Governments confront difficult political choices when they must determine how to balance their spending. But what would happen if a government found a means of spending without taxation? In this book, Gene Park demonstrates how the Japanese government established and mobilized an enormous off-budget spending system, the Fiscal Investment Loan Program (FILP), which drew on postal savings, public pensions, and other funds to pay for its priorities and reduce demands on the budget.

Although other governments have operated systems of policy finance, none have approached the Japanese system in size or been structured to deliberately relieve pressure on the budget so that it could remain balanced and low-tax. Park lays out a compelling puzzle leading us to ask why and how the Japanese created this system, why and how it was allowed to grow to such immense size, and then why it has begun to be reformed and wound down.

-Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia

[P]rovides a compelling rationale for FILP's importance in Japan's postwar political economy. . . . [N]o one has brought to bear the sustained focus, historical scope, or analytical rigor that Gene Park has with this book.

-William W. Grimes, Boston University

Park's book argues that this system underwrote a distinctive postwar political bargain, one that eschewed the rise of the welfare state and Keynesianism, but that also came with long-term political and economic costs that continue to this day. By drawing attention to FILP, this study resolves key debates in Japanese politics and also makes a larger point about public finance, demonstrating that governments can finance their activities not only through taxes but also through financial mechanisms to allocate credit and investment. Such "policy finance" is an important but often overlooked form of public finance that can change the political calculus of government fiscal choices.

Gene Park is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Baruch College. He has also been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and a visiting scholar at the Japanese Ministry of Finance's Policy Research Institute. He was also the receipient of a Fulbright IIE fellowship. He has a PhD in political science for the University of California, Berkeley.

One Alliance, Two Lenses examines U.S.-Korea relations in a short but dramatic period (1992-2003) that witnessed the end of the Cold War, South Korea's full democratization, inter-Korean engagement, two nuclear crises, and the start of the U.S. war on terror. These events have led to a new era of challenges and opportunities for U.S.-South Korea (ROK) relations.

Based on analysis of newly collected data from major American and Korean newspapers, this book argues that the two allies have developed different lenses through which they view their relationship. Shin argues that U.S.-ROK relations, linked to the issue of national identity for Koreans, are largely treated as a matter of policy for Americans-a difference stemming from each nation's relative power and role in the international system.

Offering rich empirical data and analysis of a critically important bilateral relationship, Shin also presents policy suggestions to improve a relationship, which-after 50 years-has come under more sustained and serious criticism than ever before.

Recent reviews for One Alliance, Two Lenses:

"Based on solid research, One Alliance, Two Lenses is a jargon-free and interesting study of the alliance, offering useful policy insights on how to improve this ever-expanding partnership."

-Victor D. Cha, Georgetown University, former White House Asia advisor (2004-7)

"Shin's triple achievement is in offering exceptional depth in analyzing U.S-South Korean relations during a pivotal period, presenting the premier case study of how identity politics shape a bilateral relationship, and establishing a model in using the media to show how national identities are linked to perceptions of another state. This book sets a high standard for scholarship."

-Gilbert Rozman, Professor, Princeton University

"In a major contribution to the scholarship on the U.S.-Korea relationship, Shin unearths a fundamental mismatch in the ways Koreans and Americans see their relationship. Understanding the mismatch, which this sophisticated book meticulously documents, would help us better grasp, and hopefully improve, a relationship that remains vital to the region's peace and prosperity."

-J. J. Suh, author of Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances and director of Korea Studies Program at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University

This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization