Search results for ""hoover institution press""

Ten years after 9/11, the least reformed part of America's intelligence system is not the CIA or FBI but the US Congress. In Eyes on Spies, Amy Zegart examines the weaknesses of U.S. intelligence oversight and why those deficiencies have persisted, despite the unprecedented importance of intelligence in today's environment. She argues that many of the biggest oversight problems lie with Congress—the institution, not the parties or personalities—showing how Congress has collectively and persistently tied its own hands in overseeing intelligence.Supporting sound logic with extensive data, the author offers a comparative analysis of oversight activities of intelligence with other policy areas to show that Congress is not overseeing nearly as much in intelligence as in other policy domains. Electoral incentives, she reveals, explain why. Zegart also identifies two key institutional weaknesses: one, the rules, procedures, and practices that have hindered the development of legislative expertise in intelligence and, two, committee jurisdictions and policies that have fragmented Congress's budgetary power over executive branch intelligence agencies. She concludes that, unfortunately, electoral incentives on the outside and the zero-sum nature of committee power on the inside provide powerful reasons for Congress to continue hobbling its own oversight capabilities.

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Morton Keller recounts his “not extraordinary life played out in quite extraordinary times”—from the Great Depression through World War Two, the cold war, the sixties, and 9/11. A classic American saga of respectable achievement from relatively humble origins, his life through eight-plus decades as a dues-paying member of the middle class resonates beyond the individual to echo the experiences, the beliefs, and the values of his generation.

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John Hughes examines lessons learned from the practice of public diplomacy—especially international broadcasting—in the cold war and tells how the United States could more effectively counter extremism, promote democracy, and improve understanding of itself in the Islamic world. He offers Indonesia as a successful example of the melding of democracy, Islam, and modernity and suggests that this country and other nations where Islam and democracy coexist—such as Turkey—could play a significant role in helping thwart Islamist extremism.

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Drawing on more than fifteen years of work on Social Security policy, first in the U.S. Senate and later in the White House, Chuck Blahous argues that our national Social Security debate is more polarized than it needs to be, even given the depth of legitimate differences over the program's appropriate future direction. Unless we identify and understand our respective initial assumptions, he explains, we will not be able to fathom the conflicting policy initiatives that they drive. In Social Security: The Unfinished Work he presents some often misunderstood, basic factual background about Social Security. He discusses how it affects program participants and explains the true demographic, economic, and political factors that threaten its future efficacy.Beginning with a review of the events of 1983, focusing on the substance, intent, and scorekeeping of that year's Social Security reforms, Blahous explains what happened then, why, and how it led to sharply divergent views of program finances during the Bush administration's reform initiative and on through today. He dissects competing positions in the current debate and concludes that, unless and until there is broader understanding of how these analytic differences drive opposing policy conclusions, we will continue to talk past and over each other, with little room for negotiation and compromise.

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For centuries, Islam and the West have been competing to define Turkish identity. Decades of close cooperation between Turkey and its NATO allies generated Western confidence that Turkey was a reliable ally and that its democratic system was sufficiently resilient to weather periodic political crises. But in recent years, those who have sought to soften the boundary between Islam and public life have become more organized and influential in Turkish politics.In Torn Country, Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey’s secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country’s destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey’s secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm—a separation that is now in jeopardy

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In September 2001, Europeans might have felt comfortable thinking that Al-Qaeda was only a scourge to the United States; some indulged in the unkind speculation that the United States had only itself to blame for 9/11. That innocence is now gone in the wake of attacks in Madrid and London. Since then Europe has oscillated through a range of stances in relation to Islamist terrorism, varying from country to country and across the political spectrum. In Freedom or Terror, Russell A. Berman offers an analysis of Europe’s ambivalence toward jihadist terror and the spread of aggressive Islamism, with particular emphasis on the European responses—or lack thereof—to Islamist terrorism.Berman describes how some European countries opt for appeasing and apologizing for terror, whereas others stand up for freedom. In individual chapters he examines the responses of England, France, Germany, and the smaller nations: Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. He also analyzes the dialectic of genocide and terror in Bosnia. Each country addresses the issues in light of its particular institutions and national history. Ultimately, the author argues that the European responses to Islamist terrorism involve the confrontation of contemporary postmodern European culture with the extremist values of jihadist radicals. Whether Europe is truly up to the challenge will only become clear in the struggles of the next decade.

