Stanford University

Institutions and Organizations

Public Goods Provision and the Efficacy of Governance

On May 18-19, the Program on Poverty and Governance will host a two-day conference on the provision of public goods and good governance throughout the world. This conference, co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, will bring together an interdisciplinary group of economists, political scientists, policymakers, and public health researchers examining these questions. Public goods—goods and services such as education, healthcare, sanitation, potable water, and other benefits provided by the government—are intrinsically tied to issues of governance, which we broadly define as the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs. More specifically, factors such how political leaders get elected, the way in which government projects get funded, whether the community participates in decision-making, and the extent to which the distribution of government benefits is done through clientelistic networks, among others, play an important role in the quality and coverage of public goods that governments provide. Additionally, a critical question in large parts of the developing world relates to the role of international players and foreign aid in the provision of public goods –does external provision of public goods enable or hinder governmental capacity to deliver public services in poor communities? Through two days of presentations and panel discussions, the conference will explore how various facets of governance affect the provision of public goods and services throughout the world.

The conference will be held in Encina Hall at Stanford University May 18th and 19th, 2012. Guests are encouraged to RSVP by May 16th. Any questions may be addressed to the Program on Poverty and Governance program associate Elena Cryst.

Click Here for Papers

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CISAC Conference Room

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity

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About the topic: The U.S. military has entered a period of transition. In terms of strategy, the Department of Defense is shifting away from a decade spent fighting two ground wars to a new era in which the United States hopes to spend more time preventing and deterring conflicts and preparing for future challenges. Yet at the same time, the U.S. military faces significant budget cuts in the years ahead. DOD has already released its plans for reducing the Pentagon’s base budget by $487 billion over the next decade, but the Budget Control Act of 2011 will impose an additional $500 billion in cuts on January 1 unless Congress changes the law before then. What are the strategic, military, and financial consequences of these budget cuts? Can DOD implement cuts of this magnitude and still maintain its broad global engagement strategy? Or do they pose unacceptable risks to U.S. national security objectives? This talk draws on ongoing research at the Center for a New American Security to address these questions.

About the Speaker: Nora Bensahel is Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Her current areas of research include stability operations, counterinsurgency, civilian capacity for operations abroad, and coalition and alliance operations. Prior to joining CNAS, Dr. Bensahel served as a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where she teaches M.A. classes and received the Alumni Leadership Council Teaching Award. She also serves on the Executive Board of Women in International Security. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and her B.A. from Cornell University.

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Nora Bensahel Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security Speaker
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Former U.S. Sen. Feingold and CISAC Co-Director Cuéllar encourage Americans to think globally

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A Wake-up Call for America: We Must Connect with the World

Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, currently the Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, uses an anecdote in his new book, While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, to illustrate his concern that Americans have become too insular as a result of the 2001 terrorist attacks. While teaching at Marquette University Law School during the Arab Spring of last year, an undergraduate penned a column lamenting that so many students not only could not find Tunisia on the map – they could spell Kardashian before Kazakhstan.

Feingold writes that he admired this student for his confession about his lack of knowledge on global affairs, then quotes the final thought of the young columnist: “We are connected to the rest of the world in ways few of us can fully fathom, from the shoes we wear and coffee we drink to the cell phones we carry and the tweets we post.”

In a recent interview, CISAC Co-Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Feingold discuss steps to be taken to ensure that all Americans – young and old, inside the Washington beltway and out on the farm in Wisconsin – take a patriotic stand by engaging with the world to restore our national unity and regain global respect.    

Senator Feingold, what prompted you to write this book now?

Feingold: For me, as for many Americans, 9/11 was a life-changing event, the wake-up call in which we all understood that we no longer could be safe just assuming the world would take care of itself. We got misdirected with things like Iraq and we developed this sort of invade-one-country-at-a-time approach. There was also exploitation of the fears from 9/11 for domestic agendas, from the Patriot Act to the way that Muslims and Arabs are treated in this country. And then, finally, with the rise of the tea party, I feel like we went back to sleep. But there are signals all over the place, of the continued presence of al-Qaida and the continued potency of al-Qaida, not to mention so many other trends from the Chinese influence in Africa to the Iranian influence in Latin America. We aren’t connecting as a government or as a people in a way that I think is commensurate with our place in the 21st century. I’m trying to issue a warning that we’re going to get fooled or surprised again if we think we can just go back to being just sort of safely over here across the oceans. That’s just not the world anymore.

