T J Pempel
Biographic Data
| ID | 737629 |
|---|---|
| NAME | T J Pempel |
| GIVEN NAMES | T J |
| FAMILY NAME | Pempel |
| SIGNATURE | PEMPEL T J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5400-2963 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 152 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 12 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Sources of peace in East Asia: Interdependence, institutions, and middle powers
For forty years, the East Asian regional order has delivered widespread peace and prosperity. That order faces possible upending by an economically and militarily more powerful China and a decreasingly robust and engaged United States. While accepting the possibility that such structural shifts could upend the regional order, this paper contends that three powerful counterweights are working to counter disruptive conflicts and to foster peaceful …
A Region of Regimes: Prosperity and Plunder in the Asia-Pacific
This book traces the relationship between politics and economics — power and prosperity — in the Asia-Pacific in the decades since the Second World War. It complicates familiar and incomplete narratives of the “Asian economic miracle” to show radically different paths leading to high growth for many but abject failure for some. The book analyzes policies and data from ten East Asian countries, categorizing them into three distinct regime types, e…
A Region of Regimes: Prosperity and Plunder in the Asia-Pacific
Asia’s Lesser Powers Confront US–China Threat to the Regional Order
Tensions between the United States and China have been on the rise under Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, challenging longstanding regional moves to peace and prosperity. In response, a number of less powerful East Asian states have taken steps toward deeper regional economic ties and multilateral institutions. This paper analyzes these competing tensions and their implications for the Asia-Pacific regional order
Japan and Asia’s Contested Order: The Interplay of Security, Economics, and Identity
Introduction. Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes
The Political Economy of Labor-Party Dominance and Decline in Israel
The Tar Baby Target: “Reform” of the Japanese Bureaucracy
The Dominant Party and Social Coalitions in Japan
Transpacific Torii: Japan and the Emerging Asian Regionalism
Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region
An overarching ambiguity characterizes East Asia today. The region has at least a century-long history of internal divisiveness, war, and conflict, and it remains the site of several nettlesome territorial disputes. However, a mixture of complex and often competing agents and processes has been knitting together various segments of East Asia. In Remapping East Asia , T. J. Pempel suggests that the region is ripe for cooperation rather than rivalr…
Patterns of Japanese Policymaking: Experiences from Higher Education
The author of this study of policymaking in postwar Japan contends that the prevailing perceptions of the subject advanced to date are inadequate. Professor Pempel identifies three distinct patterns of policymaking within Japan's current system of hegemonic pluralism. One of these, "policymaking by camp conflict, "is associated with broad, highly emotional, ideological issues that polarize political forces and that are resolved only after widely …
Right target; wrong tactics: The trump administration upends East Asian order
President Donald Trump initiated a tariff war claiming that the ultimate target was mercantile Chinese economic practices. Numerous countries share such concerns about China. Yet the Trump administration’s approach is wrong for at least three big reasons. First, tariffs avoid addressing the most fundamental complaints about China while they undermine the longstanding and beneficial global liberal trade order. Second, the U.S. approach has been un…
Regional decoupling: The Asia-Pacific minus the USA
This paper examines the interactions between the USA and the expanding ecosystem of East Asian and Asia-Pacific institutions. Concentrating on the period since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, it analyzes the ‘rival regionalisms’ that are now mushrooming throughout the region. Critical is the competition between nominally cooperative institutions and continued state-to-state suspicions that handicap efforts to forge regional institutions…
Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy
The Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated postwar Japan, lost power in the early 1990s. During that same period, Japan's once stellar economy suffered stagnation and collapse. Now a well-known commentator on contemporary Japan traces the political dynamics of the country to determine the reasons for these changes and the extent to which its political and economic systems have been permanently altered.T. J. Pempel contrasts the political econo…
Japan in 2016
Japanese domestic politics, foreign policy, economics and society continued along well-established paths in the year 2016. And long-term demographic trends remained a major unresolved challenge. Yet three exceptions to continuity stood out: first, controversial legislation that expanded the legality of collective self-defense; second, the likely collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); and third, the election of Donald Trump
