For years, Japanese economists and public officials described regional development in East Asia as a unitary thing, something akin to a flock of flying geese -- with Japan as the lead goose, transferring capital and technology to its slower neighbors. But times have changed. For one thing, China is now the biggest bird in East Asia. So what has happened to the traditional "flying geese" pattern of development, and how has this impacted Japan?

Walter Hatch is an associate professor of government and the director of the Oak Institute for Human Rights at Colby College in Maine. He is the author of Asia's Flying Geese: How Regionalization Shapes Japan (Cornell UP, 2010), co-author of Asia in Japan's Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance (Cambridge UP, 1996), and the author and co-author of numerous articles on the politics and political economy of East Asia, especially Japan and China. He is now editing a book about NGOs and civil society in China, and working on his own new book about the way in which war memories continue to haunt international relations in East Asia. He received his PhD from the University of Washington in 2000.

Alison Dundes Renteln is a Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at the University of Southern California where she teaches Law and Public Policy with an emphasis on international law and human rights.  A graduate of Harvard (History and Literature), she has a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the USC Law School.   She served as Director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics and as Vice-Chair of the Department of Political Science.  In 2005 she received the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching (campus-wide).  Her publications include The Cultural Defense (Oxford), which received the 2006 USC Phi Kappa Phi Award for Creativity in Research.  Her book co-edited with Marie-Claire Foblets, Multicultural Jurisprudence:  Comparative Perspectives on the Cultural Defense was published in 2009 (Hart) and featured in the California Bar Journal (February issue).  Another collection, Cultural Diversity and Law:  State Responses from Around the World, co-edited with Marie-Claire Foblets and Jean-Francois Gaudreault-Desbiens, was published in 2010 (Bruylant).  Cultural Law:  International, National, and Indigenous, co-authored with James Nafziger and Robert Paterson, was also published 2010 (Cambridge).  Two of her essays appeared in a special issue of Judicature on cross-cultural jurisprudence (March-April 2009) and another on this topic in The Judges' Journal of the American Bar Association (Spring, 2010).  Her current project is a study of the jurisprudence of names. 

Professor Renteln has collaborated with the United Nations on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  She lectured on comparative legal ethics in Bangkok and Manila at ABA-sponsored conferences.  She has often taught seminars on the rights of ethnic minorities for judges, lawyers, court interpreters, jury consultants, and police officers. During the past few years she participated on panels on cross-cultural justice at the meetings of the American Bar Association, the National Association of Women Judges, the North American South Asian Bar Association, the American Society of Trial Consultants, and others.  She served on several California civil rights commissions and the California committee of Human Rights Watch.  She is a member of the American Political Science Association, the American Society of International Law, the Law and Society Association, and the Commission on Legal Pluralism.

Natan Sachs is a CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. His primary research interest is on the formation of political cleavages and especially the politics of religious identity, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He is also interested in the use of experiments in comparative politics and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Indonesia, using experimental methods.

Michael Karayanni, Edward S. Silver Professor of Civil Procedure  and Director of the Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for  Legislative Research and Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, Hebrew  University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on private  international law and inter-religious law, civil procedure, and  multiculturalism. He holds an LL.D in law from the Hebrew  University (2000) as well as an S.J.D. degree from the University  of Pennsylvania Law School, received in 2003. He is the author of  "Conflicts in a Conflict" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012)

Event Summary

Professor Karayanni's talk addresses the question of why religious and political issues in Israel are dominated by the conflict around disproportionate funding for Jewish institutions and norms, and the implications this emphasis has on jurisdictional authority in Israel. Professor Karayanni points out that while there are 14 recognized religious communities in Israel, less than 2% of the budget for support of religious institutions goes to non-Jewish organizations. However, as a result of the relative lack of official recognition, the Israeli Supreme Court has in some cases deferred from enforcing Israeli administrative law, a practice that has afforded greater freedom to some private religious institutions such as religious schools, as Karayanni outlines demonstrates with examples from several recent court cases . He then describes how judicial freedom for some religious groups can create a "multicultural predicament" in which the autonomy allowed to minority religious groups may conflict with the best interests of more vulnerable members, such as women and children, in groups with illiberal social and judicial norms. Nonetheless, Professor Karayanni argues that the perception of being multicultural is important to the Jewish state, as it is in Egypt, Jordan, and India, where minority religious groups have similar autonomy.

A discussion session following the talk addressed such questions as: Is there any political will to divorce Jewish identity from the state and instead have it represented only through community institutions? How many Christian Palestinians live in the Palestinian Territory versus in Israel? How do they operate legally within the Palestinian community? How are minority Jewish sects treated in Israel? How would a binational state resulting in the absorption of Palestine affect these religious issues?

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and with the advent of a new Japanese government, the long-simmering concept of an East Asian Community (EAC) has come to a boil. Trilateral discussions among China, Japan, and South Korea--the "Plus Three"--have accelerated, including early steps toward formation of a trilateral free trade area. The Obama administration has responded with new interest in regionalism, including discussion of new trans-Pacific trade agreements and a bid to join the budding East Asia Summit process. In November 2010, the trans-Pacific APEC will convene in Japan, and the next annual meeting, in 2011, will take place in Hawaii.

This period could shape the future of regionalism in East Asia, but many questions have yet to be answered. Will former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's initiative to build a new regional order on the core of Japan-China-ROK ties bear fruit? How does this concept of an EAC compare to other visions of regional integration, from APEC to the ASEAN-plus process? Will the ASEAN member nations cede leadership of the drive for tighter integration to Northeast Asia? Will the gravitational power of China's booming economy overwhelm concerns about its political system, military nontransparency, and possible ambition for regional hegemony? What role will the United States seek to play in Asian regionalism, and what will Asia's response be?

On September 9 and 10, 2010, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University convened the second Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue. This distinguished gathering discussed the latest research into the course of regionalism across several dimensions: regional vs. trans-Pacific trade and production networks; traditional and nontraditional security; the intersection of historical memories and national cultures in forging, or thwarting, a new regional identity; and possible futures for the regional order and how it might interact with other transnational institutions.

The goal of the Dialogue was to facilitate discussion, on an off-the-record basis, among scholars, policymakers, media, and other experts from across Asia and the United States, and to establish trans-Asian networks that focus on issues of common concern.

The first Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue was held September 10-11, 2009, in Kyoto, on the theme of "Energy, Environment, and Economic Growth in Asia."