Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Karen Jusko

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 64305

(650) 724-9906
0
Assistant Professor of Political Science
cp_jusko.JPG

Karen Jusko is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, and a faculty affiliate of Stanford's Europe Center and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality.

Jusko's research is motivated by questions about the origins of contemporary democratic politics in the U.S., and in Europe. Drawing on survey research and historical census data, Jusko's current book project ties the different components of democratic representation -- participation, party politics, and the policy-making process -- to legislators' and political parties' electoral incentives. Specifically, Jusko draws attention to the ways in which the geographic distributions of different income groups and legislative seats across electoral districts shape legislators' and parties' incentives to craft responsive policy. This research builds on Jusko's dissertation, which was awarded the Harold D. Laswell Prize for the best dissertation in the field of public policy by the Policy Studies Organization and the APSA Public Policy Organized Section.

Jusko received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She has been a National Hoover fellow, and a fellow at the Center for the Study Democratic Politics, at Princeton University. Jusko's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

Europe and the Global Economy

Although each nation in Europe retains its distinct cultural, social and political identity, the region as a whole is among the world’s most economically integrated zones. The open movement of goods, services, capital, people, and pollutants that we observe today was not, however, inevitable; instead, it was contested, challenged, and reversed at many points in the past.

Journal Article: "Mass Support for Global Climate Agreements Depends on Institutional Design", written by Michael Bechtel and Kenneth Scheve

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Political Science professors Kenneth Scheve (Stanford) and Michael Bechtel's (University of Gallen) article on global climate agreements looks at how costs and distribution, participation, and enforcement affects the public support needed to sustain international efforts over the long run.

For a full synopsis and a PDF of the complete article, please visit the publication website by clicking on the article title below.

All News button
1

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers: The European Crisis and Chinese Direct Investment in the European Union

-

This seminar is part of the "Europe and the Global Economy" series.

Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese investment in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show an explosion in the interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both through greenfield investment and through mergers and acquisitions. This surge occurred concomitantly to the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the general economic downturn in many countries of the European Union (EU). This paper asks how the European crisis contributed to the surge of Chinese FDI in Europe. In particular, did this surge occur as a result of an explicit strategy formulated by governments in EU Member States in order to dig their countries out of the crisis? The main argument is that the crisis has provided Chinese investors with two types of bargains: economic bargains due to depressed prices and a greater number of assets for sale, and political bargains due to the lessened political resistance to deals that may have been objectionable in flusher times.

Sophie Meunier is Research Scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Co-Director of the EU Program at Princeton. She is the author of Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations (Princeton University Press, 2005)  and co-author of The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (with Philip Gordon, Brookings Institution Press, 2001), winner of the 2002 France-Ameriques book award. She is also the editor of several books on Europe and globalization. Her current work deals with the politics of hosting Chinese investment in Europe. Meunier contributes regularly to the French and American media. She is Chevalier des Palmes Academiques.

Co-sponsored by the the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

CISAC Conference Room

Sophie Meunier Research Scholar, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Co-Director, EU Program Speaker Princeton University
Seminars
Europe and the Global Economy Seminar Series
Europe and the Global Economy

The European parliament elections in 2014 are about more than protest votes

Paragraphs

The European Parliament elections in May 2014 are about more than protest votes. In an opinion piece that appeared in The Guardian newspaper Christophe Crombez (The Europe Center) and Simon Hix (The London School of Economics and Political Science) argue that next year's European Parliament elections are the most important such elections to date. European politics has been dominated by the eurocrisis in recent years, and by the austerity policies European governments have followed to combat it. These policies are largely set at the European level, in particular by the EU Commission. At the next European Parliament election voters will be able to determine the composition of the new Commission, because the European Parliament now plays a crucial role in its appointment. Moreover, the major political parties present starkly different solutions to the crisis. European voters will thus have a clear choice to make at next year's elections.


Please click here to view the opinion piece.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Commentary
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
The Guardian
Authors
Christophe Crombez
External URL

EU’s Catherine Ashton asserts Europe’s responsibility for a robust foreign policy

Authors
Roland Hsu
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Europe Center was pleased to host Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HRVP), at Stanford University on May 7th.  HRVP Ashton’s address to a capacity audience of Stanford senior scholars is part of the Europe Center’s program focused on European and EU regional and global relations.  The event co-sponsors - the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Hoover Institution, and the  - speaks to the esteem and the interest that multiple partners share in engaging the European Union’s highest foreign policy official.

