APARC is pleased to announce the appointment of political scientist Dr. Diana Stanescu and doctoral candidate in sociology Mary-Collier Wilks as our 2021-22 Shorenstein postdoctoral fellows on contemporary Asia. They will begin their appointments at Stanford in autumn 2021.

The Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Asia supports recent doctoral graduates dedicated to research and writing on contemporary Asia, primarily in the areas of political, economic, or social change in the Asia-Pacific, or international relations in the region.

Fellows develop their dissertations and other projects for publication, present their research, and participate in the intellectual life of APARC and Stanford at large. Our postdoctoral fellows often continue their careers at top universities and research organizations around the world and remain involved with research and publication activities at APARC.

Meet our new postdoctoral scholars:

Diana Stanescu

Research Project: Do Bureaucratic Networks Matter for Market Access? The Effect of Informal Connections on Trade and FDI of Japanese Firms.

Image

Dr. Stanescu’s research interests include international trade, regulation, and lobbying with a focus on Japan. Using formal and quantitative methods, her research addresses the overarching question of how bureaucracies shape global economic governance, from a structural and agent-driven perspective. Her dissertation, “The Bureaucratic Politics of Foreign Economic Policymaking,” explains the mechanisms by which stakeholders shape international economic policy through bureaucratic channels of influence. Additional work looks at the micro-foundations of bureaucratic structure and its consequences for policy, examines the role of individual bureaucrats within domestic and international institutions, and develops micro-level data on bureaucratic careers and appointments.

At APARC, Stanescu will further assess how politicians and interest group representatives maneuver within bureaucratic channels to have influence over foreign economic policy. In particular, she will examine how bureaucratic-interest group networks help firms obtain market access abroad, with evidence from trade and foreign direct investment in Japan.

Mary-Collier Wilks

Research project: How do conceptions of gender, sexuality, and women’s advancement shape the construction of development knowledge and foreign aid?

Image

It was Wilk’s work as a grant writer at a local NGO, Social Services of Cambodia, that first sparked her interests in globalization, gender, and the politics of international development. Having seen how resources and ideas from all over the world flow through NGOs to affect the lives of people in Cambodia, she began thinking about the complicated process of foreign aid and international development. She also gained experience as a consultant in the development sector, performing a gender analysis for a USAID health project and serving as a trainer for a USAID Women’s Leadership Conference.

For her dissertation, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright IIE, Wilks conducted a multi-sited ethnography comparing U.S. and Japanese international NGOs that advance women's health in Cambodia. Her work contributes to scholarly theories of global civil society and international development, contending that to adequately analyze and improve development outcomes, we must attend to national variation in international NGO programs and practices.

At APARC, Wilks will transform her dissertation manuscript into a book and extend her comparative research agenda to investigate how NGO practices are shaped by the business cultures in which their donors are embedded.

[Sign up for APARC newsletters to receive the latest updates from our experts.]

Introducing the new book, Lawrence H. Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at the Kennedy School, called the co-authors’ analysis of collaborative governance “micro microeconomics” that shows how particular tasks and particular commitments of resources, once decided on, are going to be best accomplished. This work, Summers noted, sheds light on situations involving both cooperation and competition — aspects that affect almost any complex problem yet are rarely considered by economists.

A key element of collaborative governance, noted Zeckhauser, is the sharing of discretion. Rather than contracting at one pole and complete laissez-faire at the opposite pole, in a collaborative governance process, the two parties involved play a role in determining what is produced and how it is produced. It is a process that calls on the best capabilities of both the private and public sectors and that grants each of them an element of control. Sometimes that process results in triumphs, sometimes in tragedies, and other times in outcomes that are “in-between.” The book analyses cases of this entire gamut. “We hope that this volume provides guidance on how the triumphs can become more common, the tragedies more scarce, and the in-between outcomes improved,” said Zeckhauser.

Collaborative Governance in the Time of COVID-19

The unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic provides dramatic current illustrations of collaborative governance. The urgent need for an effective vaccine created the conditions for a successful partnership between the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical sector, with the former offering both regulatory processes and significant financing, the latter its innovation. Consider the Moderna vaccine, which, based on evidence from clinical trials, is over 90% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness. The vaccine was created within less than a year using a new approach, based on Messenger RNA technology, by a company that had never before produced a commercial product. “This is a triumph of collaborative governance,” said Zeckhauser.

