International Relations

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.

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I propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations. Like firms in markets, international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas. Some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition, limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change. In comparison, institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power. To test the theory empirically, I exploit common features of the Bretton Woods institutions—the International Monetary Fund and World Bank—to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics. The empirical tests show that, despite having identical membership and internal rules, bargaining outcomes in the Bretton Woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory.

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American Journal of Political Science
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Phillip Lipscy
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In the third annual Nancy Bernkopf Tucker Memorial Lecture on U.S.-East Asia Relations, Thomas Fingar, Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, discusses U.S. policy toward China. The speech titled "The United States and China: Same Bed, Different Dreams, Shared Destiny" was delivered at The Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2015. Links to English and Chinese versions are listed below.

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Thomas Fingar
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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Jaigeun Lim, Seoul Metropolitan Government, "A Study on the Influential Factors on Inbound Foreign Direct Investment and its Implications"

The global importance of Inbound Foreign Direct Investment (IFDI) continues to grow and each nation has made an effort to enhance its national competitiveness through IFDI.  Lim’s research targets 51 nations and 14  candidate variables to learn which factors have an influence on IFDI.

Statistically meaningful variables on IFDI include GDP, economic growth rate, dependency to trade, management of cities, small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy.  Particularly, the results from Outbound Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI)-oriented nations give evidence that influences of GDP, small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy are positive to IFDI.  However, Korea shows the lower level of performances in small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy.  Korea has also shown the lower performances in similar variables compared with other Asia-Pacific nations.  Lim’s research aims to find out what these results mean in terms of policy for Korea?

 

Ryuichi Ohta, Japan Patent Office, "Relationship Between Technical Standard and Patents"

Samsung and Apple have more than 50 cases of appeals to the courts against each other in more than 10 countries.  In these court battles, Samsung asserted injunction using essential patent which is related to telecommunication standards and committed RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) commitment.  Injunction is one of the basic rights for patent, which means Samsung can assert this right.  However in this case, can Samsung assert injunction in spite of RAND commitment?  In normal circumstances, standard organizations require RAND licensing obligations for essential patents.  Ohta will address the question "Why do they require it and why do they consider these obligations are reasonable for essential patents?" through case studies.

 

Rajeev Prasad, Reliance Life Sciences, "Concept of Total Quality Management in Pharmaceutical Industries"

The pharmaceutical industry is profoundly regulated and the reasons are obvious;  the use of ineffective, poor quality, harmful medicines can result in therapeutic failure, exacerbation of disease, and resistance of medicines and sometimes death of the patients.  Also, the mistakes in product design or production can have severe, even fatal, consequences for patients which sometimes lead to recall of drugs from the market.  Total Quality Management (TQM) acts as an umbrella under which everyone in the organization can strive for customer satisfaction by producing better quality of product, reduce cost and wastage and increase the efficiency of services.  In his research, Rajeev has focused on the failures of TQM principles by evaluating the warning letters, case studies of pharmaceutical manufacturers and product recalls and also outlined about the implementation of robust quality management system by amalgamation of principles of TQM and pharmaceutical regulatory guidelines.

Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3rd Floor, Central

Jaigeun Lim Seoul Metropolitan Government
Ryuichi Ohta Japan Patent Office
Rajeev Prasad Reliance Life Sciences
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In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Zhao Han, PetroChina, "The Development of American Oil Retail – Analysis of the Competitive Strategy in China"

The first gas stations were built in the early 1900s.  Having experienced rapid growth, brand integration, rising costs, model innovation and trans-boundary competition in developed countries like the United States, the gas station industry matured towards the end of the 20th century.  Around the year 2000, international oil companies gradually began to withdraw from the gas station market in developed countries.  During this time, convenience stores became the leader of the market with gasoline being one of the products of the convenience store.

With the development of mobile internet technology and the practice of the big data theory, the information authority has been broken.  The business model of traditional industries, such as the gas station industry, will change as well.  Gas stations will transform from the traditional E-station to E-platform.  In his research, Han argues that the business model of gas stations will turn from merchandise sales to customer service, and then to resource integration and platform management.