So how do you wake up Americans and make them realize we cannot, as you say, survive as a nation without being active and aware of global events and trends? 

Feingold: It’s at all levels. I happen to think we have a good president and I think he’s going to be a great president by the end of his second term. And I think he’s started the process of alerting Americans to the need to connect to all places in the world; he’s leading us toward a global vision of the kind that I think we have to have to be safe and to be competitively successful and to be well perceived by the rest of the world. The president and other leaders should call on each of us to try and become citizen diplomats. Three hundred million people should be urged as part of their patriotic duty not just to go to the moon as we once were, but go to the rest of the world. This isn’t Pollyanna; this is about being safe. I don’t think this country is geared up to make that connection and I think it’s a fatal flaw. The Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, they’re all over the world and they have a plan for what they’re doing. We don’t.

What do you see as the most pressing global security issues today?

Cuéllar:  The United States is confronting a changing world, where countries like India, Brazil, and China are evolving and assuming greater importance. Engaging these countries to address problems like nuclear proliferation will be critical in the years ahead.  The world also faces a persistent problem involving failed or failing states. In places like Somalia, piracy is not only a regional problem in the Gulf of Aden.  The problem is an example of how threats can affect multiple countries and impact flows of commodities, disrupting the rule of law, highlighting the challenges of governing common resources such as international sea lanes. Another challenge is the enormous potential of technology to change people’s lives for the better, coupled with risks that arise which we are only in a very imperfect and incomplete way managing; risks of vulnerabilities in our infrastructure; risks of theft of intellectual property, risks of disruption of organizations.

Feingold: I like this answer because Prof. Cuéllar did not just say, “Well, it’s Russia and Iran and Colombia.” There’s this tendency to just speak of countries. We’re just trained to say, “OK what’s the hot spot and let’s just worry about that.” Like right now it’s Iran; a few months ago it was Yemen. In my book what I’m trying to point out is that you have to look at trends and overall tendencies around the world and somehow we have to have the capacity to deal with more than one thing at a time.

Senator Feingold, you called the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program – the wiretapping and surveillance of emails and financial records without court approval – one of the worst assaults on the Constitution in American history. How does the government protect our constitutional rights to privacy and probable cause while monitoring criminal and terrorist networks in a digital age?

Feingold: The assault on the Constitutional by the administration was not about whether we could do those things, its whether or not the president would basically make up his own laws just because we’re in a crisis. That to me is completely unconstitutional. We understand that a president might have to take emergency action and he may have to come to Congress and say, you know I did this, it may be beyond the law, would you please pass a law to approve it, or I’ll stop doing it. That’s not what Bush did. Bush hid it. Bush hid what he was doing on torture; Bush hid what he was doing on wiretapping. That’s a very dangerous thing that completely saps our strength from within and is completely unnecessary to stop the terrorists.

Cuéllar: The challenge of living up to our constitutional values while we secure the country is always critical. It requires organizations that can learn from their mistakes to be honest with each other enough and recognize when they have overstepped their bounds, that make good use of entities like inspectors-general, that leverage the ability of Congress to do oversight. These are all elements of making our constitutional values relevant. So me the challenge has always been how to you leverage all the information technology and all our ability to make smart, thoughtful, careful decisions – including decisions that do permit appropriate degrees of surveillance and intelligence – in order to avoid superficial reactions against individuals who simply appear threatening.

What key steps should the U.S. government take to improve its counter-terrorism efforts both at home and abroad?

Feingold: The first thing is to recognize the nature of the threat. One of the chapters in the book is called A Game of Risk, where we seem to think the way to counter terrorism is to invade a country and stay there forever and say we have to stay there or the terrorist are going to come back. But this isn’t the nature of al-Qaida or similar organizations. President Bush used to say there were 60 countries where al-Qaida was operating and, of course, one thing that was embarrassing about it was that Iraq wasn’t one of them. But we’re still in this place today. Al-Shabab in Somalia; al-Qaida and the Islamic Maghreb in northern Africa; a group called Boko Haram in Nigeria, which looks very much like an al-Qaida group, has pulled off some 70 attacks in the last year. So this is an international organization that communicates with each other and they’re not done just because Osama bin Laden is gone. So let’s not get caught unawares again.

Senator Feingold, what was your most memorable, defining challenge in Congress and how did that change the way you see yourself and the world around you?

