Delivered at:: Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs

Course type:: Compulsory course

When:: 2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructors

Varpahovskis, Eriks

Kuteleva, Anna

Full Syllabus

Abstract

This is a required course for Politics and Economics in Asia, the HSE-KIC dual degree program. This advanced undergraduate course provides a comprehensive introduction to East Asian politics. The first part (Module I) highlights East Asia as a region, focusing on shared historical memories, cultural values, and patterns of state-building. The second section (Module II) examines institutional arrangements, political development, and state-society relations in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The emphasis in this course pivots on understanding of conceptual issues that are anchored in politics of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan but that are generally relevant to comparative politics. Specifically, we will explore these and related questions: • How do nation-states form, and how are they held together? • What is development? • What would be the optimal way to design institutions in a democracy? • How do authoritarian regimes survive? • How can political institutions and policies shift deeply held cultural attitudes in society? While comparative in nature, the course will also emphasize paired comparisons of recent country-level developments (i.e., South and North Korea, China and Taiwan).

Learning Objectives

Through the course, students are expected to acknowledge the importance of the historical origins and the developmental paths of state-society relations in understanding the unique aspects of each government’s policies as well as of people’s political behaviors.

Expected Learning Outcomes

Students will also develop competency in the following areas: practicing the unique qualities of academic writing style (e.g., sentence conciseness, readability, clarity, accuracy, , using direct order organization, objectivity).
Students will develop competency in the following areas: • Collecting, analyzing, documenting, and reporting research clearly, concisely, logically, and ethically; • Understanding the standards for legitimate interpretations of research data within the academic community; • Using primary and library research to discover information;
Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to: • Be familiar with the key events that have shaped contemporary East Asian politics; • Understand and critically analyze state-society relations in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the 21st century
Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to: • Effectively compare the development of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; • Understand the role and significance of the main concepts associated with comparative politics and how they can be applied to the study of state-society relations in East Asia; • Locate East Asian politics within the global context and provide a comparative perspective

Course Contents

Week 1 Asia in a Comparative Perspective
Week 2 Colonialism and Imperialism
Week 3 Regionalism and Nationalism
Week 4 Research workshop (I)
Week 5 Asian values?
Week 6 Economic development and the role of the state (I)
Week 7 Economic development and the role of the state (II)
Week 8 Mid-term exam
Week 9 China (I): The resilience of the Chinese Communist Party
Week 10 China (II): Civil society and new middle class
Week 11 Taiwan & Hong Kong: Nationalism, national identity, and democratization
Week 12 Japan: American influence
Week 13 Korea (I): Democracy & development
Week 14 Korea (II): National identity in a divided nation
Week 15 Japan, South Korea & Taiwan: Party politics and democracy
Week 16 Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in East Asia
Week 17 FINAL EXAM

Assessment Elements

Mid-term exam (1 module)
Research essay proposal and bibliography (2 module)
Final paper: Research essay (2 module)
Final exam
Participation during in-class activities (1 module)
Workshop I (participation and in-class activities) (1 module)
Workshop II (participation and in-class activities) (1 module)
Research questions (1 module)
Participation during in-class activities (2module)
Reading notes (2 module)

Interim Assessment

2022/2023 1st module
0.2 * Research questions (1 module) + 0.1 * Workshop I (participation and in-class activities) (1 module) + 0.15 * Workshop II (participation and in-class activities) (1 module) + 0.15 * Participation during in-class activities (1 module) + 0.4 * Mid-term exam (1 module)
2022/2023 2nd module
0.1 * Participation during in-class activities (2module) + 0.15 * Reading notes (2 module) + 0.35 * Final paper: Research essay (2 module) + 0.1 * Research essay proposal and bibliography (2 module) + 0.3 * Final exam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

America’s role in nation-building : From Germany to Iraq / James Dobbins ... Rand Corporation. (2003). RAND.
Dickson, B. (2011). Updating the China Model. Washington Quarterly, 34(4), 39. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2011.608335
Doner, R. F., Ritchie, B. K., & Slater, D. (2005). Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States: Northeast and Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective. International Organization, 02, 327.
Fleckenstein, T., & Lee, S. C. (2017). Democratization, post-industrialization, and East Asian welfare capitalism: the politics of welfare state reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Journal of International & Comparative Social Policy, 33(1), 36–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/21699763.2017.1288158
Howard Sanborn. (2015). Democratic Consolidation: Participation and Attitudes Toward Democracy in Taiwan and South Korea. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.C.2035121.V1
Judd, E. R. (2007). No Change for Thirty Years: The Renewed Question of Women’s Land Rights in Rural China. Development & Change, 38(4), 689–710. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2007.00429.x
Justin P. Kwan. (2016). The Rise of Civic Nationalism: Shifting Identities in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Ming-sho Ho. (2015). Occupy Congress in Taiwan: Political Opportunity, Threat, and the Sunflower Movement. Journal of East Asian Studies, 15(1), 69–97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1598240800004173
Pekkanen, R. (2004). After the Developmental State: Civil Society in Japan. Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(3), 363–388. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1598240800006019
Stubbs, R. (2009). What ever happened to the East Asian Developmental State? The unfolding debate. Pacific Review, 22(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09512740802650971
Suzuki, S. (2015). The rise of the Chinese ‘Other’ in Japan’s construction of identity: Is China a focal point of Japanese nationalism? Pacific Review, 28(1), 95–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2014.970049
Veg, S. V. (DE-588)138055025, (DE-576)306314770, aut. (2017). The rise of “localism” and civic identity in post-handover Hong Kong : questioning the Chinese nation-state / Sebastian Veg.
Yoshimi, S. (2003). “America” as desire and violence: Americanization in postwar Japan and Asia during the Cold War. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 4(3), 433–450. https://doi.org/10.1080/1464937032000143797
Young-Hee Chang, Jack Junzhi Wu, & Weatherall, M. (2017). Popular Value Perceptions and Institutional Preference for Democracy in “Confucian” East Asia. Asian Perspective, 41(3), 347–375. https://doi.org/10.1353/apr.2017.0017

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Campbell, E. (2015). The end of ethnic nationalism? Changing conceptions of national identity and belonging among young South Koreans. Nations & Nationalism, 21(3), 483–502. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12120
O, B. T. (2017). Unbuilding from the Inside: Leadership and Democratization in South Africa and South Korea. Government & Opposition, 52(4), 614–639. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2015.41
So Young Kim. (2010). Do Asian Values Exist? Empirical Tests of the Four Dimensions of Asian Values. Journal of East Asian Studies, 10(2), 315–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1598240800003477

Bachelor’s Programme 'HSE University and Kyung Hee University Double Degree Programme in Economics and Politics in Asia'

State and Society in East Asia