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.

The prevailing view in international relations that security alliances are inevitably sustained by mutually perceived threats can be challenged in the present post-Cold War context. It will be argued in this presentation that 'alliance mutuality' can better explain ongoing U.S. security ties with Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand than traditional explanations for alliance politics. Dr. William T. Tow has been teaching with the University of Queensland's Department of Government since 1991. He was previously an Assistant Professor with the University of Southern California's School of International Relations. He has authored or edited ten books and numerous working papers, journal articles and book chapters on East Asian security problems and is completing a book on this issue as it relates to the 'realist/liberal' debate in international relations. He is a member of the Australian Foreign Minister's Foreign Affairs Council, the Australian Members Board of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In 1995, he co-authored a major study on US security policies in Asia for the IISS and he has consulted for several government agencies in both the United States and Australia. He is a dual Australian/US citizen.

Before becoming the Governor of the Bank of Korea in 1995, Mr. Lee was Advisor for the Korea-Foreign Trade Association (1994) and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economic Planning Board (1993). He was also President of the Korea Gas Corporation (1991) and of Daewoo Motors Co. Ltd. (1988). In 1981, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota after having been the President of the Small and Medium Industry Promotion Corporation.

Scott explores themes of state-craft, sedentarization, etc. as part of a critique of state-making and development. In particular, he analyzes the paradoxes of attempts by states to create a fiscally and administratively legible property regime and population despite the economic and ecological imperatives of physical mobility. He elaborates the Southeast Asian variant of this historical argument. One of the great cleavages permeating Southeast Asian history and politics is the tension between hill and valley peoples, between downstream and upstream in insular Southeast Asia. Roughly, this corresponds to the social division between comparatively dense populations in valleys and 'downstream' who are often organized hierarchically into states, on the one hand, and more peripheral, dispersed, and mobile peoples who live in more egalitarian settings, on the other. These divisions are not merely of historical interest; they animate a good deal of the intra-state tension in contemporary Southeast Asia which has been understood in ethnic or religious terms.

Qian investigates decentralization and fiscal incentives in the central-provincial relationship during China's reform. He finds a strong correlation between local government revenue collection and local government expenditure and shows that the fiscal contracting system provides local governments with strong fiscal incentives. He also finds that stronger fiscal incentives in terms of higher marginal revenue retention rate implies faster development of non-state enterprises and more reform in state-owned enterprises. Federalism, Chinese style, is compared to federalism, Russian style. Born in Beijing, Yingyi Qian received his B.S. in applied mathematics from Tsinghua University, Beijing; his M.A. in statistics from Columbia University; his M.Phil. in management science from Yale University; and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Professor Qian's fields of research include the theory of organizations, comparative institutional analysis, economics of transition, and reform and development in China. He is the author and co-author of many papers, including "Federalism and the Soft Budget Constraints," "Understanding China's Township-Village Enterprises," "Financial System Reform in China: Lessons from Japan's Main-Bank System," and "Enterprise Reform in China: Agency Problems and Political Control."

Southeast Asia has been buffeted by several shocks and momentous events over the last two years, in particular the economic recession which started in July 1997; the return of Hong Kong to China; and political instability, particularly in Indonesia.

Increasingly, large, extended urban regions compete with each other in the Region and in the global economy. Furthermore, as a result of strong driving forces, including free trade, convergence in tax structures, and the "death of distance", Southeast Asian urban regions are less protected and influenced by nation states, and are thus highly vulnerable to unpredictable consequences of strong forces associated with globalization and co-evolving domestic change.

Dr. Webster will assess events of the last few years in terms of the dramatic re-positioning that has occurred among major urban regions in Southeast Asia - identifying winners and losers. His assessment will be based on consideration of both competitiveness and resilience - the two primary objectives, perhaps non-reconcilable, of most Southeast Asian urban regions.

Dr. Webster is currently a visiting scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. He has been Senior Urban Advisor to the National Planning Board, Prime Minister's Office, Thailand for the last five years. He is involved in formulation of strategies and policies related to urbanization in the context of rapid socio-economic change in Thailand. He is also full time advisor to the World Bank's Asia and Pacific Urban Unit. At the global level, he is involved in formulation of the World Bank's Global Urban Strategy, and the World Development Report 2000 which will focus on urbanization and decentralization.

Dr. Webster was formerly Director of the Urban Planning Program at the University of Calgary and Professor of Planning at the Asian Institute of Technology. He has advised a wide variety of governments, cities, corporations, and development agencies on urban policies and programming, particularly in Southeast Asia, over the last 25 years. He is the author of many academic and professional publications on urbanization and urban issues in Southeast Asia.

India is the fourth largest producer of carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. At current growth rates, its emissions will surpass those of the US today by 2022. India's carbon emissions growth can be slowed through improving energy efficiency, a better allocation of fossil fuels, and the increased use of renewable energy or natural gas. Many or most of these options are cost-effective from a societal perspective, but require additional capital and foreign exchange, both of which are issues of concern to India. The ongoing liberalization of the Indian economy, and the greater emphasis on controlling local air pollution bodes well for improving energy efficiency, which will slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Jayant Sathaye is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research subjects are energy and land use change in the developing countries. Over the past decade, the research has focused on the implications of these two factors on greenhouse gas emissions, and the potential for reducing these emissions. The research is supported by several US government agencies and private foundations. Dr. Sathaye also consults with several United Nations organizations, and the World Bank.

After a brief description of the legacy of the past of the Mongolian political system, the lecture then considers the influence of the Socialist era and finally focuses on the post-Socialist era, dealing with both the successes and failures of the so-called Democratic Union which currently rules the country. A brief analysis of Western and U.S. policy will also be included. Morris Rossabi, born in Alexandria, Egypt, received his Ph.D. in Chinese and Central Asian History at Columbia University. Author of Khublai Khan: His Life and Times (Main Selection, History Book Club, May, 1988), China and Inner Asia, The Jurchens in the Yuan and Ming, Voyager from Xanadu and editor and contributor to China Among Equals. Has also contributed three chapters to Cambridge History of China and numerous other books on traditional China and Inner Asia. He also wrote chapters for the catalogs for the following museum exhibitions: "Mongolia: The Legacy of Chinggis Khan" (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco), "When Silk Was Gold" (Metropolitan Museum of Art), and "Ilkhanid Art" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Professor Rossabi is Board member of the Project on Central Eurasia of the Soros Foundations and is currently conducting research for a book on modern Mongolia at the Asia/Pacific Research Center of Stanford University.

Entrepreneurs and self-employed people have much higher incomes than other rural Thai residents. This raises the question: why don't more people become entrepreneurs? One possibility is that people are prevented from changing their occupations because they lack wealth or access to credit. This talk provides a preliminary exploration of this issue using new survey data from rural Thailand. Anna Paulson is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is currently a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and taught at Princeton before going to Kellogg. Her research is concerned with how people cope with risk, particularly in cases where formal financial and insurance markets are not available.

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.