East-West Center: Featured Publications

Climate Change and Energy Policy

No one would disagree with the importance and necessity of preserving the environment while promoting economic growth. However, no informed decision on any energy and environmental policy can be made without knowing its economic costs and environmental effectiveness. Against this background, several key empirical and design issues come to mind, of both scientific interest and policy relevance. Given that emissions trading scheme has been a pillar in the EU climate policy and is going to be ...

The Presidential Election: Safeguarding Mongolia's Democratic Future

The inauguration on June 18, 2009 of Tsakhia Elbegdorj as Mongolia's next president is an important, if not essential, factor in maintaining the country's two-party democracy. By all accounts, the Democratic Party (DP) leader ran a masterful campaign to defeat incumbent Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the former communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP). The peaceful presidential election outcome is all the more significant in light of the July 2008 violence following the highly charge...

(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 So...

Is a Strategic Alignment Possible for South Korea and China?

Pundits have argued that as Sino-ROK relations increase, the alliance between the United States and South Korea might eventually be undermined, compelling South Korea to choose between the United States and China as its long-term strategic partner. Hyon Joo Yoo discusses whether it is possible that increased cooperation between China and the ROK is conducive to strategic collaboration that will overshadow the ROK's relationship with the United States. amp;nbsp; Additional titles in t...

The State Strikes Back: India and the Naga Insurgency

In the first decade after declaring independence in 1947, the Indian state faced numerous challenges to its very existence and legitimacy. These ranged from a war with Pakistan over the state of Jammu and Kashmir immediately after independence to the first armed uprising in the country in Telengana led by Communists in what is today the state of Andhra Pradesh.When an armed revolt against the very idea of India erupted in the distant Naga Hills of Assam state in the 1950s, the Indian government ...

North Korean Shipping: A Potential for WMD Proliferation?

The possibility that North Korean ships may be smuggling weapons of mass destruction is a matter of intense concern in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. The few reported incidents of North Korean ships involved in WMD transport are ambiguous; some ships have been engaged in legal weapons trade and some carried quot;dual-usequot; goods suitable for use in nonmilitary applications, like agriculture. Ownership of the North Korean merchant fleet is largely private and highly fragmented; most o...

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 grou...

Transformations in Leadership, Volume 1, no. 3

This journal features articles and reflections by the students of the East-West Center Leadership Certificate Program. Over the course of two years in this program, these students explored different forms of leadership and practiced service-learning. A key exercise for the students was to profile a leader of their choosing. They had a chance to interview leaders in different fields from across the globe. Some of the articles in this journal are based on that research. The leaders p...

The Urban Transformation in Asia: Policy Implications of Decentralization

Urban growth, migration, and the transformation of human settlements represent rapid and fundamental changes in the structure of Asian society and are key issues of common concern for the United States and the countries of Asia. In 1960, Asia had just one megacity, defined as an urban center with a population of 10 million or more. Today, there are at least a dozen sprawling megacities in Asia. By 2015, 12 of the 22 megacities projected to develop worldwide will be in Asia, and, by 2030, Asia wi...

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 hav...

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 transform...

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 pol...

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 an...

The Pacific War and Its Political Legacies

Competition among the national myths of the Pacific War held by the various countries of Northeast Asia and by the US about the Pacific still rages in the international politics, even while accurate understanding of what actually took place in that war has largely faded. Unresolved wartime grievances continue to constrain, distort, and embitter bilateral relationships, erupting over such issues as the Yasukuni Shrine, Japanese history textbooks, the Nanjing Massacre, the quot;comfort...

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 ...

Are the Farmers Always Right? Rethinking Assumptions Guiding Agricultural and Environmental Research in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia faces enormous challenges in managing its agricultural and environmental resources, from global warming to biodiversity loss. But chances for effectively addressing these issues may be hampered by the wide acceptance of four basic assumptions that guide the way we think about problems of managing agriculture and the environment. These assumptions form an interlinked system of thought that privileges the traditional and local over the modern and cosmopolitan. When taken t...

China's Stimulus Package: A Catalyst for Recovery?

China's massive fiscal stimulus package has generated high expectations in official Washington as well as on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms. Some observers paint a rosy picture of a surge in growth that will transform this vast economy into a new quot;locomotivequot; of the global marketplace. Others are less sure. Dieter Ernst discusses whether the stimulus package will be sufficient to catalyze China's economy and that of its neighbors into sustainable recovery. amp;nbsp; ...

Connecting Communities and Conservation: Collaborative Management of Protected Areas in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities and one of the lowest levels of protected area coverage in the world. As a result, sustainable natural resource management and biodiversity conservation are critical issues. To address these issues, the Nishorgo Support Project was launched in 2003 as an undertaking of the Forest Department of Bangladesh, with financial and technical support from USAID. The overall goal of the Nishorgo Support Project is to enhance biodiversity...