Two Crises, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance
Back to the Future? Japan’s Search for a Meaningful New Role in the Emerging Regional Order
“Is Japan back?” Economically, the evidence is mixed at best due largely to slowness in carrying out vital structural reforms. In electoral terms, the Liberal Democratic Party has regained much of its prior dominance under Abe Shinzo. Most problematic of all, Japan is not back at all in regaining a commanding position within East Asia, in part due to its slow economic transformation, but due also to the atavistic positions taken by Abe’s governme…
Studying Asian and comparative regionalism through Amitav Acharya's work: Figure 1
The field of regionalism has been flourishing for some time. Amitav Acharya has been a persistent and powerful voice in the field, and he has contributed to and actively shaped paradigmatic debates within it. His theoretically sophisticated and contextually grounded approach to Southeast Asia's regional order and beyond has inspired countless scholars and better informed generations of students. A group of scholars, therefore, decided to discuss …
Two Crisis, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance
Two Crises, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance. Edited by T.J. Pempel and Keichi Tsunekawa. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2015. Hardcover: 280pp. As the two most significant financial crises to have hit the global economy in recent years, comparisons between the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997-98 and the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-9 were to be expected, not least by scholars of East Asia. The editors of…
Japanese political studies: Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going
We offer a historically grounded analysis of major works in the study of Japanese politics with a focus on the period since the Second World War. The article traces an evolution from early assessments of Japanese democracy and modernization through the focus on the political economy of high growth to the current disciplinary-based emphasis on narrower but more empirically defensible research. We close with a call for future research to take great…
The Economy-Security Nexus in Northeast Asia
1. Introduction: The Economic-Security Nexus in Northeast Asia, T.J. Pempel Part I: Economics and Security in Northeast Asia: Geographical Interfaces 2. Drinking Poison to Quench a Thirst? The Security Consequences of China-Taiwan Economic Integration, Scott L. Kastner 3. The North Korean Economy and International Society, Hiroku Imamura Part II: Economics and Security in Northeast Asia: Functional Interfaces 4. Economics, Security and Technology…
The 2012 United States election and the implications for East Asia
The 2012 election resulted in a major victory for President Obama and while his Democratic Party improved its Congressional strength, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control. The election revealed the depth of America's political and voter divisions with each party showing dramatically different areas of strength and weakness. Yet the election did not hinge on foreign policy leaving the Obama administration likely to continu…
Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia: Architecture and Beyond
Part 1: The Northeast Asian Security Complex 1. The Northeast Asian Security Complex: History, Power, and Strategic Choices Chung Min Lee and T.J. Pempel 2. The Requirements for Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia: Theory and Reality Ajin Choi Part 2: Security Challenges, Drivers, and Issues 3. Nuclear Weapons, State Bellicosity, and Prospects for an East Asian Security Architecture Joseph M. Grieco 4. Between Multilateralism and Bilateralism …
The Making of Northeast Asia
Journal Article The Making of Northeast Asia Get access Kent Calder and Min Ye (eds.) Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010 ISBN 10-0-8047-692202 (Price: $24.95) T. J. Pempel T. J. Pempel University of California, Berkeley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 193–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcr019 Published: 06 Octobe…
Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region
An overarching ambiguity characterizes East Asia today. The region has at least a century-long history of internal divisiveness, war, and conflict, and it remains the site of several nettlesome territorial disputes. However, a mixture of complex and often competing agents and processes has been knitting together various segments of East Asia. In Remapping East Asia , T. J. Pempel suggests that the region is ripe for cooperation rather than rivalr…
The Bureaucratization of Policymaking in Postwar Japan
To assess bureaucratic penetration of the policymaking process in postwar Japan, four indicators are examined: the declining role of the Diet as an independent legislative organ; links between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy's use -of the ordinance power; and the significant control exercised over allegedly independent advisory committees. All show a strong and growing role for the bureaucracy and attest t…
Japanese foreign economic policy: The Domestic Bases for International Behavior
By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and…
Soft Balancing, Hedging, and Institutional Darwinism: The Economic-Security Nexus and East Asian Regionalism