It had to do with recognizing when 9/11 occurred that there really was a group of people out there who would love to kill all of us and, despite the fact that I’m progressive and I voted against most military interventions, just saying to myself: look, there are times when threats are real. And it caused me to actually seek to be on the Intelligence Committee which is something I never wanted to do; I was not sure of the importance of intelligence in the post Cold War era and it was a real change for me. I remember having an emotional response, saying, “You know what? This is real; what these folks did was real and they have intimidated an entire country if not the world.” I wanted to know everything I could about how they came to be and what they were planning next, and to be a person who could try to think ahead for other kinds of threats so we as Americans can get ahead of threats instead of being the people who are reacting.

 

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"Human Terrain" and post-film discussion

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From the film’s website: ‘Human Terrain’ is two stories in one. The first exposes a new Pentagon effort to enlist the best and the brightest in a struggle for hearts and minds. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military initiates ‘Human Terrain Systems’, a controversial program that seeks to make cultural awareness the centerpiece of the new counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack as a misguided and unethical effort to gather intelligence and target enemies. Gaining rare access to wargames in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, ‘Human Terrain’ takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and a shadowy collaboration between American academics and the military.

The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist in the Western Sahara, Balkans, East Timor and elsewhere, and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returns to Brown University to take up a visiting fellowship. In the course of conducting research on military cultural awareness, he is recruited by the Human Terrain program and eventually embeds with the 82nd Airborne in eastern Afghanistan. On the way to mediate an intertribal dispute, Bhatia is killed when his humvee hits a roadside bomb.

War becomes academic, academics go to war, and the personal tragically merges with the political, raising new questions about the ethics, effectiveness, and high costs of counterinsurgency.

Following the screening, James Der Derian (the film's Co-Director and Executive Producer) will discuss the film with the audience.

For more information about the film, please visit the Human Terrain website. 

CISAC Conference Room

James Der Derian Co-Director and Executive Producer, “Human Terrain” Professor (Research), Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University Speaker
Joseph Felter Senior Research Scholar, CISAC Speaker

Norman M. Naimark

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C235
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-6927 (650) 725-0597
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Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Robert & Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies
Professor of History
Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Naimark,_Norman.jpg MS, PhD

Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, a Professor of History and (by courtesy) of German Studies, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and (by courtesy) of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. Norman formerly served as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division, the Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, the Convener of the European Forum (predecessor to The Europe Center), Chair of the History Department, and the Director of Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Norman earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1972 and before returning to join the faculty in 1988, he was a professor of history at Boston University and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He also held the visiting Catherine Wasserman Davis Chair of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1996), the Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding faculty volunteer service (1995), and the Dean's Teaching Award from Stanford University for 1991-92 and 2002-3.

Norman is interested in modern Eastern European and Russian history and his research focuses on Soviet policies and actions in Europe after World War II and on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. His published monographs on these topics include The History of the "Proletariat": The Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 1870–1887 (1979, Columbia University Press), Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (1983, Harvard University Press), The Russians in Germany: The History of The Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (1995, Harvard University Press), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (1998, Westview Press), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe (2001, Harvard University Press), Stalin's Genocides (2010, Princeton University Press), and Genocide: A World History (2016, Oxford University Press). Naimark’s latest book, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty (Harvard 2019), explores seven case studies that illuminate Soviet policy in Europe and European attempts to build new, independent countries after World War II.

 

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Norman M. Naimark Professor of Eastern European Studies; Professor of History; CISAC Affiliated Faculty; Europe Center Research Affiliate and FSI Senior Fellow by courtesy Moderator
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Dual Use Research of Concern: Avian H5N1 influenza adaption to a mammalian host

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The life sciences have many examples of where research results and technologies can be used for good, but also for bad purposes. Because such scenarios are so common, it is critical to identify that research which is particularly bad and would be classified as dual use research of concern (DURC). Attributes that might result in a DURC designation include how immediate a threat it represents, the magnitude of the threat, the availability of safeguards to defend against its nefarious use and its relative risk to benefits ratio. Several policy forums have studied this problem and the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) is currently the official U.S. government advisory group for DURC policy. Recently, NSABB was asked to review two manuscripts that reported adaptation of the high-path avian influenza virus H5N1 to transmission in a mammalian model. This virus rarely infects humans but when it does, it has catastrophic consequences with ~60% mortality. The board weighed the risks and the benefits of the work and recommended that the papers not be published as written, but only in a highly redacted form that would prevent the rapid and direct replication of the work. NSABB also argued for a communication pause so that the consequences of these papers and this research focus be evaluated by a broad cross section of science, public health and society. The US government accepted these recommendations and the two journals (Science and Nature) have thus far not published the papers. Multiple additional forums are planned to discuss the issues and recommendations. The future for policy development in the area of pathogen research and DURC will be shaped by these recommendations and subsequent activities.

About the speakers:

Dr. Paul Keim holds the E. Raymond and Ruth Cowden Endowed Chair in Microbiology at Northern Arizona University (NAU), where he is also a Regents Professor of Biology. In addition, he directs the Pathogen Genomics Division at The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). Both institutions are based in Flagstaff, Arizona. His biological interests span many types of organisms and microbes, but revolve around genetic diversity and its organization in populations and species. This necessarily has involved systematic and phylogenetic analyses to understand how observable genetic diversity is based upon past evolutionary processes. Biodefense programs have capitalized upon his approach of using genomic analysis to understand bacterial pathogen populations for microbial forensics and molecular epidemiological analyses. His laboratory was heavily involved in analysis of evidentiary material from the 2001 anthrax-letter attacks. He has published extensively on the evolution and population genetics of Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Burkholderia mallei, Brucella spp., and Coxiella burnetii. Recently, these same principles have been applied to other public health-related and clinically important pathogens such as S. aureus and E. coli. In all, he has published over 230 scientific or policy papers. Dr. Keim received his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Arizona University in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Botany in 1981 from the University of Kansas. Dr. Keim has previously served on the editorial boards of Crop Science and Molecular Breeding; he currently serves on the editorial boards of Infection Genetics and Evolution, Investigative Genetics, and Biotechniques.

Dr. David Relman is a professor of medicine – infectious diseases, and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford. He joined CISAC as an affiliated faculty member in November 2011. He is also chief, Infectious Diseases Section, at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Among his other activities, Dr. Relman currently serves as Vice-President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Chair of the U.S. National Academies of Science Institute of Medicine's Forum on Microbial Threats, and member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He received a S.B. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977) and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School Medicine (1982).

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Paul Keim Acting Chair, National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, The Cowden Endowed Chair of Microbiology, Northern Arizona University and Director, Pathogen Genomics Division, Translational Genomics Research Institute Speaker

David Relman

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E209
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor
Professor of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
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David A. Relman, M.D., is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He is also Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, and served as science co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford from 2013-2017. He is currently director of a new Biosecurity Initiative at FSI.

Relman was an early pioneer in the modern study of the human indigenous microbiota. Most recently, his work has focused on human microbial community assembly, and community stability and resilience in the face of disturbance. Ecological theory and predictions are tested in clinical studies with multiple approaches for characterizing the human microbiome. Previous work included the development of molecular methods for identifying novel microbial pathogens, and the subsequent identification of several historically important microbial disease agents. One of his papers was selected as “one of the 50 most important publications of the past century” by the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Relman received an S.B. (Biology) from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. He served as vice-chair of the NAS Committee that reviewed the science performed as part of the FBI investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, as a member of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on Science, Technology and the Law, both at the National Academies of Science. He has received an NIH Pioneer Award, an NIH Transformative Research Award, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.

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Exposure to Low-­‐Dose Radiation: We Need Social Discussion for Risk Judgment

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For a copy of the original article in Japanese, please contact Toshihiro Higuchi at th233@stanford.edu.

At the end of last year, the expert panel established by the Cabinet Office submitted a report on the effects of low-level and chronic radiation exposure. It is a Herculean task to tackle the difficulty challenge of risk management within such a short period. Risk management regarding the type of radiation exposure at issue, however, is not a matter of pure science to be left solely with scientific experts. It is essential for each of us to judge the degree of its danger and work out social consensus as to solutions.

Our past experience offers a lesson worth noting. In March 1954, the U.S. hydrogen bomb test showered an enormous amount of deadly fallout on a Japanese tuna fishing boat. The specter of “radioactive tuna” terrified consumers, and reports of cesium and strontium in brown rice and vegetables continued. As public opinion against nuclear tests was boiling, the U.S. government claimed that health damage from them was negligible and asked the scientific committee established by the United Nations to investigate this problem.

