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FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

State of the art of the state?

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Donald K. Emmerson
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Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis is now available for purchase from Stanford University Press.  Co-published with the East-West Center, the book is innovative in several respects.

First, it reflects new thinking by younger scholars.  Its editors are all assistant professors  of political science specializing on Southeast Asia:  Erik Martinez Kuhonta (McGill University), Dan Slater (the University of Chicago), and Tuong Vu (the University of Oregon, Eugene).  

Southeast Asianist assistant professors also account for seven of the volume's other contributors:  Regina Abrami (Harvard Business School), Jamie Davidson (National University of Singapore), Greg Felker (Willamette University, Salem, Oregon), Kikue Hamayotsu (Northern Illinois University), Allen Hicken (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung (University of Massachusetts, Lowell), and Meredith L. Weiss (State University of New York, Albany).  

Three senior scholars round out the table of contents:  Richard F. Doner (Emory University), Donald K. Emmerson (Stanford University), and Ben Kerkvliet (Australian National University).  

Second, the book is a "state of the art" review of political science knowledge of Southeast Asia.  Nothing else like it exists.  What do we really know about, the state, political economy, political parties, ethnic and religious politics, rural politics, globalization and politics, democracy or the lack of it, and political life generally in Southeast Asia?  For scholars, students, and the interested public, this book is a unique place to pursue the answers.  

Third and also distinctive is the book's exploration of unchartered intellectual terrain-the simultaneously productive and turbulent overlap between Southeast Asian studies and political science.  Are the area and the discipline at odds?  Do they offer rival methods and clashing epistemologies?  Or are place-based knowledge and disciplinary ambitions mutually enhancing?  The authors of the volume wrestle with these questions as well.

The idea behind Southeast Asia in Political Science dates from the conference Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis organized by SEAF at Stanford in 2004 while Erik Kuhonta was at APARC as a Shorenstein Fellow.

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Angie Ngoc Trần

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(831) 582-3753 (650) 723-6530
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Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
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Angie Ngoc Trần is a professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB).  Her plan as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow is to complete a book manuscript on labor-capital relations in Vietnam that highlights how different identities of investors and owners—shaped by government policies, ethnicity, characteristics of investment, and the role they played in global flexible production—affect workers’ conditions, consciousness, and collective action differently.

Tran spent May-July 2008 at Stanford and will return to campus for the second half of November 2008.  She will share the results of her project in a public seminar at Stanford under SEAF auspices on November 17 2008.

Prof. Trần’s many publications include “Contesting ‘Flexibility’:  Networks of Place, Gender, and Class in Vietnamese Workers’ Resistance,” in Taking Southeast Asia to Market (2008); “Alternatives to ‘Race to the Bottom’ in Vietnam:  Minimum Wage Strikes and Their Aftermath,” Labor Studies Journal (December 2007); “The Third Sleeve: Emerging Labor Newspapers and the Response of Labor Unions and the State to Workers’ Resistance in Vietnam,” Labor Studies Journal (September 2007); and (as co-editor and author) Reaching for the Dream:  Challenges of Sustainable Development in Vietnam (2004).  She received her Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California in 1996 and an M.A. in Developmental Economics at USC in 1991.

Southeast Asia in Political Science: Terms of Enlistment

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Co-published by the East-West Center, this book originated in a 2004 conference convened by the Southeast Asia Forum (SEAF) at Shorenstein APARC.

The book in which this chapter appears—Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (ed. Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu—argues that Southeast Asian political studies have made important contributions to theory building in comparative politics through a dialogue involving theory, area studies, and qualitative methodology.

The book provides a state-of-the-art review of key topics in the field, including: state structures, political regimes, political parties, contentious politics, civil society, ethnicity, religion, rural development, globalization, and political economy. The chapters allow readers to trace the development of the field of Southeast Asian politics and to address central debates in comparative politics. The book will serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars of Southeast Asian politics, and comparativists engaged in theoretical debates at the heart of political science.