The Europe Center’s director Amir Eshel opened the session, followed by President Gerhard Casper, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who delivered a formal introduction of Ashton.  HRVP Ashton spoke at length and in considerable detail on the mission of the office of EU High Representative, and addressed a number of the critical foreign policy challenges that we face today. 

Three pillars of EU foreign policy
In her talk, Lady Ashton highlighted three pillars of EU foreign policy:

  1. Europe assumes primary responsibility for bringing and safeguarding peace in its “neighborhood”.  Ashton proposed that the European Union – in terms of its status as a foreign policy actor – should be judged by the record of its mission to foster post-conflict resolution, and promote long-term stability and growth throughout its own member states, and in neighboring regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and Eastern and Baltic regions of former Soviet societies.
  2. European Union foreign policy should promote what Ashton termed “Deep Democracy”.  This includes reformed and transparent judiciary, police, and representative governing institutions that safeguard the well-being and individual emancipation of citizens, and women’s and human rights.
  3. European Union international relations prioritize effective and long-term cooperative missions with “strategic partners” beginning with the United States, as well as Russia and China.  Ashton emphasized that the EU also prioritizes long-term relations and strategic missions with regional and supra-national institutions beginning with the United Nations, and including the African Union, ASEAN, and the Arab League.

“Deep Democracy”: the long-term challenge
Of special note was Ashton’s significant elaboration on the priority for “deep democracy”.  When asked about the case of Mali, and what the vision was for what comes after the current French and European military intervention, she emphasized the following points of policy and tactics.

  • The EU views the military engagement against Jihadist forces in Mali, within a larger regional view of the “Sahel Arc”.  The EU is deeply engaged in the “Arab Awakening” movements – and the attendant security, political, and civil crises in each country of the region, and in terms of displaced populations across borders. 
  • In the case of Mali, the office of the EU High Representative invited the country’s leadership to Brussels for close coordination of policy. 
  • The EU foreign policy has been set to closely support the Malian government’s own road map for peace, territorial sovereignty, internal cohesion, and development.
  • In remote districts of northern Mali, residents have seen little evidence of the value of government.  The EU foreign policy of engagement in Mali includes programs to deliver primary health care (i.e. immunization and women’s reproductive health) and infrastructure (i.e. transportation and employment in local economic initiatives) to demonstrate the efficacy and value of state institutions.
  • The decision to commit troops from Europe to foreign soil remains, Ashton emphatically stated, the responsibility of the individual sovereign states, and of their democratically elected representatives who, in making such commitments, are ultimately responsible to their citizens.
  • Individual European nations are invited to meet with the governments and civil society leaders of countries undergoing transformations, to tell their distinct histories of democratic development.

Ashton delivered her insights in response to questions from the audience on a number of topics, including the growing magnitude of displaced regional refugees, EU-US military cooperation, and the support and criticism of the EU within European nations.  

Please visit the European Union website to learn more about HRVP Catherine Ashton.

 

All News button
1

"Three Reichs and You are Out": Germany in the 21st Century

-

Germany has always been too strong or too weak for Europe. Now it is Number One again, but what a difference 70 years of democratic development and European integration have made. Merkel's Germany is no "Fourth Reich", and the political class knows it. If she isn't "triangulating" like Bill Clinton, Merkel "leads from behind" like Obama. After two murderous grabs for hegemony, Germany is an accidental great power - so strong because France, Britain, Italy and the rest are so weak.

Oksenberg Conference Room

Josef Joffe Speaker
Seminars

Have the poor always been less likely to migrate? Evidence from inheritance practices during the Age of Mass Migration

Paragraphs

Using novel data on 50,000 Norwegian men, we study the effect of wealth on the probability of internal or international migration during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913), a time when the US maintained an open border to European immigrants. We do so by exploiting variation in parental wealth and in expected inheritance by birth order, gender composition of siblings, and region. We find that wealth discouraged migration in this era, suggesting that the poor could be more likely to move if migration restrictions were lifted today. We discuss the implications of these historical findings to developing countries.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Journal of Development Economics
Authors
Ran Abramitzky
Subscribe to International Development