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The Power Of Weakness: Coercion In The American Alliance Network In Asia, Noelle Claire Troutman

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

How can a weaker ally, or ‘protégé’ coerce their stronger partner, or ‘patron’ for greater autonomy? My primary argument is that protégés have agency; they can and do coerce their patron. I ask two interrelated questions within this study. First, when can allied preferences diverge? Second, if allied disagreement is likely, how can a protégé coerce their patron for greater autonomy? I argue that protégés with insecure regimes can threaten their own collapse to get their patron to give into their demands. This is a tough lie to get away with; patrons are therefore likely to concede when their protégé …

The Influence Of The Thirty-Six Stratagems On Chinese Strategy In The Diaoyu Islands, Brent Schuliger

Senior Honors Theses

The Diaoyu Islands are a small, uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea which has begun increasing in strategic significance due to its advantageous location near Taiwan and along the First Island Chain. The islands are currently under Japanese administration, but the People’s Republic of China considers them historically Chinese and contests Japan’s claim to the islands. A careful examination of China’s actions in challenging Japan’s rule over the Diaoyus reveals the influence of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a tome of ancient Chinese military wisdom which provides a framework onto which China’s current strategy corresponds. This thesis examines the historical …

Us Bilateral Relations With China And Their Effects On Us-Japan And Us-India Relations, Mackenzie Owens

International Relations Summer Fellows

How do US-China relations impact US relations with other Asian nations, specifically with India and Japan? US-China relations can be seen as the main driver in US relations with Japan and India following rapprochement with the United States. The inverse relationship that exists between US-China and US-Japan/US-India relations signals the importance of the US’ bilateral relationship with China. While there are significant differences between the US-India and US-Japan relations, both are similarly affected by US-China relations. The critical time period explored in this paper is the Sino-Soviet Border Conflict of 1969. This time period explores the impact of US-China relations …

Uniquely Okinawan: Determining Identity During The U.S. Wartime Occupation, Courtney A. Short

History

When the U.S. military landed on the shores of Okinawa in 1945, they faced not only a fierce and battle-tested Japanese force, but also 463,000 Okinawan inhabitants. Larger than any other civilian population encountered by the Americans during previous campaigns throughout the Pacific islands, the people of Okinawa also had a unique and complex historical and political relationship with Japan. Okinawa never experienced subjugation as a colony, yet its acceptance as a prefecture did not yield equal treatment for the people because of their Ryukyuan heritage. As the U.S. military prepared for the Battle of Okinawa, they faced dangerous uncertainty …

Why Does The Us Pay So Much For The Defense Of Its Allies?: 5 Questions Answered, Michael E. Flynn, Carla Martinez Machain, Michael A. Allen

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since the start of Donald Trump’s run for the U.S. presidency in 2015, he has been critical of the amount of money U.S. allies contribute to their own defense.

Now, the Trump administration is demanding that Japan and South Korea pay more for hosting U.S. troops stationed in those countries.

The media also reported that U.S. military leadership in South Korea discussed the possibility of withdrawing up to 4,000 troops from South Korea if it does not increase its contributions. The Pentagon has since denied having such plans.

We have each studied overseas deployments of U.S. military personnel for nearly …

Lawyers And Law Graduates In Parliaments As A Consequence Of Smd Electoral Systems: Comparing Japan, South Korea, And Germany, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study addresses the question of why so many of the world’s legislators are lawyers or law graduates. Drawing from previous studies on lawyer-legislators and electoral systems, it develops the argument that ‘first-pass-the-post’ single-member district electoral systems presume a principal-agent logic of representation and are therefore conducive to political parties selecting representatives with either occupational experience or educational training in the field of law. By contrast, proportional representation (PR) elections presume a microcosm model of representation incentivizing parties to select candidates representing diverse demographic and occupational backgrounds. This conjecture is tested by examining legislator backgrounds in three large parliaments with …

Robert H. Pruyn: An Albany Yankee In The Tycoon's Court, Susanna Fessler

Campus Conversations in Standish

Robert H. Pruyn (1815-1882), a "good Dutchman" of Albany, served as the second American foreign minister to Japan, 1861-1865. This was a time of civil war in the States, and a time of great civil unrest in Japan. Pruyn prided himself both on his diplomacy and his appreciation of Japanese culture. This talk will focus on some of the lesser-known details of his experience as revealed in his many personal letters home, held by the Albany Institute of History and Art.