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Joshua Teitelbaum evaluates Saudi foreign policy in the Persian Gulf and in the Arab-Israeli peace process and provides a shrewd assessment of the Saudi-U.S. relationship. He debunks the traditional view of Saudi foreign policy that emphasizes the Saudi concern with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and explains how the true concern of Arabia's rulers is the ideological battle that has been opened up by Iran's push into Arab affairs.

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Health care in the United States has made remarkable advances during the past forty years. Yet our health care system also has several well-known problems: high costs, significant numbers of people without insurance, and glaring gaps in quality and efficiency—and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is not the answer. This second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise details a better approach, offering fundamental reform alternatives centering on tax changes, insurance market changes, and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid.The book proposes five specific reforms to improve the ability of markets to create a lower-cost, higher-quality health care system that is responsive to the needs of individuals, including increasing individual involvement, deregulating insurance markets and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid, improving availability and quality of information, enhancing competition, and reforming the malpractice system. The authors show that, by promoting cost-conscious behavior and competition in both private markets and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, we can slow the rate of growth of health care costs, expand access to high-quality health care, and slow down runaway spending.

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In Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, Paul Gregory sheds light on how the world’s first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the story of two of Stalin’s most prominent victims. A founding father of the Soviet Union at the age of twenty-nine, Nikolai Bukharin was the editor of Pravda and an intimate of Lenin’s exile. (Lenin later dubbed him “the favorite of the party.”) But after Bukharin crossed swords with Stalin over their differing visions of the world’s first socialist state, he paid the ultimate price with his life. His wife, Anna Larina, the stepdaughter of a high Bolshevik official, spent much of her life in prison camps and in exile after her husband’s execution.Drawn from Hoover Institution archival documents, the story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina begins with the optimism of the socialist revolution and then turns into a dark saga of foreboding and terror as the game changes from political struggle to physical survival. Told for the most part in the words of the participants, it is, as Robert Conquest says in his foreword, “a story told to show the horrors of fate, of personal mistreatment and suffering by real people.” It is also a story of courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, misplaced idealism, missed opportunities, bungling, and, above all, love.

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Drawing from the findings of the Stanford Task Force on Preventive Force, Abraham D. Sofaer offers a practical guide to identifying and considering the issues relevant to preventive uses of force, in the hope that such uses of force, if undertaken, will advance national and international security and the purposes of the United Nations Charter. The book examines such key questions as What are the dangers and limitations of relying on preventive force in dealing with security threats? When, if ever, would states be justified in using preventive force without U. N. Security Council approval? What standards and procedures could enhance the legitimacy of preventive force?The Best Defense? Legitimacy and Preventive Force reveals that, although preventive uses of force in general pose even greater dangers and potentially adverse consequences than uses of force in self-defense, the costs of each type of error depend on the consequences of acting versus not acting in particular cases. No general rule is available to ensure foolproof decisions. It makes sense, the author concludes, to encourage states to undertake a systematic appraisal of the merits of any threat or use of preventive force based on legal standards, U.N. Charter purposes, and established norms of conduct.

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Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans had thriving societies based on governing structures and property rights that encouraged productivity and trade. These traditional economies were crippled by federal law that has held Indians in colonial bondage. This book provides the knowledge for tribes trapped in "white tape" to revitalize their economies and communities.

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At their October 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons. That historic meeting ultimately led to the end of the cold war. "Since that time, the nature of the nuclear threat in the world has changed, but the twenty-year-old lessons of Reykjavik may well help us achieve the goal of a modern world free of nuclear weapons," said former secretary of state George P. Shultz. Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary: Conference Report (Hoover Institution Press, 2007) contains essays drawn from presentations at the 2006 Hoover Institution conference on the legacy of the Reykjavik meeting. The contributors examine a range of topics including the implications of the summit for current nuclear arms control efforts, President Reagan's nuclear legacy, and a key lesson learned at Reykjavik: the importance of negotiating with enemies. Along with these insightful essays, the book includes the declassified official transcript of the discussions between Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik as well as official Soviet documents. The Soviet documents, now available in the Hoover Archives, provide insight into Soviet preparations for the summit, including key positions and an assessment of their research and development with respect to nuclear weapons relative to the United States. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this collection reassert the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and underscore the need for new, practical measures to achieve that goal.

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A government monopoly over drug regulation is not sacrosanct. This hard-hitting book describes the current regulation of drugs by the FDA and proposes a model for fundamental, yet workable, reform—including an innovative proposal for drug testing and certification review.

