Economics from MIT.
David M. Studdert, Professor of Medicine and of Law, Stanford University
David M. Studdert is a leading expert in the fields of health law and empirical legal research. His scholarship explores how the legal system influences the health and well-being of populations. A prolific scholar, he has authored more than 150 articles and book chapters, and his work appears frequently in leading international medical, law and health policy publications. Professor Studdert has received the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, the leading organization for health services and health policy research in the United States. He was awarded a Federation Fellowship (2006) and a Laureate Fellowship (2011) by the Australian Research Council. He holds a law degree from University of Melbourne and a doctoral degree in health policy and public health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
As part of Stanford Worldview's Wide Angle: Election 2016 Project, Nate Persily of Stanford Law School recently described how the 2016 election highlights changing trends in polarization and gridlock in the United States, particularly the role of campaign finance and digital technology.
Bob Kocher
