Stanford University

Empowering the World: Entrepreneurship and the Future of Foreign Policy

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Please note: the start time for this event has been moved from 3:00 to 3:15pm.

Join FSI Director Michael McFaul in conversation with Richard Stengel, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. They will address the role of entrepreneurship in creating stable, prosperous societies around the world.

Richard Stengel Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Special Guest United States Department of State

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

International Working Group on Russian Sanctions

The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Anil Menon | War, Politics, and the Birth of Modern Bureaucracy

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We collected monthly data on individual employees over 200 years to understand how wars shaped the evolution of modern bureaucracy.

A large literature has examined the “rise of the state” in early modern Europe, focusing on the increase in the capacity of states due to war. However, state institutions were increasing not only in size but also in their quality, through the creation of “modern” or “Weberian” bureaucracies. To illustrate these distinct processes, our project examines the state in early modern Britain, often cited as the ideal type of a bureaucratic transformation. To do so, we are building a dataset of every central government employee in Britain between 1660 and 1870, capturing not just their numbers but several measures of bureaucratic rationalization: structured career progression, functional specialization, remuneration through salaries rather than user fees, higher salaries, increased time in office, the de-linking of bureaucratic and political careers, and reduced nepotism.

Anil Menon is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced. His research focuses on the legacies of political violence and political responses to conditions of vulnerability more broadly. Dr. Menon’s work is published or forthcoming at journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the Economic Journal, and Lancet Regional Health Europe.

Dr. Menon’s work on Europe concerns both historical and contemporary topics. For instance, he has investigated the long-term electoral legacies of forced migration at the end of World War 2 in Germany. In more recent work, he examines whether citizens are willing to trade off civil liberties for decisive policy action in the domain of immigration.

Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anil Menon, University of California, Merced Presenter
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R. Daniel Kelemen REDS Seminar | Europe in the Upside Down: Democratic Backsliding in the European Union

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Why has the EU - which professes to be a Union of democracies committed to rule of law values - allowed autocratic regimes to emerge in its midst? Can the EU escape the autocracy trap it has created for itself?

The European Union has long presented itself as a Union of democratic states based on the rule of law and other common democratic values. Recent EU initiatives designed to defend democracy in the Union - like the Democracy Shield - depict the threats as mostly external, stemming from dangers like foreign election interference. However, the greatest threats to democratic values in the EU - and indeed to the functioning of the Union itself - stem not from external threats, but from the rise of autocratic member state governments such as Hungary’s.  The EU’s failure to stem the rise of autocratic member governments poisons the European Union from within. Using the metaphor of the "Upside Down" from the Netflix series Stranger Things, this talk explores the phenomenon of democratic backsliding as a parasitic dimension growing within the very fabric of the Union. This parasitic, upside down dimension draws on the rightside-up, democratic EU’s resources in an effort to dismantle and supplant it.

R. Daniel Kelemen is McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy. He is also Professor of Law (by courtesy) at Georgetown Law. Kelemen has published widely on the politics and law of the European Union, comparative politics and law, and comparative public policy. Prior to joining Georgetown University, Kelemen was Professor of Political Science and Law at Rutgers University. He also served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for European Studies at Rutgers. Prior to Rutgers, Kelemen was Fellow in Politics at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. Kelemen is a Senior Associate (Non-Resident), in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Executive Committee of the European Union Studies Association. Kelemen comments regularly on EU affairs for European and American media. He was educated at UC Berkeley (A.B. in Sociology) and Stanford (M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science).


REDS: RETHINKING EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY


The REDS Seminar Series aims to deepen the research agenda on the new challenges facing Europe, especially on its eastern flank, and to build intellectual and institutional bridges across Stanford University, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to current global challenges.

REDS is organized by The Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Learn more about REDS and view past seminars here.

 

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Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse, Kathryn Stoner
R. Daniel Kelemen, Georgetown University Presenter
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Resource Concentration and Authoritarianism

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On February 12, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Europe Center, and the Hoover Institution hosted Lucan Way, Distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto, for a seminar titled “Economic Dependence and Authoritarianism: Russia in Comparative Perspective.” The talk, part of the REDS (Rethinking European Development and Security) series, examined the structural relationship between state resource concentration and democratic outcomes, using Russia as a central case while situating it within broader comparative patterns.

Way’s core argument centered on a simple but powerful proposition: when economic resources are concentrated in the hands of the state, autocracy becomes more likely; when resources are dispersed outside the state, democracy becomes more feasible. The key mechanism linking economic structure to regime type is the strength — or weakness — of countervailing societal power. Resource concentration generates societal dependence on political leaders. Citizens dependent on public-sector employment or state benefits face high personal costs for political opposition, including loss of income or access to essential services. Similarly, business elites reliant on state licenses, contracts, or regulatory goodwill incur substantial risks if they challenge incumbents. The result is weak opposition, limited activist networks, minimal independent funding, and fragile civil society organizations.

