Takeshi Kawanaka is a 2005-06 visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC, and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), Japan. He was a visiting research associate at the University of the Philippines from 1996 to 1998.

Since Kawanaka joined IDE in 1993, he has been working on politics in developing countries. He did field research mainly in the Philippines. He wrote a book on local politics, Power in a Philippine City (Chiba: IDE) and edited a book on post-democratization politics, The Philippines in the Post EDSA Period (in Japanese, Chiba: IDE). Now, he works on political institutions and policy outcomes in new democracies.

Kawanaka received BA and MA in Law from Waseda University and a PhD in political science from Kobe University. He taught courses on Southeast Asian Politics at Komazawa University and Seijo University. Aside from Japanese and English, he speaks Tagalog.