Stephen Krasner, a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, has been named director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, and will work closely with newly-confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also a Hoover Senior Fellow.
Krasner also is director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies.
He came to Stanford in 1981 from Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles. At Stanford, he was chairman of the political-science department from 1984 to 1991. He is widely known in academic circles for his work on governance and the limits of the authority of states in the modern world.
Krasner spent a year in Washington at the beginning of the Bush administration, first on policy planning at the State Department and then with Condoleezza Rice at the National Security Council. He helped formulate the Millennium Challenge Account, a new approach to development assistance that ties increased aid to steps to improve governance such as curbing corruption.
His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), and Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999), and Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001). He received a B.A. degree in history from Cornell University, an M.A. degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a Ph.D. degree in political science from Harvard.
