The talk will highlight the economic and social development of India and Pakistan and how this has been affected by the high level of military expenditures. It will trace the likely consequences of the emergence of a nuclear race on the two economies arising both from the short-run impact of economic sanctions and the costs in the long-run of increased sophistication of military technology. Before becoming the managing director of the SPDC in Pakistan, Dr. Hafiz Pasha was Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance and Economic Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, with status of federal minister. Earlier, he was Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi, Dean and Director of the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, and Professor and Director of the Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi. Dr. Pasha's publications cover the fields of public finance, urban and regional economics and economics of social sectors. He has been involved with high-level policy making in Pakistan and has taken on numerous research assignments for international bilateral and multilateral agencies.

Dr. Nakai will talk about his research plan for the next year in China. A broad and open-ended question he has in mind is, "What is happening in the Chinese countryside these days?" He is interested in analyzing the roles of the county leaders in the pursuit of economic development. Despite its historical role as the most coherent subprovincial administrative unit, the county in China has not received much academic attention until recently. First, Dr. Nakai would like to add a case or two to the pioneering works by Jean Oi and Andrew Walder, and Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue. Second, he would like to look into the county leaders' response to market economy. How do they respond to foreign trade, special economic zones, and private enterprises? Third, he hopes to bring some comparative perspectives to the study of the county. Would county leaders in Heilongjiang province, for example, behave like their colleagues in Guangdong or in Zhejiang? Are those county leaders different from local administrators in Japan? Dr. Nakai will discuss the implications of the preliminary analysis of a few counties in Heilongjiang province. Yoshi Nakai has been Senior Researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies since 1997. He graduated from Tohoku University (BL) and from Indiana University (MA). He studied Chinese language at Beijing University in 1981. He just completed his Ph.D. in comparative politics at the University of Michigan. His dissertation is about politics in Manchuria and is chaired by Mike Oksenberg. Dr. Nakai was lecturer at University of Michigan; researcher at the Japanese Consulate in Hong Kong from 1991 to1994; and senior researcher at the Japan Institute of International Affairs from 1994 to 1997. He is going to Beijing next year.

Like a double-edged sword, the recent conflict in East Timor challenged Indonesia and the international community alike. For Indonesia, the crisis and its resolution offered a chance for military reform, yet threatened national unity. For international donors, the chance to defend human rights and implement self-determination carried a risk of provoking nationalist resentment against foreign intervention for democratic change.This talk will focus on the international community and its donor countries and agencies. How did they react to the conflict in East Timor? What were their strategies? How did their actions affect Indonesia -- not only its East Timor policies but also the course of its own democratic transition? Looking back on them now, do the crisis and its outcome lessons for the feasibility of foreign intervention to achieve domestic political reform? If so, what are they? If not, why not? And what do the answers to these questions imply for the democratic prospect in developing countries more generally?

The Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) is Pakistan's best reputed and only private management school. Operating within the environment of a government run university system, LUMS has used innovative strategies in marketing, research and consulting to reach its globally renowned status. Wasim Azhar, Dean of LUMS, will present a case study on its strategies. Dr. Wasim Azhar has taught at Wake Forest University, Swarthmore College, Kean University and the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. He has also worked as Marketing Analyst for Exxon Corporation in the USA. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), American Marketing Association, American Production Inventory Control Society (APICS), American Mathematical Association and MENSA. His research interests include issues in business policy, marketing strategy, and negotiation dynamics. Dr. Azhar received his Ph.D. and MSc from the University of Pennsylvania, MBA from Wake Forest University, and MSc from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore.

Japan represents a quintessential "network society" -- permeated by dense webs of formal and informal relationships across all areas of daily life, from the political to the economic. Yet as industrial activity continues to languish along many indicators in the 1990s, what was once considered a source of competitive strength is now viewed as an underlying weakness. Critics of "crony capitalism" in Japan (and the rest of Asia) charge that mutual backscratching has replaced the kind of hard-nosed business decisions needed to make economically efficient decisions about how to allocate capital, weed out poorly performing companies, and shift resources into more productive uses. Based on the forthcoming volume, "The Organization of Japanese Business Networks" (Cambridge University Press), this presentation evaluates these criticisms theoretically and empirically. It also considers efforts now underway in Japan in the area of keiretsu reform. Michael L. Gerlach received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Yale University and is currently associate professor at UC Berkeley's business school. His research is focused on cross-national studies of business organizations; entry strategies in foreign markets; strategic alliances, joint ventures, and new organizational forms; interfirm relationships and corporate strategies in Japanese business; business and public policies concerning international competitiveness; the comparative analysis of the institutions of modern market economies as they reflect social and cultural contexts.

For three decades following its establishment in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) played an important role in managing regional conflicts and nurturing a sense of regional identity in Southeast Asia. Toward the end of the 1990s, however, transnational environmental and economic crises dealt heavy blows to the credibility of the Association. These crises exacerbated tensions and burdens that had already arisen inside ASEAN in the wake of its expansion to include all ten Southeast Asian countries and its involvement in building larger multilateral institutions for the Asia Pacific. Are ASEAN's best years behind it? Or will it recover, perhaps even exceed, its former ability to sustain regional security and strengthen regional identity in Southeast Asia? Why, or why not? Amitav Acharya is an internationally recognized authority on regionalism in Southeast Asia. His latest books are The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Oxford, 2000) and Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2000). He is on research leave at Harvard for the current academic year as a fellow of the Asia Center and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

David W. Brady is a political scientist whose work encompasses American politics and legislative bodies, international political trends, and comparative politics. Brady holds the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy endowed chair at the Graduate School of Business and is a professor of political science in Stanford University's School of Humanities and Sciences. A dedicated and popular teacher, Professor Brady is a past recipient of Stanford's Phi Beta Kappa Distinguished Teacher Award, presented for his work with undergraduates, and of the Robert K. Jaedicke Silver Apple Award, presented by the Stanford Business School Alumni Association for his participation in alumni activities.

Brady recently served as an associate dean for academic affairs at the Business School and continues to serve as director of the School's programs in executive education. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior fellow by courtesy at the Institute for International Studies, both on campus. David is also co-director of the University's Social Science History Institute and associate director of the University's Public Policy Program. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the advisory council for the Kansai Silicon Valley Venture Forum.

His publications include Change and Continuity in House Elections (eds. with J. Cogan), Stanford University Press (2000), Revolving Gridlock, Westview Press (1998); "Congress in the Era of the Permanent Campaign," Brookings Review, forthcoming 2000; "The Roots of Careerism in the U.S. House of Representatives," Legislative Studies Quarterly, (1999); "The SNTV and the Politics of Electoral Systems in Korea," in Electoral Systems in Asia (University of Michigan Press (1999); "Out of Step, Out of Office: Legislative Voting Behavior and House Election Outcomes," in Change and Continuity in House Elections, Stanford University Press (1999).

Author Liza Dalby will discuss the extraordinary life and times of Lady Murasaki Shikibu, the writer of the world's first novel, The Tale of Genji. Ms. Dalby, an anthropologist and renowned scholar of Japanese history, will apply "literary archaeology" to explore the life of Lady Murasaki Shikubu and the Japanese Imperial Court, and will introduce her new book, The Tale of Murasaki. Liza Dalby is an anthropologist specializing in Japanese culture. As the only Westerner to have become a geisha, Ms. Dalby was able to obtain previously undisclosed material for her Ph.D. and her books Geisha and Kimono. Presently, she is a consultant for Steven Spielberg's upcoming film adaptation of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and three children.