Way situated this framework within three major literatures on authoritarianism. First, underdevelopment (Lipset 1959; Przeworski et al. 2000) remains strongly associated with autocracy: roughly 70 percent of poor countries were autocratic between 2000 and 2021. Second, oil wealth (Ross 2001; Bellin 2004) produces an even starker pattern: about 90 percent of petrostates were authoritarian in the same period. Third, statist or weak private-sector economies (Fish 2005; Greene 2007; Arriola 2013; Rosenfeld 2021) show similar tendencies, with roughly 80 percent of the most statist countries classified as autocratic. Despite their differences — very poor African states, wealthy Middle Eastern petrostates, and middle-income statist regimes — the underlying mechanism is the same: resource concentration fosters weak countervailing power.

Russia exemplifies this structural dynamic. While the 1990s appeared to feature strong countervailing forces, including powerful oligarchs credited with supporting Boris Yeltsin’s reelection, Way argued that these actors were in fact institutionally weak. Russia’s private sector relied heavily on state connections in a system with weak courts and manipulable regulatory frameworks. The imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky after he challenged Vladimir Putin underscored the vulnerability of even the wealthiest economic actors. The broader business community remained largely passive, reflecting structural dependence rather than autonomous strength.

Statism further entrenched authoritarian control. A state-dependent middle class and political parties reliant on Kremlin financing limited the development of robust opposition. In oil-rich systems, public-sector employment and distributive benefits deepen citizens' dependence, while governments remain fiscally insulated from private-sector pressures. In underdeveloped postcolonial contexts, even modestly financed states wield disproportionate leverage over fragile economies, facilitating cooptation and repression.
Preliminary statistical evidence using V-Dem measures of “resource concentration” supports these claims. State ownership or control over key sectors correlates strongly with authoritarianism, high pro-incumbent mobilization, low opposition mobilization, media control, and weak civil society. Way acknowledged complications, including endogeneity: autocrats often increase resource concentration through nationalization or expansion of public employment. Nevertheless, certain structural conditions — such as large oil reserves, extreme underdevelopment, or historically weak private sectors — make concentration more feasible ex ante.

In conclusion, Way emphasized that autocracy is not inevitable in such contexts. However, where countervailing societal power is weak, imposing authoritarian rule becomes far easier. Across diverse regimes, economic dependence constitutes a common mechanism of authoritarian control — whether through business capture of the state or state capture of business.

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Andrew Michta presented his research in a REDS Seminar co-hosted by CDDRL and TEC on January 22, 2026.
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Will Deterrence Hold in Europe?

At a REDS seminar co-hosted by CDDRL and TEC, Andrew Michta assesses whether Europe’s security institutions are prepared for renewed great power competition.
Will Deterrence Hold in Europe?
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Lucan Way presented his research in a REDS Seminar on February 12, 2026.
Lucan Way presented his research in a REDS Seminar on February 12, 2026.
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Lucan Way examines the structural relationship between state resource concentration and democratic outcomes, using Russia as a central case while situating it within broader comparative patterns.

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  • In a REDS (Rethinking European Development and Security) Seminar co-hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, The Europe Center, and the Hoover Institution, Lucan Way examined how state resource concentration shapes authoritarian and democratic trajectories.
  • He argued that economic dependence weakens opposition, civil society, and independent business, limiting countervailing societal power.
  • The discussion situated Russia within comparative research on statism, oil wealth, and the links between underdevelopment and the durability of authoritarianism.
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Will Deterrence Hold in Europe?

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At a recent REDS seminar co-hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center, Andrew Michta, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Hamilton School, delivered a sobering assessment of European security in an era of renewed great power conflict. Framed around the question “Will deterrence hold?”, Michta’s talk examined the structural weaknesses of Europe’s post–Cold War security order, the evolving threat environment posed by authoritarian powers, and the limits of both U.S. and European military preparedness.

Michta argued that Europe has spent the past three decades on what he termed a “vacation from history” — a period marked by disarmament, strategic complacency, and the belief that economic integration could substitute for hard security. The post-1990 unification of Germany, the enlargement of the European Union, and the decline of territorial defense planning reinforced the assumption that major war on the continent was no longer plausible. This mindset, he contended, left Europe strategically unprepared for Russia’s gradual re-militarization and revisionism, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

A central theme of the talk was the failure of the European Union to develop a credible, EU-centric security architecture. While EU elites pursued visions of a “United States of Europe,” Michta emphasized that political fragmentation, divergent threat perceptions, and regulatory obstacles have undermined collective defense capacity. Events such as Brexit, the 2015 migration crisis, and internal disagreements over Russia have further eroded cohesion. In Ukraine, these weaknesses have translated into a fragmented and often reactive European response.

