In August 1997, after financial crisis had broken out in Thailand, Japanese officials proposed the establishment of an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). The proposal encountered a number of obstacles, the most formidable of which was opposition by the United States and the IMF. Consequently, Japanese officials aborted the initiative. However, the notion of an AMF resurfaced in a variety of forms thereafter,. Most recently, a network of bilateral currency swap arrangements has begun to emerge among the ASEAN + 3 nations under the auspices of the May 2000 Chiang Mai Initiative. This talk will examine the political dynamics surrounding the Japanese Government's initial proposal for the creation of an AMF in 1997, and the arrangements that have emerged in its place. In doing so, the talk will attempt to draw out the significance of the AMF idea, its institutional evolution for the U.S.-Japan bilateral relationship, and for U.S. and Japanese roles in multilateral financial institutions today.

Dennis Harter is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and a Foreign Service Officer (since 1966) specializing in Asian Affairs. From 1968-1970, he served as a district senior advisor in the Mekong Delta, then as deputy director for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia Affairs in the late 1970s. He has served as director of Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam Affairs during the period of normalization of relations with Vietnam, and as deputy chief of Mission (Deputy Ambassador) from August 1997 to the present. He also served in Hong Kong twice; in Taiwan and Indonesia, and was Consul General in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China from 1989-1993.

The prevailing view in international relations that security alliances are inevitably sustained by mutually perceived threats can be challenged in the present post-Cold War context. It will be argued in this presentation that 'alliance mutuality' can better explain ongoing U.S. security ties with Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand than traditional explanations for alliance politics. Dr. William T. Tow has been teaching with the University of Queensland's Department of Government since 1991. He was previously an Assistant Professor with the University of Southern California's School of International Relations. He has authored or edited ten books and numerous working papers, journal articles and book chapters on East Asian security problems and is completing a book on this issue as it relates to the 'realist/liberal' debate in international relations. He is a member of the Australian Foreign Minister's Foreign Affairs Council, the Australian Members Board of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In 1995, he co-authored a major study on US security policies in Asia for the IISS and he has consulted for several government agencies in both the United States and Australia. He is a dual Australian/US citizen.

Southeast Asia has been buffeted by several shocks and momentous events over the last two years, in particular the economic recession which started in July 1997; the return of Hong Kong to China; and political instability, particularly in Indonesia.

Increasingly, large, extended urban regions compete with each other in the Region and in the global economy. Furthermore, as a result of strong driving forces, including free trade, convergence in tax structures, and the "death of distance", Southeast Asian urban regions are less protected and influenced by nation states, and are thus highly vulnerable to unpredictable consequences of strong forces associated with globalization and co-evolving domestic change.

Dr. Webster will assess events of the last few years in terms of the dramatic re-positioning that has occurred among major urban regions in Southeast Asia - identifying winners and losers. His assessment will be based on consideration of both competitiveness and resilience - the two primary objectives, perhaps non-reconcilable, of most Southeast Asian urban regions.

Dr. Webster is currently a visiting scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. He has been Senior Urban Advisor to the National Planning Board, Prime Minister's Office, Thailand for the last five years. He is involved in formulation of strategies and policies related to urbanization in the context of rapid socio-economic change in Thailand. He is also full time advisor to the World Bank's Asia and Pacific Urban Unit. At the global level, he is involved in formulation of the World Bank's Global Urban Strategy, and the World Development Report 2000 which will focus on urbanization and decentralization.

Dr. Webster was formerly Director of the Urban Planning Program at the University of Calgary and Professor of Planning at the Asian Institute of Technology. He has advised a wide variety of governments, cities, corporations, and development agencies on urban policies and programming, particularly in Southeast Asia, over the last 25 years. He is the author of many academic and professional publications on urbanization and urban issues in Southeast Asia.

Entrepreneurs and self-employed people have much higher incomes than other rural Thai residents. This raises the question: why don't more people become entrepreneurs? One possibility is that people are prevented from changing their occupations because they lack wealth or access to credit. This talk provides a preliminary exploration of this issue using new survey data from rural Thailand. Anna Paulson is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is currently a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and taught at Princeton before going to Kellogg. Her research is concerned with how people cope with risk, particularly in cases where formal financial and insurance markets are not available.

This talk explores the broader puzzles of the East Asian economic crisis through a focus on the Thai textile-garment industry. Once the leading Thai export, the textile industry weakened in the 1990's in the face of wage increases, regional competition and slackening demand. The goal of this talk is to explain the industry's past success, its failure to sustain that growth through technical upgrading, and its current responses to the crisis. The emphasis is on the political and institutional factors influencing industry performance. Rick Doner is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, his M.A. in Chinese Studies from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Doner's general research interest is comparative political economy of Southeast Asia. This current research covers political and institutional bases of Thai economic growth, comparative analysis of business associations in developing countries, flexible production in East Asia, and political economy of the hard disk drive industry in East Asia.