Accurate estimates of the health damage caused by low-level radiation exposure, however, proved extremely difficult. A fierce debate inevitably broke out over the validity of the findings, and people began to feel even more insecure. The claim that the damage from pollution was small also turned out to be relative in comparison to the security value of nuclear weapons, the scale of X-rays, natural background and other radiation hazards, and such commonly accepted dangers as smoking cigarettes or driving a car. In reality, however, the world was deeply divided over the merits of nuclear armaments. Moreover, the essential character of fallout hazards differed from our everyday risks in that we could neither avoid the danger of fallout nor expect due compensation for it. As a result, all prerequisites for comparative analysis quickly eroded in the case of radioactive contamination. In August 1958, the United Nations Scientific Committee reported its conclusion that there was no reason to tolerate the risks of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests. In the end, the U.S. government’s claim lost its ground.

Our society has a wide diversity of values. It is simply impossible to seek a universal answer as to how much radiation dose is acceptable to all stakeholders. Even if those in charge of risk management unilaterally determine the “acceptable” dose, it will be meaningless unless people at risk accept such decision. It will rather saw a seed of distrust and make risk management even more difficult.

Our next task is to listen to the voices of people at risk through regular field visits and social media such as Internet, and to explore a point of social consensus as to the risks associated with nuclear power. 

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Q&A: Stanford’s Cuéllar and US diplomat on human rights and the Internet

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As the Internet evolves, people around the world have faster, easier ways to connect. Innovative plans and economic opportunities are being hatched online, but so are ideas that challenge governments. Voices of dissent are amplified by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, leaving some countries confused about how to balance free expression rights against perceived threats to national security and government stability.

Working with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Eileen Donahoe is trying to make government officials feel more comfortable with online technology. Donahoe, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, recently brought about 35 diplomats from around the world to Stanford. The group met with academics, Internet developers and technology business leaders to address the questions posed by a free and open Internet.

“I know the technology feels mysterious and challenging,” says Donahoe, who was an affiliated scholar at CISAC before becoming an ambassador. “So part of what we tried to do was demystify it. But we also conveyed the message that you’re not going to control technological change. And you’d better get used to it. It’s part of our world.”

In the following interview, Donahoe and CISAC co-director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar discuss the challenges and potential promised in the online frontier.

Why did you arrange this meeting of diplomats in Silicon Valley?

Donahoe: Some ambassadors who are otherwise very committed to human rights have started to feel that the protections for freedom of expression and freedom of assembly could be weakened or lessened when you bring technology into the mix. There was a sense that governments could legitimately squelch free speech and free assembly when it happened in the online world. That’s a problem because so much of what happens today happens online. The Internet is now so central to the ability to speak freely. It was our responsibility to call them out and make them understand that technology should not change the equation in the protection of human rights.

How has the Internet changed the way we need to think about human rights and free expression?

Donahoe: In some ways, it hasn’t changed anything – free speech is free speech. But new technology has created new media, and that’s all changing at an exponential pace. People are being required to adjust in timeframes that were unimaginable before, and governments can’t keep up. Individuals can hardly keep up. It’s the pace and innovation that’s challenging. But there’s no change in our responsibility to protect the longstanding values of free expression.

What does a free and open Internet have to do with global security?

Cuéllar:  Some governments lack a commitment to basic rights and the rule of law. Technology can help people respond by raising their voices. They can organize and respond when their own government threatens citizens’ security.  Cyber technologies can also empower law enforcement officials, intelligence agencies and armed forces, raising fundamental questions about the role of government and the nature of conflict in the years to come. The Internet is an evolving technology that reflects vulnerability and enormous potential. Societies depend on government and private sector systems that face a variety of threats.  For all these reasons, the future of cyberspace is an important security issue at the very center of our agenda at CISAC.

Why do some governments feel threatened by the Internet?

Donahoe: It comes from the volume of voices you can have online. It comes from the pace of change. And there’s another aspect to online technology that’s intriguing: It is inherently democratizing. Citizens are becoming journalists. Anyone with a cell phone can broadcast live to the planet anything they’re observing. That can be threatening, but I believe it’s ultimately going to be a very positive force for transparency and government accountability.

How do you convince governments worried about those threats that open Internet access is ultimately in their best interest? 

Cuéllar: If the leaders of a state see it merely as a vehicle for control and stability, then much of the technology we have been discussing will appear profoundly threatening.  States seeking to build or maintain lasting institutions capable of meeting the needs of their citizens will tend to take a different approach, focused on the value of the public’s feedback and participation in governance.

Donahoe: A compelling point – especially for developing countries that may not otherwise place emphasis on the benefits to freedom from technology – is the recognition that there’s an economic upside to a free and open Internet. It can be framed as a development issue. Many government leaders can see that the future of all our economies is so intricately connected to this technology that if they try to squelch or shut down Internet development for political reasons, there will be dramatically negative effects for their economies. And that will lead to political problems. The economic value isn’t my primary human rights emphasis, but it helps to remind governments they run the risk of shutting themselves out of economic development if they don’t get comfortable with the technology.