Michta placed Europe’s challenges within a broader systemic context, highlighting the emergence of what he described as an “axis of dictatorships” linking Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea across the Eurasian landmass. Russia, he argued, is now fully mobilized for war, while China is expanding its military capabilities at unprecedented speed and scale. These dynamics are producing an “expanding battlefield” stretching from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific, raising the prospect of simultaneous regional conflicts. Referencing warnings by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Michta noted that a two-theater conflict by 2027 can no longer be dismissed as implausible.

The talk also addressed the constraints facing the United States and NATO. Despite unmatched global reach, U.S. forces have been reshaped by two decades of counterterrorism operations, face recruitment shortfalls, and are constrained by an industrial base ill-suited for protracted large-scale combat operations. European NATO members, with a few notable exceptions such as Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states, lack deployable forces and the industrial capacity needed for sustained deterrence.

In conclusion, Michta outlined a more pragmatic path forward centered on what he called NATO’s “Northeast Corridor” — a coalition of states in Northern, Baltic, and Central Europe that share threat perceptions and possess credible military capabilities. With continued U.S. support, particularly in nuclear deterrence, logistics, and long-range fires, this regional core could serve as the alliance’s new center of gravity. Whether deterrence ultimately holds, Michta suggested, will depend on how quickly Europe can translate recognition of risk into concrete military and political action — and on how the war in Ukraine ultimately ends.

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Andrew Michta presented his research in a REDS Seminar co-hosted by CDDRL and TEC on January 22, 2026.
Andrew Michta presented his research in a REDS Seminar co-hosted by CDDRL and TEC on January 22, 2026.
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At a REDS seminar co-hosted by CDDRL and TEC, Andrew Michta assesses whether Europe’s security institutions are prepared for renewed great power competition.

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Global Trends and Geopolitics in 2026: A Look Ahead

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Registration is currently closed.

Stanford faculty, students, and staff are welcome to join the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) for “Global Trends and Geopolitics in 2026: A Look Ahead,” a forward-looking conversation on the forces shaping the world.

FSI Director Colin Kahl will moderate a panel of leading institute scholars as they examine key regions and themes. The discussion will feature Larry Diamond on the future of global democracy; Anna Grzymala-Busse on European politics; Harold Trinkunas on Latin America; and Or Rabinowitz on Middle East politics and U.S.-Israel relations. Kahl will also offer insights into U.S.-China competition for AI dominance.

Don't miss this timely conversation on emerging risks, opportunities, and policy implications as we navigate an increasingly complex global landscape in 2026.

Drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served following the panel discussion. 

Colin Kahl

Location available following valid registration

Larry Diamond

Anna Grzymała-Busse

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA  94305

 

(650) 723-4270
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Director of The Europe Center
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Sona N. Golder | Revisiting Classic Government Formation Questions

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Sona Golder

Who Gets into Government and How is Power Shared? Sona Golder revisits two classic government formation questions with new data and new methods.

Who gets into government? Empirical scholars conceptualize government choice as a discrete choice problem in which a government is selected from the set of potential governments. Existing studies define potential governments as any combination of parties that could form a government. However, potential governments with the same partisan composition are not necessarily equivalent. A potential AB government where A is the prime ministerial party is different from a potential BA government where B is the prime ministerial party. Neither political elites nor voters view these potential governments as interchangeable. In this paper, we demonstrate how a reconceptualization of potential governments allows us to jointly model the choices of prime ministerial party and government. Our proposed strategy narrows the gap between theory and empirics, allowing us to test previously 'untestable' hypotheses. It also allows us to integrate the previously separate literatures on the choice of prime minister and the choice of government in a unified framework.

How is power shared within governments? Is there a prime ministerial (PM) party advantage when it comes to ministerial portfolio allocation in coalition governments? Early models of government formation predicted that PM parties would be advantaged when portfolios are allocated. Empirical studies based on postwar Western Europe, though, show that portfolios are allocated fairly proportionally with, if anything, a slight PM party disadvantage. In recent years, scholars have sought to resolve this troubling disconnect between theory and empirics by developing new theoretical models that better match 'empirical reality.' In this paper, we question the purported empirical reality. Using original data on (i) a global sample of postwar non-presidential democracies, (ii) interwar European democracies, and (iii) subnational Indian governments, we find that PM parties are rarely disadvantaged across different regions, time periods, and institutional settings. Indeed, we generally find a significant PM party advantage. Our findings highlight a potential danger of repeatedly testing and revising theories based largely on the same empirical cases.

