Before 1947, South Asia was for the most part a single state. Multiple states emerged thereafter, and then moved apart politically, culturally, and economically. The resulting interstate tensions are manifest in the countless "negative lists"-items that may not be traded, tariffs that must be paid, transport lines that cannot be crossed-that govern these nations' daily interactions. Intermittent armed conflict in the region only intensifies feelings of distrust.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, interstate relations can be characterized by mutual wariness and circumspection. Failures in development and security cooperation have hurt South Asia, which contains two declared nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Crossborder human trafficking and terrorism are increasing. Regional trade represents a paltry 5 percent of total trade. Globally, regional integration and prominent regional institutions-such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-are gaining ground, but South Asia lags behind. It is almost as if South Asia, as a region, does not exist.

Given that South Asia contains India, one of the world's most dynamic, democratic economies, this is an anomaly. As shown in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, a "powerhouse" state can be the best guarantor of regional stability and integration. India's recent rise has prompted in some progress in regionalism, but it has been modest to date.
More can and must be done to understand regionalism's drivers, benefits, and barriers. Using a comparative perspective, this lively and broad-based volume draws on theories of trade, security, great-power influence, and domestic political theory to examine the prospects for South Asian regionalism. Does South Asia Exist? devotes particular attention to India, the largest power in the region, and analyzes the extent to which it enhances or blocks greater regional integration. As the distinguished contributors reveal with piercing honesty, the question at the heart of this provocative book defies easy answers.

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Few regions rival the Korean Peninsula in strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy. For half a century, America has stationed tens of thousands of troops in South Korea to defend its ally from the threat of North Korean aggression. South Korea, in turn, is critical to the defense of Japan, another ally and the linchpin of American interests in East Asia. The rise of a nuclear-armed North has upped the ante.

Yet despite the stakes, the two Koreas have registered only episodically on the radar of the United States. The troubling gap between American perceptions of the peninsula and its strategic importance remained an unexplored phenomenon until now. First Drafts of Korea breaks new ground in examining how the American mass media shape U.S. perceptions of both Koreas and, as a result, influence U.S. foreign policy.

Beginning with a detailed analysis of American newspaper coverage of Korea between 1992 and 2003, the book features essays by Western journalists and senior U.S. officials with firsthand experience on the peninsula over the past two decades. These include frank accounts of the unique frustrations of covering Kim Jong-il's North Korea, undoubtedly the most closed and media-unfriendly nation on earth.

Addressing topics ranging from the democratization of South Korea in the 1980s to today's deteriorating nuclear crisis, the book's distinguished contributors offer unique insights into American media coverage of the peninsula and its impact on policymaking in Washington. What emerges is a complex, shifting portrait of two rival nations sharing one peninsula whose future remains inextricably linked to the global security interests of the United States.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally and at the same time deeply rooted in local culture. Prescribing Cultures examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific.

The first section of this timely book analyzes pharmaceutical policy in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India. The second section focuses on two cross-cutting themes: differences in "prescribing cultures" and physician dispensing; and the challenge of balancing access to drugs with incentives for innovation.

The book's contributors discuss important issues for U.S. policy. These include such hot-button topics as drug imports from Asia, regulation of global supply chains to assure drug safety and quality, new legislation to encourage development of drugs for neglected diseases, and the impact that decisions about pricing, regulation, and bilateral trade agreements have on access to medicines at home and abroad. In Prescribing Cultures, pharmaceutical policy reveals the economic trade-offs, political compromises, and historical trajectories that shape health systems.

Prescribing Cultures also illustrates how cultural legacies shape and are shaped by the forces of globalization, and thus will be of interest to students and scholars well beyond the confines of health policy.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press. 

Hard Choices offers a most rewarding perspective on how Southeast Asian states straddle the ongoing tensions among three rarely compatible goals—security, democracy, and regionalism. Empirically rich and topically diverse, [the book] is broad in scope and full of deep analytic insights. It will be appreciated well beyond Southeast Asia." — T. J. PEMPEL, University of California, Berkeley

Southeast Asia faces hard choices. The region’s most powerful organization, ASEAN, is being challenged to ensure security and encourage democracy while simultaneously reinventing itself as a model of Asian regionalism.

Should ASEAN’s leaders defend a member country’s citizens against state predation for the sake of justice—and risk splitting ASEAN itself? Or should regional leaders privilege state security over human security for the sake of order—and risk being known as a dictators’ club? Should ASEAN isolate or tolerate the junta in Myanmar? Is democracy a requisite to security, or is it the other way around? How can democratization become a regional project without first transforming the Association into a “people centered” organization? But how can ASEAN reinvent itself along such lines if its member states are not already democratic?

