Good Enough Governance: Interview with Prof. Stephen Krasner

Dr. Leslie Vinjamuri of SOAS University interviews Prof. Stephen D. Krasner of Stanford Unversity on "Good Enough Governance". The renowned author of “Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy” addresses the concept of "Good Enough Governance" in matters of war and nation building. American foreign policy has consistently focused on promoting democracy, which has overshadowed more immediate national security concerns. The assumption that countries could be put on a path toward consolidated democracy has been the fundamental cause of American failures in Afghanistan, Iraq or its inability to devise a coherent policy for Egypt and Syria. Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Hoover Institution. From February 2005 to April 2007 he was Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace, and was a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board of the Department of State from 2012 to 2014. He edited International Organization from 1986 to 1992. Professor Krasner is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a Mercator Fellow at the Free University and was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in 2000-2001. He has written and edited up to ten books and more than eighty articles. Some titles of the books he has written and edited includes 'Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations'; 'Addressing State Failure' and 'Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities'.