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May 20, 2013
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Sergio B. Gautreaux

Sergio B. Gautreaux is a recent graduate with a M.A. in International Relations from Webster University in Leiden, the Netherlands. Sergio also has a B.A. in History from Louisiana State University. Sergio’s professional experiences include working at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and as a volunteer at the Pax Ludens Foundation, a Dutch-based NGO which focused on strategic game theories in the Middle East. Recent publications include his graduate thesis, titled "China's Energy Policy: A Twenty-First Century Approach".

Articles by Sergio B. Gautreaux:

Understanding China’s Internal Migration

March 3, 2013 by

China’s President Hu Jintao talks to Vice President Xi Jinping after the closing ceremony of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 13, 2009. Alfred Cheng Jin/Reuters via Council on Foreign Relations

In November 2012, China began a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that will continue through this month when Xi Jinping succeeds Hu Jintao as President of the People’s Republic. Xi has been primed to carry his nation into the second decade of the twenty-first century, as the country prepares itself for an unprecedented international role. With its new economic, political, and military clout, Xi’s China stands ready to be both a regional and global leader.

Amidst this historic shift, however, lies a set of deep challenges that Xi will be forced to confront on the international front. These include a ‘pivoting’ United States, growing nationalism in Japan, and a more caustic North Korea, among many others.

However, an often overlooked and more dangerous domestic problem is a result of the restrictions placed on the migrant workers that have been fueling China’s monumental growth. Understanding the causal factors that explain rural migrants’ flock to urban areas will be crucial for the fifth generation of leadership, which is dealing with one of the largest human movements in the world.

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Examining the Democratic Peace Hypothesis: A Neorealist Critique

April 26, 2012 by

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

– George Santayana

Referred to as the “closest thing we have to law in international relations,” the democratic peace theory – the idea that democratic states do not go to war against each other – has been used as a champion ideology during the latter half of the post-World War II era and into the new millennium. For the theory’s mostly Western advocates, it is believed that as democracy is spread to all corners of the globe, so shall peace. The seemingly unanimous explanation among liberal international relations theorists for such a Kantian principle has been that democratic states avoid conflict with each other because of the similar natures of the democratic processes and the shared values within liberal societies that constrain the states’ leaders from conflict escalation.

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