What makes some governments perform better than others? With rising levels of decentralization and local democracy, the focus of "good governance" is increasingly shifting from national to subnational levels. While much of the existing development literature remains preoccupied with formal institutional and society-centered explanations, there is growing evidence that local policy reforms are strongly affected by informal norms and elite-centered processes.

Post-Suharto Indonesia, a country with one of the most pronounced shifts to democratic decentralization anywhere in recent history, is a case in point. Drawing on empirical comparisons across ten districts (comprising 1000 business surveys and 150 interviews), Dr. von Luebke argues that societal pressures are often less significant in explaining policy differences than the quality of local government leadership. In the early transition to democracy, local firms, associations, and district councils continue to be constrained by collective action and political incentive problems. Local government leaders, on the other hand, have wielded historically strong formal and informal powers and stand, for better or worse, at the gateway to local policy reform. Motivated by direct elections and prospective donor funding, some district heads have become catalysts for better governance by introducing informal public-private dialogues, innovative monitoring instruments, and meritocratic promotion schemes. In response to current development debates, these findings highlight the importance of government leadership as an often underestimated policy determinant that can compensate for weak societal checks in periods of transition from authoritarian rule.

Christian von Luebke is completing a book manuscript titled “Heterodox Governance: The Political Economy of Local Policy Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia.”  He has been awarded a 2009-2011 German Science Foundation Fellowship for a follow-up project incorporating cases from the rest of Southeast Asia and China.  In 2001-2006 he worked in rural Indonesia as a technical advisor for the World Bank and the German Development Agency. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University.

A group of writers and academics in China in recent years have come to be known as the "New Left." But the range of views encompassed under this rubric is broad and seemingly contradictory. Many are critical of the inequality that has come from the market reforms; some seem to look fondly back on the Maoist system and even the Cultural Revolution, while others hold very different views, preferring to call themselves "critical intellectuals," who see a "Chinese alternative" to a neoliberal market economy. This panel will explore the range of views within this group loosely termed the "New Left," to understand what exactly the "New Left" is. How are these "New Left" views different from the Old Left? What are the implications of these views for China's political and economic reforms? Discussing these issues are Wang Hui, a central figure in the "New Left" in China, and David Kelly, a leading Western scholar on the subject.

Wang Hui is professor of Chinese language and literature at Tsinghua University and guest professor at Nankai University. In May 2008, he was named one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy magazine. His essays, commentary, and teaching examine the paradoxes of social change in modern and contemporary China. He was editor-in-chief of Dushu, China's leading intellectual journal.

David Kelly is Professor of Chinese Politics at the China Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney. Professor Kelly's work ranges widely across Chinese politics: intellectual history, especially of Marxism and liberalism; political sociology, mainly of intellectuals, urban homeowners and migrant workers; and public policy, focusing on the dilemmas of governance under turbulent current conditions.

Reckoning with the Past:  Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Asia

Is it possible to come to terms with the violent past and foster reconciliation with former foes, what are the obstacles and how can they be overcome? These are some of the questions we are asking in the "Divided Memories and Reconciliation" project. This colloquia will bring several scholars to Stanford to discuss the ‘history problem' in a series of lectures analyzing the ways in which past conflict has or has not been addressed and resolved in contemporary Asia. Examining issues of memory and forgetting, guilt and innocence, apology and restitution from diverse social science perspectives, our speakers investigate the handling of the violent past both within and between countries in contexts ranging from international diplomacy to the broadcast media to mass education.

In November of 2008, the head of the Japanese air self defense force, General Tamogami Toshio, resigned in a swirl of controversy over an essay he wrote entitled "Was Japan An Aggressor Nation?" The essay argued that Japan's seizure of Korea and of northern China was a legal act and that it had pursued a moderate policy of modernization in its colonial rule of Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria, superior to the colonial rule of the Western imperial  powers. General Tamogami also argued, in his published essay, that Japan's war with the United States was a result of being "ensnared in a trap that was carefully laid by the United States to draw Japan into a war." What is the story behind this controversial incident? What does it mean when a senior Japanese military officer holds such views of the wartime past? What are the implications of this for Japan's security relations with its neighbors and the United States?

In recent decades, nationalism has become a bad word among many liberal Western scholars, who have highlighted the political agendas and usages of nationalist discourse, frequently associating it with fascism, patriarchy, conservatism and protectionism. Unlike many Western countries in which right-wing groups have attempted to monopolize nationalism, in the Koreas, it has been associated primarily with the ‘left’: in South Korea, with anti-authoritarian democratic movements, and in North Korea, where nationalism has been one of the founding principles of the Communist Party. Dennis Hart argues, however, that there are multiple nationalisms on the Korean peninsula that cannot necessarily be subsumed under simple left-right rubric: some are more open and inclusive, some more grassroots-based and self-affirming, and others more aggressive, exclusive, state-driven, and exceptionalist. What both Koreas have shared in their respective official nationalist discourses, however, has been the state-led effort to show their citizens that they are the only legitimate representative of ‘true’ Korean identity, and that the other Korea is a pretender or puppet state. Needless to say, both sides have targeted history in their attempts to compete for hegemony over Korean nationalist discourse. In this lecture, Dennis Hart juxtaposes North and South Korean state narratives to show how the same historical moments and events are remembered (in other words, appropriated and mobilized) by each state in different ways. Also discussed are how people of North and South Korea respond to or protest against the state narratives of the nation, and how they struggle to articulate alternative memories and by extension alternative nationalisms.

Dennis Hart is the associate director of the Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and an affiliate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Washington. Professor Hart’s research and teaching interests include nationalism, culture and identity, and politics in North and South Korea.

He is currently working on a pair of book projects: Politics and Culture in North and South Korea, which will be published by Routledge Press, and Letters from the Empire, a collection of political essays.

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.

Professor Maclachlan is the author of Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Advocacy (NY: Columbia University Press, 2002), and a co-editor and contributing author to The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). She has also written several articles and book chapters on consumer-related issues in Japan and the West, Japanese civil society, and on Japanese postal reform. She is now completing a book on the history and politics of the Japanese postal system.