The Study of International Cultural Relations of Postwar Japan

The paper examines policies and activities of cultural exchange carried out by Japanese national, local and private agents since the end of WWII. Methodologically, we distinctively use the notion culture as a tool and as an object of study, and to synthesize the two in full intention, based on the debate among IR students about so called Cultural Turn in IR theories. As case studies, the Japanese experiences are examined from two points. Firstly, it is compared with the German experiences in Europe, with special attention to the construction of national identity.In both countries, the peoples tried to make use of cultural exchange activities in the management of international relations. The actual developments of cultural relations by the two countries, however, were in striking contrast to each other. Secondly, our study focuses on the explosive expansion of private sector's international cultural exchange in the 1980s in association with so called "emerging civil society" phenomenon observed worldwide throughout 1970s and 1980s. By using our original approach mentioned in the Chapter 1, the paper tries to sketch out that the increase of the private organizations is largely the response of the Japanese society to outside influences, not something genuinely outgrown from within the society itself due to mainly domestic causes.

Political limits on the world oil trade : firm-level evidence from US firms

International politics affect trade patterns, especially for firms in extractive industries. We construct the firm-level dataset for the U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2010 to test whether the state of international relations with the trading partners of the U.S. affect importing behavior of the U.S. firms. To measure "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners we use voting records for the UN General Assembly. We find that the U.S. firms, in fact, import significantly less oil from the political opponents of the U.S. Our conjecture is that the decrease in oil imports is mainly driven by large, vertically-integrated U.S. firms that engage in foreign direct investment (FDI) overseas.

The Nature of the State in Afghanistan and Its Relations with Neighboring Countries

Since the formation of Afghanistan, its nature as a Pashtun state has affected all its international relations. On the other hand, the fact that it was originally established as a buffer state between Britain and Russia still governs its national integration. In this article I examine Afghanistan's relations with its neighbors through an investigation of its history and the present conditions of its borders with its southern, western and northern neighbors. My aim is to obtain an overall perspective of Afghanistan's relations with its neighbors, historically decisive elements, and the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-55 and U.S.-R.O.C Relations

On September 3, 1954, Chinese artillery began shelling Quemoy (Jinmen), one of the Kuomintang-held offshore islands, setting off the first Taiwan Strait Crisis. This paper focuses on the crisis and analyzes the following three questions: (1) What was the policy the U.S. took towards the Republic of China (R.O.C), especially towards the offshore islands, to try to end the Taiwan Strait Crisis? (2) What were the intentions of the U.S. government in trying to end the Taiwan Strait Crisis? And (3) how should U.S. policy towards the R.O.C. which led to solving the Taiwan Strait Crisis be positioned in the history of Sino-American relations? Through analysis of these questions, this study concludes that the position the U.S. took to bring an end to crisis, one which prevented China from “liberating Taiwan” and the Kuomintang from “attacking the mainland,” brought about the existence of a de facto “two-China” situation.

The effects of international politics on oil-exporting developing countries

International politics affects oil trade. But does it affect the oil-exporting developing countries more? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine how these firms respond to changes in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. We conjecture that the political pattern of oil imports from these individual firms is driven by hold-up risks, because oil trade is often associated with backward vertical FDI. To the extent that developing countries have higher hold-up risks because of their weaker institutions, the political effect on oil trade should be more significant in the developing world. We find that oil import decisions are indeed more elastic when firms import from developing countries, although the reverse is true in the short run. Our results suggest that international politics can affect oil revenue and hence long-term development in the developing world.

Chairship system and decision making by consensus in international agreements : the case of ASEAN

How are different positions reconciled under decision making by consensus in international agreements? This article aims to answer this question. Consensus rule provides each participant a veto, which risks resulting in non-agreement. Taking ASEAN as a case study of international organizations that have adopted consensus rule as the main decision-making procedure, this article presents the chairship system as an analytical scheme to examine how different positions are or are not reconciled under consensus rule. The system is based on conventional knowledge regarding the chair in international conference, which can be defined as an institution where the role of the chair is taken by one member state in an international organization and plays a role in agenda-setting. The agenda-setting power given to the chair varies across organizations. This article assumes that the chair in ASEAN is given a relatively strong agenda-setting power to enable the chair to reach agreements and bias such agreements in its own favor.