The vaccine distribution process in the United States, however, has proved to be challenging and chaotic. Zeckhauser contrasted this experience with China’s activation of technology giant Tencent, which is using its ubiquitous WeChat application to allow individuals to easily find where the vaccine is distributed and sign up for vaccination appointments. “There is probably a lesson here in the way these two outcomes came about. We hope that individuals in both China and the United States will examine the lessons in this volume to see how they can achieve outcomes for their citizens that produce public benefits more effectively.”

A Spectrum of Policy Domains

The book details how China and the United States grapple with the complexity of producing the goods and services they need to meet a broad array of public goals. Eggleston surveyed the five broad policy domains she and her co-authors examine in the book through detailed historical legacies and case studies of the application of collaborative governance in both countries.

These domains include the railroads that build the nation historically in both countries and China’s high-speed rail network; real estate's intricate tangle of public and private partnerships; hosting the Olympic Games and the experience of the public and private sectors in that endeavor in both countries; education provision; and state and market in population health and health care in both countries. The book spotlights the different ways in which both countries produce public goods and services in these broad policy domains.

East and West

Professor Yijia Jing of Fudan University, an expert on privatization, governance, and collaborative service delivery, participated in the discussion with the book co-authors and shared insights on public-private relationships in China. Collaborative governance in the country, he said, has undergone a gradual process of institutionalization. He observed that Chinese local governments apply different strategies in collaborating with private companies. For example, local governments like Guangdong and Shanghai partner in different ways with digital giants Tencent and Alibaba to build up their digital capacities — collaborations through which they have been learning how to balance their multiple roles as partners, policymakers, and market regulators.

Jing noted that China uses collaborative governance not only in domestic arenas but also in areas of international development, through entities such as the BRICS Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China is also promoting collaborative governance as part of its Belt and Road initiative.

A Call for Transparency

The Dragon, the Eagle, and the Private Sector helps decision-makers apply the principles of collaborative governance to effectively serve the public. The book's overarching conclusion is that transparency is the key to the legitimate growth of collaborative governance. In the United States, said Donahue, the principle of governmental transparency is widely accepted as a broad-spectrum accountability device. He recognized that he and his co-authors do not expect China to adopt the U.S. approach to transparency, but expressed their hope to see more transparency “with Chinese characteristics.” “It is crucial for China to embrace the transparency imperative because the evil twin of collaborative governance is cronyism or corruption,” Donahue argued.

In many countries and policy arenas, collaborative governance could effectively increase innovation but is not available because the populace is convinced that any interaction between the public and private sectors amounts to corruption on the part of elites against the public interest. The potential in China to create public value through interaction between its public and private sectors is enormous, concluded Donahue. ”It would be a shame to squander that.”

[Subscribe to our newsletters to stay informed on research happening at APARC.]

Oliver Hart and the ‘Proper Scope of Government’

Hart’s seminal economic theory, ‘The Proper Scope of Government,” underpins much of the research into public-private partnerships in healthcare. Hart developed this touchstone framework jointly with Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny to better evaluate when a government should provide a service itself and when it should contract with a private provider for support and execution of services.

The model outlined in Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny’s original 1996 working paper is designed to help providers and contractors consider the costs and benefits of a proposed contractual service agreement. While this model was originally applied to the case of prison privatization, the framework has served as an invaluable tool for researchers in multiple sectors including health policy and provision.

Reflections and Updates to the Theory

In reflecting on ‘The Proper Scope of Government,’ there are things Hart would like to see more fully incorporated into the theory to enrich its real-world applicability. Chiefly among these is better accounting for contractual incompleteness or the reality that a contract cannot anticipate and outline every possible unforeseen event or area of ambiguity. However, modeling contractual incompleteness is notoriously difficult given the almost-limitless factors of variability.

Some of Hart’s recent work on guiding principles responds to this challenge. Rather than trying to predict every aspect of a contractual relationship within the framing and language of a standard contract model, Hart argues that mutually agreed-upon guiding principles —such as equity, loyalty, and honesty — can serve as a foundation for navigating inevitable areas of ambiguity and potential conflict that a contract does not specifically state or that the original theory does not fully account for.

These guiding principles also help preserve space for renegotiation and innovation, which are necessary in an era of rapid technological advances and explosion of measurable data. In this context, Hart cautions against the mentality of ‘more is more:’

“If you put more and more things into the contract and then something happens that wasn’t in the contract, the fact that you put so much more in may make it more difficult to negotiate about the thing that you didn’t put in.”

 Applying ‘The Proper Scope of Government’

Hart shared a prime example of his theory at work in health systems in a case study of the Vancouver Island Health Authority. Traditionally, family physicians would continue as the primary care provider for their patients even if a patient needed hospitalization. But a change of law in 2006 required all specialized in-hospital care be contracted to hospitalists with little to no crossover with care provided by family practice physicians.

