Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

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On April 28, 2004, the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, unanimously passed UNSC 1540. The resolution "decided that all States shall refrain from providing any form of support to non-state actors" attempting to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, "adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws" to that effect, and "take and enforce effective measures to "prevent the proliferation of" WMD. To carry out its part of this mandate, the UNSC established and renewed a Committee, which has mainly and usefully assisted States in adopting "appropriate effective laws." This study, in collaboration with Committee members, has focused on implementation mechanisms and indicators of performance in border and exports controls, securing materiel and facilities, and adapting controls to State needs. We conclude that the most meaningful measures of implementation need to be more broadly adopted and that the 1540 Committee needs a more extensive staff in order to extend its role to disseminate States' experience with those measures. We also conclude that mechanisms need to be developed to facilitate information sharing between the Committee and the private sector.

Michael May is a professor emeritus (research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings. His research project this year is entitled "The Energy Security Initiative and a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Center: Two Enhancement Options for the Current Non-Proliferation Regime."

Allen Weiner is an associate professor of law (teaching) at the Stanford Law School, as well as the inaugural Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy, a chair held jointly by FSI and the Stanford Law School. He is also an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. His expertise is in the field of public international law and the foreign relations law of the United States. His work focuses on the effect of positive international law rules on the conduct of foreign relations and other implications for the behavior of states, courts (both national and international), and other international actors. Current research interests focus on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He teaches courses in public international law and international criminal law at Stanford Law School. Before coming to Stanford, Weiner served for 12 years as a career attorney in the U.S. Department of State. He served in the Office of the Legal Adviser in Washington, D.C. (1990-1996) and at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague (1996-2001), most recently as legal counselor, in which capacity he served as the U.S. Government's principal day-to-day interlocutor with the international legal institutions in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. He received a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Roger Speed is a physicist formerly with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now an affiliate of CISAC. He has also worked at the National Academy of Sciences, at R&D Associates, and, as a Peace Fellow, at the Hoover Institution, where he wrote a book on strategic nuclear policy. He has served on a number of defense-related committees, including ones for the Office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the American Physical Society, the U.S. Navy (Non-Acoustic ASW Panel), the National Academy of Sciences, and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization. He has conducted a broad range of national security studies for the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and Central Intelligence Agency in such areas as arms control, strategic deterrence, nuclear war, ballistic missile defense, nuclear weapons safety, and the survivability of strategic systems.

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Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
FSI Senior Fellow
CISAC Faculty Member
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Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.

May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971.

May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the International Institute on Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards.

His current research interests are nuclear weapons policy in the US and in other countries; nuclear terrorism; nuclear and other forms of energy and their impact on the environment, health and safety and security; the use of statistics and mathematical models in the public sphere.

May is continuing work on creating a secure future for civilian nuclear applications. In October 2007, May hosted an international workshop on how the nuclear weapon states can help rebuild the consensus underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proceedings and a summary report are available online or by email request. May also chaired a technical working group on nuclear forensics. The final report is available online.

In April 2007, May in cooperation with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Professor Ashton Carter of Harvard hosted a workshop on what would have to be done to be ready for a terrorist nuclear detonation. The report is available online at the Preventive Defense Project. A summary, titled, "The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City," was published fall 2007 in Washington Quarterly and is available online.

Recent work also includes a study of nuclear postures in several countries (2007 - 2009); an article on nuclear disarmament and one on tactical nuclear weapons; and a report with Kate Marvel for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on possible game changers in the nuclear energy industry.

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Michael M. May Speaker
Chaim Braun Speaker

Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
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Senior Lecturer in Law
Director, Stanford Program in International Law
Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
CISAC Core Faculty Member
Europe Center Affiliated Faculty
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Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; for more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School.

