FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in 2009 with a commanding majority, ending fifty years of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Then, in 2012, just over three years later, the DPJ lost power in an equally stunning landslide loss to the LDP. This volume examines the DPJ’s remarkable ascendance, its policies once in power, and its dramatic fall.
What explains the DPJ’s rapid rise to power? Why was policy change under the DPJ limited, despite high expectations and promises of bold reform? Why has the party been paralyzed by internecine conflict?
Chapters in the volume cover: DPJ candidate recruitment; the influence of media coverage; nationalization of elections; electoral system constraints on policy change; the role of third parties; municipal mergers; the role of women; transportation policy; fiscal decentralization; information technology; response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; security strategy; and foreign policy. Japan under the DPJ makes important contributions to the study of Japanese politics, while drawing upon and advancing scholarship on a wider range of issues of interest to political scientists.
Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.
The Politics of Transition and Governance
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Jean-Marc F. Blanchard (白永辉) joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from July-October 2013 from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) where he serves as Professor, Assistant Dean for International Cooperation and Exchange, and Executive Director of the SJTU SIPA Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations.
His research interests include Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI), inward FDI into China, Chinese foreign economic policy, Chinese foreign energy policy, multinational corporations, and economic globalization. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he will conduct research on the politico-economy of Chinese OFDI.
Blanchard is a co-author of Economic Statecraft and Foreign Policy (2013), a co-editor of and contributor to Governance, Domestic Change and Social Policy in China (forthcoming 2013); “China and Soft Power” (Asian Perspective special issue, 2012); New Thinking about The Taiwan Issue (2012), Multidimensional Diplomacy of Contemporary China (2010), Harmonious World and China’s New Foreign Policy (2008), and Power and the Purse (2000), and the author of more than three dozen refereed journal articles and book chapters.
Blanchard is former Associate Editor of the Journal of Chinese Political Studies (JCPS), a member of the Editorial Board for the JCPS, and a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He previously served as President of the Association of Chinese Political Studies (2010-2012).
Blanchard received his PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and AB in economics from U.C. Berkeley. Prior to his career in academia, Blanchard worked for the U.S. government Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corporation and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and for the investment banking firm Kelling, Northcross, & Nobriga.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Peigang Li joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as a visiting scholar for the 2013-2014 acedemic year. He is currently an Investment Portfolio Manager for Hollyhigh International Capital, the first investment banking firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Mainland China.
His research interests include studying China‘s economic development and other areas of economic history in East Asian countries. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Peigang will participate in a research project with the Stanford China Program, where he will evaluate China’s economic situation, and assess its future development for sustainability through institutional change.
Peigang received a Masters in Power Electric Automation Control from the Northeast China Institute of Electric Power Engineering. After working as a power automation software engineer, his interests in the financial community led him to enter into the investment field. Peigang soon became an industry stock analyst, and a mutual fund manager.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Sungchul Hong is a visting scholar in Korean studies for the 2013-14 academic year. As vice-chief news correspondent at the Korea Broadcasting System, Mr. Hong has widely covered political and social affairs in both national and international sections.
He holds a BA in sociology from Yonsei University.
Kharis Templeman is the former project manager of the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project in the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). He currently serves as advisor to the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he has lived, worked and traveled extensively in both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
His research includes projects on party system institutionalization and partisan realignments, electoral integrity and manipulation in East Asia, the politics of defense spending in Taiwan, and the representation of Taiwan’s indigenous minorities. His most recent publication is “The China Model: How Successful Is the Chinese Regime?” a review essay in the Taiwan Journal of Democracy. He is also the editor (with Larry Diamond and Yun-han Chu) of Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years (2016, Lynne Rienner Publishing). Other work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies and the APSA Comparative Democratization Newsletter.
Dr. Templeman currently serves as coordinator of the American Political Science Association Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS) and as a regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. He holds a BA (2003) from the University of Rochester and a PhD (2012) in political science from the University of Michigan.
In our current era, the advent of digital technologies and accelerating globalization is driving ever-faster commoditization of firms and products. With rapidly improving Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools, manufacturing is decomposed with finer granularity, and corporate functions can be outsourced and offshored more than ever before. Services can be unbundled into activities that can be taken apart, reconfigured, and transformed with the application of algorithms. Overall, firms are experiencing accelerating shifts in the sweet-spot for markets and business models in their search for sustainable advantage.
As firms struggle to adjust in this global, digital world, governments are also under pressure to examine their options to retain value in their national contexts; wealthy nations face the challenge of how to remain wealthy.
Japan is no exception, and from this vantage it is worth reconsidering the potential role that industrial policy can play in its growth strategy. We will proceed in three sections, each of which builds from our previous research (indicated below the title), towards a set of recommendations for thinking about industrial policy in this digital, global era. Each point contributes something new to Japan’s discourse about a new growth strategy.
The Europe Center's 2-day multidisciplinary dialogue on migration -- the subject of great and growing consequence in the contemporary world. Conference participants from a wide range of theoretical, case-study, and comparative approaches will address the phenomenon of population movement and the experience of migration in its various qualities.
The agenda for this conference is below.
Co-sponsored by the University of Vienna, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Bechtel Conference Center
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Dong Sung Kim, a lawyer, is a 2013 visiting scholar in the Korean Studies Program. Mr. Kim, former member of the National Assembly in South Korea, served in the national defense committee of the Assembly.
Mr. Kim was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration and Local Autonomy, Hanyang University, 2010–2011. He began his career in law as judge in the district of Incheon in 2000.
Mr. Kim holds a BA in Law from Seoul National University and an MA in Business Administration from Yonsei University, Korea.