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Machan and his contributors offer highly unusual insights that expose our "one size fits all" approach to education as misguided and ultimately damaging to learning—and propose a bold entrepreneurial solution, which would require full separation of school and state.

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NATO: Its Past, Present, and Future tells the complete story of the most successful peacetime venture in Western cooperation, from the historic alliance's shaky beginnings to its cold war triumphs, failures and successes, as well as its recent enlargement and its controversial involvement in the Yugoslav imbroglio.

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In Political Environmentalism, Terry Anderson and his contributors show how environmental special interests have indeed provided the high moral ground for economic special interests who stand to gain from legislation that hampers competition. The book documents a range of examples of how politics and environmentalism mix to produce strange bedfellows and perverse results. It shows for instance, how clean air and water legislation based on technology standards actually results in dirtier air and higher costs to consumers. It tells how wilderness designations and Superfund sites are usually determined more by economic interests than by any other factor. And it reveals how the Endangered Species Act puts property up for grabs in the political arena—doing little to save species but consuming considerable resources in the process.

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This concise volume examines the relationship between law, governance, and economic development and shows the main substantive and procedural legal factors that developing nations must address to promote political stability and economic growth, intended for the general informed reader as well as for policymakers in governments and civil society.

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A collection of essays that discusses such issues as the media, immigration, the minimum wage and multiculturalism.

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In Facing the Age Wave, four experts explain the most significant areas of concern created by the aging of the American population and offer possible solutions.David Wise analyzes the declining participation in the labor force by older Americans and the role played in encouraging this phenomenon by Social Security and the early retirement plans funded by employees. Douglas Bernheim measures the inadequacy of personal saving for retirement and proposes methods to encourage saving for the critical senior years. John Shoven and David Wise describe the taxing of pensions as a disincentive to the most important form of saving in this country. David Cutler presents principles that are key to averting the crisis of looming health care costs.Facing the Age Wave is the product of a symposium of distinguished scholars on the subject of aging in America. The symposium was held in the spring of 1997 under the auspices of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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This compete history of one of the largest non-Slavic ethnic groups charts it from its emergence in the mid–fifteenth century to the present. Olcott details the major events that have shaped the character of the Islamic nation of Kazakhstan, discussing the rise and fall of the Kazakh Khanate, the Kazakhs in imperial Russia, revolutionary and Soviet Kazakhstan, and the struggle for autonomy under Soviet rule.

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These essays identify key failures in modern American education and illuminate some ways in which those in the teaching profession—and their students—can achieve higher levels of performance, making the case for content-rich education and explicit teaching.

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In describing his seven and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, the late Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale has said: "In that atmosphere of death and hopelessness, stripped of the niceties, the amenities of civilization, my ideas on life and leadership crystallized." Despite torture, intimidation, and isolation, Stockdale fulfilled his duties as senior officer among the prisoners with intelligence and courage, defining rules of conduct and maintaining morale. He often described the intense pressures of that situation as a "melting" experience, in which preconceived feelings, fears, and bias melt as one comes to realize that, under the gun, you must grow or fail—or, in some cases, grow or die.This collection of his essays and speeches from the 1980s and 1990s reinforces how that experience formed a lifelong basis for his philosophical thought on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics. The selections in this volume all reflect, in one way or another, a central theme: how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.

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This volume evaluates the complex developments between the United States and Korea and offers policy recommendations for how both countries in the future might avoid the bitter politiczation of trade disputes of the recent past and expand their economic relations.

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This is the first English-language volume that brings the history of Latvia to the threshold of the twenty-first century. Until the re-establishment of Latvian independence in 1991, Soviet dominance served for nearly fifty years to hinder publication of any complete and objective historical record of the region. Plakans now places the evolution and formation of the Latvian nation in a balanced, historical framework that stretches from the early medieval period to the present.

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A distinguished panel of scholars from around the world convened at the Hoover Institution in June 1993 to assess prospects for a reunited Korea. Scenarios for reunification identified at that conference are presented in this volume.

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The first comprehensive account of Azerbaijan's rich and tumultuous history up to the present time.

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In Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union, Richard F. Staar places revolutionary contemporary events into historical perspective. Citing Russian-language sources, he charts the recent structural changes within the USSR and how they have affected foreign policy. Detailing the shift of power from the CPSU political bureau to the presidential council, he explores the increasing importance of the foreign affairs ministry in the exercise of presidential power.

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The authors of this volume illustrate the extraordinary success of the Taiwan Relations Act in contributing to regional security and a high level of economic and political stability in one of the world's most tactically unpredictable and volatile areas.