Sona N. Golder is Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on political institutions, especially in the context of coalition formation. In addition to articles in a variety of general and comparative politics journals, such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, and Politics & Gender, she has published four books, including The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation, Multi-level Electoral Politics, and Principles of Comparative Politics. She's currently working on a fifth book on Interaction Approaches to Intersectionality that's under contract at Cambridge University Press. She's also a co-PI on a multi-year project funded by the Norwegian Research Council examining party instability and party switching in parliaments (INSTAPARTY). 

Professor Golder has served as the lead editor of the British Journal of Political Science as well as on multiple editorial boards. She is currently an Associate Editor for Research & Politics and on the editorial board of Political Science Research and Methods. She also previously edited the Newsletter of the Comparative Politics Organized Section of the American Political Science Association.

Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Sona N. Golder, Pennsylvania State University
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Zeynep Somer-Topcu | Political Candidates on Twitter: How do Social Media Campaigns of Candidates Respond to the Public’s Issue Priorities?

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Zeynep Somer-Topcu

Whose preferences do political candidates in majoritarian systems represent on social media? Using the candidates' tweets during election campaigns in the UK, we examine whether candidates target copartisans, independents, or general preferences

We investigate how political candidates in the UK use Twitter to emphasize policy issues during election campaigns, and to what extent the issue priorities of
different voter groups affect their social media behavior. Drawing on approximately 750,000 tweets from nearly 5,000 candidates during the one-month campaign period before the 2015, 2017, and 2019 general elections in the UK, we examine the alignment between candidates’ online issue emphasis and the Most Important Issue (MII) responses of average voters, co-partisans, and independents at both the regional and national levels. 

We find that candidates’ Twitter activity most closely aligns with their co-partisans’ issue preferences. Candidates also represent the issues of general voters and independents but put less effort on those compared to the copartisans. Voters’ social media use, on the other hand, does not condition candidates’ online strategies.

Zeynep Somer-Topcu is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also one of the chief editors at the British Journal of Political Science, Vice-President of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), and the Chair of the Diversity Committee of the European Political Science Society (EPSS), among her other services. Her research interests are at the intersection of political parties and voter behavior in advanced democracies. Her recent book, Glass Ceilings, Glass Cliffs, and Quicksands: Gendered Party Leadership in Parliamentary Systems (coauthored with Andrea Aldrich), published by Cambridge University Press, examines the life-cycle of women party leaders from candidacy to their election to and termination from party leadership. She is currently working on a series of projects examining party campaign rhetoric and voter perceptions of party issue positions. Her research sheds light on why political parties adopt certain electoral strategies and on the electoral and behavioral consequences of these strategies.

Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Zeynep Somer-Topcu, University of Texas at Austin
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Birgit Lodes | Echoes of Dedication: Beethoven and the Women Who Shaped His Art

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Birgit Lodes

Birgit Lodes explores how women inspired and performed, enabled and transformed Beethoven's music and legacy.

Beethoven dedicated printed works to sixty-three individuals––twenty-three of them women–– mostly from the high nobility or the “second society” that shaped Viennese musical life and patronage around 1800. Nearly all knew the composer personally and shared his enthusiasm for a refined ideal of music that functioned as social and symbolic capital in the Bourdieusian sense. Beethoven’s dedications thus can offer a window into the social conditions of composition, early performance practices, and the meanings attached to these works. The pieces Beethoven dedicated to women—chiefly songs and piano compositions—not only reflect the gendered norms of musical education and salon culture central to his professional life, but, as I will argue, were often specifically crafted to suit the individual tastes and abilities of these women. 

Several of these works might never have existed without the inspiration and engagement of these female patrons and performers. Shifting the focus from the composer’s public “heroic” oeuvre to works reflecting his artistic and social engagements within these circles reveals a different Beethoven: one deeply embedded in the musical, cultural, and sociological networks of his time. Reconsidering these contexts challenges long-standing nationalist and bourgeois-masculine narratives and highlights the active, formative role of aristocratic women as patrons, performers, and mediators of Beethoven’s art in Habsburg Vienna.

Birgit Lodes studied in Munich, at UCLA, and at Harvard University. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Vienna and currently serves as Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University. She is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of the series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. Her research focuses on musical life in Central Europe around 1500 (https://musical-life.net/en), as well as on Beethoven, Schubert, and their circles.

Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Birgit Lodes, University of Vienna; Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at The Europe Center
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