How will its new Charter affect ASEAN’s ability to make these hard choices? How is regionalism being challenged by transnational crime, infectious disease, and other border-jumping threats to human security in Southeast Asia? Why have regional leaders failed to stop the perennial regional “haze” from brush fires in democratic Indonesia? Does democracy help or hinder nuclear energy security in the region?

In this timely book—the second of a three-book series focused on Asian regionalism—ten analysts from six countries address these and other pressing questions that Southeast Asia faces in the twenty-first century.

Recent Praise for Hard Choices

“In this delightful volume, a diverse, fresh, and talented group of authors shed new light on Southeast Asia and speak engagingly to wider scholarly questions.  Emmerson's introduction sets the tone for an unusually creative edited collection.”
 —Andrew MacIntyre, Australian National University
“In Hard Choices, Donald Emmerson has brought together a remarkable group of leading young scholars to write on Southeast Asian regionalism from political-security, economic, and sociological perspectives. His introductory chapter defines the dimensions of regionalism on which the other contributors elaborate in a series of fine essays examining ASEAN’s past, present, and alternative futures. Hard Choices is a landmark study that will be consulted for years to come by scholars and practitioners. Highly recommended.”
—Sheldon Simon, Arizona State University

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Will China come to dominate global high-tech innovation?

In the future, perhaps. Today, however, Greater China—Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—is focused on the quest for innovation. The dominant paradigm on the Mainland is one of execution, not innovation. Beijing now aims to turn China—historically an adopter of technologies from elsewhere—into a major technology creator. Self-reliance has become the government’s watchword and its ultimate goal.

The talents and resources available are impressive. More Chinese young people are well-educated, international patents and research and development (R&D) spending are on the rise, and China boasts a growing presence in world scientific literature.

Still, negatives remain. China must overcome the legacies of a top-down, state-run research system that is largely disconnected from commerce, and an academic system not always supportive of independent scholarly inquiry. The government is working to change these outdated institutions, but such shifts do not occur overnight.

Taiwan and Hong Kong have followed different paths to high-tech innovation. Taiwan’s route has been dominated by government but implemented by mostly small- and medium-sized firms, with help from its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a model for moving concepts to commerce. Significantly, Taiwan’s companies maintain strong links to multinational firms both in the United States and in Mainland China. Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science-based Park is seen as a model high-tech cluster throughout Asia and beyond.

Hong Kong has taken another road. While its formal R&D activity is small, it innovates in business models, particularly in logistics chains that reach into the Mainland and globally. It is a (largely unheralded) story of great success.

The big question is: When will Greater China’s high-tech innovation have a major impact on the world economy?

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and beyond in East Asia. The essays in this volume assess current interactions -- or cross currents -- between national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, and suggest their future direction.

Cross Currents features provocative, plain-spoken contributions from a range of eminent international scholars and practitioners. They address key questions facing the region today: What competing visions of regional integration are being considered in Northeast Asia? Will they be realized? How do national pressures, especially the renewed China-Japan rivalry, stunt the movement toward regionalism? What role can Korea play to mitigate tensions between the two archrivals? How does the United States figure in Northeast Asian regionalism? Do America's Cold War alliances still have currency?

By addressing these questions from both Asian and U.S. perspectives, Cross Currents sheds new light on the interplay of national and regional forces in this strategic part of the world. Reformulating these interactions constructively is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.

Downloads: List of contributors | Introduction by Gi-Wook Shin | The United States and Northeast Asia, by Daniel Sneider

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.  

Throughout history, nations have waged war against epidemics, from bubonic plague to pulmonary tuberculosis. Today, we confront HIV/AIDS, SARS, and avian influenza, among other major infectious diseases. The failure to contain HIV/AIDS, the longest contemporary pandemic, and the difficulties in dealing with the threat posed by avian influenza, show that the world is not well prepared for the next health crises. Because preventing and controlling these infectious diseases is a race against time, scientists around the world scrutinize viruses and bacteria more intently than ever. Yet while scientific advances are crucial, they are insufficient.

This timely book addresses the urgent need to study the governance of infectious disease epidemics, and argues that the battle must be fought on two fronts, simultaneously. The first is within the laboratory; the second is located in a wider social context that involves ordinary individuals, groups, communities, legislators, and the state. Research by medical sociologists and other social scientists indicates that many factors influence people's behavior and, in turn, the level of success in preventing and containing an infectious disease epidemic.