Reviews

"The scholarship here is excellent. These people know their region and its literature cold. This collection demonstrates the potential of qualitative Southeast Asian area studies to contribute to the broader accumulation of knowledge in political science, including the development of disciplinary theory."
-Jack Snyder, Columbia University

"This collection consists of elegantly written, carefully crafted, intelligent, and interesting essays that will be of enormous value to scholars of the politics of Southeast Asia."
-John Sidel, London School of Economics

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Stanford University Press in "Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis"
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Donald K. Emmerson
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The Foxy Art of Herding Dragons: How Sly Asian Leaders Pulled off Politically Difficult Economic Reforms

The Foxy Art of Herding Dragons: How Sly Asian Leaders Pulled off Politically Difficult Economic Reforms

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Major economic reforms are often politically difficult.  They may cause pain to voters and provoke unrest.  They may be opposed by politicians whose time horizons are shortened by electoral cycles.  They may collide with the established ideology and long-standing practices of an entrenched ruling party.  They may be resisted by bureaucrats who fear change, and by vested interests with stakes in the status quo.  Obstacles to major economic reform can be daunting in democratic and autocratic polities alike. 

And yet, somehow, past leaders of today's Asian dragons did manage to get away with critical and creative economic reforms.  Sly political foxes nudged their countries onto high-growth paths toward global renown as economic dragons.  What lessons can be learned from their experiences?  Are tactics that worked in authoritarian systems applicable to democratic ones, and vice versa?  Can one identify a set of stratagems that would amount to an equivalent, for economic reformers, of the advice Machiavelli gave political princes? 

Arroyo will recount the crafty political maneuvers used by leaders of economic reform in Asia during these pivotal eras:  China under Deng Xiaoping; India in the 1990s; Thailand under General Prem Tinsulanonda; Vietnam's Doi Moi; South Korea under Park Chung Hee; Malaysia under Mahathir Mohamad; and Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew.  Arroyo's remarks will be drawn from the paper he has been writing at Stanford on "The Political Economy of Successful Reform: Asian Stratagems," which he describes as "a playbook of useful maneuvers for economic reformers."

Dennis Arroyo is presently on leave from his government post as a director of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) of the Philippines.  He has held consultancies with the World Bank, the United Nations, and the survey research firm Social Weather Stations, and has written widely on socioeconomic topics.  His critique of the Philippine development plan won a mass media award for "best analysis."  He has degrees in economics from the University of the Philippines.  

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Dennis Arroyo 2007-2008 Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow Speaker Shorenstein APARC
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Justice or Farce? The Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia

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The UN and the Cambodian government have finally established a “hybrid-style” tribunal in Phnom Penh to begin prosecuting senior leaders from the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that caused the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians more than thirty years ago. This tribunal is widely viewed as one of the most important experiments in transitional justice in a post-conflict society. Prof. Hall will show, however, that the hybrid structure mixing international and local lawyers, judges, and staff is deeply flawed. Cambodia’s legal system is notoriously corrupt, inefficient, and politically controlled. Predictably, the UN-sponsored tribunal has been plagued by accusations of corruption, opacity, distrust, and woeful human resource management. Against this backdrop, the international lawyers and judges at the tribunal continue their up-hill battle to forge a venue that meets minimum international legal standards.

John A. Hall specializes in international law and human rights. His controversial 21 September 2007 op ed in the Wall Street Journal (“Yet Another U.N. Scandal”) helped focus international attention on corruption and mismanagement at the Khmer Rouge tribunal. In addition to writing widely on Cambodia, he has worked for Legal Aid of Cambodia in Phnom Penh and the Public Interest Law Center in the Philippines. He holds a doctorate in Modern History from Oxford University, graduated from Stanford Law School in 2000, and before going to law school was a tenured professor of history.

John Ciorciari is Senior Legal Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a leading NGO dedicated to accountability for the abuses of the Khmer Rouge regime. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD from Oxford University.

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John Hall Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Global Trade & Development Speaker Chapman University School of Law

John Ciorciari

Hoover Institution
Stanford, CA 94305

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Affiliate - Southeast Asia Forum
CiociariHeadshot.jpg JD, PhD

John D. Ciorciari was a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2007-2008.  Dr. Ciorciari will remain at Stanford for the academic year 2008-09 as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution. His current research centers on the alignment policies of small states and middle powers in the Asia-Pacific region. He focuses particularly on the phenomenon of "hedging," whereby secondary states pursue a balance of security and autonomy vis-a-vis the great powers.

Dr. Ciorciari also has interests in international human rights law and international finance. Before coming to Stanford, he served as Deputy Director of the Office of South and Southeast Asia at the U.S. Treasury Department. He has published articles on the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions and is currently undertaking a project on financial cooperation in East Asia.

In addition, he serves as a Senior Legal Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which assists the Khmer Rouge tribunal and conducts research into the history of Democratic Kampuchea. He has published a range of scholarly works on international criminal law and the Khmer Rouge accountability process.