East Asia has increased its formal institutional linkages in both the economic and security arenas. This article addresses three questions concerning this expansion. First, why has the number of institutions increased? Second, why is there so little overlap in the purposes and memberships of these many new bodies? Third, why have most regional institutions achieved such limited policy successes? The article demonstrates that the bulk of the new e…
How Bush bungled Asia: Militarism, economic indifference and unilateralism have weakened the United States across Asia
Criticism of the Bush administration's policies in East Asia is hardly common fare. Roseate colors certainly pervade the picture painted by defenders of Bush's policies toward Asia who argue that relations between the US and that region have never been better. This paper shows to the contrary that the Bush administration politicized wide swaths of public policy, including foreign relations, in an effort to create a permanent Republican electoral …
"The Unbundling of "Japan, Inc: The Changing Dynamics of Japanese Policy Formation
T. J. Pempel, The Unbundling of "Japan, Inc.": The Changing Dynamics of Japanese Policy Formation, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Issue: A Forum on the Trade Crisis (Summer, 1987), pp. 271-306
Structural Gaiatsu: International Finance and Political Change in Japan
This article contends that key structural changes in Japan's political economy have been the result of Japan's new interactions with world capital markets. A once closed system is now substantially more open to currency fluctuations and enhanced capital movements into and out of Japan. These have led to sweeping systemwide alterations in Japan's prior system
Right target; wrong tactics: The trump administration upends East Asian order
President Donald Trump initiated a tariff war claiming that the ultimate target was mercantile Chinese economic practices. Numerous countries share such concerns about China. Yet the Trump administration’s approach is wrong for at least three big reasons. First, tariffs avoid addressing the most fundamental complaints about China while they undermine the longstanding and beneficial global liberal trade order. Second, the U.S. approach has been un…
Japan's Search for the ‘Sweet Spot’: International Cooperation and Regional Security in Northeast Asia
Between Pork and Productivity: The Collapse of the Liberal Democratic Party
The Lower House election on August 30, 2009, saw a wrenching break from the familiar in Japanese politics. Fifty-four years of almost uninterrupted single-party rule by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party was shattered by the massive electoral win by the Democratic Party of Japan. This article contends that the results can be traced to the LDP's unresolved internal tensions between its productivity-oriented and its pork-oriented constituenc…
Regime Shift: Japanese Politics in a Changing World Economy
The Dilemma of Parliamentary Opposition in Japan
The Japanese parliamentary opposition is generally viewed in American journalistic and political science literature as irresponsible in its tactics, impractical in its proposals, and impotent in influencing governmental decisions. Pempel explains the bases of this characterization, then argues that it overemphasizes certain kinds of behavior while ignoring others and that it fails to note the real dilemma of the opposition parties, for whom both …
Regional decoupling: The Asia-Pacific minus the USA
This paper examines the interactions between the USA and the expanding ecosystem of East Asian and Asia-Pacific institutions. Concentrating on the period since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, it analyzes the ‘rival regionalisms’ that are now mushrooming throughout the region. Critical is the competition between nominally cooperative institutions and continued state-to-state suspicions that handicap efforts to forge regional institutions…
The 2012 United States election and the implications for East Asia
The 2012 election resulted in a major victory for President Obama and while his Democratic Party improved its Congressional strength, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control. The election revealed the depth of America's political and voter divisions with each party showing dramatically different areas of strength and weakness. Yet the election did not hinge on foreign policy leaving the Obama administration likely to continu…
Patterns of Japanese Policymaking. Experiences from Higher Education
Studying Asian and comparative regionalism through Amitav Acharya's work: Figure 1
The field of regionalism has been flourishing for some time. Amitav Acharya has been a persistent and powerful voice in the field, and he has contributed to and actively shaped paradigmatic debates within it. His theoretically sophisticated and contextually grounded approach to Southeast Asia's regional order and beyond has inspired countless scholars and better informed generations of students. A group of scholars, therefore, decided to discuss …
More Pax, Less Americana in Asia
Northeast Asia presents a major theoretical puzzle: the region is rife with security challenges and seems continually poised for horrific military conflicts. Yet, despite many structural tensions, the region has been devoid of significant shooting wars since the signing of the Korean armistice in 1953. This essay examines two major contributions to that pacific condition: first, the pervasive focus on economic development and the growing economic…
