Stanford University

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.

Normalizing Security after Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods in the New Northern Ireland

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Abstract
If an armed group cannot be defeated in war, are there conditions in peace that will allow for its demobilization and disbandment?  What are the key barriers that stand in the way?  Using case studies of the three large paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland since the 1994 ceasefires, I weigh competing arguments from the civil conflict literature about the security concerns of previously warring parties that stand in the way of security normalization.  I find that existing theories miss two crucial forms of post-conflict security crises: intra-community criminality and inter-communal confrontations.  These two kinds of security concerns present two major challenges to the normalization of security that are instructive to broader theory on conflict termination and peace-building.  First, these security concerns are not the kind that outside actors can successfully manage without the partnership of local power brokers.  As a result, state actors institutionalize paramilitary authority rather than replacing it.  Second, the management of these security concerns does not present clear-cut opportunities for signaling the commitment to peace necessary for trust-building amongst formerly warring parties.  Armed groups are forced to make impossible choices that signal weak commitments and make a return to war more likely.

Brenna Marea Powell is a 6th year PhD candidate in the department of Government at Harvard University, and a doctoral fellow at the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. She received her AB from Stanford in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her research interests include inequality, civil conflict and political violence in divided societies. Her three-article dissertation research explores the role of political institutions in redefining ethno-racial boundaries and social hierarchy. This includes work on post-conflict policing in Northern Ireland, racial policy in Brazil, and the politics of ethno-racial classification in the United States.

Eric Morris is a Visiting Scholar at CISAC and is Practitioner-in-Residence at the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies. Most recently he served as the UN Recovery Coordinator for Aceh and Nias following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December, 2004. He headed the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2002 to 2005. In 2000-01 he served simultaneously as Special Envoy in the Balkans of the High Commissioner for Refugees and as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Kosovo. In 1998-99 he was Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on police and judicial reform issues. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, an MA from Yale University, and a BA from Baylor University.

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Brenna M. Powell CISAC Predoctoral Fellow Speaker

Eric Morris

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Eric Morris is a former Visiting Scholar at CISAC and is Practitioner-in-Residence at the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies. Most recently he served as the UN Recovery Coordinator for Aceh and Nias following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December, 2004. He headed the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2002 to 2005. In 2000-01 he served simultaneously as Special Envoy in the Balkans of the High Commissioner for Refugees and as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Kosovo. In 1998-99 he was Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on police and judicial reform issues. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, an MA from Yale University, and a BA from Baylor University.

 

(Profile last updated in September 2011.)

Eric Morris CISAC Visiting Scholar Commentator
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Paper Tigers or Barriers to Proliferation: What Accessions Reveal about NPT Effectiveness

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Karthika Sasikumar

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Karthika Sasikumar began her education in Hyderabad, India. She obtained her undergraduate degree from St. Francis College for Women. From 1995 to 1999, she was a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where she earned Master's and M.Phil Degrees from the School of International Studies.

Dr. Sasikumar received her Ph.D. from the Government Department at Cornell University in 2006. Her dissertation explores the interaction between India and the international nuclear nonproliferation order.

Before coming to San Jose State University, where she is a Professor of Political Science, Dr. Sasikumar was a Program Associate at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Associate in the International Security Program at Harvard University’s  Kennedy School of Government, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s  Liu Institute for Global Issues in Vancouver, and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.

In 2010-11, she spent a year at the Belfer Center as the first Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow. She is the Vice-Chair of the SJSU Senate, and has served as a mentor in the Preparing Future Professors Program, and as the Co-PI for the university’s Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence.

Her research and teaching interests are in International Relations theory, international regimes, global security, migration, and national identity.

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Karthika Sasikumar CISAC Affiliate; Assistant Professor of Political Science, San Jose State University Speaker
Christopher Way Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University Speaker
Arian L. Pregenzer CISAC Visiting Scholar Commentator
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Multinational Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

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Introduction

With the recent attention to new nuclear power, the challenge of managing the spread of nuclear technology has increased. At the same time, the growth of interest in nuclear power can serve as an important opportunity to improve the related safety, security, and nonproliferation regimes. One such opportunity arises in the context of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, and the concern over how to mitigate the spread of enrichment and reprocessing, as well as how to store and ultimately dispose of spent nuclear fuel.

