This event is presented in conjunction with the Japan Society of Northern California.

About the talk

After five years of sweeping changes during the Koizumi administration (2001-06), Japan has slipped into a period of political stagnation.  

The ruling LDP is in disarray and facing the prospect of defeat in the next general election, partisan conflict is slowing the pace of policy innovation, and past reforms have been partially unraveled in response to demands from both the public at large and vested interests.  

This lecture explores the past decade of political change and backtracking in Japan and their implications for innovation and entrepreneurship in the business community, paying particular attention to the ongoing process of postal privatization and other instances of “structural reform.”

About the speaker

Patricia Maclachlan is Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.  She received her Ph.D in political science and Japan studies in 1996 from Columbia University and spent one year as a research associate in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her research interests include consumer politics and culture in advanced industrial democracies, with a focus on Japan.

ISEAS is pleased to invite you to the panel discussion and book launch for Donald Emmerson's new book, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Program

• 3:00 pm - Welcome by Ambassador K Kesavapany - Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
• 3.05 pm - Introduction of Panelists by Professor Donald K Emmerson
• 3.10 pm - Presentation by Professor Donald K Emmerson
• 3.20 pm - Presentation by Professor Jörn Dosch
• 3.30 pm - Presentation by Dr Alan Chong Chia Siong
• 3.40 pm - General Discussion
• 4.30pm - Comments, Q & A
• 4.30 pm - Concluding Remarks
• 4.35 pm - Book Signing

Alan Chong Chia Siong is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.  His recent publications include "Asian Contributions on Democratic Dignity and Responsibility:  Rizal, Sukarno and Lee on Guided Democracy" in East Asia: An International Quarterly (2008) and Foreign Policy Global Information Space: Actualizing Soft Power (2007).  His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Jörn Dosch is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds.  Among his recent publications are The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics (2006), Economic and Non-traditional Security Cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion) (GMS) (co-authored, 2005).  His PhD is from Mainz University.

Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford University.  His recent publications include "ASEAN's Black Swans," Journal of Democracy (2008) and "Southeast Asia in Political Science:  Terms of Enlistment," in Erik Martinez Kuhonta et al., eds, Southeast Asia in Political Science:  Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (2008).  His PhD is from Yale University.

This lecture situates the ‘history problem’ in historical perspective, focusing on the ‘textbook issue’ in twentieth century Sino-Japanese relations. Professor Kawashima argues that far from being the beginning of a new problem, the diplomatic tensions that arose in 1982 over Japanese textbooks actually had clear historical antecedents. Even before WWII, these two countries fought over the representation of the past and sometimes competed over rival historical truth claims on the diplomatic stage. We should accordingly examine contemporary problems over the past in light of this basso continuo.

Shin Kawashima teaches the history of international relations in East Asia at the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo. He received his BA from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and his MA and PhD in Oriental History from the University of Tokyo in Oriental history. He served at Hokkaido University  in the Department of Politics and the Faculty of  Law, until 2006 when he moved to the University of Tokyo. He has also been a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica in Taipei, the Beijing Center for Japanese Studies, National Chengchi University at Taipei and Peking University. His research focuses on Chinese Diplomatic History and he has recently started a project on radio history in East Asia. He has published widely in academic journals and his first book was awarded the 2004 Suntry Academic Prize.

North Korea has often been considered an aberration in the post-Cold War international system, a relic of a Stalinist past. In fact, a close examination of North Korean foreign relations during the Cold War period reveals that Pyongyang's behavior never fit neatly into the paradigm of a bipolar international order, and that the Cold War itself had a distinctive dynamic in the Korean context. This dynamic helps to explain the continued existence of a divided Korea to this day, long after the bipolar international system has ended. Based largely on formerly secret materials from North Korea's Cold War allies in Eastern Europe, this paper suggests that Pyongyang's "aberrent" behavior long pre-dates the 1990s. It argues that North Korea has exhibited more continuity than change in the way it has dealt with the outside world over the last several decades, focusing on three areas of foreign policy: economic extraction, political non-alignment, and the development of an independent nuclear weapons capability.

Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. In the fall semester of 2008 he was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.

A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong is the author or editor of several books, including The Koreas (Routledge, 2007), The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell, 2003), Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State (Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.  His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia.

Professor Armstrong holds a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 1996.

Two images tend to dominate conceptions of the modern Cambodian experience.  Angkor represents heaven, referring to the magnificent temples that capture Cambodia's past glory and future aspirations.  Angkar represents hell, referring to the merciless Khmer Rouge organization that littered the countryside with corpses in the late 1970s.  In many respects, contemporary Cambodian life can be seen as a difficult journey from Angkar toward Angkor.

This panel will discuss challenges that Cambodians face as they seek to move from a dark modern past to a brighter future.  It will address a number of critical questions.  The panel will begin by putting Cambodia's transition in modern historical context.  How have the country's politics and society evolved since the demise of the Pol Pot regime thirty years ago?  How did the Khmer Rouge tribunal take shape, and why has that forum been the subject of such intense political contestation?  The panel will then shift to an analysis of the present day.  How are Cambodians coming to terms with the country's tragic history on personal and societal levels?  What are their views on the adequacy and effectiveness of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in advancing justice, human rights, and other ends? Lastly, the panel will focus on problems beyond the Khmer Rouge legacy.  What are the principal contemporary barriers to democracy and development under the Hun Sen government?  What are the keys to overcoming those obstacles?

About the Panelists
Joel Brinkley assumed his post at Stanford in 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times, where he was a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent.  He has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other reporting and writing awards.  He writes a nationally syndicated weekly op-ed column on foreign policy and has reported from over 50 foreign countries.  He has a long-standing interest in Cambodia, which is the subject of his latest book.

Seth Mydans (2009 Shorenstein Journalism Award recipient) Since taking up his post as the New York Times Southeast Asian correspondent in 1996 he has covered the fall of Suharto and rise of democracy in Indonesia; the death of Pol Pot, the demise of the Khmer Rouge and the trauma and slow rebirth of Cambodia; repeated attempts at People Power in the Philippines; the idiosyncracies of Singapore and Malaysia; the long-running political crisis in Thailand and the seemingly endless troubles of Myanmar.

John Ciorciari is a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and was a 2007-08 Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He is also Senior Legal Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent institute dedicated to promoting memory and justice with respect to the abuses of the Khmer Rouge regime.

IT firms in Silicon Valley access talent globally, recruiting from colleges abroad and recruiting firms, and personnel transfers from overseas affiliates. Another strategy is to open offshore operations--though this restricts access to a few locations, in countries with large labor pools this may spur innovation, while providing access to domestic markets.

The conference, the fourth in the annual Globalization of Services series, will explore SV firms' assessment of foreign education and experience, the career paths of foreign engineers, and the impact on firms' capacity for scale and innovation. The intent is to understand whether selecting from a global labor force enables US employers to select just the "best" worker or is motivated by other considerations. The conference is limited to 40 persons, including panelists.

Presentations may be downloaded below.

Parking Information

final Agenda

Parking Information:

The conference is being held in the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall, located at 616 Serra Street on the Stanford University campus.

Attendees should parking in visitor parking. Parking on campus, particularly near Encina Hall, is extremely limited due to recent construction. Attendees should give themselves plenty of time to find a parking spot.

Visitor parking is either at meters with coins or at the "pay and display" machines. Please note that if you park at a meter that take coins you will need $12 in quarters for a full day.

Here are the locations of visitor parking, in order of increasing distance from Encina Hall. Please refer to the visitor parking map for info:

1. Directly in front of Encina Hall (coins only)
    
2. Directly across the street from Encina Hall (coins only)
    
3. On Memorial Way just off Galvez, south of the Alumni Center (machines)
    
4. At the Track House lot, Galvez and Campus Drive East
    
5. In Parking Structure 6, on the southeast corner of campus around Campus Drive East and Wilbur Lane. This is your best bet for a spot but is 5-10 minutes from Encina Hall.

This conference is the 4th annual "Globalization of Services" conference, generously supported by the Sloan Foundation.

Image

Image

Image