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Until recently, democracies in new European Union members and aspirants were believed to be on their way to consolidation. Nonetheless, the recent financial crisis has had important political implications, with renewed fears of instability and even reversal of democratic gains. In Hungary, the Fidesz government has changed the Constitution and the electoral system, and has fired more than 10,000 government employees amid complaints of political discrimination. In Romania, austerity measures have led to in-fighting between the president and the parliament-backed prime minister, resulting in a failed attempt to impeach the president, and EU concerns over government attacks on the independence of the Constitutional Court. Moreover, the December 9, 2012, Romanian elections have dealt a decisive victory to the prime minister’s Social Liberal Union, which will likely make co-habitation with the current president crisis-prone. Bulgaria is another recently admitted EU member wherein concerns over the rule of law negatively affected democratic performance, while Serbia has recently elected a nationalist government with connections to the Milosevic regime. These developments raise doubts over the sustainability of New Europe’s democratic gains, and warrant a reassessment of the consolidation of these democracies.

Officials, scholars, and activists have long believed in improving environmental policy in developing countries by fostering desirable values and practices through networks of experts. Tim Forsyth will question this faith by arguing that all too often such networks ignore the limitations of global environmental assessments and the politics involved in producing and using expert opinion. Using preliminary evidence from Indonesia and Thailand, he will show how Procrustean advice and local agendas affect efforts to mitigate climate change, and what that can mean for the generation of greenhouse gas (through energy use) and its absorption in sinks (through forest conservation). Forsyth argues that more deliberative institutions of environmental information, judgment, and decision can better accommodate local knowledge and vulnerabilities, strike productive balances between mitigation and adaptation, and thereby address climate change in Southeast Asia in more timely and effective ways.

Tim Forsyth is Reader in Environment and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely on matters of politics of environmental science and policy in Southeast Asia including Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (Routledge, 2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (with A. Walker, Washington University Press, 2008); and International Investment and Climate Change: Energy Technologies for Developing Countries (Earthscan, 1999). He was a co-author of the chapter on climate change in the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).

In Singapore the People’s Action Party has held power continuously since 1959, having won 13 more or less constrained legislative elections in a row over more than half a century. In Malaysia the Alliance Party and its heir, the National Front, have done nearly as well, racking up a dozen such victories over the same 54-year stretch. These records of unbroken incumbency were built by combining rapid economic growth with varying degrees and types of political manipulation, cooptation, and control. 

In both countries, as living standards improved, most people were content to live their lives quietly and to leave politics to the ruling elite. In the last decade, however, quiescence has given way to questioning, apathy to activism, due to policy missteps by the ruling parties, the rise of credible opposition candidates, increasing economic inequality, and the internet-driven expansion of venues for dissent. 

As the ground appears to shift beneath them, how are the rulers responding? Will their top-down politics survive? How (un)persuasive have official warnings against chaotically liberal democracy become? Are ethno-religious and even national identities at stake? Are comforting but slanted historical narratives being rethought? And how principled or opportunistic are the agents of would-be bottom-up change? 

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh is the author most recently of Floating on a Malayan Breeze:  Travels in Malaysia and Singapore (2012) and The End of Identity? (2012). Before joining The Economist Group in Singapore in 2006 he was a policy analyst on foreign investment for the government of Dubai. He has written for many publications, including The Economist, ViewsWire, and The Straits Times, and been widely interviewed by the BBC and other media. He earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School (Harvard, 2005) after receiving bachelor degrees in Southeast Asian studies and business administration (UC-Berkeley, 2002). His service in the Singapore Armed Forces in the late 1990s took him to Thailand, Taiwan, and Australia.

More than 215 million people—approximately 3% of the world’s population—now live outside their country of birth (United Nations, 2009). Migration of individuals across international borders has socio-economic consequences both to the receiving and sending countries. One of the most important economic impacts of international migration is the amount of remittances sent home by migrants. World Bank (2011) estimated that developing countries received about $372 billion of remittances. Remittances serve as the second largest source of foreign reserves, next to exports of goods and services, for these countries. In addition, remittances benefit the poor households whose average income falls below the amount necessary to meet their most basic and non-food needs for the year.