Dr. Ciorciari received an AB and JD from Harvard, where he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard International Law Journal. He received his MPhil and DPhil from Oxford, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and Wai Seng Senior Research Scholar.

John Ciorciari Discussant - 2007-2008 Shorenstein Fellow Commentator
Seminars

Christian von Luebke

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 726-0685 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar, 2009-12
CvL_APARC_Photo_-_Oct_2010_2.jpg MA, PhD

Christian von Luebke is a political economist with particular interest in democracy, governance, and development in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a research project that gauges institutional and structural effects on political agency in post-Suharto Indonesia and the post-Marcos Philippines. During his German Research Foundation fellowship at Stanford he seeks to finalize a book manuscript on Indonesian governance and democracy and teach a course on contemporary Southeast Asian politics.

Before coming to Stanford, Dr. von Luebke was a research fellow at the Center of Global Political Economy at Waseda (Tokyo), the Institute for Developing Economies (Chiba), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta). He received a JSPS postdoctoral scholarship from the Japan Science Council and a PhD scholarship from the Australian National University.

Between 2001 and 2006, he worked as technical advisor in various parts of rural Indonesia - for both GTZ and the World Bank. In 2007, he joined an international research team at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) analyzing the effects of public-private action on investment and growth.

Dr. von Luebke completed his Ph.D. in 2008 in Political Science at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University. He also holds a Masters in Economics and a B.A. in Business and Political Science from Muenster University.

His research on contemporary Indonesian politics, democratic governance, rural investment, and leadership has been published in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asian Affairs, Asian Economic Journal, and ISEAS. He regularly contributes political analyses on Southeast Asia to Oxford Analytica.

The Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia

This program will bring together some of the world's leading experts on Southeast Asia and democracy to consider critical questions facing the region. Has the American model of democracy become tarnished in Asia, and is the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism of growing appeal and significance? What are the dimensions and implications of Islamicization for Southeast Asia? What are the prospects for cleaning up notoriously corrupt party politics? Will the military ever be driven out of politics in places like Thailand and the Philippines? Is the American-led "war on terror" helping stabilize politics in the region, or is it exacerbating already serious problems? What do these developments mean for U.S. foreign policy and American influence in Asia?

 

Kishore Mahbubani, one of Asia's leading public intellectuals, is author of the forthcoming The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East; and Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World. Now the dean and professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, and the newly-released The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World.

Donald K. Emmerson has written or edited more than a dozen books and monographs on Southeast Asian politics, including the forthcoming Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia Beyond Suharto. His latest publication is titled "Challenging ASEAN" (Jan 2008). He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he also heads the Southeast Asia Forum.

Douglas Bereuter (moderator) is president of The Asia Foundation. He assumed his current position after 26 years of service in the U.S. Congress, where he was one of that body's leading authorities on Asian affairs and international relations.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society; Business Executives for National Security; UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asian Studies; USF Center for the Pacific Rim; and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this panel discussion.

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Kishore Mahbubani author and dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Speaker National University of Singapore
Larry Diamond Senior Fellow Speaker the Hoover Institution

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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ASEAN adopts charter despite differences over Myanmar

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A long-time loose group of countries focused on trade and business, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is trying to forge a common market roughly similar to the European Union. But the question of how to confront Myanmar's crackdown on democracy has left ASEAN divided. Will Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore start to take a stand on democracy, and are they turning away from the US as China booms? Dr. Donald K. Emmerson is director of the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the author of many papers and books on the region comments on the adoption of the charter on KCRW's To the Point. Link to audio file of the entire day's show below. Professor Emmerson's interview begins at about 42 minutes into the show.
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Robert W. Hefner

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
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Robert William Hefner, professor of anthropology and associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, is the inaugural Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia.

Professor Hefner has been associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, where he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past thirty years, and has authored or edited a fourteen books, as well as several major policy reports for private and public foundations. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton 2005), ed., and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton 2000). Hefner is also the invited editor for the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.

Hefner is currently writing a book on Islamic education, democratization, and political violence in Indonesia. The research and writing locate the Indonesian example in the culture and politics of the broader Muslim world. His book also revisits the the question of the role of religious and secular knowledge in modernity.

Hefner will divide his time between Boston University, the National University of Singapore, and Stanford, where he will teach a seminar during the spring quarter.

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