Regulating E-Cigarettes: Why Policies Diverge, Eric A. Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper, part of a festschrift in honor of Professor Malcolm Feeley, explores the landscape of e-cigarette policy globally by looking at three jurisdictions that have taken starkly different approaches to regulating e-cigarettes—the US, Japan, and China. Each of those countries has a robust tobacco industry, government agencies entrusted with protecting public health, an active and sophisticated scientific and medical community, and a regulatory structure for managing new pharmaceutical, tobacco, and consumer products. All three are signatories of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, all are signatories of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, …

Shifting Bilateralism: Understanding Change In The Us-Japan Alliance During The Cold And Gulf War, Grant Anderla

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Emerging from a violent past as unlikely partners, the alliance of the United States and Japan has withstood years of cooperation and competition. Today, the two nations face regional threats from North Korea and China. Considering the unique alliance, I hope to provide a framework for understanding inter-alliance management and policy making processes. Subsequently, I consider one main question in my research. What factors explain continuities and changes within this alliance relationship? To address this question, I consider leadership role conception, role prescription, and norms of consultation that contribute to changes within alliance relations.

Analyzing these variables in the case …

Japan National Energy Strategy: Energy Politics - Posc 370, Peter Wong

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

In this paper is my energy strategy for Japan, with the purpose to: provide broad strategic objectives, identify and explain the policies chosen, mobilization of political support as well as consideration of Japan’s energy resources. Additionally the paper considers economic and political feasibility, and theaters of conflict that may arise. The paper uses the knowledge and skills of looking at national energy politics and strategies learned in class.

Singapore: Commemoration And Reconciliation, Tze M. Loo

History Faculty Publications

Commemorations are in general highly political acts; in East Asia, the period around the anniversary of Japan's surrender on August 15 has, for some time now, become highly politicized. It is a moment in which postwar Japan performs its attitude toward its war responsibility and aggressive acts-performances that are invariably evaluated for their sincerity, or lack thereof. At the same time, nation states who suffered Japan's wartime aggres­sions use the period to present their understanding of the history of Japan's wartime conduct and, as is often the case, to include a criticism of the per­ceived inadequacies of Japan's contrition. The …

The East China Sea In Dod China Military Power Reports, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2000 saw Congress require the Department of Defense (DOD) to prepare an annual report on Chinese military power. This report contains classified and unclassified editions. Documenting Chinese military developments, strategy, and trends are critical parts of these reports. Beijing’s military activities in the East China Sea (ECS) are important report components. This work explains the importance of these and other DOD reports for those studying ECS developments, examines how DOD has documented Beijing’s military activities within these publicly accessible reports, and describes how members of Congress have reacted to ECS developments during the Obama …

Japan’S Proactive Multilateralism, Dennis T. Yasutomo, Tomoaki Ishigaki

Government: Faculty Publications

Japan’s 2013 UN Arms Trade Treaty diplomacy exhibited neither the standard minimalist, subservient negotiating style nor policymaking restricted to the usual actors. Juxtaposition of the treaty and the 2014 arms export policy revision illustrates how traditional ‘‘peace diplomacy’’ can evolve into ‘‘proactive pacifism.’’

Geopolitical Implications Of The Sino-Japanese East China Sea Dispute For The U.S., Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This presentation updates the article "Geopolitical Implications of the Sino-East China Sea Dispute for the U.S." published in Geopolitics, History, and International Relations which is already available in epubs.

