Volume promotes a deeper understanding of contemporary China's development
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Recent reviews published in International Affairs and the China Quarterly hail Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation, edited by Jean C. Oi, Scott Rozelle, and Xueguang Zhou, as successful in presenting a more balanced and thorough understanding of China's significant growth in the last three decades. International Affairs reviewer Kerry Brown highlights important chapters on wages, corruption, local elections, and family planning, while China Quarterly reviewer Scott Kennedy emphasizes, "Growing Pains deserves the attention of every scholar interested in contemporary China."
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South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society
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This book explores the evolution of social movements in South Korea by focusing on how they have become institutionalized and diffused in the democratic period. The contributors explore the transformation of Korean social movements from the democracy campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s to the rise of civil society struggles after 1987. South Korea was ruled by successive authoritarian regimes from 1948 to 1987 when the government decided to re-establish direct presidential elections. The book contends that the transition to a democratic government was motivated, in part, by the pressure from social movement groups that fought the state to bring about such democracy. After the transition, however, the movement groups found themselves in a qualitatively different political context which in turn galvanized the evolution of the social movement sector.
Including an impressive array of case studies ranging from the women's movement, to environmental NGOs, and from cultural production to law, the contributors to this book enrich our understanding of the democratization process in Korea, and show that the social movement sector remains an important player in Korean politics today.
This book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies, Asian politics, political history and social movements.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
1: Democratization and the Evolution of Social Movements in Korea: Institutionalization and Diffusion, Paul Y. Chang and Gi-Wook Shin
PART I: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION
2: The Korean Democracy Movement: An Empirical Overview, Gi-Wook Shin, Paul Y. Chang, Jung-eun Lee and Sookyung Kim
3: From Minjung to the Simin: The Discursive Shift in Korean Social Movements, Namhee Lee
4: Exorcizing the Ghosts of Kwangju: Policing Protest in the Post-Authoritarian Era, Jong Bum Kwon
PART II: INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
5: Origins of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea: Global and Domestic Causes, Jeong-Woo Koo
6: From the Streets to the Courts: PSPD’s Legal Strategy and the Institutionalization of Social Movements, Joon Seok Hong
7: The Entry of Past Activists into the National Assembly and South Korea’s Participation in the Iraq War, Sookyung Kim and Paul Y. Chang
8: The Consequences of Government Funding for Environmental NGOs in South Korea, Chang Bum Ju
9: The Institutionalization of the Women’s Movement and Gender Legislation, Chan S. Suh, Eun Sil Oh and Yoon S. Choi
PART III: SPIN-OFF MOVEMENTS AND DIFFUSION PROCESSES
10: Citizen Journalism: The Transformation of the Democratic Media Movement, Thomas Kern and Sang-hui Nam
11: New Activist Cultural Production: Independent Filmmakers, the Post-Authoritarian State, and New Capital Flows in South Korea, Young-a Park
12: The Korean Gay and Lesbian Movement 1993-2008: From "Identity" and "Community" to "Human Rights", Hyun-young Kwon Kim and John (Song Pae) Cho
13: Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun): The Evolution of Its Legal Mobilization Process Since 1988, Patricia Goedde
14: Left Out: People’s Solidarity for Social Progress and the Evolution of Minjung After Authoritarianism, Alice S. Kim
APPENDIX: The Stanford Korea Democracy Project
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The Future of India's Muslims
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India’s Muslims account for 13.4 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion population and constitute its largest minority group. Since the country’s independence in 1947 and right up to the present decade, the Muslim community in various parts of the country has suffered hundreds of violent, sectarian attacks. A recent peak involved the Gujarat riots of 2002, when 2,000 Muslims were killed in a state-sponsored pogrom. When the ruling party in Gujarat state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was subsequently re-elected to power in the province with a larger electoral margin than before, it raised fears that the discrimination and violence were acquiesced to by the majority Hindu community.
These fears dissipated in 2004 when the BJP lost power in national elections, apparently in part because of its sectarian policies. However, the loss of life and assets in the Gujarat riots has raised the question of how the weakened Muslim community could recover.
In response, and in fulfillment of an electoral promise to Muslims, in 2005, the new national government in India, led by the Congress party, created a committee, termed the “Prime Ministers’ High-Level Committee on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India,” to study the status of the Muslim community to enable the state to identify areas of intervention. Informally known as the Sachar Committee, named after its Chairperson, Rajendra Sachar, the Committee submitted a report in 2006.
Four years after the report has been written, far from acting on its findings, not a single area of intervention has been mooted by the state, even as the report remains largely ignored by the media and other organs of civil society. Why is this and what does it tell us about the future of India’s Muslims?
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Avicenna: The Stanford Journal on Muslim Affairs
New fellows to study China's automotive industry and religious tolerance in Indonesia
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In September, Crystal Chang and Jeremy M. Menchik will join the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as its Shorenstein Fellows for the 2011–2012 academic year.
