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.

Stefan Hedlund

Department of East European Studies
Uppsala University
Gamla Torget 3, III
Box 514, 751 20 UPPSALA
Sweden

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Professor of East European Studies, Uppsala University
Visiting Scholar, Forum on Contemporary Europe (December 2008)
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Stefan Hedlund is Professor of East European Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. A long-standing specialist on Russia, and on the Former Soviet Union more broadly, his current research interest is aimed at economic theories of institutional change. He also has a devouring interest in Russian history, which he has sought to blend with more standard theories of economic change. He has been a frequent contributor to the media, and has published extensively on matters relating to Russian economic reform and to the attempted transition to democracy and market economy more generally. His scholarly publications include some 20 books and close to 200 journal and magazine articles. His most recent monographs are Russian Path Dependence (Routledge, 2005), and Russia since 1980: Wrestling with Westernization (Cambridge University Press, 2008), the latter co-authored with Steven Rosefielde.

 

Proliferation of International Dispute Settlement Mechanisms: The Threat of Fragmentation vs. the Promise of a More Effective System? - Some Reflections from the Perspective of Investment Arbitration

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(From the introduction) For more than a decade, international lawyers and international relations scholars have been fascinated by an ever-increasing number of international courts and tribunals. These are producing more international case-law, thereby replacing the traditional scarcity of international law precedents embodied in a few celebrated ICJ and PCIJ cases. Today, there is a host of frequently highly specialized international dispute settlement mechanisms like the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, the International Tribunal for the Law of The Sea, the International Criminal Court, various investment tribunals acting under The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Convention or other arbitration rules. All apply, interpret and probably ‘make’ international law. One question frequently raised in this context is whether these institutions contribute to the development of a single uniform body of international law or whether they make ‘their own’ ever more fragmented law. To the extent that they must apply specifically agreed upon rules, such as the WTO agreements, various bilateral investment protection treaties or the Law of the Sea Convention, etc., this is of course largely a false problem. In so far as they rely on common rules of international law, coherence vs. fragmentation does indeed arise and is a serious issue.

Scholars of international law have intensely debated these problems mostly under the heading ‘fragmentation’ of international law or ‘proliferation’ of international courts and tribunals. Gerhard Hafner has significantly contributed to this scholarly debate in a number of articles, and most importantly in a report prepared for the International Law Commission (ILC), which triggered the Commission’s work on fragmentation and was further pursued by Gerhard Hafner’s successor on the ILC, Martti Koskenniemi.

It thus appears appropriate to dedicate a few modest thoughts about these issues to a great international lawyer with whom I have had the privilege to work at the Department of International Law and International Relations at the University of Vienna during the last twenty years. Gerhard Hafner will understand that due to the space allotted in this liber amicorum, I must limit the scope of my remarks on fragmentation and proliferation to a specific subfield of international law. He will also appreciate that the chosen field is investment law and arbitration, which, in many respects, may be viewed as a test laboratorium of international law where many of the pertinent problems mentioned above have appeared in particularly visible form.

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Martinus Nijhoff Publishers in "International Law between Universalism and Fragmentation - Festschrift in Honour of Gerhard Hafner", J. Crawford/A. Pellet/I. Buffard/S. Wittich (eds.)
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Societal Determinants of National and European Identities: 1995 and 2003 in comparison

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For many centuries, Europe had been a battleground. Finally, after World War II, a number of European leaders came to the conclusion that closer economic and political cooperation of their countries could secure peace in the region. This consensus led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 with six members, Belgium, West Germany, Luxembourg, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Since then the integration of European countries has progressed exponentially, engendering formal institutions such as the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. Currently, the European Union (EU) comprises already 27 member states. Yet, Europe is a patchwork of many nations with strong national, regional, ethnical, and even religious identities. Thus, in spite of the institutional proliferation of symbols of a united Europe, the strength of a European identity at the individual level and its relations to other identities have been a matter of debate. Especially, since the formation of the EU, coupled with growing immigration to and within Europe (Quillian, 1995; McLaren, 2003) gave also rise to a resurgence of nativist political movements in spite of the efforts to promote a European identity. Identities, their development, and their relation to each other are discussed within different disciplines. Their common denominator is that identities are seen as fluid, influenced by the context and dependent on the previous and expected identities. In this paper we are, thus, focusing on the effect of contextual variables at the country level on the individual affiliation to Europe and the nation and the changes between 1995 and 2003. In a twin paper, we are focusing on the processes at the individual level and the relationship between different layers of identities.

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Markus Hadler

Andreas Wiebe

Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
Department of Information Technology Law and Intellectual Property Law
Althanstrasse 39-45
1090 Wien

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Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor, 2007-2008
Visiting Professor, Stanford Law School
Head of the Deparment of Information Technology and Intellectual Property Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
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Andreas Wiebe, LL.M., is Head of the Deparment of Information Technology and Intellectual Property Law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. From January through June 2008, Professor Wiebe served as Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor at the Forum on Contemporary Europe, during which time he taught courses in e-commerce law and intellectual property law at the Stanford Law School. Professor Wiebe co-organized the June 14 "Transatlantic Information Law Symposium," held at the Stanford Law School and presented by the Transatlantic Technology Law Forum and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Wolfgang Mueller

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall E103
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-8020 (650) 725-2592
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Research Scholar, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Visiting Scholar, Forum on Contemporary Europe
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Dr Wolfgang Mueller, PhD in contemporary history and Russian studies (University of Vienna), is a research associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Former professional affiliations include the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, Canada, and the Institute of East European History, University of Vienna. Wolfgang Mueller was a visiting fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of OSCE missions to the CIS area. He teaches Russian history and politics at the University of Vienna.

Research interests: Russian and Soviet foreign policy, international relations, the Cold War, European integration. Current research projects: continuities in Russian foreign policy behavior, the USSR/Russia and European integration; the revolutions of 1989.

Wolfgang Mueller’s book on postwar Soviet policy in Austria Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich 1945-1955 (2005) was awarded the Richard G. Plaschka Prize. Further publications include Sovetskaia politika v Avstrii: Dokumenty iz Rossiiskikh arkhivov (with N. Naimark, A. Suppan, G. Bordiugov eds. 2005); The Austrian State Treaty 1955: International Strategy, Legal Relevance, National Identity (with G. Stourzh, A. Suppan eds. 2005); “Stalin and Austria: New Evidence on Soviet Policy in a Secondary Theatre of the Cold War,” Cold War History 6 (2006) 1; Osteuropa vom Weltkrieg zur Wende (with M. Portmann eds. 2007); “Die UdSSR und die europäische Integration,” in From the Common Market to European Union Building (M. Gehler ed. 2009); Peaceful Coexistence or Iron Curtain? Austria, Neutrality, and Eastern Europe 1955-1989 (Forthcoming).

Dr. Mueller was a visiting scholar with the Forum on Contemporary Europe from October 2008 through March 2009.

Freedom Fighters or Terrorists? Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution as Illustrated by the Incidents at Oradour in France, Via Rasella in Rome, and Ujvidék/Novi Sad in Hungary/Yugoslavia

Former Spanish Prime Minister speaks at Stanford

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José María Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004, delivered a public lecture to an overflow crowd at Stanford University on November 17, 2008, entitled, "America and Europe After Bush." This program was sponsored jointly by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, International Law Society, and Stanford Law School.
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America and Europe After Bush

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This program is sponsored jointly by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, International Law Society, and Stanford Law School.

José María Aznar was born in Madrid in 1953. He is:

  • Executive President of FAES Presidente Ejecutivo de FAES (The Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis).
  • Distinguished Scholar at the University of Georgetown where he has taught various seminars on contemporary European politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School since the year 2004.
  • Member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.
  • Member of the Global Advisory Board of J.E. Robert Companies y Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Latin American division
  • Member of the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council of the United Status.
  • Member of the Advisory Board of Centaurus Capital
  • Advisor of Falck SPA

He became Prime Minister of Spain in 1996, following the electoral victory of the Partido Popular. With the party's subsequent electoral victory in the year 2000, this time with an absolute majority, he led the country again for a new term. His time as Prime Minister lasted up until the elections of 2004, when he voluntarily chose not to run for office again.

Throughout his two terms as Prime Minister of the Government he led an important process of economic and social reform. Thanks to various liberalisation processes and the introduction of measures to promote competition, along with budgetary controls, rationalised public spending and tax reductions, almost 5 million jobs were created in Spain. The Spanish GDP figure grew each year by more than 2%, at an average of 3.4% in fact, featuring an aggregate increase of 64% over eight years. Throughout this period, Spain's average income increased from 78% to 87% of the average income of the European Union. The public deficit decreased from an alarming 6% of GDP to a balanced budget. Furthermore, the first two reductions in income tax that democratic Spain has ever known took place during his two terms in office.

One of José María Aznar's most serious concerns is the battle against terrorism. He is in favour of a firm policy, one that is against any kind of political concession, combined with close international cooperation between democratic countries. He is a strong supporter of the Atlantic Relationship and the European Union's commitment to freedoms and economic reform.

He is the Honorary Chairman of the Partido Popular, a party he chaired between 1990 and 2004. Until the year 2006 he was the President of the Centrist Democrat International (CDI) and Vice-President of the International Democrat Union (IDU), the two international organisations that bring together the parties of the Centre, along with Liberals, Christian Democrats and Conservatives throughout the world.

He forms part of the committees of various organisations, including the committee for the initiative known as "One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)" and the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba (ICDC).

José María Aznar began his political career in the political party known as Alianza Popular, in 1979. In 1982 he was elected a Member of Parliament for Ávila. He then went on to become the Regional Chairman of Alianza Popular in Castile-Leon and the Head of the Regional Government of Castile-Leon between 1987 and 1989. In 1989, following the re-founding of the Partido Popular, he was chosen as a party candidate for Prime Minister in the general elections of 1989. The following year he was elected Chairman of the Party. He led the Partido Popular in the elections of 1993, 1996 and the year 2000. Throughout these four legislatures, he served as a Member of Parliament for Madrid. Between 1989 and 1996 he was the Leader of the Opposition.

José María Aznar graduated in law at the Complutense University. He qualified as an Inspector of State Finances in 1975.

He has written the following books: Cartas a un Joven Español (2007), Retratos y Perfiles. De Fraga a Bush (2005) ("Portraits and Profiles: From Fraga to Bush"), Ocho años de Gobierno (2004) ("Eight Years in Government"), La España en que yo creo (1995) ("The Spain I Believe in"), España: la segunda transición (1994) ("Spain: The Second Transition") and Libertad y Solidaridad (1991) ("Freedom and Solidarity").

José María Aznar has been awarded honorary doctorates by Sophia University in Tokyo (1997), Florida International University (1998), Bar-Ilan University in Israel (2005) Ciencias Aplicadas University in Perú (2006), Andrés Belló University in Chile (2006), Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (2006) and by Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore in Milán (2007).

He is married to Ana Botella, with whom he has three children and three grandchildren.

A video recording of this event can be viewed at: http://www.law.stanford.edu/calendar/details/2201/#related_information_and_recordings.

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Stanford Law School
Room 290

José María Aznar Former Prime Minister, Spain Speaker
Lectures
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