 

Yasunori Matsui, Mitsubishi Corporation, "How to Develop Effective Leadership Skills:  A Study Comparing Silicon Valley Companies"

In most Japanese companies, leadership skills are lacking.  From his experience, Matsui believes this problem exists at a higher level than the organization, as leadership skills are only developed for select people within the organization.  Additionally, he believes there is a high correlation between leadership effectiveness and the results that leaders produce.  Developing an adequate cadre of leaders to perpetuate their organization is essential to Japanese companies.  Unfortunately, the concept of leadership continues to be shrouded in misunderstanding.  In his research, Matsui compares leadership styles in Silicon Valley to those of Japanese companies.  Matsui asks the question as to whether leadership personnel training is possible in Japanese companies and discusses some possible solutions to this problem.

 

Ryo Wakabayashi, Sumitomo Corporation, "Trends of the American Entertainment Video Industry"

Wakabayashi’s research discusses the entertainment video industry trends in the United States, in particular, the influence of emerging Over-the-Top (OTT) markets in existing entertainment video industry.  Over the past few years, online video streaming services, called “Over-the-Top”, have rapidly become popular and have deprived the subscribers from existing Pay-TV companies.  The reasons why OTT services have taken advantage of existing markets are 1) the infrastructures for their services have drastically improved -- faster internet access speeds and various devices such as smartphones, tablets, and Set-Top-Boxes that are suitable for watching video being released and becoming popular; 2) subscription fees for services are about six times less than the fees for existing Pay TV services like cable TV or satellite TV; and 3) OTT markets have attractive content such as movies, dramas, TV shows, and animated videos and have started producing their own original, high-quality content.  As a result of the growth of the OTT market, Wakabayashi discusses three big trends that are emerging in the video industry in the United States – 1) Video streaming providers are becoming the “New Network”, 2) Large consolidations are emerging and 3) Existing media companies are going toward OTT markets.

Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3rd floor, Central

Zhao Han PetroChina
Yasunori Matsui Mitsubishi Electric
Ryo Wakabayashi Sumitomo Corporation
Seminars
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global talent cover
Co-authored by Gi-Wook Shin and Joon Nak Choi, Published by Stanford University Press

Global Talent seeks to examine the utility of skilled foreigners beyond their human capital value by focusing on their social capital potential, especially their role as transnational bridges between host and home countries. Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University) and Joon Nak Choi (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) build on an emerging stream of research that conceptualizes global labor mobility as a positive-sum game in which countries and businesses benefit from building ties across geographic space, rather than the zero-sum game implied by the "global war for talent" and "brain drain" metaphors.

"Advanced economies like Korea face a growing mismatch between low birth rates and increasing demand for skilled labor. Shin and Choi use original, comprehensive data and a global outlook to provide careful, accessible and persuasive analysis. Their prescriptions for Korea and other economies challenged by high-level labor shortages will amply reward readers of this landmark study."  —Mark Granovetter, Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

The book empirically demonstrates its thesis by examination of the case of Korea: a state archetypical of those that have been embracing economic globalization while facing a demographic crisis—and one where the dominant narrative on the recruitment of skilled foreigners is largely negative. It reveals the unique benefits that foreign students and professionals can provide to Korea, by enhancing Korean firms' competitiveness in the global marketplace and by generating new jobs for Korean citizens rather than taking them away. As this research and its key findings are relevant to other advanced societies that seek to utilize skilled foreigners for economic development, the arguments made in this book offer insights that extend well beyond the Korean experience.

 

Books will be available for purchase at the event or  purchase online

 

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations.

Shin is the author/editor of more than a dozen books and numerous articles. His recent books include Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015), Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Asia’s Middle Powers? (2013); Troubled Transition: North Korea's Politics, Economy, and External Relations (2013); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia (2006); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many of them have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic journals including American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, and Asian Survey. Shin is currently writing a book on historical memories of the Asia-Pacific wars with Daniel Sneider. 

 

Joon Nak Choi is an associate professor in the Department of Management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Prior to joining HKUST, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D and M.A in Sociology at Stanford  University and his B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Brown University. His ongoing research continues to focus upon the effects of social and political capital, especially in Korea.

 

Hwy-Chang Moon joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for the 2015-2016 academic year. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Moon will be working on a research project titled, “The Global Strategy of Korean Firms in Silicon Valley.”

Moon received his PhD from the University of Washington and is currently a professor of international business strategy in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University in South Korea, where he also served as the Dean. He has previously taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Keio University, and Hitotsubashi University. Moon has also consulted for several multinational companies, international organizations, and governments (e.g., Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and the Guangdong Province of China).

