Despite the many benefits of democracy, some scholars believe that introducing elections in ethnically divided states can lead to the politicization of identity and to ethnic conflict. Yet few scholars have explored what compels politicians to mobilize around identity in the first place. In search of an answer, Jeremy Menchik and George Washington University doctoral student Colm Fox compiled the only known dataset of campaign advertisements—over 5,000 political banners, posters, and stickers—across hundreds of electoral districts in the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, Indonesia. They coded these advertisements for the use of religious, ethnic, nationalist, party, and regional symbols in order to then explain their variation. Their findings shed light on how “politics works” in a new Muslim democracy and suggest that parties, including Islamists, are strategic about their use of identity appeals. Menchik will illustrate this and other findings with ample recourse to visual images.

Dr. Jeremy Menchik is a 2011–12 Shorenstein Fellow. His PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison drew on two years of field research to explain variations in religious and political tolerance in Indonesia during the twentieth century. He has been a Luce Scholar at Columbia University and a visiting fellow at the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta. He is working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation: Tolerance Without Liberalism: Islamic Institutions in Twentieth Century Indonesia.

Co-sponsored with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University.

Ambassador Joon-woo Park, the 2011–12 Koret Fellow and a former senior diplomat from Korea, will give a historical review of Korea-Vietnam bilateral relations, including the effects of Korea's participation in the Vietnam War; bilateral relations today including diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges; and prospects for future developments and cooperation for East Asian integration.

As a career diplomat, Ambassador Park served in numerous key posts, including those of Ambassador to the European Union and to Singapore and Presidential Advisor on Foreign Affairs. Park worked closely for over 20 years with Ban Ki-moon, the former Korean diplomat who is now the United Nations Secretary-General.

This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.

Venue Changed to the Philippines Conference Room

In 1992, Cambodia became a United Nations (UN) protectorate—the first and only time the UN tried something so ambitious. What did the new, democratically-elected government do with this unprecedented gift? Cambodians today live in the grip of a venal government that refuses to provide even the most basic services without a bribe. Nearly half of the Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A malnourished populace still lives as Cambodians did 1,000 years ago, while government officials are the only overweight people in a nation where the hungry waste away. These conditions have not, however, dissuaded the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from acceding the Cambodian regime's desire to chair ASEAN in 2012. Prof. Joel Brinkley will turn an unsparing analytical eye on these and related aspects of Cambodian history, political economy, and foreign policy.

Joel Brinkley joined Stanford in the fall of 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times. At the Times he served as a reporter, editor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent. At Stanford, he writes a weekly column on foreign affairs that appears in some 50 newspapers and web sites in the United States and around the world. He also writes on foreign affairs for Politico, and maintains an active public-speaking career. His research interests include American foreign policy and foreign affairs in general. Over the last 30 years, he has reported from 46 American states and more than 50 foreign countries. The latest of his five books is Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land (2011), already lauded by a reviewer in The American Interest as a "compelling" and "revealing tale of delusion and corruption" told with "panache."  Copies of the book will be available for sale at the talk.

Venue Changed to the Philippines Conference Room

China has recently reformed its health care system with the intent of providing universal coverage for basic health care to every Chinese citizen. Three separate health insurance plans have recently been launched to achieve this objective: the rural newly cooperative medical scheme, urban resident health insurance, and urban employee-based health insurance. Each plan differs substantially in terms of insurers, insured population, premiums, and benefits packages. Using data from the 2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey, Hai Fang will discuss a study that investigates whether and to what extend different health insurance plans have created disparities in health care utilization and expenditure.

Hai Fang is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management, and Policy at the University of Colorado Denver, and a research associate in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He earned his doctorate in economics and master of public health from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2006. Before joining the University of Colorado Denver, he taught at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami. His research interests include health economics, labor economics, and public health.