The result was a rise in caseload and stress levels amongst hospital specialists and repeated failed negotiations of the standard contract. The addition of guiding principles to the contract, however, provided avenues where reasonable solutions and additional communications could happen beyond the limits of the formal contract.

This is just one case of innumerable where Hart’s work has helped inform and contextualize how policymakers consider relationships between the public and private spheres of healthcare. Responding to the praise and input from fellow economists presented in a tribute documentary to the impact of his framework, Hart remarked:

“I hadn't realized how many people have been influenced by this paper and how they've been using it in different contexts. I knew some of the applications, but there were others I didn't, and it’s been truly amazing to see that.”

Looking Toward the Future

The tradeoffs between public and private partnerships in healthcare systems across the world will continue to be a dynamic and evolving area of research that will rely on theories such as ‘The Proper Scope of Government’ for framing and application. Looking towards the future, Hart was hopeful but cautious about the vitality of the kind of theoretical tradition which allowed for the development of his original theory. He recognizes that specialties such as contract theory and contractual incompleteness are inherently “messy” and somewhat out of vogue with current trends in economics which tend to favor theories that are “impressive, clever, and non-obvious,” regardless of whether they address important questions.

As he iterated in his Nobel Prize lecture, the incomplete world of contracts nonetheless “underlies numerous significant phenomena, some of which have great policy relevance,” and therefore fully deserving of upcoming economists’ time and efforts.

Further Research into Public-Private Partnerships

The Asia Health Policy Program’s 2020-21 colloquium series focuses on the roles and impacts of public-private partnerships in healthcare and the tradeoffs in equity, accessibility, and cost that come with contracted agreements in health systems. All of the events from the colloquium series are available on our YouTube channel. Click the thumbnails below to start exploring.

Collaborative governance — that is, relationships involving both the private and public sectors in the pursuit of public value — is part of ongoing research by Karen Eggleston. Her forthcoming book, The Dragon, the Eagle, and the Private Sector (Cambridge University Press), co-authored with Harvard’s John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser, examines the ways in which collaborative governance works across a wide range of policy arenas in China and the United States, with the goal of empowering public decisionmakers to more wisely engage the private sector. Join us for the book launch event, which will be held jointly with the Harvard Kennedy School on March 5 

 

Image

This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson first appeared in The Jakarta Post.

Above all, Trump wanted to be a winner. History granted his wish. He is the first president in the 245-year life of his country to have been impeached twice. By that standard, he won the title of America’s Worst President (AWP)—worse than any of the 44 presidents who preceded him.

AWP rhymes with 'gawp,' and that’s what he also wanted: to be stared at, talked about, catered to, the center of fawning attention, unforgettably present, dominating the news, astride the world in which the news is made. He wanted applause. His ravenous insecurity—narcissism—inflated his ego to continental size. In effect, in his authoritarian imagination, the “extremely stable genius” that he called himself deserved to be the indispensable “me” in “America,” without which the country’s name and the country itself would crumble.

The roars and chants of Trump’s crowds slaked his thirst for veneration. But they imprisoned him in his “base.” By satisfying his craving to be idolized, they gave him no reason to convince the unimpressed. How much more gratifying it must have been for him to bask in mass flattery at rallies than to engage in the difficult business of persuading the uncommitted. That would have taken assets he lacked: empathy, knowledge, intelligence, and a willingness not to lie.

[Subscribe to APARC's newsletters to get regular updates on our scholars.]

So how could Americans have elected such a demagogue? Trump was corrupt but charismatic. He broke the rules. He said whatever was on his mind. He appealed to the streak of individualism in American culture. He ran his campaign and his presidency as a mass entertainment featuring a lone patriot fighting a “deep state” controlled by globalist elites. Especially in rural areas between Silicon Valley and the Boston-to-Washington corridor, millions of white Americans felt threatened by the transfer of jobs from physical toward mental labor in a computerized society whose racial make-up was increasingly non-white. Globalization fed those anxieties. Trump stoked them. He promised to end them and “make America great again.”

Joe Biden defeated Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College—respectively by 4.4 and 13.7 percent. Biden’s margins were narrower than one might have wished, given the blatant flaws in Trump’s character, including the 30,573 false or misleading claims that he made during his presidency as tracked and noted by The Washington Post . The egregiousness of his behavior is, however, a double testament to America’s democratic system: to its failure to select a less despicable leader, yes, but also to its success in providing the lawful framework within which his desperate effort to stage what in Latin America would be called an autogolpe or “self-coup” could be and was overcome.