This study focuses on the roles of international migration and remittances in the Philippines, which was ranked fourth in total international remittances received in 2009, after India, China, and Mexico (World Bank, 2012). The Philippine government refers to the temporary international workers or Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as bagong bayani or new heroes. This epithet stems from the important roles that these migrant workers play: they often serve as the primary income providers for their families left in the Philippines, and their transfers are a source of foreign reserves for the Philippine economy.  

The colloquium presents evidence on three related research questions. The first is whether agricultural households in rural Philippines use remittances from OFWs, along with loans, and assets to mitigate the effect of negative shocks to their income. In particular, speaker Marjorie Pajaron will ask the question whether farmers depend on their network of family and friends when they encounter a natural disaster, like excessive rainfall or typhoon. The second is how migration affects the bargaining power within the household. Finally, she will discuss the remittance behavior of different types of migrants from the Philippines. 

Marjorie Pajaron joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during the 2012–13 academic year from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Department of Economics where she served as a lecturer.

She took part for five years in the National Transfer Accounts project based in Honolulu. Her research focuses on the role of migrant remittances as a risk-coping mechanism, as well as the importance of bargaining power in the intra-household allocation of remittances in the Philippines. Pajaron received a PhD in economics from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. 

Her recent working papers include: “Remittances, Informal Loans, and Assets as Risk-Coping Mechanisms: Evidence from Agricultural Households in Rural Philippines,” October 2012, Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Development Economics; “The Roles of Gender and Education on the Intra-household Allocations of Remittances of Filipino Migrant Workers,” June 2012; and “Are Motivations to Remit Altruism, Exchange, or Insurance? Evidence from the Philippines,” December 2011.

Motoshige Itoh, Professor, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo. He has served as President of the National Institute for Research Advancement since February 2006, and held the post of Dean at the Gradual School of Economics from 2007 to 2009. He was professor of the Graduate School of Economics and the Faculty of Economics since 1993, and Assistant Professor in Economics since 1982. He has served in various government committees, including the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning Agency, Fair Trade Commission, and others and was a member of Economic Strategy Council in 1998-1999. He has been an advisor to the Statistical Division at the Bank of Japan, and a visiting scholar at various institutions, including the Department of Economics at Harvard University, the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Australian National University, and Research Institute at the Bank of Japan. He has published numerous books and papers on Japan’s economy and finance. He received his BA from Tokyo University and PhD from University of Rochester, both in Economics.

Hideaki Miyajima, Director, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study(WIAS), Professor of Japanese Economy, Graduate School of Commerce, Waseda University. He teaches Japanese Economy, and Corporate Governance in Japan.  He stayed at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University as a visiting scholar for 1992-94 and 2004-05. He was asked to consult by several institutions such as the World Bank, Hawaii University, Hebrew University, and Korean Development Institute. He was also appointed to numerous positions: Faculty Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry, a Special Research Fellow of Policy Research Institute (Ministry of Finance), Research Fellow of EHESS (Paris), and an Adjunct Professor of Chung-Ang University (Seoul). He wrote several books and numerous papers including: Corporate Governance in Japan, Oxford University Press, 2007 (co-edited), Changes and Continuity in Japan, Curzon Press, 2002 (co-edited), Policies for Competitiveness, Oxford University Press, 1999 (co-edited), He received his Ph.D in Economics from the University of Tokyo.

Takeo Hoshi, Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, and professor of finance (by courtesy), Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining S/APARC, he was Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in International Economic Relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Hoshi also serves on the Board of Directors at Union BanCal Corporation. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and at the Tokyo Center for Economic Research (TCER). His main research interests include the study of the financial aspects of the Japanese economy, especially corporate finance, banking, and monetary policy. He received numerous awards for his publications including Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001), co-authored with Anil Kashyap (Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago), and his other publications include, “Japanese Government Debt and Sustainability of Fiscal Policy” (with Takero Doi and Tatsuyoshi Okimoto), Journal of the Japanese and International Economies,2011; “Corporate Restructuring in Japan during the Lost Decade” (with Satoshi Koibuchi and Ulrike Schaede), Japan’s Bubble, Deflation, and Long-term Stagnation, MIT Press, 2011 (Koichi Hamada, Anil K Kashyap, and David E. Weinstein, eds.) He has been the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies since 1999. Hoshi received his BA in social sciences from the University of Tokyo in 1983, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.