I am currently working on the following projects:

DISSERTATION

Permeable Policymaking: Cross-National Coalitions and Foreign Policy Formation in Japan

Although foreign policymaking is often characterized as a predominantly domestic sparring ground where interest groups compete to define their country’s “national” interest, policymaking is not the exclusive preserve of a unitary state or domestic actors. In my dissertation, I look systematically at cases in which Japanese bureaucracies and firms form "cross-national coalitions” with their counterparts in foreign countries in order to increase their chances of achieving their desired policy outcomes. This mezzo-level approach allows me to examine a number of interesting shifts in Japanese foreign economic, security, and environmental policy since the end of the Cold War. I use a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the formation and success of these coalitions, combining paired case study comparisons with large-N quantitative analysis in order to both identify specific mechanisms at work and to put my case studies into a larger context. This research has been generously supported by the Japan Foundation and the UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies.

WORK ON EAST ASIAN POLITICS

Linking Trade, Traditional Security and Human Security: Lessons from Europe and the Americas and Implications for Asia (with Vinod Aggarwal)

Despite the fact that contemporary international relations scholarship tends to deal with economics and security as separate spheres, the linkages between these two areas are vital in determining the nature of international politics. This project focuses on the influence of both conventional and human security factors in driving trade policy measures and the corresponding implications of different types of trade arrangements for international traditional and human security. In particular, we address several key gaps in the existing literature: (1) the concept of “human security” as a driver and potential result of trade arrangements, independent of and distinct from “traditional” security concerns; (2) the role of different types of trade arrangements (i.e. global, minilateral, or bilateral) in defining the nature of security-trade linkages; and (3) the concrete effects that trade arrangements have on the security environment. Aggarwal and I provide the theoretical framework for the project, while other scholars contribute detailed case studies on the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), the East Asia Summit (EAS), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as seen in the policies of the US, the EU, and Asian countries. We examine how the EU and U.S. have used their trade policy toward achieve non-economic goals and how the resultant trade agreements have influenced traditional and human security in order to draw connections with the linkages currently being made in the Asian region. This project has been generously supported by the Center for Global Partnership and the Korea Foundation.

Hot Economics, Cold Politics? Reexamining Economic Linkages and Political Tensions in Sino-Japanese Relations (with Sara Newland)

Scholars often claim that East Asia is characterized by “hot economics and cold politics.” While economic linkages between East Asian countries proliferate rapidly, mutual distrust and unresolved historical tensions seem to present a continual obstacle to the development of closer interregional political ties. This dynamic is particularly evident in the bilateral relationship between Japan and China. Though it has much to gain from trading with Japan, China continues to experience strong domestic anti-Japanese sentiment and periodic protests over issues such as history textbooks, territorial disputes, controversial Japanese statements about the Nanjing Massacre, and visits by politicians to the infamous Yasukuni Shrine. Despite the frequency with which the “hot economics, cold politics” thesis is invoked, however, there have been few attempts to test its accuracy or to specify the conditions under which it holds true. To what extent do firms react to these political debacles, and to what extent are the latter simply demonstrations of nationalist rhetoric? We tackle these questions by using a combination of event analysis and nonparametric matching techniques to examine the effects of a series of negative shocks in Sino-Japanese relations on specific types of companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Our findings indicate that when shocks are unexpected and have potentially large-scale consequences, companies dependent on the Asian sales market are more negatively effected than otherwise similar companies. This suggests that a firm’s value is partially tied to Sino-Japanese bilateral relations and that political tensions are indeed important for the future of economic linkages in Asia. Our findings help to clarify the relationship between economic integration and political tensions between these two key countries, making a contribution to the understanding of Asian regionalism and the broader relationship between conflict and economic interdependence. Early versions of this paper were presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association. Part of the research for this project was conducted with the support of the Japan Foundation.

OTHER PROJECTS