Crystal Chang, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, is currently completing her dissertation on China's growing independent automotive industry. Her research examines Chinese automakers alongside historical case studies from Japan and Korea. During her time at Shorenstein APARC, she will expand her dissertation to include a comparative study of India's contemporary automotive industry, which, like China's, has experienced domestic and international success. She will also continue research that she is currently conducting about China's private energy sector, with a focus on the solar power industry. Chang holds an MPIA degree in international management from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in international relations from Stanford University.
Jeremy Menchik, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), is finishing his dissertation, which poses the question: what is the basis for religious tolerance in Indonesia, and why does it sometimes break down? He addresses this question through a study of Indonesian civil society and of three of the country's largest and oldest Islamic organizations: Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah, and Persatuan Islam. Menchik has conducted extensive field research in Indonesia during the course of his graduate studies. At Shorenstein APARC, he will prepare his dissertation for publication and develop related projects on Islamic law, political tolerance, and political symbolism in Indonesian elections. Menchik holds an MA in political science from UW-Madison and a BA, also in political science, from the University of Michigan.
Established in 2002 through the generosity of Walter H. Shorenstein, the Shorenstein Fellowship in Contemporary Asia is an exciting opportunity for junior scholars to spend a year at Shorenstein APARC, engaging with other scholars and experiencing the world-class resources—ranging from libraries to events—that Stanford University has to offer. Shorenstein APARC looks forward to welcoming Chang and Menchik to the center in the coming academic year.
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New Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellows
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After completing the postdoc program, I landed a dream academic job, where I can continue to research health policy with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Despite its relatively short period, my postdoc experience also helped expand the scope of my research and the breadth of professional network.
-Dr. Young Kyung Do
Former Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow (2008–09)
The Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) is pleased to announce that Ang Sun has been awarded the 2011–12 Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Sun is currently completing her PhD in development economics at Brown University. She earned bachelor degrees in computer science and economics from Peking University in 2002. Sun's research focuses on resource allocation within households, especially in developing Asia. In her dissertation, she provides empirical evidence that the 2001 divorce law in China empowered women and decreased sex-selective abortion. She has also studied multi-generational living arrangements and household decisions about fertility and labor-force participation.
We also are delighted to announce that Yuki Takagi, currently completing her PhD in government at Harvard University, will be the 2012-13 Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow. Takagi is completing her dissertation on the political economy of insurance provision and intergenerational family transfers, such as nursing and childcare, focusing on East Asia. She has earned bachelor of economics and master of law degrees from the University of Tokyo. Takagi will join Shorenstein APARC after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Politics at Princeton University in 2011–12.
The research of these two postdoctoral fellows will complement the Shorenstein APARC research initiative on demographic change in East Asia.
The Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellowship is designed to strengthen research in the field of Asian comparative health policy and demographic change, drawing from junior scholars in a variety of disciplines, including: demography, sociology, political science, economics, law, anthropology, public policy, health services research, and related fields. Fellows participate in AHPP events and collaborative research while completing their own projects on health policy or the social and economic implications of population aging in Asia.
Previous postdoctoral fellows in the program have accepted faculty positions in Asia and the United States. Dr. Young Kyung Do (2008–09), who earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is now an assistant professor at the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. Dr. Brian Chen (2009–10), who earned his PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley, has accepted a faculty position at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. The current postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Qiulin Chen, earned his PhD from Peking University. He studies the political economy of China's health reforms as well as how China compares to other countries in terms of public and private intergenerational transfers (the China component of the National Transfer Accounts project).
Thoughts from the postdoctoral fellows
Dr. Do notes that "given that the primary goal of most postdoc programs is to help fresh PhD graduates prepare a successful academic career, my postdoc experience at Stanford['s Shorenstein] APARC has proved to be effective in my professional career thus far. After completing the postdoc program, I landed a dream academic job, where I can continue to research health policy with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Despite its relatively short period, my postdoc experience also helped expand the scope of my research and the breadth of professional network."
Dr. Chen adds that "the postdoctoral position opened many more doors than I had coming directly out of my Ph.D. program... The support I received was phenomenal... The wider Stanford community affords the postdoctoral fellow the opportunity to meet and interact with leading scholars of virtually any field in the arts and sciences."
The new postdoctoral fellows anticipate similarly stimulating experiences at Stanford: Takagi says she is "delighted and excited" to accept the fellowship, and Sun emphasizes that she appreciates "the opportunity to spend one year at such a prestigious place as the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford, which will be a very nice start of my research career."
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The Performance and Driving Force of Government Health Expenditure in China: Evidence from Provincial Panel Data, 1991-2007
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The new health reform started in 2009 has shown the determination of the Chinese government, especially the central government, to increase its responsibility in the health sector. The most obvious manifestation of this commitment would be to increase government health expenditure (GHE). But there is still a hot debate about whether the government should allocate more public finds to health or just deepen the marketization of the health sector. Moreover, commitments at the central and local levels are not the same: local government responsibility for GHE is high, and commitments by the central government to increase GHE have not translated into increases in local government GHE as much as proposed in the national health reform.
Our research seeks to answer two questions: What was the actual pattern of GHE? And why did China’s local governments respond as they did? We first discuss the necessity of public financing for health care, and then analyze how intergovernmental economic competition affects local governments’ behavior under “Chinese-style decentralization” (known as fiscal decentralization with political centralization). Empirically, we apply a dynamic panel data model to provincial panel data from 1991 to 2007 to identify the effect of GHE on health performance in each province over time, using infant mortality and some morbidity metrics as health performance variables. We also examine differences across regions, as well as before and after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003.
