Shorenstein APARC is pleased to announce the selection of two scholars as postdoctoral fellows for the 2019-20 academic year. They will begin their appointments at Stanford in the coming Autumn quarter.

The Center offers the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Asia to recent doctoral graduates dedicated to research and writing on contemporary Asia, primarily in the areas of political, economic, or social change in the Asia-Pacific region, or international relations and international political economy in the region. The Center’s Asia Health Policy Program sponsors the Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship, supporting young scholars who pursue original research on contemporary health or healthcare policy of high relevance to low- and middle-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region

Fellows develop their dissertations and other projects for publication, present their research, and participate in the intellectual life at the Center and at Stanford at large. Our postdoctoral fellows often go on to pursue careers at top universities and research organizations around the world and continue to contribute to APARC research and publications.

Meet our new postdoctoral scholars:

Image

What are the conditions necessary to ensure the effectiveness of public health insurance programs?

Radhika Jain is completing her doctorate in the Department of Global Health at Harvard University. She studies the role of the private sector in the health system, frictions in health care markets, and the incidence of public health policy benefits.

Radhika’s dissertation examines the extent to which government subsidies for health care under insurance are captured by private hospitals instead of being passed through to patients, and whether accountability measures can help patients claim their entitlements. Radhika’s research has been supported by grants from the Weiss Family Fund and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL). She has worked on impact evaluations of health programs in India and on the implementation of HIV programs across several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She also held a doctoral fellowship at the Center for Global Development.

At Shorenstein APARC, Radhika will refine her dissertation research for publication in academic journals and start new work on the structure of health care markets in India and the impacts of measures to increase the effectiveness of public health insurance.  

Image

How does modernization influence cultural democratization in East Asia?

Hannah June Kim is completing her doctorate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. She researches public opinion, political behavior, theories of modernization, economic development, and democratic citizenship, focusing on East Asia.

Hannah’s dissertation examines how and why people view democracy in systematically different ways in six countries: China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Developing unique categories of democratic citizenship that measure the cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns of individuals, she finds that state-led economic development limited the growth of cultural democratization among middle class groups in all three dimensions. The results imply that the classic causality between modernization and democratization may not be universally applicable to different cultural contexts.

At Shorenstein APARC, Hannah will work on developing her dissertation into a book manuscript and make progress on her next project that explores democratization and gender empowerment in East Asia. Hannah received an MA in International Studies from Korea University and a BA from UCLA. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Journal of Politics, PS: Political Science & Politics, and the Japanese Journal of Political Science.

In the nearly seven years since assuming the role of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping has had far-ranging impact on the country’s policies at home and abroad. From his anti-corruption campaign and tightening restrictions on civil society to championing the Belt and Road initiative and abolishing China’s presidential term limits, Xi is transforming the Chinese state and its place on the global stage.

Among the cutting-edge topics that China scholars are beginning to explore is Xi’s impact on Chinese politics and its concomitant influence on what and how scholars study Chinese politics. Last December, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC hosted a conference that drew preeminent scholars of Chinese politics and comparative politics primarily from across the United States and Canada, where they gathered to assess the state of the discipline, and where the field might go next.

Too Big for One Room

The conference traces its origins to a prior gathering at the American Political Science Association (APSA). The number of attendees at that meeting outpaced any room upgrade APSA could provide. “We were impressed by the number of people studying Chinese politics,” said the China Program Director Jean Oi . “It was apparent to many of us who attended that meeting that it was time we convened a separate event with leaders in the field.”

The need to bring together the multiple generations of scholars of Chinese politics was also clear. “Younger scholars today are so much more well-equipped with various sophisticated methodologies such as machine learning and web scraping,” noted Oi. “We decided it would be useful to gather those doing various types of research, quantitative and qualitative, to think about what we don’t know about Chinese politics but would like to know; and how possibly we might go about doing that research. Our goal for this conference was to try to identify collectively some of those questions for the study of Chinese politics and how our research might contribute to the broader field of comparative politics.” The first gathering of Chinese politics scholars took place at Harvard in December 2017.

‘Burning Questions’ Light Up Second Gathering

That first conference at Harvard reinforced the utility of inter-dialog and helped organizers secure a grant from APSA, which along with support from from FSI and Shorenstein APARC facilitated the second gathering, this time at Stanford. To ensure that the sessions allowed for maximum participant engagement, attendees were assigned into seven working groups. In the months preceding the conference, each group prepared a memo identifying the key questions in the field of Chinese politics, the ways to addressing these questions, and the synergies between Chinese politics and comparative politics .

“The State of the Field in Chinese Politics” conference opened with presentations by the seven small group leaders to a plenary session, followed by discussion of the various burning questions identified by the participants. Unsurprisingly, one prominent item across many of the memos was the oversized impact of Xi on China. Other areas of interest included “elite politics,” the relationship between newfound billionaires and the party, the renewed role of state-owned enterprises in the economy, and the current status of relationships between the private sector, the Party, and the state

Several groups also expressed their desire to learn more about the internal workings of the Party, specifically the adaptation of political institutions over time. While observers often point out that China’s political institutions have changed little compared to its economic institutions, scholars have also found that, in fact, the changes within China’s governmental organizations have been subtle yet profound. But how can we determine when an organizational structure changes the ways in which it operates, and who decides? The field of Chinese politics remains uncertain about these questions.

On the second day, conference attendees were joined by several Stanford scholars of comparative politics, including FSI Director Mike McFaul and FSI Senior Fellows Lisa Blaydes, Beatriz Magaloni and Barry Weingast, who responded to the group memos. Breakout discussions of methodology followed.

Keeping the Fire Going

The conference concluded with a plenary session that focused on the questions "Where are we now?” and “Where do we go next?" One conclusion from the closing was an acknowledgment of the need to more fully consider China in the context of its interactions with other countries in the region as well as globally. “I think that ‘China in the Global Context’ may very well be the theme of our next conference,” said Oi.

A third conference is tentatively scheduled for December 2019. The five partners behind the series—Stanford University, Harvard University, Duke University, MIT, and the University of Michigan—are currently seeking outside funding to keep this effort going. The hope is that the next meeting will be at Duke University.