The Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG), directed by Helen V. Milner, is pleased to announce the selection of its 2008-2009 fellows for the Center’s three fellowship programs: Globalization and Governance Fellowship Program, Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Regional Political Economy, and Global Leaders Fellowship Program.

Globalization and Governance Fellowship Program

Through the Globalization and Governance Fellowship Program, NCGG awarded six one-year research positions to the most talented scholars in a large pool of applicants from all over the globe. These awards are designed to promote basic research in the broad areas of international and comparative political economy, international organization, global governance, and globalization.

The Princeton Fellows in Globalization and Governance Program are:

Susan Hyde is currently in her second year as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Her broader research agenda explores how international politics influence domestic politics with the majority of her research thus far focusing on international democracy promotion, which represents a direct attempt by international actors to change the course of domestic politics. In addition to her book project on international election monitoring, Susan will spend time on two other projects: (1) examining the global spread of elections and (2) running field experiments that test whether international election observers reduce election day fraud or otherwise influence the electoral process.

Heather E. McKibben a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh is working on her dissertation which addresses why, and the conditions under which, states will adopt bargaining strategies that are cooperative in nature, when they are often assumed to adopt non-cooperative types of strategies. Her research addresses the relationship between institutional design and international bargaining cooperation analyzed in terms of state bargaining strategies, a linkage as yet unexplained in the IR literature. During the tenure of this fellowship, Heather’s dissertation project will be expanded from her studies of the EU to highlight and focus on additional theoretical and empirical contributions. Ms. McKibben is expected to receive her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in May 2008.

Christina Schneider is a post-doctoral fellow of International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and an external research fellow at the Max Plank Institute of Economics in Jena, Germany. Her main research interests are in the field of international and comparative political economy, methodology, and international institutions. Thus far, Christina’s research on strategic budgeting has focused on the conditions under which German state governments may rely on deficit spending in the pre-election period. She aims to conduct a more general theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between domestic and international budgeteering and electoral outcomes in EU member states.

Ben Shepherd is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) in Paris, France, and expects to complete his degree in the spring of 2008. His research focuses on the role of trade costs and institutional factors, such as market entry costs, in shaping developing country trade integration through the extensive margin channel (i.e., new product varieties and new markets). Trade Costs, Corruption, and Economic Integration, his current research proposal, builds on both his dissertation work and research he has conducted since mid-2006 as a consultant in the World Bank’s Development Research Group. The core of the proposal is a theoretical and empirical analysis of the links between trade costs, corruption, and international trade flows from a development policy point of view.

T. Camber Warren currently completing his graduate study in the Department of Political Science at Duke University is expected to defend his dissertation and complete his Ph.D. by May 2008. His research interests have been motivated by a desire to uncover patterns in the relationship between technologies of mass communication and the construction of national allegiances. Camber has several projects which he will be moving forward into article length publications during his time at the Center. The first (A House United) will be based on the civil conflict chapter of his dissertation; second project (Modeling Interstate Alliances as Evolving Networks) offers both a theoretical claim and methodological solution; and final project entitled When Preferences and Commitments Collide will seek to more rigorously connect domestic political competition with the international dynamics of treaty compliance.

Matthew S. Winters will receive his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in September 2008. His research explores the ways in which international institutions—such as the World Bank—interact with national governments in the pursuit of development objectives and the way in which this interaction between the international political sphere and the domestic political sphere leads to particular development outcomes. His dissertation, The Impact of Domestic Political Constraints on World Bank Lending Programs, examines how differing capacities for collective action among impoverished groups affect the implementation of international development projects. The dissertation analyzes targeting performance in two World Bank programs in Indonesia and also includes analysis of an original cross-country dataset constructed from World Bank project evaluations.

Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Regional Political Economy

The Niehaus family’s generosity to the Center has funded the new Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Regional Political Economy created with the goal of developing a new generation of scholars able to analyze and make policy recommendations about the regional political economy in the Middle East, East, South, or Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. This fellowship program attracted over 80 applicants for only one slot available. Our first recipient for the upcoming academic year is Arang Keshavarzian.