Our analysis provides evidence that Chinese-style decentralization negatively impacted GHE. The main findings are as follows:
- Increasing GHE did improve health performance, and this improvement was mainly
driven by the GHE through the health department directly, not
through spending by other governmental departments that also impact health.
However, pursuit of economic performance lowered local governments’ GHE, mainly
by decreasing GHE through local health departments.
- Compared with in the
eastern and western regions, this health improvement was not significant in China’s
middle regions, where the intergovernmental economic competition leads to much
less GHE through health departments.
- The outburst of SARS in 2003 further
increased the positive effect from GHE through local health departments, while
the effect from GHE through other departments was not equally significant.
All these results suggest that adjusting the structure of public health financing, reforming the fiscal system, and improving the performance evaluation system for local governments are critical for the success of China’s on-going health reform.
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Qiulin Chen
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C335
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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qlchencn@stanford.edu
2011 Shorenstein-Spolgi Fellow in Comparative Health Policy
Qiulin Chen is a postdoctoral fellow of Shorenstein APARC and a member of the center's Asia Health Policy Program. His main interest of research is health economics and public finance, focusing on policy and outcome comparison of health care systems and Chinese health reform. His dissertation focused on performance comparison between public (or governmental) and private health care financing, between local and central government responsibility on health care, between contracted and integrated health care system. In particular, his dissertation examined under Chinese-style decentralization, known as fiscal decentralization with political centralization, how economic competition affect local government's behaviour on health investment, and why public contracted system obstructs health performance and provides one channel of such effects in terms of preventive care and public health. He is currently involved in a comparative research project on demographic change in East Asia based on the National Transfer Accounts data and analysis.
Chen's recent publication is "The changing pattern of China's public services" (with Ling Li and Yu Jiang) in Population Aging and the Generational Economy: A Global Perspective (Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason, editors), forthcoming 2011. Before studying in Stanford, he has published more than 10 papers in academic journals in Chinese, such as Jing Ji Yan Jiu (Economic Research) and Zhong Guo Wei Sheng Jing Ji (Chinese Health Economics), and 5 book chapters. He has participated in about 20 research projects, such as A Design of Framework for Healthcare Reform in China which is commissioned by the State Council Working Party on Health Reform, Strategy Planning Study of "Healthy China 2020" which is commissioned by the Minister of Health, and Health Challenge in the Aging Society and It's Policy Implication funded by Chinese National Natural Science Foundation.
Chen earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Peking University in 2010, and earned a B.A. in Business Administration from Nanjing University in 2001. From 2004 through 2008, he was Executive Assistant of the Director of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University (CCER). He is also a postdoctoral fellow of National School of Development at Peking University (Its predecessor is CCER).
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Mental Health in China after the Sichuan 5.12 Earthquake: An Empirical Study of Knowledge Transfer from Doctor to Patient
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Mental Health in China after the Sichuan 5.12 Earthquake: An Empirical Study of Knowledge Transfer from Doctor to Patient
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Political Change in Japan II: One Step Forward, One Step Back
The Japanese elections of 2007 and 2009 brought about the most significant political change in postwar Japan since the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. The elections saw a collapse of the LDP that had ruled Japan for almost the entirety of the postwar period, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) gained control of both houses of parliament (Diet). The elections appeared to mark the consolidation of a new era of genuine competitive electoral politics in Japan, potentially leading to a stable two-party system. The DPJ came into power in the fall of 2009 promising to revolutionize Japanese policy making and diminish the authority of the government bureaucracy in favor of a greater role for elected politicians and a cabinet-led system of governance.
A year later, the winds of change seem to have lost much of their momentum. The DPJ's string of electoral victories came to a quick end in the Upper House vote of 2010. Prior to the election, Prime Minister Hatoyama was forced to step down in favor of Naoto Kan after the government proved ineffectual in forging clear and cohesive policies in both domestic and foreign arenas. The LDP, along with new conservative groupings, has stepped back from the brink of self-destruction.
The future of politics in Japan is now highly uncertain with numerous possible outcomes. When it comes to political change in Japan, are recent events a case of one step forward, one step back? Alternatively, is the 2010 election simply be a temporary setback in what will become either a period of DPJ dominance or a period of genuine party competition? Or, are we still in a period of flux, in which further realignment and possibly even grand coalition making between the LDP and DPJ may continue to shake up the system?
Moreover, even if the events of 2007 and 2009 really did usher in a new party system, what sorts of changes are we looking at? Will the system be focused on genuine two-party competition, or will small parties help decide future governments? And what do these changes really mean in terms of government policy-making in Japan?
This conference follows in the footsteps of our successful conference on political change in Japan in 2007 at Stanford that produced an edited volume - Political Change in Japan. We again hope to bring together both junior and senior academic specialists on Japanese politics and policymaking to take stock of the state of political change after genuine party alternation has occurred. The conference will examine the impact of change on parties and politics and on key areas of governance.
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