The first essay in this collection, "The Key Role of the Back-End in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle" by Charles McCombie and Thomas Isaacs, has been reprinted from the Winter 2010 issue of Daedalus on the global nuclear future. It focuses on the proliferation concerns that arise from enrichment and reprocessing as well as on the opportunities at the back-end of the fuel cycle for regional and international initiatives that may help to assuage energy, security, and waste concerns. Managing the emerging nuclear order will require the development of a clear set of goals, in which the issues surrounding the back-end of the fuel cycle must be included and satisfactorily addressed. This essay seeks to contribute to those efforts.

It is followed by four new papers whose authors were invited to reflect on this issue and to share their thoughts on this topic. These new papers reflect a diversity of sources and opinions, in keeping with both the global importance of these questions and the benefits of developing an international perspective on how they might be addressed. The authors focus on various aspects of the challenges raised by the back-end of the fuel cycle and offer possible options for addressing these challenges.

This volume also includes an edited version of remarks made by Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security, at a January 2010 conference at the Hoover Institution. Tauscher's remarks underscore the shared sense of the importance of addressing the back-end of the fuel cycle, in government as well as within academic and other non-governmental circles. This importance cannot be overstated when considering the growth of nuclear power. As Tariq Rauf observes in his essay, most of the spent fuel around the world is kept at the nuclear power plants that have generated it. All of the authors, however, support the idea of moving from the current status quo toward some form of multinational or international approach to dealing with spent fuel, including the possibility of the establishment of international spent fuel repositories. Although Rauf notes the likelihood of strong public opposition to international repositories (based on the traditional resistance even to national repositories), Frank von Hippel observes that communities in Finland and Sweden that host nuclear power plants have actually volunteered to host underground repositories, suggesting that it may be possible for public opposition--even toward international repositories--eventually to be overcome.

Two of the authors (Frank von Hippel and Atsuyuki Suzuki) suggest that the United States should be the first to serve as a host for an international repository and take spent fuel from other countries with small programs, as a way both to strengthen the nonproliferation regime and to increase nuclear safety and security worldwide. Suzuki asserts that such an approach, by the United States, would serve as an "epoch-making opportunity for the [Obama] administration to take the leadership" on this issue.

The essays in this collection engage with the challenge of the back-end of the fuel cycle in very different ways, whether through a cross-comparison of the programs of Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Russia, or through a focus on the history and current role of international organizations in this area. All, however, are linked by a recognition that the back-end of the fuel cycle has often been overlooked in discussions of the anticipated nuclear renaissance. They also share a general support, in principle, for international approaches to the backend of the fuel cycle, although, as Noramly Bin Muslim points out, such approaches "by no means constitute a ‘magic bullet' that can solve nonproliferation problems."

This publication thus stands as the continuation of the conversation begun both by the special issues of Daedalus on the Global Nuclear Future and by a meeting sponsored by the Academy in Abu Dhabi on nuclear power in the Middle East. With a growing desire for development, and a reliable energy supply, comes the need for a global expansion in nuclear power. A serious discussion of all aspects of this expansion is necessary if it is to be managed safely and securely.

We hope that the papers contained herein contribute to that discussion and help to build the basis for a more sustainable international nuclear order.

Leslie Berkowitz
CEO, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Thomas Isaacs

Markets, Information, and the Spreading of Risks: The Economic Meltdown and Organizational Theory

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Abstract
Social science interpretations of the meltdown emphasize system characteristics such as complexity and coupling, and/or culture as in neo-institutional theories.  Examining regulatory changes, regulatory agents, elected representatives, firms and the many warnings, I argue that the role of human agents has been greatly neglected. Building on earlier work on "executive failure" I offer an agentic interpretation that is missing from both of the social science interpretations. Structure (systems) and culture (neo institutional theory) are valuable but incomplete.

Charles Perrow is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and a visiting professor at CISAC in the winter and spring terms. Among his award-winning research is Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2002), and Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies (Princeton, 1999). His recent articles include "Modeling Firms in the Global Economy," Theory and Society, 2009, v 38:3, May, 217-243, "Organizations and Global Warming," in Constance Lever-Tracy, ed. Handbook of Society and Climate change (Routledge, forthcoming, 2010), "Complexity, Catastrophe, and Modularity," Sociological Inquiry 78:2, May 2008 162-73; "Conservative Radicalism," Organization 15:2 2008 271-77; "Disasters Evermore? Reducing our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters," Social Research 75:3 Fall, 2008. His recent membership on a National Academy of Science panel on the possibilities of certifying software led to his current work on cyber security. He is also writing on the economic meltdown, but his major interest now is the institutional/organizational aspects of global warming. He received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, all in sociology.

