In the space of ten short years, Germany and Japan have gone from paragons of economic success to models of political paralysis. In both countries, reformers call for a decisive move toward the liberal market model, yet find themselves frustrated with their governments' inability to act. This deadlock reflects the normal operation of German and Japanese democracy, and not its failure, for Germany and Japan are fundamentally divided over the merits of the proposed liberal reforms. As a result, Germany and Japan proceed with reforms slowly and cautiously, they package delicate compromises, and they design reforms to preserve the core institutions of their respective economic models as much as possible. Steven K. Vogel is Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. His book, Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (Cornell University Press, 1996), won the 1998 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. He has written extensively on Japanese politics, industrial policy, trade and defense policy. He has taught previously at the University of California, Irvine and Harvard University. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Berkeley.

What will "post-developmental" Japan look like? In contrast to the view that Japan's political economy will converge with the U.S. system, Schaede argues that Japan is characterized by a system of cooperative capitalism. One feature of this system is the dominant role played by industry associations, which have increasingly assumed regulatory functions in the 1980s and 1990s. With the decline in ministerial power to guide industrial development, this self-regulation by industry is becoming a critical factor in understanding the workings of Japan's political economy. Ulrike Schaede is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego. She has a Ph.D. from Marburg University (Germany) in Japanese Studies, and has held various visiting positions and research affiliations in Japan, including at Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo), the Bank of Japan, MITI, and the Ministry of Finance. Prior to joining IR/PS, Schaede taught at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She specializes in Japanese government-business relations and business regulation in Japan, and Japan's financial markets.

This presentation will focus on the effects of the economic crisis on poverty in Southeast Asia illustrated by a case study of Indonesia. Particular attention will be paid to the government responses with social safety net programs and how these responses have been influenced by government perceptions of the role of rural-urban dynamics and the urban informal sector. This presentation is based upon research carried out over the last sixteen months in Indonesia. The final part of the talk deals with the issue of inserting social policy into development plans in the period of economic recovery in Indonesia. Terry Mc Gee has spent more than 40 years carrying out research in Southeast Asia. He has held appointments at the University of Malaysia, University of Hong Kong and the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australia National University (Canberra), as well as UBC since l978. He is the author of The Southeast Asian City (l967), Essays on Third World Urbanization ( l971) and co-editor of The Extended Metropolis in Asia (l991) and Mega-Urban Regions in Southeast Asia (l995) he has acted as a consultant for UNDP and CIDA on urban policy in Asia.

In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.

Prof. Panikkar will address the relationship of history to issues of power, politics, and censorship in the context of the recent controversy involving the withdrawal of two volumes on modern history by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR).

Prof. K. N. Panikkar teaches at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the Chairman of the Archives on Contemporary History and formerly the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, JNU. He is associated with several universities and institutions in India and abroad. He has been the President of the Modern History Section of the Indian History Congress and a member of the Indian Council for Social Science Research and the Indian Council for Historical Research. He has also been a member of several academic and research organizations and a visiting professor to universities abroad.

Prof. Panikkar's main area of current research is intellectual-cultural history of modern Indian on which he has written extensively. His publications include, Culture, Ideology and Hegemony--Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India; Culture and Consciousness in Modern India; Against Lord and State--Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar; Communal Threat, Secular Challenge and British Diplomacy in North India. Among the books he has edited the latest is The Concerned Indian's Guide to Communalism.