East-West Center: Featured Publications

Bill Clinton in North Korea: Winners and Losers

Bill Clinton's recent trip to North Korea to bring home imprisoned American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling was a welcome end to a frightening ordeal for these women and their families. All Americans can share in their well-publicized jubilation. Beyond this, however, there is little to celebrate. Denny Roy discusses the implications of Bill Clinton's visit to North Korea. amp;nbsp; Additional titles in the Asia Pacific Bulletin series

The United States-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership and the New Yudhoyono Administration

Indonesia's July 2009 presidential election confirmed that Indonesia has joined the ranks of the world's consolidated democracies. Indonesia's popular incumbent president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, appears to have easily won a second term in office. As SBY prepares for his second term, the United States and Indonesia are planning a new quot;comprehensive partnershipquot; to strengthen bilateral relations. Thomas B. Pepinsky discusses the prospects for U.S.-Indonesia relations during Yudhoyono's...

(Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

(Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia is the tenth book in the Studies in Asian Security series sponsored by the East-West Center and published by Stanford University Press. This book seeks to explain two core paradoxes associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): How have diverse states hung together and stabilized relations in the face of competing interests, divergent preferences, and arguably weak cooperation? How has a group of lesser, self-identified Southeast...

U.S. Territorial Policy: Trends and Current Challenges

As a large continental power the United States has embraced a pragmatic and flexible approach to building stable relations with remote Island jurisdictions--each with its own unique history, culture, and economic potential. In light of their distinctive needs, the United States has extended special trade, tax, wage, financial assistance, and other privileges to support the growth of the Islands' less-competitive market economies. In this landmark paper, Allen P. Stayman breaks new ground...

Forest Communities and REDD Climate Initiatives

Loss of the world's forests contributes an estimated 17 percent to all global greenhouse gas emissions, creating both a major challenge and an opportunity for international climate change agreements. In response, global policymakers have proposed that new carbon agreements include rewards for reducing forest-based emissions, an initiative known as REDD--Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. By creating financial incentives to reduce forest-sourced greenhouse gases,...

Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence Across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond

Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence Across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond is the eleventh book in the Studies in Asian Security series sponsored by the East-West Center and published by Stanford University Press. Why is it that political conflict between countries sometimes undermines commerce between those states, and yet at other times it seems to have little or no effect on cross-border economic flows? The question is an important one, yet, while numerous studies have...

Reconfiguring Families in Contemporary Vietnam

Reconfiguring Families in Contemporary Vietnam is the fifteenth title in the East-West Center book series, Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific, published by Stanford University Press. This book chronicles and analyzes the most significant change for families in Vietnam's recent past--the transition to a market economy, referred to as Doi Moi in Vietnamese and generally translated as the quot;renovation.quot; Two decades have passed since the wide-ranging institutional transformations...

Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class

Rise of the Red Engineers is the fourteenth title in the East-West Center book series, Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific, published by Stanford University Press. How did the Chinese Communist Party, which came to power promising to eliminate class distinctions, including those based on education, end up creating a highly hierarchical society presided over by technocratic officials? Joel Andreas chronicles how the CCP came to abandon class leveling in favor of technocratic policies....

Social Policy at a Crossroads: Trends in Advanced Countries and Implications for Korea

After successfully surviving the brunt of the Asian economic crisis that began in mid-1997, Korea is now confronting the threat of global economic crisis. In coping with this new crisis, Korea faces many challenges. Rapidly increasing numbers of elderly and retired people require programs that meet their needs in an equitable way, but do not impose impractical economic burdens on future working-age populations. Family and population policies must boost flagging fertility rates and...

How the Asia Pacific Can Drive the Global Recovery

The transition to a new, sustained global growth path is still precarious and will require concerted policy actions by many countries. Leadership by the G-20 will be essential for coordinating the global effort. But due to the central importance of the Asia Pacific in the world economy, regional institutions such as ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6, and APEC could also play large roles in the next phase of the recovery. Interdependence in the Asia Pacific region is now often seen as a source of risk,...

Islam and Nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia

Islam and Nation is the twelfth book in the Studies in Asian Security series sponsored by the East-West Center and published by Stanford University Press. Rooted in the latest theoretical debates about nationalism and ethnicity, yet written in an accessible and engaging style, Islam and Nation presents a fascinating study of the genesis, growth and decline of a nationalist movement. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with nationalist leaders, activists and guerillas, Aspinall reveals how...

The Global Economic Crisis and Its Implications for Asian Economic Cooperation

The economic crisis of 2008amp;#8211;09 has had a highly damaging effect on Asian economies. While it appears in the second half of 2009 that the worst of the crisis is over, expectations are that the region will revert to its pre-crisis growth trend only in 2011, and many uncertainties remain. This monograph considers the implications of the crisis for the regionalism movement in Asia, which essentially began in 2000 and was going strong when the crisis hit. Regionalism in Asia has grown...

Higher Education in Asia/Pacific: Quality and the Public Good

The past two decades have witnessed a vast expansion of higher education in the Asia/Pacific with education universally accepted as a necessary condition of economic growth. Countries throughout the region have rapidly expanded access to higher education, often by loosening restrictions on the private sector to stimulate its provision. In the process, the status of higher education has shifted from a widely accepted public good to a commodity provided and purchased through market mechanisms....

The New ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: Toothless Tiger or Tentative First Step?

In late 2008 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) committed to creating a human rights body, which emerged as the Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), the terms of reference (TOR) for which have since been adopted. Although the TOR for the commission currently outlines a primarily advisory rather than an enforcement role, the very existence of the ICHR has the potential to act as a trigger to further discussion on human rights issues in member states and open avenues...

A New Geography of Knowledge in the Electronics Industry? Asia's Role in Global Innovation Networks

Debates about globalization are focused on offshore outsourcing of manufacturing and services. This approach, however, neglects an important change in the geography of knowledge--the emergence of global innovation networks (GINs) that integrate dispersed engineering, product development, and research activities across geographic borders. This new form of globalization poses new challenges and opportunities for research on international economics, economic geography, and international...

Why Science Alone Won't Solve the Climate Crisis: Managing Climate Risks in the Pacific

The Pacific Islands are extraordinarily vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And although policymakers are turning to science to answer questions of how communities should deal with climate challenges, scientific knowledge is only one element of an effective risk-management process. The people of the Pacific Islands hold diverse beliefs about climate change and these beliefs inform their decisions. In addition, a dynamic social context influences the extent to which people are able...

The ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights and Beyond

More than forty years after its foundation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is on the verge of establishing a human rights body. On July 20, 2009, the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting adopted the Terms of Reference for the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). Hao Duy Phan discusses the implications of AICHR and whether the body will be adequate and effective in responding to major human rights problems in the region.amp;nbsp; amp;nbsp; Additional titles...

Sustainable Growth and Resource Productivity: Economic and Global Policy Issues

Written by international experts in their respective fields Sustainable Growth and Resource Productivity provides a comprehensive overview of global issues of raw materials supply and resource use. It also introduces new views and perspectives on the sustainable growth of emerging economies and develops a rationale for a new resource economics. This book emphasises why resources are back on the agenda: firstly, because of their fundamental economic role in technological progress and long-term...