FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
Innovations in Strengthening Local Economic Governance in Asia
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SPEAKERS
V. Bruce J. Tolentino - Chief Economist/ Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation
Véronique Salze-Lozac'h - Regional Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation
Nina V. Merchant - Assistant Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation
Meet Asia Foundation economics experts as they share their experiences working with on-the-ground partners to enhance economic growth throughout Asia. The Foundation is recognized internationally for its innovative work on economic governance and a political economy approach to reform, including programs in regulatory reform, strengthening local economic governance, private sector development, anticorruption, trade liberalization, and promotion of private investment. The Foundation has developed one-of-a-kind economic reform and development strategies, projects, interventions, and activities designed to enhance and sustain economic growth, with particular attention to effective local economic governance.
Complimentary copies of Innovations in Strengthening Local Economic Governance in Asia will be available during the presentation. We hope you can join us for what promises to be a lively conversation about the future of Asia’s economy.
Co-sponsored by the Asia Foundation
Philippines Conference Room
Seminars
Does Democratization Imply Islamization? Lessons from Democratic Indonesia, the World’s Largest Majority-Muslim Country
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Indonesia has undergone democratization since 1998. Islamic political parties have re-emerged, but they have failed to gain significant support. National politics in Indonesia today are mainly secular. Yet religious values are held in high regard, and religious sentiments are expressed in books, films, fashions, and television programs, among other media. Why has this enthusiasm for religion not yielded a dominant role for Islamism as a political force? The popularity of Islamic political parties has actually declined. Why? What factors have enabled non-religious parties to maintain political prominence while, at the same time, society has become more pious?
Anies Baswedan, currently president of Paramadina University in Jakarta, is a leading intellectual figure in Indonesia. In 2008, the editors of Foreign Policy named him one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals. As an advisor to the Indonesian government, he is a leading proponent of democracy and transparency in Indonesia, a creative thinker about Islam and democracy, as well as a charismatic leader in the educational field. Anies Baswedan will be on campus in May 2011 through the International Visitors Program sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He was nominated by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
Co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Southeast Asia Forum, and the Stanford Humanities Center
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Anies Baswedan
President
Speaker
Paramadina University in Jakarta, Indonesia
Seminars