Using Asia as a case study, Crisis Preparedness discusses the inadequacies of current preventive and management approaches to deal with epidemics. The distinguished international contributors to this volume present perspectives from the fields of social science, epidemiology, and public health, and collectively seek to answer the pressing question: How can we prepare for the next global epidemic?

About the Editor: Stella R. Quah is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. She is on the advisory boards of the British Journal of Sociology, Health Sociology Review, and Asian Population Studies. She also serves as editor of the Health Systems Section, Encyclopedia of Public Health (Elsevier).

This title is now out of print. You may download individual chapters below:

Front matter and preface (includes chapter 1) 

1. Governance of Epidemics: Is There a Reason for Concern? (Stella R. Quah)
2. The Global Governance of Epidemics: Possibilities and Limitations (Jim Whitman)
3. Responding to Epidemic Disease Threats in Burma and Lessons for China: Why Good Governance Matters (Chris Beyrer)
4. Global and Local Strategies against HIV/AIDS in South and Southeast Asia: The Cases of India and Thailand (Graham Scambler)
5. Taming the Tiger: The Success and Failure of HIV/AIDS Policies in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China (Kari Hartwig)
6. On Trust and Health Consensus-building in the Governance of Epidemics (Stella R. Quah)
7. Global Public Health Research Preparedness against Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases (Gabriel M. Leung)

Since the mid-1990s, China, Japan, and Korea have come under severe pressure to restructure and reform their economic systems. Indeed, across East Asia, governments are attempting to address their structural problems with a variety of reform programs. It is still too early to declare the triumph of financial globalization, and East Asian financial and corporate systems continue to fall short of global standards in structure and performance. Yet now that the reform process has been under way for more than five years, old models have been discarded and new patterns are emerging.

This book identifies and accounts for empirical regularities across East Asian countries and sectors, which previous studies have left largely unexplained. In general, the distinguished contributors to this collection conclude that the interaction between financial globalization and domestic politics is the key to unlocking the reform process. In particular, the authors address issues important to the study of East Asian political economies—their receptivity to financial globalization, their financial integration, the convergence or divergence of their economic institutions, and the impact that their institutional transformations will have on national competitive advantage and the global economic system.

This title is out of print. Download PDFs below.

1. Front matter/ Financial Globalization and East Asian Capitalism: An Overview (Jongryn Mo and Daniel I. Okimoto)
2. The Politics of Reform in Japanese Finance: Assessing the Relative Influence of Foreign Investors (Jennifer Amyx)
3. Policymaking in the Era of Financial Globalization: The Battle for Japanese Corporate Reforms, 1996–2002 (Yves Tiberghien)
4. Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity: The Political Economy of Korea’s Financial Sector Reform (Wonhyuk Lim and Joon-Ho Hahm)
5. East Asian Capital Flows: Political Networks, Liberalization, and Crises (A. Maria Toyoda)

Ten years ago, in the summer of 1995, it was fashionable in Washington and Seoul to predict the imminent collapse of North Korea's political and economic systems, and even the state itself. While clearly an errant forecast, it is easy to see why pundits and analysts thought as they did. Kim Il-Sung had died. Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-Il, was failing to lead just as the country suffered a massive agricultural failure. A nuclear-weapons dispute with the United States had forced a costly full-scale mobilization of the country's million-man army. It was likewise clear that North Korea's industry had shut down; night imagery of the peninsula showed, quite literally, that the lights were out in North Korea.

Ten years on, this volume aims to rectify misconceptions and increase collective understanding about North Korea. It is intended to present a snapshot of what is happening in North Korea now -- economically, politically, and socially. To be sure, much of the country remains in shadow, and there is much we still do not know. Moreover, issues of North Korean nonproliferation are so often binary that compromise becomes difficult, if not impossible.

The distinguished contributors -- specialists in politics, economics, human rights, and security -- advocate a subtler, more multidimensional approach to the North Korea problem. Offering cautionary perspective on this poorly understood place, they highlight recent positive developments and suggest solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Most attest that economics, commerce, and integration -- all arenas in which slow progress is being made -- may be the most powerful forces for change on the Korean peninsula. This timely book encourages thoughtful, pragmatic discussion about North Korea and seeks to light the road ahead, for the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

(This book is now out of print. You may download the full text here.)