Arang Keshavarzian has been an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Connecticut College; he will move to NYU after his fellowship year. And he completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in the fall 2003. Keshavarzian's research and teaching focuses on comparative politics, political economy of development, and Middle East politics, with a focus on Iran. He has published journal articles and book chapters on such topics as authoritarianism, clergy-state relations, and the Tehran Bazaar. His current research interests revolve around the political economy of free trade zones in the Persian Gulf, in particular in Dubai and southern Iran. His research on the Persian Gulf examines the processes of imperialism and globalization from the perspective of local circuits of trade and regional strategic conditions. He has also begun researching the political logics and consequences of the establishment of free trade zones in the Persian Gulf, in particular in United Arab Emirates and Iran, over the last four decades.

Global Leaders Fellowship Program

After exhaustive consideration of almost 100 written applications, extensive discussion, and thorough telephone interviews with finalists, the new Global Leaders Fellowship Program (GLF), at Oxford University and Princeton University has selected five fellows for a two-year period, 2008-2010, which includes post-doctoral fellowships in world politics and political economy for holders of a doctorate who are nationals of a developing country. In addition, one fellow, Lethanh Forsberg, from Vietnam, was allowed to defer the beginning of her fellowship until the fall of 2009. Selection was made by the Executive Committee of the Program: Professors Woods, Hurrell and Khong at Oxford and Professors Keohane, Milner and Widner at Princeton. Professor Woods came to Princeton in early February for the most important discussions to assure close coordination.

Up to six fellowships will be awarded in each of the next five years, beginning in September 2008, for a year’s study at Oxford followed by a year at Princeton. The program will create a network of scholars and practitioners with expertise in the key issues surrounding globalization.

The first cohort of Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellows is as follows:

Ana Arroio is from Brazil. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Sussex in 2000 and plans to work on how individuals in developing countries can best capture the benefits of technological advances and information flows in the global economy.

Arunabha Ghosh is an Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow, currently at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He is currently working on the governance of the climate change regime, including technology development and transfer, linkages between the trade and climate regimes, global energy governance, and national-level governance arrangements. Arunabha has expertise on monitoring, surveillance and compliance systems in international regimes, particularly global trade and climate change. Arunabha was previously Policy Specialist at the United Nations Development Programme in New York and co-author of three Human Development Reports, and has worked at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He has led research on transboundary water basins, intellectual property and the rights of indigenous people, violent conflict and extremist movements, and has undertaken/advised research projects on aid, financial crises and trade negotiations for DFID (UK), IDRC (Canada), and the Commonwealth Secretariat. His advocacy efforts for human development span a documentary on the water crisis set out of Africa, presentations to the President of India, the Indian Parliament and other legislatures, training of ministers in Central Asia, public lectures in Australia, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United States, and regular articles in the print media. Arunabha is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.

Arunabha has a D.Phil. and M.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford as the Marvin Bower Scholar at Balliol College. As Radhakrishnan Scholar, he earned a First Class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Arunabha graduated with Honours in Economics at the top of his class from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. He speaks Bengali, English, Hindi and basic Spanish.

George Gray Molina is from Bolivia. He gained his doctorate in Politics at Oxford University in 2004 and plans to work on how trade and labor policies affect growth and inequality, focusing on Bolivia.

Qu Bo is from China. He gained his doctorate at Peking University in 2007 and plans to work on international monetary cooperation, focusing on the role of China.

Pooja Sharma is an Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs. Her current research is focused on international trade governance where she is investigating the diversity in trade agreements from a governance perspective. She argues that international trade agreements tend to vary not only in terms of their economic implications but also along their governance dimension. The aim of the research is to explore strategies for better aligning global institutions with the interests of people in developing countries. Her previous research includes the political economy of trade policy (published in the Review of Development Economics), regional integration (published in National Strategies for Regional Integration, Anthem Press for the Asian Development Bank, 2009), multilateral trade liberalization (available in the World Trade and Development Report, Oxford University Press, 2007) and trade transaction costs (available at the GTAP website). Pooja Sharma was previously a Fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi, Visiting Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), New Delhi and Consultant, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. Pooja Sharma was educated at the University of Delhi (BA (Hons) and MA in economics) and received her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Cincinnati.