On 1 February 2021, watching television at his 126-room estate in Palm Beach, Florida, ex-president Trump would have learned of the coup in Myanmar and might have envied Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Both men had been banned by Facebook for inciting violence in their respective countries—Trump in 2021, the general in 2018. Both had suffered defeats in elections held just five days apart in 2020—3 November in the US, 8 November in Myanmar. Both had rejected the voters’ verdict, claiming fraud. But whereas Trump’s frantic and deadly effort to subvert the US election and retain power failed, Min Aung Hlaing’s self-coup has succeeded, at least for now. The general quickly seized full power despite his party’s massive embarrassment at the polls in November, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party having won 83 percent of the available seats. In contrast, Trump could not reverse his exit from power despite a far slimmer margin of electoral defeat. To the extent that the ex-president was even aware of the difference, it could have fanned what angry envy of the general he may have felt.

Trump failed mainly due to the checks and balances that generally call government to account in America. Min Aung Hlaing succeeded in no small part thanks to the checks and balances in the bank accounts of the generals who have compromised Myanmar’s transition to democracy and helped make it the second most corrupted country in Southeast Asia (after Cambodia) as measured by the Corruption Perceptions Index.

Among the many reactions to the Burmese coup, several stand out for their courage and creativity. UN Secretary General António Guterres was unequivocal. "It's absolutely unacceptable,” he said, “to reverse the result of the elections and the will of the people.” Presumably speaking on behalf of the UN, its secretariat, or himself, or all three, he went further: "We'll do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors of the international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails." 

This notable response came from Indonesia’s former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa: “Deafening silence in the face of assaults against democratic principles [has] increasingly become the norm,” he said. He urged ASEAN to “demonstrate its relevance: It must speak urgently for the respect of constitutional process and rule of law in Myanmar, and call for the immediate release of those unlawfully detained.”

In the days immediately following the coup, ASEAN’s Bruneian secretary general said nothing about it, preferring to remain, in the Indonesian expression, “silent in a thousand tongues.” Speaking for ASEAN as its current chair, however, Brunei’s government did at least encourage a “return to normalcy in accordance with the will and interests of the people of Myanmar,” noting that the group charter’s called for adherence to “democracy, the rule of law” and “human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

As for ASEAN’s next chair, Cambodia, its strongman Hun Sen did speak, but only to say that "Cambodia does not comment on the internal affairs of any country at all.” Hun Sen’s restraint made historical sense. Had Cambodia’s old despot chosen to criticize Myanmar’s new despot, observers could have noted that Min Aung Hlaing had only done what Hun Sen himself had bloodily accomplished in 1997 by seizing full control over Cambodia in a self-coup of his own that had enabled him to become the longest-serving prime minister in the world.

Critical Southeast Asian voices, unconstrained by look-the-other-way diplomacy, have been heard. The chairman of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, Charles Santiago, has urged ASEAN to send a high-level delegation to Myanmar to tell Min Aung Hlaing that his coup “violates ASEAN principles and the ASEAN charter” and is “not acceptable.” “If Myanmar does not turn around,” he added, “there should be proceedings to expel Myanmar out of ASEAN.”

Who is better positioned to deal with this crisis than ASEAN’s largest and debatably least authoritarian member country? It was Indonesia’s Natalegawa who patched up ASEAN’s consensus after Hun Sen damaged it on China’s behalf in 2012. And it is Natalagewa who believes, with the Myanmar coup in mind, that “at this critical juncture for the region, Indonesia must demonstrate its leadership within ASEAN.”

Indonesia’s president Jokowi, rather than trying to rally the region against the coup, will likely continue to focus on domestic economic growth. Not to mention the existential priority that COVID-19 also warrants on his agenda.

So why not task Natalegawa with a damage-control trip around the region comparable the one he took with some success in 2012? He could start with fact-finding in Myanmar. He could then explore an intra-ASEAN understanding that would reassert the core democratic values in the ASEAN Charter while lessening, if possible, the chance that Myanmar will revert to entrenched and fully authoritarian rule. That may be a lost cause. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, America is still not safe from Trumpism. But America’s system—democracy—is working as it should. Is ASEAN really a dictators’ club? Or does it, too, when threatened from within, have a system that can at least manage and minimize the damage that is, in Myanmar as I write this, being done?

This article was originally written by Melissa De Witte on behalf of Stanford News.

As Monday’s coup in Myanmar demonstrates, democracy is often fragile and subject to setbacks, says former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar and Stanford visiting scholar, Scot Marciel.