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Herbert Hoover arrived at Stanford in 1891, neither wealthy nor from a distinquished family, and was admitted on the condition that he become "proficient" in English. From that inauspicious beginning came the long and mutually rewarding relationship between Herbert Hoover and his alma mater, Stanford University. During his lifetime Hoover followed several careers: engineer, philanthropist, author, statesman, and president of the United States.George H. Nash points out that Stanford gave Hoover his first chance, and he spent much of his life repaying that debt. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, the Student Union, the Food Research Institute, the Lou Henry Hoover House, and the Graduate School of Business were direct results of his involvement as a Stanford trustee, his fundraising ability, and his personal philanthropy.Although Hoover in later years was often at odds with both the faculty and administration, Nash's research reveals the enduring ties that bound the man and his university together. Stanford president David Starr Jordan said at Hoover's commencement that men and women "are judged by achievement, not by dreams." Hoover shared that view of life, and Stanford University today is itself part of Herbert Hoover's living legacy of achievement.

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This collection of essays presents a sampling of the significant contributions to twentieth-century economic thought and practice by Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman.Friedman is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago school of economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of governmental policy and as a major determinant of business cycles and inflation. Making an early impact on the economics profession was his analysis of economics as an empirical science, and in particular, his conclusion that the only relevant test of the acceptability of economic hypotheses is the conformity of the predictions they generate with observation. His permanent income theory of consumption, his restatement of the quantity theory of money, and his hypothesis of natural rate of unemployment have by now become part of received economic doctrine.Outside the economic profession, Friedman is best known for his outspoken statements on public policy, particularly his consistent belief that a free-enterprise system with minimum governmental intervention in the economic process will best preserve and extend both human freedom and economic prosperity. A number of the essays reprinted here are eloquent expressions of his commitment to everyone's freedom to choose.In 1976 Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis and monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization polivy.

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This lively, nontechnical book offers a positive reappraisal of the giant corporation. Hessen presents an uncompromising defense of the right of corporation to exist and function freely and outlines and examines the arguments and proposals of Ralph Nader, who is recognized as the most vocal critic of the corporation, in addition to addressing various other issues regarding the corporation.

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The author, writing on behalf of Hoover's Koret task Force on K–12 Education, presents a convincing case that, despite the controversy it has ignited, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is making a positive difference and should be renewed. He outlines ten specific lessons and recommendations that identify the strengths and weaknesses of NCLB and offers suggestions for improving the law, building on its current foundation.

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This book reports on a three-year study of public housing tenants and their evaluation of public housing in Wilmington, Delaware.

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Drawn from presentations made at the Hoover Institution's October 2007 conference, this collection of essays examines the practical steps necessary to address the current security challenges of nuclear weapons and to move toward the Reykjavik goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. The distinguished group of contributors includes former officials of the past six administrations—Republican and Democratic—along with senior scholar and scientific experts on nuclear issues.

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This collection of twenty-five essays written over the past five years by international economic policy expert Charles Wolf Jr. covers a range of worldwide economic, political, security, and diplomatic issues. Wolf looks at the challenges facing the United States at home and around the globe including critical issues regarding China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Iraq, and other key locales. Throughout the book, the author offers his often-controversial viewpoints, such as his assertion that "unilateralism" in U.S. national security policy may sometimes be preferable to multilateralism or that the erroneous expectation that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons does not imply that the intelligence leading to this expectation was flawed. Wolf reexamines each essay in the light of later developments with a "postaudit" comment to address whether the original argument is still valid and relevant compared with when it was first written.

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The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to level the playing field and give charter schools—and the children they serve—a fairer chance to succeed.

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The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to level the playing field and give charter schools—and the children they serve—a fairer chance to succeed.

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The author reveals the dangerous weaknesses undermining domestic intelligence in the United States and tells why a new national security service should not be part of the FBI. He explains the need for a new domestic intelligence agency, modeled on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and lodged in the Department of Homeland Security.

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A diverse collection of readings from scholarly journals, government reports, think tank studies, newspapers, and books that offers a comprehensive look at the drug debate. With each section featuring opposing articles written by many of the foremost authorities in their respective fields, the book offers a concise view of the many divergent viewpoints surrounding drug policy in America.

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With a journalist's eye for detail, Robert Zelnick looks at Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's key role in the controversial University of Michigan affirmative action cases of 2003, providing key background information, detailed descriptions of daily arguments, and an evaluation of the final rulings.

