Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

Does South Asia Exist? Prospects for Regionalism in South Asia

Shorenstein APARC, in collaboration with India's Observer Research Foundation, will hold a conference on regionalism and regional integration in South Asia at Stanford University. This is the third in a series of academic conferences on regionalism organized by Shorenstein APARC, following earlier conferences on regionalism in Northeast and Southeast Asia. The conferences have yielded important edited volumes, published in association with The Brookings Institution press. The conference papers from this conference as well will be issued as an edited volume in that same series.

Globally, the trend towards regional integration and the rise of regional institutions as actors in the international system has been on the rise. The paradigm for transnational regionalism is the European Union but we have also seen a growing role for regional organizations in Latin America, in Central Asia and even in North America. In Asia, there is increasing interest in the creation of an East Asian Community, driven in large part by the rise of intra-Asian trade and investment, propelled by China. Regionalism has been on the agenda in South Asia since the establishment of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 1985. Yet the progress toward regional cooperation and integration in South Asia has been very slow. However the dynamic growth of the Indian economy may be giving a new impetus to regionalism, driven by forces of business and the market.

This conference will examine the prospects for regionalism in South Asia, looking at the factors that drive greater regional integration and the obstacles to regionalism. It will place South Asia in the comparative framework, examining how South Asia compares to other experiences globally, including in Asia and Europe. The conference will explore the different perspectives on regionalism from within South Asia. It will focus on the role of India, as the largest power in the region and look at how much India drives or blocks greater regionalism. And finally, the participants will examine the interests of other powers in South Asian regionalism.

Funding for this conference was provided by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, The Observer Research Foundation, Jet Airways, Mr. Kanwal Rekhi, insure1234.com, and G1G.com.

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South Asia Initiative

Political Change in China: Comparisons with Taiwan

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How might China become a democracy? And what lessons, if any, might Taiwan's experience of democratization hold for China's future? The authors of this volume consider these questions, both through comparisons of Taiwan's historical experience with the current period of economic and social change in the PRC, and through more focused analysis of China's current, and possible future, politics.This volume explores current, and possible future, political change in China in the context of Taiwan's experience of democratization.

Table of Contents

  • Comparing and Rethinking Political Change in China and Taiwan - B. Gilley.
  • Civil Society and the State. The Evolution of Political Values - Y.H. Chu.
  • Intellectual Pluralism and Dissent - M. Goldman and A. Esarey.
  • Religion and the Emergence of Civil Society - R. Madsen.
  • Business Groups: For or Against the Regime? - D.J. Solinger.
  • Regime Responses. Responsive Authoritarianism - R.P. Weller.
  • Developing the Rule of Law - R. Peerenboom and W. Chen.
  • Competitive Elections - T.J. Cheng and G. Lin.
  • International Pressures and Domestic Pushback - J. deLisle.
  • Looking Forward. Taiwan's Democratic Transition: A Model for China? - B. Gilley.
  • Why China's Democratic Transition Will Differ from Taiwan's - L. Diamond.

Author's Biography
Bruce Gilley is assistant professor of political studies at Queen's University in Canada. His numerous publications include China's Democratic Future, Model Rebels: The Rise and Fall of China's Richest Village, and Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite. Larry Diamond is senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and also at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy. Most recent of his many works on democracy and democratization are Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

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Eberhart discusses Japanese corporate governance reforms

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A multitude of corporate governance reforms were enacted in Japan from 1997-2005. As a result of one of those reforms, beginning in 2003 Japanese companies had the option of choosing a committee system of corporate governance, one partially modeled on the American system, rather than the auditor system.

On May 14, SPRIE Researcher Robert Eberhart spoke at a SPRIE seminar about his current research assessing the effect of the Japanese reforms and the question of whether the corporate system in Japan will ultimately be converging with the Western model.

We compared two groups of committee system and auditor system companies and found that the firms using committee system governance, the so-called American model, were significantly valued higher as measured by Tobin's q--thirty- and forty-percent higher.

In researching the performance of Japanese companies under the committee system, Eberhart's current study has found significantly (30%-40%) higher Tobin's q scores for those companies following the committee system over those following the auditor system. This observation seems independent of other financial variables differentiating these companies. The research focused on 63 companies in the pharmacueuticals, electronics, and machine industries.

Tobin's q is the ratio of a firm's market cap to the replacement value of its assets. Since the change in Tobin's q was immediate, based on monthly data, this suggests a change in market evaluation, Eberhart noted, since the asset value would not have changed so quickly.

One possibility, Eberhart ventured, is that by opening themselves up to the committee system, management is indicating a confidence in the veracity of the firm's fiscal monitoring system, and the market is responding to that confidence.

Eberhart concluded by noting that these results are preliminary and further research is necessary to precisely determine the nature of these performance differences.

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Alisa Jones

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

(650) 726-0771 (650) 723-6530
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Northeast Asian Fellow, 2008-09
Jones,_Alisa.jpg MA, PhD

Alisa Jones received her MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and her PhD from the University of Leeds. She specialized in the history of modern and contemporary China with secondary interests in politics and education, writing her doctoral dissertation on history education policy and praxis in the post-Mao reform-and-opening period.

Recently, Jones collaborated on book projects that address the roles played by history textbooks, historiography, and popular culture in shaping public memory and national identities across East Asia and the ways in which the past has been contested in various domestic and international arenas. She is currently working on several related projects, examining the goals and content of history and citizenship education as well as the ways in which other public and private mechanisms (such as the legal system, patriotic campaigns, the media, the internet) have been used and abused to define the parameters of acceptable debate about the past and the claims on the citizens of the present and future it represents.

While at Shorenstein APARC, she will be researching and teaching on issues of historical memory, identity, conflict and reconciliation in the Northeast Asian region.

POSCO NGO Fellowship Committee admitted 10 applicants for 2008 Fellowship Program

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Ten 2008 POSCO NGO Fellows were selected by the Fellowship admission committee during the second POSCO NGO Fellowship Conference held on May 1 and 2 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

George Washington University:

Ms. Gyung Lan Jung, Center for Peaceful Future of Korea

Mr. Hyun-Mo Choi, Korea Migrant Workers' Human Rights

Indiana University:

Mr. Seoung-Hwan Jeon, National Council of YMCAs of Korea

Mr. Jae-Seok Kim, Gwangju Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice

Columbia University:

Mr. Tae Ho Lee, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy

Mr. Boyoun Joung, Korea Youth Corps

University of British Columbia:

Ms. Jeong Sook Park, Korean Women Link

Ms. Hee-Seon Jeong, Seocho Volunteer Center

Stanford University:

Ms. Hye-Jeong Kim, Korea Federation for Environmental Movement

Mr. Hyun Gon Jung, Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation

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Are the Chinese Anti-American?

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Iain Johnston is the Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Harvard University's department of government. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His research and teaching interests include socialization in international institutions, the analysis of identity in the social sciences, and ideational sources of strategic choice, mostly with reference to China and the Asia-Pacific region. He is the author of "Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History" (Princeton 1995) and "Social States: China in International Institutes, 1980-2000" (Princeton 2008), and co-editor of "Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power" (Routledge 1999), "New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy" (Stanford 2006), and "Crafting Cooperation: Regional Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge 2007).

Graham Stuart Lounge (Room 400)
Encina Hall West

Professor Alastair Iain Johnston Speaker Department of Government, Harvard University
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