Kenneth Arrow is the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, emeritus; a CHP/PCOR fellow; and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is a Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has been primarily in economic theory and operations, focusing on areas including social choice theory, risk bearing, medical economics, general equilibrium analysis, inventory theory, and the economics of information and innovation. He was one of the first economists to note the existence of a learning curve, and he also showed that under certain conditions an economy reaches a general equilibrium. In 1972, together with Sir John Hicks, he won the Nobel Prize in economics, for his pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory.

Arrow has served on the economics faculties of the University of Chicago, Harvard and Stanford. Prior to that, he served as a weather officer in the U.S. Air Corps (1942-46), and a research associate at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics (1947-49). In addition to the Nobel Prize, he has received the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He received a BS from City College, an MA and PhD from Columbia University, and holds approximately 20 honorary degrees.

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Charles Perrow CISAC Visiting Professor Speaker
Kenneth Arrow Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus and CHP/PCOR Fellow; FSI Senior Fellow by courtesy Speaker
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Activating a North Korea policy

Authors
Robert Carlin
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Article Highlights * After a spring and summer filled with rocket and nuclear tests, relations with North Korea have calmed. * Washington should use this period of quiet to its advantage by abandoning its current hard-line strategy against Pyongyang in favor of a strategy of engagement. * Such a change will better help the United States reach its ultimate goal--a denuclearized North Korea.

It is routine in U.S. foreign policy for a pot not boiling over to be moved to the back burner. Precisely because the North Korean issue is not boiling, however, might offer an all-too-rare chance to make progress with Pyongyang. Over the past several months, the North has signaled publicly and privately that it is in engagement mode. In Washington, arguments abound about whether or not this is a stall tactic or a trick, but we'll never know if we don't move ahead with serious and sustained probing of the North's position. So long as our government sticks to an all-or-nothing approach in terms of Pyongyang, the opportunity to advance vital U.S. security interests in northeast Asia could be lost.

Underlying Washington's current position are two beliefs, so firmly held that they approach dogma. The first is that we should wait until the situation with North Korea breaks in our favor or sanctions force North Korean leadership to reassess its attachment to nuclear weapons. A year into the Obama administration, this waiting borders on self-imposed paralysis even though North Korea remains capable of badly damaging regional stability as well as U.S. nonproliferation goals. So instead of positively defining and shaping the realities on the ground, we have taken shelter behind fixed positions: enforcing U.N. Security Council sanctions and demanding that the North make progress on denuclearization at the Six-Party Talks. These may be useful parts of an overall policy, but they cannot be effective by themselves and must be handled carefully.

Sanctions will inevitably get in the way of diplomatic progress, and there needs to be a way to use their loosening--as much as their tightening--in support of negotiations. Moreover, Washington's single-minded insistence that the North return to the Six-Party Talks actually has ceded to Pyongyang a great deal of tactical initiative. There is nothing the North Koreans love more than leaping over our heads to a new position just as we think we have them cornered. As such, in mid-January, they reversed their opposition to talks in the framework of the September 2005 Six-Party joint statement and have proposed that talks proceed on all fronts simultaneously.

The second part of Washington's dogma is that there is no sense in negotiating with Pyongyang because history shows that agreements with North Korea always fail and the United States ends up snookered. But the idea that our deals with the North have all been useless is based on a flawed reading of the record, a lingering misrepresentation of the accomplishments of the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. In fact, the utility of that agreement (which lasted from 1994 until 2002) is still evident. Without it, North Korea would have produced far more fissile material and a significantly larger arsenal of nuclear weapons. Two hulking, unfinished North Korean nuclear reactors testify to its lasting legacy.

Reinforcing the belief that we don't need to, or shouldn't, pursue an active policy toward North Korea is the Obama administration's apparent concern that it will be vulnerable to charges of being "weak" if it approaches Pyongyang from anything but the toughest position possible. Thus, on the grounds that the September 2005 joint statement calls for progress on the North's denuclearization before talks can begin on replacing the 1953 Korean Armistice with permanent peace arrangements, Washington rejected out of hand Pyongyang's recent proposals to move on both issues simultaneously. We may find it difficult to hold that position because it is neither what the joint statement actually says nor what some of the other parties (especially the Chinese) intended.