Policy Analysis: A Rich Array Of Country And Comparative Insights, Joselyn Muhleisen, Ishani Mukherjee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The International Library of Policy Analysis (ILPA) series, edited by Iris Geva-May and Michael Howlett, is a collection of books assessing the state of the discipline of policy analysis in eight countries. The books address the academic development of policy analysis, its practical applications, the diverse range of actors involved, and pertinent academic instruction. Alhough the state of policy analysis - and, importantly, the state of policy analysis scholarship - varies considerably in the countries studied, the series is able to sythesise existing knowledge through empirical research and institutional analyses of the governmental and non-governmental organisations that provide policy advice …

Governing Disasters: The Challenge Of Global Disaster Law And Policy, Eric A. Feldman, Chelsea Fish

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter uses the analytical framework of transnational legal ordering (TLO) developed by Halliday and Shaffer and applies it to the area of law and disasters. In contrast to the increasingly transnational legal nature of social ordering highlighted by Halliday and Shaffer, it argues that the emergence of transnational regulatory networks and cross-border principles or policies in the area of disaster management has been uneven and incomplete. Although there are many factors that help to explain why the law/disasters area has resisted the trend toward “transnationalization,” two stand out. One is the relative dearth of national laws and policies governing …

The Values Of Nations: The Fate Of Nations Is Not Predetermined, Daniel Reiher

Senior Honors Theses

The values of a nation are vital for forming the institutions that govern a people and for guiding public policies. This thesis examines the historical institutions and political cultures of several nations and compares them to their geographic (i.e. continental) contemporaries. Particular emphasis is devoted to case-studies of Industrial Revolution Britain, Meiji Restoration Japan, Independent Botswana, and Post-war Asia. This thesis demonstrates a correlation between such institutions as free markets, limited government, and protected personal liberties, with national prosperity. Most importantly, the formation of these institutions was directly affected by the values of the individuals that established them. Values, both …

Identity, Ideology, And Cinema: Making Sense Of Japan's Foreign And Security Policies In The 1950s And 2000s, Yukari Ito

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Japan is an important ally of the United States–the world’s third biggest economy, and one of the regional great powers in Asia. Making sense of Japan’s foreign and security policies is crucial for the future of peace and stability in Northeast Asia, where the possible sources of conflict such as territorial disputes or the disputes over Japan’s war legacy issues are observed.

This dissertation explored Japan’s foreign and security policies based on Japan’s identities and unconscious ideologies. It employed an analysis of selected Japanese films from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, as well as from the late 1990s …

China's Military Modernization, Japan's Normalization And Its Effects On The South China Sea Territorial Disputes, Zenel Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China’s military modernization has allowed it to take a more assertive position on the territorial disputes it currently has with Japan and its Southeast Asian neighbors. The South China Sea (SCS) dispute is a clear example. Meanwhile, Japan is normalizing its military status to play a more proactive security role in the region. Japan’s normalization process has been greatly influenced by China’s growing military capabilities as it fears that China could pose a threat to its sea lanes of communications. Although Japan does not have territorial claims in the SCS, it regards the SCS as a strategically vital area. It …

The National Historic Preservation Act: Preserving History, Impacting Foreign Relations?, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the highest political leader in Japan, shook his head in disbelief. His tenure as Prime Minister had been tense, partly due to the ongoing question of a replacement airfield for the U.S. Marines in Futenma. A predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, also suffered political fallout stemming from his reversal of a public promise to find a replacement location for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station. Prior to the Hatoyama administration, the Japanese government had selected a new location for the Marine Air Station, a remote area far removed from the busy city of Okinawa in Henoko. Moving …

Constructing Threat: How Americans Identify Economic Competitors, Shelley D. Wick