 

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-six books and numerous articles. His books include Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of SociologyWorld DevelopmentComparative Studies in Society and HistoryPolitical Science QuarterlyJournal of Asian StudiesComparative EducationInternational SociologyNations and NationalismPacific AffairsAsian SurveyJournal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

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Director of the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Professor of Sociology; Director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; Director of the Korea Program, Stanford University

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Joon Nak Choi is the 2015-2016 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). A sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context.

Choi, a Stanford graduate, has worked jointly with professor Gi-Wook Shin to analyze the transnational bridges linking Asia and the United States. The research project explores how economic development links to foreign skilled workers and diaspora communities.

Most recently, Choi coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea with Shin, who is also the director of the Korea Program. From 2010-11, Choi developed the manuscript while he was a William Perry postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

During his fellowship, Choi will study the challenges of diversity in South Korea and teach a class for Stanford students. Choi’s research will buttress efforts to understand the shifting social and economic patterns in Korea, a now democratic nation seeking to join the ranks of the world’s most advanced countries.
 
Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea. The fellowship has expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in Korea, and aims to identify young promising scholars working on these areas.

 

2015-2016 Koret Fellow
Visiting Scholar
Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Encina Hall E301616 Serra StreetStanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 723-6530
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hwychangmoon_2.jpg PhD

Hwy-Chang Moon has joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for the 2015-2016 academic year. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he will be working on a research project entitled, “The Global Strategy of Korean Firms in Silicon Valley," and will also teach a course on Korean economy and business in the fall quarter.

Moon is a professor of international business strategy at the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), Seoul National University, where he also served as the dean of GSIS.

Professor Moon is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business and Economy, and has published numerous articles and books on topics covering international business strategy, cross-cultural management and economic development in East Asia with a focus on South Korea. He frequently provides his perspectives on global economy and business through interviews and televised debates, and his writings appear regularly in South Korean newspapers. The New York Times and NHK World TV have also asked for his perspectives on these topics.

Professor Moon received a PhD from the University of Washington, and has previously taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Keio University, and Hitotsubashi University. He has also consulted several multinational companies, international organizations, and governments (e.g., Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and the Guangdong Province of China).

Visiting Professor
Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Seminars
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Perspicacious scholarship by the preeminent American historical sociologist working on the People’s Republic of China. A balanced, critical account of events of baffling complexity, and a sophisticated analysis of uniquely solid empirical data. If reading is indeed the basics for all learning, then this is the book to read in order to learn why Mao in the end accomplished so little of what he had hoped to achieve after 1949 and why his legacy remains so controversial.”
—Michael Schoenhals, Lund University

 

China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.

Mao’s China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao’s greatest achievements—victory in the civil war, the creation of China’s first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life—also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.

Misdiagnosing China’s problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided.

Books will be available for purchase at the event

Andrew G. Walder, Author, has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on China have ranged from the political and economic organization of the Mao era to changing patterns of stratification, social mobility, and political conflict in the post-Mao era. Another focus of his research has been on the political economy of Soviet-type economies and their subsequent reform and restructuring. His current research focuses on popular political mobilization in late-1960s China and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty the fall of 1997. He received his PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. As a professor of sociology, he served as chair of Harvard's MA Program on Regional Studies-East Asia for several years. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. From 1996 to 2006, as a member of the Hong Kong Government's Research Grants Council, he chaired its Panel on the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business Studies.

Thomas P. Bernstein, Discussant, earned his PhD from Columbia University, 1970. He joined the faculty of the Department of Political Science and of the East Asian Institute in 1975, having previously taught at Yale and Indiana Universities. He retired in December 2007.  He is a specialist on comparative politics, with a focus on China as well as on communist systems generally. He has written on the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union and China and on the two famines that each country experienced in the l930's and late l950's. Publications on China include a book on Chinese youth (Yale University Press, 1977), which was translated into China in 1993, as well as articles and  book chapters on the Mao era, China’s growth without political liberalization, prospects for democratization, and on education. His recent writings have focused on various aspects of state-peasant relations in China’s reform period. Together with Professor Xiaobo Lu, he co-authored Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (Cambridge University Press, 2003). In recent years, he has resumed work on Sino-Soviet relations and comparisons. In 2010, he published a co-edited book with Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present (Lexington Book). And he has written on reform and authoritarian rule in contemporary China and Russia. Prior to retirement, he served on various editorial boards, including Comparative Politics and China Quarterly.  He has held various fellowships, including a Guggenheim. He served as Chair of the Department of Political Science from 1986-l989 and again from 1991 to l994.