The fundamental U.S. goal is exactly right: We want North Korea to denuclearize and to return to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. But stating the goal isn't the same as moving closer to it. To do so, we must accomplish things that can help stabilize the situation, make it less likely that the strategic threat from the North will get worse, and begin exploring with Pyongyang a range of ideas for reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in the region. A couple of mid-term steps could include a halt in nuclear testing and long-range ballistic missile launches, along with a complete freeze of the Yongbyon nuclear center, which would involve further decommissioning and a return of international inspectors.

These interim steps won't "solve" the nuclear problem, but they aren't beyond what we can accomplish. They will do considerably more to protect our interests and those of our allies than the current all-or-nothing policy, which is going nowhere fast.

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Consequences of Counterterrorism, The

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The 9/11 terrorist attacks opened America's eyes to a frightening world of enemies surrounding us. But have our eyes opened wide enough to see how our experiences compare with other nations' efforts to confront and prevent terrorism? Other democracies have long histories of confronting both international and domestic terrorism. Some have undertaken progressively more stringent counterterrorist measures in the name of national security and the safety of citizens. But who wins and who loses? In The Consequences of Counterterrorism, editor Martha Crenshaw makes the compelling observation that "citizens of democracies may be paying a high price for policies that do not protect them from danger." The book examines the political costs and challenges democratic governments face in confronting terrorism.

Using historical and comparative perspectives, The Consequences of Counterterrorism presents thematic analyses as well as case studies of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Israel. Contributor John Finn compares post-9/11 antiterrorism legislation in the United States, Europe, Canada, and India to demonstrate the effects of hastily drawn policies on civil liberties and constitutional norms. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Jean-Luc Marret assert that terrorist designation lists are more widespread internationally than ever before. The authors examine why governments and international organizations use such lists, how they work, and why they are ineffective tools. Gallya Lahav shows how immigration policy has become inextricably linked to security in the EU and compares the European fear of internal threats to the American fear of external ones.

A chapter by Dirk Haubrich explains variation in the British government's willingness to compromise democratic principles according to different threats. In his look at Spain and Northern Ireland, Rogelio Alonso asserts that restricting the rights of those who perpetrate ethnonationalist violence may be acceptable in order to protect the rights of citizens who are victims of such violence. Jeremy Shapiro considers how the French response to terrorist threats has become more coercive during the last fifty years. Israel's "war model" of counterterrorism has failed, Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger argue, and is largely the result of the military elite's influence on state institutions. Giovanni Cappocia explains how Germany has protected basic norms and institutions. In contrast, David Leheny stresses the significance of change in Japan's policies.

Preventing and countering terrorism is now a key policy priority for many liberal democratic states. As The Consequences of Counterterrorism makes clear, counterterrorist policies have the potential to undermine the democratic principles, institutions, and processes they seek to preserve.

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Martha Crenshaw
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Quadrennial Defense Review Report

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The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is a legislatively-mandated review of Department of Defense (DoD) strategy and priorities. The QDR will set a long-term course for DoD as it assesses the threats and challenges that the nation faces and re-balances its strategies, capabilities and forces to address today's conflicts and tomorrow's threats.

Executive summary (excerpt):

The mission of the Department of Defense is to protect the American people and advance our nation’s interests.

In executing these responsibilities, we must recognize that first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war. In Afghanistan, our forces fight alongside allies and partners in renewed efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In Iraq, U.S. military personnel advise, train, and support Iraqi forces as part of a responsible transition and drawdown. Above all, the United States and its allies and partners remain engaged in a broader war—a multifaceted political, military and moral struggle—against Al Qaeda and its allies around the world.

Furthermore, as a global power, the strength and influence of the United States are deeply intertwined with the fate of the broader international system—a system of alliances, partnerships, and multinational institutions that our country has helped build and sustain for more than sixty years. The U.S. military must therefore be prepared to support broad national goals of promoting stability in key regions, providing assistance to nations in need, and promoting the common good.