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China’s emergence as an economic powerhouse has often been portrayed as threatening to America’s economic strength and to its very identity as “the global hegemon.” The media’s alarmist response to an economic competitor is familiar to those who remember US-Japanese relations in the 1980s. In order to better understand the basis of American threat perception, this study explores the independent and interactive impact of three variables (perceptions of the Other’s capabilities, perceptions of the Other as a threat versus as an opportunity, and perceptions of the Other’s political culture) on attitudes toward two different economic competitors (Japan 1977-1995 and China …

The Discursive Construction Of Japanese Identity And Its Haunting Others, Yoshiko Yamada

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examined the formation of Japanese identity politics after World War II. Since World War II, Japan has had to deal with a contradictory image of its national self. On the one hand, as a nation responsible for colonizing fellow Asian countries in the 1930s and 1940s, Japan has struggled with an image/identity as a regional aggressor. On the other hand, having faced the harsh realities of defeat after the war, Japan has seen itself depicted as a victim. By employing the technique of discourse analysis as a way to study identity formation through official foreign policy documents and …

Japan Chair Platform: Japan's Other Spending Problem, Gene Park

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

Since the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, a combination of declining revenue growth, fiscal stimulus, and growing budget commitments have made Japan the most indebted country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Attention to Japan’s growing public debt problem increased in the wake of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis, and the issue of how to go about fixing Japan’s finances shot to the forefront during July’s Upper House election as competing political parties put forth ideas from trimming wasteful spending to increasing taxes to reducing budget deficits and debt. But until just a short …

Global Governance And The Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Political Economies Of Broadband Development In Korea And Japan, Kenji Kushida, Seung-Youn Oh

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

South Korea’s and Japan’s telecommunications sectors developed rapidly, especially in high-speed, low-priced broadband. We argue that both countries are engaged in strategic liberalization, fostering competition to reach specific goals. However, different political dynamics pushed their initially similar policy regimes apart. Korea retained its managed competition regime while Japan experienced a regime shift.

Competition Policy In East Asia : The Cases Of Japan, People's Republic Of China, And Hong Kong, Ping Lin

CAPS Working Paper Series

This paper describes and evaluates the competition policies in Japan, China, and Hong Kong. A simple framework based on the economic incentive of violations of law is used to evaluate the effectiveness of competition policy. After half a century of effort, Japan has finally established of a modern antitrust system, although its surcharge system could be further improved so as to enhance the deterrence effect of the law. China and Hong Kong (as most other East Asia countries) are at the early stage of developing an adequate and effective competition policy. Their short experiences, however, demonstrate the importance and complexity …

As A Matter Of Factions: The Budgetary Implications Of Shifting Factional Control In Japan’S Ldp, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies

Faculty Scholarship

For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of agenda-setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions “control” the LDP affect the party’s decisions over spending priorities systematically. This runs contrary to the received wisdom in the voluminous literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison d’être, do …

Explaining Policy Failure: Japan And The International Economy, 1969-1971, Robert C. Angel

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the determinants of Japan's most serious postwar blunder: failure to define and implement effective and timely countermeasures to deal with its change from deficit to surplus international monetary status during the 1969-1971 period. It concludes that intense bureaucratic compartmentalization and a lack of supra-ministerial leadership of national policy were key determinants of this failure, leaving Japan's political system dependent upon irresistible external pressure (gai-atsu), in this case from the United States, to define and force implementation of necessary policy changes. This critical but largely ignored episode illustrates a negative aspect of the traditional insulation of Japan's national …

The Good Empire: Japan's New Order At Home And Abroad, Stephen E. Pelz

Asian Language & Literature Occasional Papers

PREFATORY NOTE

The Area Studies Programs within the International Programs Office of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst initiated in 1976 a series of Occasional papers to provide an outlet for both informal and formal scholarly works of a generci interest to the University community. In 1978 the first numbers in this series devoted to issues and themes related to Asia were introduced under the sponsorship of the Asian Studies Committee at the University. The initial three papers deal with topics in Japan, China and Laos. In future papers topics will be presented which encompass the major regions of Asia; …