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-4560 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor
walder_2019_2.jpg PhD

Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and Head of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Walder has long specialized in the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on Mao-era China have ranged from the social and economic organization of that early period to the popular political mobilization of the late 1960s and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state. His publications on post-Mao China have focused on the evolving pattern of stratification, social mobility, and inequality, with an emphasis on variation in the trajectories of post-state socialist systems. His current research is on the growth and evolution of China’s large modern corporations, both state and private, after the shift away from the Soviet-inspired command economy.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Walder has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books and articles have won awards from the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Social Science History Association. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His recent and forthcoming books include  Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement  (Harvard University Press, 2009);  China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed  (Harvard University Press, 2015);  Agents of Disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution  (Harvard University Press, 2019); and  A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Feng County  (Princeton University Press, 2021) (with Dong Guoqiang); and Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China’s Southern Periphery (Stanford University Press, 2023).  

His recent articles include “After State Socialism: Political Origins of Transitional Recessions.” American Sociological Review  80, 2 (April 2015) (with Andrew Isaacson and Qinglian Lu); “The Dynamics of Collapse in an Authoritarian Regime: China in 1967.”  American Journal of Sociology  122, 4 (January 2017) (with Qinglian Lu); “The Impact of Class Labels on Life Chances in China,”  American Journal of Sociology  124, 4 (January 2019) (with Donald J. Treiman); and “Generating a Violent Insurgency: China’s Factional Warfare of 1967-1968.” American Journal of Sociology 126, 1 (July 2020) (with James Chu).

Director Emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director Emeritus of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University, July to November of 2013
Graduate Seminar Instructor at the Stanford Center at Peking University, August to September of 2017
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, Stanford University
Thomas P. Bernstein Professor Emeritus of Government, Columbia University
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"'Critical Engagement': British Policy toward the DPRK" examines the United Kingdom's policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The policy known as "critical engagement" has been applied for over 14 years. 

"UK efforts are not going to have the immediate result we all want. However, they do show...that it is possible to carry out engagement and hopefully reduce the chasm between DPRK thinking and the rest of the world," author Mike Cowin writes. He suggests that the British approach is similar to that advised by a Stanford research team in Tailored Engagement.

Cowin wrote an earlier policy paper on relations between the DPRK and the European Union in March 2015.

Mike Cowin is the 2014-15 Pantech Fellow in the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Before coming to Stanford, he served as the deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Pyongyang, North Korea. He has also served in the British embassies in Seoul from 2003 to 2007, and in Tokyo from 1992 to 1997.

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North Korea fired off short-range missiles last Tuesday close to the arrival of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to the region. Carter, who was on his inaugural trip to Asia as the newly confirmed Secretary of Defense, said the launch was a sign of the region’s continued tensions.

The United States consistently expresses concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, yet attempts to resume the Six-Party Talks, the negotiations to denuclearize North Korea which began in 2003, have been unsuccessful. The United Kingdom, although not an official participant in the Talks, has had diplomatic relations with North Korea since 2000, setting itself apart from many in the West, and from Japan which do not have formal diplomatic ties with the country. 

In a new policy brief, Mike Cowin, the 2014-15 Pantech Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), discusses lesser-known channels of engagement between the United Kingdom and North Korea. 

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Cowin is the former deputy head of mission at the British Embassy Pyongyang, and implemented many of the programs he describes in the paper, "Critical Engagement": British Policy Towards the DPRK.

Typically small-scale and led largely in collaboration with European NGOs, the Embassy’s initiatives span from humanitarian aid – providing water supplies and sewage systems – to exchanges – hosting visiting delegations of North Korean paralympic athletes and English teachers.

The Embassy also works to build a stronger understanding of modern Britain in North Korea. They have shown films such as Wallace and Grommit and Philomena at the Pyongyang International Film Festival, and supplemented reading materials in the Grand People’s Study House, a central library in Pyongyang.

Cowin says that it’s not easy to construct these exchanges, but if established, they provide small steps in the right direction, and help set the stage for critical engagement in the future. The United Kingdom’s approach shares commonalities with the suggestions made by a Stanford research team in Tailored Engagement, he says.

“The United Kingdom’s efforts are not going to have the immediate result we all want. However, they do show that the DPRK is not completely isolated from the Western world and that it is possible to carry out engagement,” he says.

Cowin is also the author of an earlier policy brief on relations between North Korea and the European Union.

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Presenters on stage at the 13th annual Pyongyang International Film Festival in North Korea.
Mike Cowin
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