With these realities in mind, the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review advances two clear objectives. First, to further rebalance the capabilities of America’s Armed Forces to prevail in today’s wars, while building the capabilities needed to deal with future threats. Second, to further reform the Department’s institutions and processes to better support the urgent needs of the warfighter; buy weapons that are usable, affordable, and truly needed; and ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and responsibly.

The strategy and initiatives described in the QDR will continue to evolve in response to the security environment. Using the QDR as its foundation, the Department will continually examine its approach—from objectives to capabilities and activities to resources—to ensure its best alignment for the nation, its allies and partners, and our men and women in uniform.

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Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face

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The routine employment of torture on the popular television series 24 has given rise to the charge that the program lends verisimilitude to  the questionable premise that torture is a legitimate and effective means of interrogation. A growing body of evidence suggests the critics' charge is correct. Indeed, the Dean of the US Military Academy at West Point grew sufficiently concerned about the pernicious effects 24 was having on his cadets that he traveled to California to meet with the show's creators to ask them to tone down the use of torture on the program. The Intelligence Science Board has echoed the critics' concerns, arguing that similar reality-distorting attitudes towards torture can be seen in the public at large. But how and why can a wholly fictional program like 24 actually influence political reality? Is this case something of an exception, or more akin to the rule?  Unfortunately, evidence suggests that fiction and other socially constructed portrayals of political reality-including propaganda, false flag operations and conspiracy theories-have long exercised demonstrable effects on political reality, often in unforeseen and unintentional ways.

Through the lens of the invasion panic that gripped Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, Greenhill will explore how and why national security-related "social facts"-i.e., things that are deemed to be "true" simply because they are widely believed to be true-can become broadly adopted and disseminated and, by extension, thereby influence the development and conduct of national security policy. Greenhill will further explore what this historical case can tell us about the theoretical and policy implications such "social facts" may hold for the threats we face today, including terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Kelly M. Greenhill is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M. from M.I.T., a C.S.S. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. Greenhill previously held pre- or post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and at CISAC.

Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including the journals International Security, Security Studies, and International Migration as well as in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and in briefs prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court. Greenhill has two books shortly forthcoming with Cornell University Press: the first, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy, focuses on the use of large-scale population movements as instruments of state-level coercion; and the second, Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (co-edited with Peter Andreas), examines the politicization and manipulation of crime and conflict-related statistics. She is currently at work on a new book, a cross-national study that explores why, when, and under what conditions, fiction, so-called "social facts" and other non-factual sources of information-such as rumors, conspiracy theories and propaganda-materially influence the development and conduct of national security policies.

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

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Kelly M. Greenhill CISAC Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Tufts University Speaker

Lynn Eden

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Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

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Lynn Eden Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research, CISAC Commentator
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Strategic Stability at Low Numbers

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Abstract
In order to eliminate nuclear weapons, the world will first have to pass through a regime of "low numbers" in which the US and Russian arsenals contain hundreds of weapons. The conclusion of the New START agreement, along with President Medvedev and President Obama's intention to work on a successor treaty, have brought this prospect forward. Many Western and Russian analysts worry that such a world might be unstable. However, in spite of these fears, the "low numbers problem" has attracted surprisingly little attention in the past (perhaps because the prospect of deep reductions always seemed so remote). In this talk, I will argue that the most likely type of instability is rearmament. I will examine potential drivers of rearmament and discuss steps to ensure that its likelihood can be minimized.

James M. Acton is an associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment specializing in nonproliferation and disarmament. A physicist by training, Acton’s research focuses on the interface of technical and political issues, with special attention to the civilian nuclear industry, IAEA safeguards, and practical solutions to strengthening the nonproliferation regime.

Before joining the Endowment in October 2008, Acton was a lecturer at the Centre for Science and Security Studies in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There he co-authored the Adelphi Paper, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, with George Perkovich and was a consultant to the Norwegian government on disarmament issues. Prior to that, Acton was the science and technology researcher at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), where he was a participant in the UK–Norway dialogue on verifying the dismantlement of warheads.

Acton’s other previous research projects include analyses of IAEA safeguards in Iran, verifying disarmament in North Korea, preventing novel forms of radiological terrorism, and the capability of Middle Eastern states to develop nuclear energy. He has published in Jane’s Intelligence Review, Nonproliferation Review, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Survival, and the New York Times. In the UK, he appeared regularly on TV and radio, including on the BBC programs Newsnight, Horizon, and the Six O’clock News.

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James Acton Associate, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Speaker
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