Five visiting scholars with expertise on Southeast Asia will spend varying portions of the academic year 2008-09 in residence at Stanford. Shorenstein APARC and the Southeast Asia Forum will host four of them: three were selected under the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia. and one is a recipient of a 2008-09 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. A fifth scholar will be on campus as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution.

The five are John Ciorciari, Joel S. Kahn, Mark Thompson, Angie Ngoc Tran, and Christian von Luebke.

John Ciorciari spent the 2007-08 academic year at Stanford as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. He finished a book that examines how Southeast Asian states have "hedged" their relations with the United States and China.

Dr. Ciorciari will spend upcoming academic year at Stanford as a Hoover Institution National Fellow. In that capacity he plans to expand his research to include the international relations of India.

Joel S. Kahn is a professor of anthropology (emeritus) in the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. He will be at Stanford for the first half of October 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Lecturer.

While at Stanford Professor Kahn will give three public lectures. Their tentative titles are: "A Southeast Asian Modernity?"; "Empires, States, and Political Identities in (Pen)insular Southeast Asia"; and "Religion, Reform, Science, and Secularity." Details including dates, times, and venues will be posted as they become known.

Mark Thompson is a professor of political science at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He will be in residence at Stanford in Winter and Spring 2009 as the 2009 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

While at Stanford, Prof. Thompson will pursue a book project on "Late Democratization in Pacific Asia." The book will question the claim that democratization in Pacific Asia (including Southeast Asia) has been driven by economic growth and offer an alternative perspective. He will present the results of his project in a public lecture in the spring of 2009. Date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

Angie Ngoc Trần is a professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). She will be in residence at Stanford for the second half of November 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

In a public lecture on November 17, 2008 (Mobilized Workers vs. Morphing Capital: Challenging Global Supply Chains in Vietnam), Professor Tran will present the results of her study of labor-capital relations in Vietnam and how the different national origins of investors and owners affect workers' conditions, consciousness, and activism. Details including time and venue will be posted as they become known.

Christian von Luebke was a research fellow in Tokyo at Waseda University's Institute for Global Political Economy in 2007-08 following receipt of his 2007 PhD in public policy and governance at the Australian National University. He will be at Stanford for the 2008-09 academic year as a Walter H. Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow.

During his residence Dr. von Luebke will pursue a research and writing project on "Good Governance in Transition: Explaining Local Policy Variations in Indonesia, China, and the Philippines." He will give a public lecture on the results of his project in winter or spring 2009. The date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

As a 2007-08 Shorenstein Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, John D. Ciorciari pursued a full and varied agenda of research and writing on Southeast Asia.

Fellowships are more often won on the promise of completing a book than books are finished before the fellowships end. Dr. John Ciorciari broke this “rule” by completing his book manuscript in Spring 2008 and submitting it to a university press for possible publication.

Based on his Oxford dissertation, the work is provisionally entitled “Hedging: Using Southeast Asian States as Case Studies.” In it, he examines the range of options that secondary states possess between outright alignment with and neutrality toward the great powers. He argues that secondary states normally seek to "hedge" by limiting their alignments. They do so to avoid the risks of tight security cooperation with the great powers, including diminished autonomy and entrapment, while reaping sufficient rewards in the form of protection. He presented his findings at a Southeast Asia Forum seminar on May 28, 2008 titled “Dating but Not Married: Southeast Asian Security Responses to the Rise of China.” See the link below for an audio file of the seminar.

In addition to finishing his book on hedging, Ciorciari used his fellowship period to pursue his research interest in Asian financial cooperation, which is increasingly central to broader political relations in the region. He focused on the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), an effort by China, Japan, South Korea, and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to develop economic resilience by establishing regional mechanisms for balance-of-payments support.

Ciorciari collaborated on this study with Jennifer Amyx, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and herself a former Shorenstein Fellow and speaker for the Southeast Asian Forum (SEAF) at Shorenstein APARC. Ciorciari and Amyx acknowledge that establishing an effective financing mechanism under the CMI has proven to be a challenging task. Nevertheless, by fostering regular interaction among Asian central bankers and finance ministry officials, the CMI has begun to yield a range of spillover benefits conducive to regional financial resilience. (Schedules permitting, Ciorciari and Amyx may present some of their findings at a SEAF seminar at Stanford in the upcoming academic year.)

As a Shorenstein Fellow in 2007-08 Ciorciari also worked on two projects on Cambodia: a book chapter on the international politics surrounding the long-delayed and finally ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal, and an article on China’s relations with the Khmer Rouge regime during the late 1970s. The article argues that the Pol Pot regime effectively punched above its weight in an otherwise asymmetrical relationship by exploiting China's rigid conception of its security interest in Indochina. In studying the Sino-Cambodian alliance, Ciorciari was able to test and illustrate some of the arguments in his book manuscript as to how small states pursue leverage and autonomy in their relations with major powers.

In 2007 Shorenstein APARC and The Asia Foundation chose Dennis Arroyo to be the first Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow.  Arroyo spent the 2007-08 academic year researching and completing a monograph on "The Political Economy of Successful Reform:  Asian Stratagems."  An edited abstract follows:

Major economic reforms are often politically difficult, causing pain to voters and provoking unrest.  They may be opposed by politicians with short time horizons. They may collide with the established ideology and an entrenched ruling party.  They may be resisted by bureaucrats and by vested interests.  Obstacles to major economic reform can be daunting in democratic and autocratic polities alike.
 
And yet, somehow, past leaders of today's Asian dragons did implement vital economic reforms. "The Political Economy of Successful Reform:  Asian Stratagems" recounts the political maneuvers used by Asian leaders of economic reform in these countries at these pivotal times:  Thailand under General Prem Tinsulanonda; Vietnam during Doi Moi (or Renovation); Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew; China under Deng Xiaoping; India in the 1990s; and South Korea under Park Chung Hee.

The paper classifies these maneuvers as responses to the main political barriers to reform and develops a "playbook" of tactics for economic reformers.  To overcome ideological obstacles, for example, the reformers packaged and presented reforms as ways of strengthening the party in power. Reformers proceeded gradually.  Initially they sought win-win compromises. They blessed pro-market violations as pilot projects. They even created new provinces in order to dilute the anti-reform vote.

The full text of Arroyo's monograph has been published by the Stanford Center for International Development in its working paper series.

Arroyo came to Stanford well qualified to study economic reform techniques.  In 2005 he was named director for national planning and policy at the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) of the Philippines.  His duties included building public support for the economic reforms championed by NEDA.  He has consulted for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the survey research firm Social Weather Stations, and has written widely on socioeconomic topics.  His critique of the Philippine development plan won a mass media award for "best analysis."  He has degrees in economics from the University of the Philippines.

In May 2008 Arroyo presented his findings in a SEAF lecture entitled "The Foxy Art of Herding Dragons: How Sly Asian Leaders Pulled off Politically Difficult Economic Reforms."