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.

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.

What is the role of apologies in international reconciliation? Jennifer Lind finds that while denying or glorifying past violence is indeed inimical to reconciliation, apologies that prove to be domestically polarizing may be diplomatically counterproductive.  Moreover, apologies were not necessary in many cases of successful reconciliation.  What then is the relationship between historical memory and international reconciliation?

Jennifer Lind is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government, Dartmouth College. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master's in Pacific International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has also authored scholarly articles in International Security and Security Studies, and has written for wider audiences within the Atlantic and Foreign Policy. Professor Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense, and has lived and worked in Japan. Her current research interests include the resilience of the North Korean regime, planning for U.S. military missions in the event of North Korean collapse, energy competition and its security implications for East Asia, and democratization and stability in East Asia.

The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Financial globalization means that most countries and regions are not immune to the contagious effects of a financial crisis that originates in one country.

East Asian countries had already experienced the contagious effects of a financial crisis in 1997. That year, a financial crisis that broke out in Thailand and Indonesia reached Malaysia and then South Korea. Each of these countries reacted differently to the crisis. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand accepted International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities that required neoliberal economic restructuring in return for emergency loans, while Malaysia rejected the IMF offer and instead encouraged the inflow of speculative financial capital, while reforming the banking and financial system. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis, regional economic, financial and security cooperation were discussed among East Asian countries. These efforts resulted in the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Bond Initiative, the East Asian Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Six Party Talks.

Thus, regionalism in East Asia was revived in response to external shocks, such as global financial volatility, endogenous opportunities such as East Asian market compatibility (Pempel, 2008), endogenous security threats such as the North Korean nuclear development, and exogenous opportunities such as "bringing in the U.S." (Pempel, 2008).

Nonetheless, East Asian regionalism is still at a low level of institutionalization compared to Europe. East Asian regionalism is still basically "bottom-up, corporate (market)-driven regionalism" (Pempel, 2005). 

I will discuss the obstacles and the opportunities that Northeast Asian countries are facing since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization.

Hyug Baeg Im is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Dean at the Graduate School of Policy Studies and Director at Institute for Peace Studies. He received B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He was visiting professor at Georgetown University (1995-1996), Duke University (1997), Stanford University (2002-2003) and visiting fellow at International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC (1995-1996). He served as a presidential adviser of both Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidency. His current research focuses on the impact of IT revolution and globalization on Korean democracy. His publications include “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1987), “South Korean Democratic Consolidation in Comparative Perspective” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “’Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan: Myth and Reality,” (co-authored with Kim, Byung Kook) Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), “Faltering Democratic Consolidation in South Korea: Democracy at the End of Three Kims Era” Democratization, Vol. 11, No. 5(2004), “Christian Churches and Democratization in South Korea” in Tun-jen Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (eds.), Religious Organizations and Democratization: Comparative Case Studies in Contemporary Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) and “The US Role in Korean Democracy and Security since Cold War Era,” International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol. 6, No.2 (2006).