What role, if any, should governments play in regulating the Internet?

Donahoe: Governments do need to play a role in regulation, just as they do in the offline world. But just because technology is brought into the equation doesn’t mean governments and regulators should be free to regulate too broadly or without concern for the costs to freedom. Just like in the offline world, regulation must be narrowly tailored and serve important government interests. Part of the challenge comes from the sense that governments can’t keep up with the technological advances. So they’re inclined to regulate more – and more bluntly – rather than in a more tailored way. This is where governments need to get more sophisticated about how to adjust to technological change.

What do policymakers need to know and understand before passing regulations?

Cuéllar: The future of cyberspace implicates security, economic development and the protection of civil and political rights – and all of these challenges are deeply interrelated.  A country's decision to restrict certain forms of Internet traffic can discourage economic innovation. Internet access in poor communities can lead to new economic opportunities, changing the larger context in which governance and security problems arise.  It is crucial to recognize these connections as societies think through the future of cyberspace.

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The Road Ahead for America and Pakistan

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About the topic: When democracy returned to Pakistan, Americans and Pakistanis had high expectations of an improved partnership. Those expectations have not been met: The events of 2011 were hard on both sides, and pushed the relationship to a series of dangerous crises. What can we expect in 2012 and beyond, not only in bilateral ties, but in the plans both countries have for regional stability in South Asia?

About the Speaker: Cameron Munter was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan on October 6, 2010. Prior to his nomination, Ambassador Munter completed his tour of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He served there first as Political-Military Minister-Counselor in 2009, then as Deputy Chief of Mission for the first half of 2010. He served as Ambassador in Belgrade from 2007 to 2009.

In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Prague from 2005 to 2007 and in Warsaw from 2002 to 2005. Before these assignments, in Washington, he was Director for Central Europe at the National Security Council (1999-2001), Executive Assistant to the Counselor of the Department of State (1998-1999), Director of the Northern European Initiative (1998), and Chief of Staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office (1997-1998). His other domestic assignments include: Country Director for Czechoslovakia at the Department of State (1989-1991), and Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (1991).

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Cameron Munter U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Speaker
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The Fort Hood Terrorist Attack: An Organizational Postmortem of DOD and FBI Deficiencies

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About the topic: This talk examines the organizational roots of disaster.  Using the 2009 Fort Hood terrorist attack as a case study, she explores why the Defense Department and FBI were unable to stop a self-radicalizing terrorist within the Army who was openly espousing his beliefs, failing to perform his duties, and known, nearly a year before the attack, to be communicating with Anwar al-Aulaqi.  In publicly released investigations of the attack, much attention has been paid to political correctness and failures of individual leadership. She finds, by contrast, that fundamental aspects of organizational life -- the structure of organizations, the incentives influencing employees' choice of tasks, and the cultural norms that color "how things are done around here" --- played a crucial and overlooked role.  Organizational weaknesses, not human ones, were the root cause of disaster.

 

About the Speaker: Amy Zegart is an affiliated faculty member at CISAC and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Before coming to Stanford, she served as professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and as a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations.  She is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design, which won the highest national dissertation award in political science, and Spying Blind, which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award.

Zegart was featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform.  Her commentary has been featured on national television and radio shows and in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.


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Amy Zegart

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E216
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-9754 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
amyzegart-9.jpg PhD

Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The author of five books, she specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security. At Hoover, she leads the Technology Policy Accelerator and the Oster National Security Affairs Fellows Program. She also is an associate director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute; and professor of political science by courtesy, teaching 100 students each year about how emerging technologies are transforming espionage.

Her award-winning research includes the leading academic study of intelligence failures before 9/11: Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton, 2007) and the bestseller Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton, 2022), which was nominated by Princeton University Press for the Pulitzer Prize. She also coauthored Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, with Condoleezza Rice (Twelve, 2018). Her op-eds and essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Zegart has advised senior officials about intelligence and foreign policy for more than two decades. She served on the National Security Council staff and as a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor and has testified before numerous congressional committees. Before her academic career, she spent several years as a McKinsey & Company consultant.

Zegart received an AB in East Asian studies from Harvard and an MA and a PhD in political science from Stanford. She serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, and the American Funds/Capital Group.

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