What explains the recent large swings in the behavior of Japanese voters? Last August, for the first time in the post-WWII era, Japan's leading political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, lost power, making way for a new DPJ government. During the preceding months leading up to the lower house elections in August 2009, popular media coverage pointed to fundamental structural changes in the Japanese political economy as the underlying causes for changing voter preferences. To what extent can structural changes in the economy and society explain changing voter behavior and electoral outcomes? Japan's two decade old stagnating economy, rapidly graying society, and post-industrial advanced economic structure provide an ideal case for studying this question. Using both national and sub-national level data spanning two decades, we test both popular theories and conventional wisdom about the political effects of a graying society, widening income disparities, and industrial structural change.

Kay Shimizu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She received her undergraduate degree and PhD in political science from Stanford University (2008). Her research concerns the political economy of Japan and China, with a focus on fiscal politics, central local relations, and the politics of economic structural change. Her book manuscript, Private Money as Public Funds: the Politics of Japan's Recessionary Economy, examines the role of private financial institutions in Japan's political struggles to adjust to a changing economic and demographic landscape. She is on leave during the 2009-2010 academic year as an Advanced Research Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Program on US Japan Relations at Harvard University.

Organized by the Haas Center and led by Professor emeritus David Abernethy (Political Science), this half-day interactive workshop will include a panel of returning students and small group discussions for students intending to travel abroad.

This workshop is particularly encouraged for students enrolled in History 299X Design and Methodology for Interational Field Research, Haas Center fellows, and any student planning public service trips abroad in the coming months.

The workshop will focus on such issues as

• Managing stress, culture shock, and other unexpected turns of events
• Handling delicate issues of reciprocity with professional coleagues
• Confronting negative attitudes to you in your role and to the United States
• Appropriately acknowledging the help and support you've received

The workshop will give students the opportunity to meets others heading out to the same part of the world and learn more about available resources.

http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/haas/fellowships/workshop

Bill Gates is the Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he shapes and approves foundation strategies, reviews results, advocates for the foundation’s issues and helps set overall direction of the organization. Gates is the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corporation, a worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. In Gates’ last full year with the company, 2007, Microsoft had revenues of $51 billion, employed more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions, and invested $7.1 billion in research and development, as part of its commitment to make it easier, more cost-effective and enjoyable for people to use computers.

In July 2008, Gates transitioned out of his day to day role in the company to spend more time on his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, the foundation focuses on improving people’s health and lifting them out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people, especially those with the fewest resources, have access to opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.

Through the foundation, Gates and his wife Melinda support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global development, global health, and education, in the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. With assets of some $34 billion, the Gates Foundation has made grant commitments of $21 billion since inception. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health, with a focus on expanding childhood immunization ($1.5 billion), eradicating polio ($355 million), and combating malaria($287 million). In 2010, Gates pledged to spend more than $10 billion to develop and deliver new vaccines over the next decade. The foundation has also committed more than $2 billion to improving educational opportunities.

Viewed from the realist perspective of mainstream international political economy, economic and elite-based political integration are the keys to building a region; “soft” or “normative” questions of identity can be ignored.  Contesting that view, Dr. Pietsch will argue that research on regionalism, especially in Southeast Asia, could benefit from a focus on the nature and role of national and regional identity in that process. Compared with the growing body of scholarship on European identity as a means of understanding “Europeanization,” regional identity in Southeast Asia is still underexplored. Addressing this gap is important especially in relation to issues of democratization such as human rights, migrant labor, access to citizenship, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and corruption. These questions necessarily invoke national cultural and political values and their implications for regional identity.

Drawing on relevant theories, Dr Pietsch will use AsiaBarometer data to examine public opinion on democratization, national identity, and regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. Her preliminary findings underscore the need to broaden scholarship on regionalism in Southeast Asia to encompass both cultural and political manifestations of identity. In addition, she will show how identity helps explain why ASEAN-style regionalism is often thought by analysts to have succeeded in economic and security terms but to have failed in the consciousness of Southeast Asians themselves.

Dr. Juliet Pietsch is a senior lecturer in political science in the Australian National University’s School of Politics and International Relations. She studies broad patterns of social and political behaviour in Australia and East Asia. Recent publications include Dimensions of Australian Society (co-authored, 2010), and "Generational Change: Regional Security and Australian Engagement with Asia," The Pacific Review (co-authored, 2010).

Zalmay Khalilzad is President and CEO of Khalilzad Associates LLC, an international advisory firm. He serves as a Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and sits on the Boards of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America Abroad Media (AAM), the RAND Corporation's Middle East Studies Center, the American University of Iraq in Suleymania (AUIS), and the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF).

Dr. Khalilzad served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2007-2009, a post for which he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Prior to that position, he spent more than two years in Baghdad as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
(2005-2007).

He previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (2003-2005), Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan (2001-2003), and Special Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large for Free Iraqis (2002-2003).

Dr. Khalilzad held a series of high level positions at the National Security Council and in the White House between 2001 and 2003, including Special Assistant to the President for Islamic Outreach and Southwest Asia Initiatives, and Special Assistant for Southwest Asia, Near East, and North African Affairs. He is the recipient of three Distinguished Public Service Medals, one each from three consecutive Secretaries of Defense.

Between 1993 and 1999, he was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for RAND's Project Air Force. At RAND, he also founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Dr. Khalilzad previously served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 1990 to 1992. He served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and as Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs from 1985 to 1989.

Earlier in his career, he was an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego and an assistant professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Ambassador Khalilzad earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, as well as a PhD from the University of Chicago. He regularly appears on U.S. and foreign media outlets to share his foreign policy expertise.