Weiner is the author of "Constitutions as Peace Treaties: A Cautionary Tale for the Arab Spring” in the Stanford Law Review Online (2011) and co-author (with Barry E. Carter) of International Law (6th ed. 2011). Other publications include “The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight (2009), "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?", in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory (Steven P. Lee, ed.) (2007), ”Enhancing Implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: Report of the Center on International Security and Cooperation” (with Chaim Braun, Michael May & Roger Speed) (September 2007), and "The Use of Force and Contemporary Security Threats: Old Medicine for New Ills?", Stanford Law Review (2006).

Weiner has worked on several Supreme Court amicus briefs concerning national security and international law issues, including cases brought involving "war on terror" detainees.  He has also submitted petitions before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Vietnamese social and political activists detained by their governing for the exercise of free speech rights.

Weiner earned a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.

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Roger Speed CISAC Affiliate Speaker Stanford University
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Boris Yeltsin found himself leading a nuclear superpower after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The new Russian Federation not only possessed the largest number of nuclear weapons of any of the nuclear states, but it also shared them with its three post-Soviet neighbors--Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. Transferring control of these weapons to Moscow and consolidating the remaining nuclear weapons in Russia was a serious challenge.

Most of the credit for the orderly and safe transfer belongs to the professionals in the military who actually did the job, and to Kazakh, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and U.S. diplomats who worked out the legal side of consolidating the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. But we should not underestimate the contribution from Yeltsin and other political leaders. They allowed the professionals to do their job, which helped diffuse political tensions in the process.

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In this issue brief, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar examines a little-noticed way in which the burgeoning focus on homeland security since the attacks of 9-11 has affected domestic regulatory policy. He argues that the government reorganization that took place when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created, which included converting the U.S. Coast Guard into a bureau within the vast new DHS bureaucracy, is taking a toll on protection of the environment. According to the paper, the Coast Guard has significant responsibilities for protecting the environment; indeed, it has over twice as many employees as the entire Environmental Protection Agency, and its employees work on missions of comparable environmental importance. The Coast Guard is charged with limiting risks from dangerous oil spills, guarding against toxic chemical leaks from ship engines, regulating the cruise ship industry, and protecting against over-fishing and the elimination of marine endangered species. But as part of DHS, Cuéllar writes, the Coast Guard's environmental mandate is being eclipsed by other priorities, and its already-scarce resources strained by new demands. The result, he concludes, is a significant decline in the hours it devotes to environmental protection activities, the size of the budget it allocates to them, and the regulatory actions it is taking on critical environmental matters. Professor Cuéllar analyzes these changes and recommends vigorous Congressional oversight and action to put the Coast Guard's environmental protection mission back on course.

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There have been serious disagreements between India and the United States in negotiation of the proposed nuclear-cooperation agreement between the two countries described at this website on Dec. 20, 2006 and Jan. 17, 2007. Our December article reported the President George W. Bush administration's hope of submitting a final agreement with India to the international Nuclear Suppliers' Group for approval at the Group's April meeting this year, 2007. That hope was not achieved. Indeed, India's objections to provisions of the U.S.-drafted agreement designed to meet Congressional requirements have raised questions as to whether a U.S. nuclear agreement with India that meets Congressional requirements is likely. Given the new Democratic majority in the House and Senate, achieving acceptance by Congress in 2007 or 2008 of an agreement with India that satisfies the statute adopted in 2006 by a Republican-controlled Congress seems unlikely.

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During the strategic modernization program that the Soviet Union undertook in the 1970s, it deployed a large number of multiple-warhead ballistic missiles. This deployment raised concerns in the United States about vulnerability of its land-based missile force and was one of the factors that contributed to the military buildup that the United States undertook in the late 1970s-early 1980s. The newly available documents that contain evidence of the Soviet missile programs demonstrate that the "window of vulnerability" did not exist and provide some insight into the Soviet modernization program.

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years.

Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, and nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

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Pavel Podvig is an independent analyst based in Geneva, where he runs his research project, "Russian Nuclear Forces." He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Pavel Podvig started his work on arms control at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which was the first independent research organization in Russia dedicated to analysis of technical issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. Pavel Podvig led the Center for Arms Control Studies project that produced the book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (MIT Press, 2001). In recognition of his work in Russia, the American Physical Society awarded Podvig the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of 2008 (with Anatoli Diakov). Podvig worked with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, the Security Studies Program at MIT, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons complex, as well as technical and political aspects of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, missile defense, and U.S.-Russian arms control process. Pavel Podvig is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. He has a  physics degree from MIPT and PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

For a list of publications, please visit http://russianforces.org/podvig/.

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This paper analyzes what might be expected to happen if a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in a U.S. city; the example used for this analysis is San Francisco. The analysis draws from research projects the author has done in recent years for the Department of Homeland Security and other government organizations, including observing and providing critique on TOPOFF 2 (Top Officials), an exercise of federal, state, and local emergency response systems to terrorist attacks. The paper summarizes a number of talks the author has given to students and professionals working on security issues.

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Carol Atkinson (speaker) retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 2005. While in the military she served in a wide variety of management and operational positions in the fields of intelligence, targeting, and combat assessment. During the Cold War she flew on the Strategic Air Command's nuclear airborne command post as a target analyst. During Operation Desert Storm (1991) she worked on the intelligence staff in Riyadh, and, subsequently, on the contingency planning staff in Dhahran/Khobar, Saudi Arabia. While in the military, she taught at the Air Force Academy and the Air Force's Command and Staff College.

Atkinson holds a PhD in international relations from Duke University, an MA in geography from Indiana University, and a BS from the United States Air Force Academy (5th class with women). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Atkinson's primary research focuses on U.S. military-to-military contacts as channels of international norm diffusion. She is also working on a project examining the influence of educational exchange programs on democratization and a project on the social construction of the biological warfare threat in the United States.

Jessica Weeks (respondent) is a doctoral candidate in the Stanford Department of Political Science. Her research interests include foreign policy decision-making in non-democratic regimes, the settlement of military crises, and the effects of foreign military interventions on target states. She will be a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC during 2007-2008. Jessica received her BA in political science from The Ohio State University, and an MA in international history and politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Carol Atkinston Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Studies Speaker University of Southern California
Jessica Weeks Doctoral Candidate, Department of Political Science Commentator Stanford University
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Charles Perrow (speaker) is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and a visiting scholar at CISAC. An organizational theorist, his latest research is presented in The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters (Princeton, spring 2007). Among his award-winning research is Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2002), winner of the Max Weber award for best book on organizations from the American Sociological Association in 2003. His recent articles include "Organizational or Executive Failures?" and "Inside the Nuclear Plant's Executive Office," both published in Contemporary Sociology. Perrow currently serves on a National Academy of Science panel on the possibilities of certifying software. He received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, all in sociology.

Peter G. Neumann (respondent) has been in SRI's Computer Science Lab since September 1971. He is concerned with computer systems and networks, trustworthiness/dependability, high assurance, security, reliability, survivability, safety, and many risks-related issues such as voting-system integrity, crypto policy, social implications, and human needs including privacy. He moderates the Association for Computing Machinery's Risks Forum, edits Communications of the ACM's monthly Inside Risks column, chairs the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, and chairs the National Committee for Voting Integrity. He is a Fellow of the ACM, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is also an SRI Fellow. He received the National Computer System Security Award in 2002 and the ACM SIGSAC (Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control) Outstanding Contributions Award in 2005. He is a member of the U.S. Government Accountability Office Executive Council on Information Management and Technology, and the California Office of Privacy Protection advisory council. He has doctorates from Harvard and Darmstadt.

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Charles Perrow Speaker
Peter G. Neumann Speaker Computer Science Lab, SRI
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On 8 February 2007, at the Kellogg Conference Center at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the Journal of International Affairs and the Middle East Institute hosted a live debate between Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz. The two political scientists revisited their classic debate on nuclear weapons, addressing recent developments in Iran and possible global responses. Richard K. Betts moderated the event. Dean Lisa Anderson delivered opening remarks. This article is a transcript of the discussion.

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Scott D. Sagan
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