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To the doomsayers who maintain that natural resources are being depleted and the environment is getting worse, Terry Anderson and his fellow contributors offer a bold retort: it's getting better all the time. They present a powerful argument that, through such established institutions as property rights, the rules of law, and limited government, economic growth and environmental quality will both flourish.You Have to Admit It's Getting Better shows how, by focusing our energies on developing and protecting the institutions of freedom, rather than on regulating human use of natural resources through political processes, we can in fact have our environmental cake and eat it, too. The book offers a number of often-surprising revelations that debunk many commonly held beliefs about the future of our environment. It shows, for example, how liberalization of international trade is more likely to improve environmental quality than reduce it. It also explains how the prosperity and improved human well-being that we enjoy today are not leaving future generations worse off, but leaving them with more capital and larger stocks of natural resources. Throughout the book, the authors repeatedly show that economic growth is not the antithesis of environmental quality: rather, the two go hand in hand if the incentives are right.

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Thomas Sowell takes some of his most popular newspaper columns and examines the broader questions beyond the events which inspired them. One of conservatism's most articulate voices dissects today's most important economic, racial, political, education, legal, and social issues, sharing his entertaining and thought-provoking insights on a wide range of contentious subjects.

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When physical disability from combat wounds brought about Jim Stockdale's early retirement from military life, he had the distinction of being the only three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor. His writings all converge on the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.

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The "red files" revealed. Examining the period from the early 1930s through Stalin's death in 1953—the height of the Stalinist regime—this enlightening book reveals what we have learned from the archives, what has surprised us, and what has confirmed what we already knew. Most of the authors have worked with these archives since they were opened.

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School Figures presents statistics, along with historical trends and cross-sectional comparisons, to provide a clear, factual picture of today's K–12 education landscape, including information on school demographics, cost and finance, testing and achievement, public school reform, and other key areas.

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The United States, Taiwan, and China are bound within a “silicon triangle.” Semiconductors link our geopolitics, our ongoing economic prosperity, and our technological competitiveness. This book draws on the deliberations of a multidisciplinary Hoover Institution–Asia Society working group of technologists, economists, military strategists, industry players, and regional policy experts to contemplate the dynamic global supply chain in semiconductors—one in which US industry faces growing vulnerabilities, China aggressively promotes home-grown semiconductor mastery, and Taiwan finds itself with a crucial monopoly on high-end logic chips sought by buyers globally. Silicon Triangle seeks to present a balanced view of how policies of the United States and its partners around semiconductors can increase the resilience of shared supply chains—and contribute to deterring conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

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Clint Bolick and Kate J. Hardiman begin with a thought experiment: how would we structure a 21st-century K-12 school system if we were starting from scratch, attending to contemporary parental needs and harnessing the power of technology? Maintaining that the status quo is unacceptable, they take a forward-thinking look at how choice, competition, deregulation, and decentralization can create disruptive innovation and reform education for all students.The US Supreme Court proclaimed 65 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that our schools must provide equal educational opportunities, but the authors argue we have yet to make good on that promise. School systems are bound to antiquated structures, outdated technology, and bureaucratic systems that work for adults, not children.The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how ossified the traditional public school system has become. Today's ruptures in traditional learning create opportunity for reinvention. Unshackled explains that technology can redefine the ways students learn in and out of the classroom and highlights the benefits of expanding educational freedom so that families are able to choose an education that fits their child's needs.

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What are the keys to good economic policy? George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor draw from their several decades of experience at the forefront of national economic policy making to show how market fundamentals beat politically popular government interventions—be they from Democrats or Republicans—as a recipe for success.Choose Economic Freedom reconstructs debates from the 1960s and 1970s about the use of wage and price controls as tools of policy, showing how brilliant economists can hold diametrically opposed views about the wisdom of using government intervention to spur the economy. Speeches and documents from the era include a recently unearthed memo from Arthur Burns, Federal Reserve chair, in 1971, in which he argues in favor of controls.Under Burns's guidance and in the face of stubborn inflation, Nixon introduced wage and price guidelines and freezes. But over the long run, these became a drag on the economy and ultimately failed. It wasn't until the Reagan administration that these controls were reversed, resulting in a vibrant economy.The words of iconic economist Milton Friedman—whose "free to choose" ethos inspired the free-market revolution of the Reagan era—along with lessons Shultz and Taylor learned from the front lines, demonstrate that tried-and-true economic policy works.

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