Here, Marciel discusses how in a country like Myanmar (formerly Burma), which was under military rule from 1962 to 2011, establishing a democracy takes time. Despite democratic reforms over the past decade, the military in Myanmar has held onto a considerable amount of power, said Marciel, noting that it is difficult to build not only a representative parliament but other democratic institutions including an independent judicial system, a fair police force and a free press.

While Monday’s coup is a major setback in Myanmar’s fight for democracy, Marciel said that there are many people in the country who will do what they can to restore their elected government and build the foundations of democracy.

Marciel is a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education and engagement on contemporary Asia that is run under the auspices of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020. From 2010 to 2013, Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia.

[Subscribe to APARC's newsletters to get the latest updates from our scholars.]

What do people who have not spent extensive time studying or living in Myanmar need to know about its history to better understand Monday’s coup?

A couple of things. First, as historian Thant Myint-U has written, Myanmar is an unfinished nation, in the sense that the diverse communities that make up the country have never truly solidified as a unified nation. The country has been in near-constant conflict, mostly between the majority Bamar ethnic group and the many ethnic minority communities that inhabit much of Myanmar’s border areas. Second, the military staged a coup in 1962 and ran the country for nearly 50 years before allowing some movement toward representative democracy beginning in 2011-2012. So the military has long been a dominant force in the country, and – even after the reforms of the past decade – retained substantial power.

Is there anything that is often misunderstood about its history and its people?

In the West, many people have tended to view Myanmar mostly through the prism of a struggle for democracy between the military and the civilian opposition, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. That is a critically important part of the story, for sure. Perhaps equally important, however, has been the struggle of the many ethnic minority communities for equality, a degree of autonomy, and respect for their own histories, cultures and languages. This struggle has produced widespread conflict, significant human rights abuses, and large numbers of refugees and displaced people for decades.

What are some of the difficulties in establishing, and maintaining, democratic rule in a country like Myanmar?

First, persuading the military to give up power, depart from politics, and play a more appropriate role in the country. Second, it is very difficult to build the institutions of democracy, including not only parliament, but also a strong, independent judicial system, an effective and fair police force, and respect for the critical role of civil society and the independent media. In Myanmar, another essential aspect is to shift from historically centralized rule to a federal structure that would allow the various communities across the country to have more of a say in how they are governed.

As ambassador to Myanmar, what was it like working with not only the country’s policymakers but also its people? What did you learn from them about how democracy is established? And how did those experiences shape your perspective?

In Myanmar, I met so many people, all over the country, from many different walks of life, who had sacrificed and continued to sacrifice to try to build democracy and respect for human rights. Some operated at the national level, others at the local level. It was a good reminder that democracy isn’t just imposed from the top; it requires careful building at the community and state level, with intensive involvement by the various communities. It also takes time and, as we have seen this week, is often fragile and subject to setbacks. In other words, it is a long-term effort that requires persistence, courage, and participation by large numbers of people. Establishing a democracy is a lengthy, painstaking effort that can be upended, particularly if the armed forces are politicized and pursue their own agenda.

Is there anything else you would like to add? 

This week’s military takeover constitutes a major setback, but the story of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy is not over. Many people there will continue to do what they can to restore elected government and build, brick by brick, the foundations of democracy.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) has broadened its fellowship and funding opportunities to support Stanford students working in the area of contemporary Asia. The Center introduced these expanded offerings in response to the harsh impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student’s academic careers and their access to future jobs and valuable work experience, and in recognition of the critical need to make the field of Asian Studies more diverse and inclusive.

APARC’s diversity grant aims to encourage Stanford students from underrepresented minorities (URM) to engage in the study and research of topics related to contemporary Asia and U.S.-Asia relations, including economic, health, foreign policy, social, political, and security issues. The grant, which was first announced in June 2020, is now an ongoing offering. APARC will award a maximum of $10,000 per grant. Current  Stanford undergraduate and graduate students in the URM category from any major or discipline are eligible and encourage to apply.

APARC also invites Stanford Ph.D. candidates specializing in topics related to contemporary Asia to apply for its 2021-22 predoctoral fellowship. Up to three fellowships are available and the application deadline is May 1, 2021.

In addition, APARC continues to offer an expanded array of research assistant internships. The Center is currently seeking highly motivated Stanford undergraduate- and graduate-level students to join our team as paid research assistant interns for the spring and summer quarters of 2021. Applications for spring 2021 research assistant assignments are due on February 22, for summer 2021 assignments on March 8.