Stephen D. Krasner - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Stephen Krasner is an international relations

International relations

International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...

professor at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

and is the former Director of Policy Planning

Director of Policy Planning

The Director of Policy Planning is the United States Department of State official in charge of the Department's internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff. The position of Director of Policy Planning has traditionally been held by many members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment...

at the United States Department of State

United States Department of State

The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

, a position he held from 2005 until April 2007 while on leave from Stanford. He is a senior fellow at Stanford University

Stanford University

's Hoover Institution

Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....

Awards

Krasner received his bachelor's degree from the Department of History

Cornell University Department of History

at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

in 1963, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger

Quill and Dagger

Quill and Dagger is a senior honor society at Cornell University. It is often recognized as one of the most prominent collegiate societies of its type, along with Skull and Bones of Yale University...

society. He then earned his master's degree from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, and his PhD from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. Krasner is the author of six books and over ninety articles. He has taught courses on international relations, international political economy

International political economy

International political economy , also known as global political economy, is an academic discipline within the social sciences that analyzes international relations in combination with political economy. As an interdisciplinary field it draws on many distinct academic schools, most notably ...

, international relations theory, policy making, and state-building at Stanford University. He received a dean’s award for excellence in teaching in 1991.

One of his most famous accomplishments in the realm of political science was defining "international regimes" as, "implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations," in a special issue of the journal International Organization in 1982. He has also written extensively about statehood and sovereignty.

Weak State Stabilization

Stephen Krasner is what political scientists define as a neorealist. He writes about the United States as being threatened by weakened nations in the increasingly interconnected international system in his article, Addressing State Failure (2005). Krasner believes in conflict prevention, in which he believes the United States and NGOs (non governmental organizations) should make it clear that stabilizing weak states in the world is high on the policy agenda. Krasner lays out three steps to what he believes are the main goals in managing weak post conflict states successfully: (for example the United States rebuilding of Iraq)

Stabilization
The root causes being addressed
The creation of laws and institutions of a market democracy

Executive Power

Stephen Krasner also argues that bureaucratic procedures and bureaucratic politics are not what shape American foreign policy. Instead, he states that the undisputed power of the President is what ultimately leads to the foreign policy decisions Are Bureaucracies Important? (1972). He also states that bureaucratic politics are dangerous and misleading, “because it undermines the assumptions of democratic politics by relieving high ranking officials of responsibility” (1972). Bureaucratic theorists see the collective decisions of smaller actors in the bureaucratic procedure as what influences the foreign policy, not the decisions of the high ranking executive officials. Yet, Krasner argues that it is a dangerous theory because it gives leaders excuses for their foreign policy failures, and it gives the public a skewed view of the ultimate power that the President possesses. He defines states political objectives as a direct reflection of the President’s national interest goals and beliefs of what he thinks society should be.

State Sovereignty

Stephen Krasner was made famous in the political science world for his extensive contributions on the topic of states sovereignty, in his influential book, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999). In this book Krasner describes his views on the long disputed topic. His ideas brought up in his book define states sovereignty as clearly drawn out rules in the international system. In international law, the rule states that: a state has the exclusive right to have control over and area of governance, people, and that a state has a legitimate exercise of power and the interpretation of international law. In his book however, he talks about the rules of sovereignty continually being broken. In Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999), he defines four ways in which people refer to sovereignty in international relations:

Legal Sovereignty, which Krasner defines as states recognizing one another as independent territories.
Interdependence Sovereignty, which is an eroding mechanism of sovereignty. Krasner sees globalization (capital flows, migration, and ideas) as a way in which the power of sovereignty in states is being increasingly lessened.
Domestic Sovereignty is seen as the standard, this definition refers to state authority structures and their effectiveness of control within the state.
Westphalian Sovereignty, which Krasner declares is the concept that states have the right to separately determine their own domestic authority structures.

Krasner also describes the four situations in which the international community deems the rules of sovereignty invalid, and subject to outside intervention:

Religious Toleration
Minority Rights
Human Rights
International Stability

Edited Works

International Regimes (1983)
Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999)
Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001)

External links

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