Seminar Talk: The State of Asian Democracies

Abstract
Democracy, as a form of political regime, has become a part of daily political reality in many East and Southeast Asian nations, placing the old claim of oriental despotism quite obsolete. The trouble here, however, is that institutional democracy opens up a can of political dilemma that challenges the normative basis of democratic governance. In this talk, Professor Fujiwara will focus on three of such dilemmas, namely, democracy and development, democracy and security, and finally, democracy and accountability.

About Speaker
Kiichi Fujiwara is Director of the Security Studies Unit, Policy Alternatives Research Center, and Professor of International Politics at the University of Tokyo. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Professor Fujiwara studied as a Fulbright student at Yale University before he returned to Japan at the Institute of Social Science (ISS). He has held positions at the University of the Philippines, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Bristol, and was selected as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center at Washington D.C. Prof. Fujiwara’s works include Remembering the War, 2001; A Democratic Empire, 2002; Is There Really a Just War? 2003; Peace for Realists, 2004 (winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005; revised edition published in 2010); America in Film, 2006; International Politics, 2007; War Unleashed, 2007; That’s a Movie! 2012, Conditions of War, 2013.