The Politics of Enrollment Expansion in Japanese Universities
There is a significant correlation between the level of industrial development in any country and the percentage of its population attending institutions of higher education. The reasons for this would appear to be obvious: among other things, more people with greater skills are demanded to meet labor needs in a complicated, highly industrialized society than would be necessary in a primarily agricultural society. In addition, as the economic lev…
Sources of peace in East Asia: Interdependence, institutions, and middle powers
For forty years, the East Asian regional order has delivered widespread peace and prosperity. That order faces possible upending by an economically and militarily more powerful China and a decreasingly robust and engaged United States. While accepting the possibility that such structural shifts could upend the regional order, this paper contends that three powerful counterweights are working to counter disruptive conflicts and to foster peaceful …
Japanese political studies: Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going
We offer a historically grounded analysis of major works in the study of Japanese politics with a focus on the period since the Second World War. The article traces an evolution from early assessments of Japanese democracy and modernization through the focus on the political economy of high growth to the current disciplinary-based emphasis on narrower but more empirically defensible research. We close with a call for future research to take great…
Alternative capitalisms confront new pressures to conform
To critique these two volumes puts me in a somewhat awkward position. On the one hand, I was involved in the early planning and subsequent conferences of the project, as the preface so generously notes. Consequently, I feel somewhat responsible for its eventual shape and direction despite the editors' usual disclaimers. Yet, I am not a contributing author. Hence, I must wrestle with the dilemma of how best to raise criticisms without appearing to…
Global Social Policy: International Organizations and the Future of Welfare . Bob Deacon , Michelle Hulse , Paul Stubbs
Bureaucracy in Japan
Japan, the first Asian country to enter the ranks of the industrialized democracies, provides an excellent case study of a non-Western, but highly modern, national bureaucracy. As such, it provides a useful, informative, but culturally different, country for comparative purposes, whether with the United States specifically or with other industrialized democracies more generally. —Because of the central role that the Japanese bureaucracy has playe…
Of Dragons and Development
Economists could profitably treat academic publishing as a lagging economic indicator. Just as the Tokyo stock market hit its peak in late 1989, books on Japan's economic sucess began to pour off the presses; they still thrive today despite the fact that in the intervening three years, the Tokyo market has dropped over 50 per cent. In a like manner, academics are suddenly blessed with a plethora of studies of the countries presumably following in…
Japanese Democracy and Political Culture: A Comparative Perspective
Japan is an excellent case for the comparative study of the connections between democracy and culture. —It is a country with a well established system of constitutional democracy with roots in the nineteenth century. Politically, the country has been constitutionally and electorally democratic for the entire period since the end of World War II. —Democracy in Japan also has strong social and cultural underpinnings. Despite a hierarchical Confucia…
The Politics of Enrollment Expansion in Japanese Universities
There is a significant correlation between the level of industrial development in any country and the percentage of its population attending institutions of higher education. The reasons for this would appear to be obvious: among other things, more people with greater skills are demanded to meet labor needs in a complicated, highly industrialized society than would be necessary in a primarily agricultural society. In addition, as the economic lev…
American Education Through Japanese Eyes
The Bureaucratization of Policymaking in Postwar Japan
To assess bureaucratic penetration of the policymaking process in postwar Japan, four indicators are examined: the declining role of the Diet as an independent legislative organ; links between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy's use -of the ordinance power; and the significant control exercised over allegedly independent advisory committees. All show a strong and growing role for the bureaucracy and attest t…
Japan’s Nuclear Allergy
Essay| April 01 1975 Japan’s Nuclear Allergy T. J. Pempel T. J. Pempel Assistant Professor of Government, Cornell University T. J. Pempel has contributed articles on postwar Japanese politics to various scholarly journals. He has recently completed a manuscript on higher educational policy making in Japan and is editing a volume of papers on postwar policy making. In 1975–1976, he will be in Japan on a Fulbright research grant for a study of the …
The Dilemma of Parliamentary Opposition in Japan
The Japanese parliamentary opposition is generally viewed in American journalistic and political science literature as irresponsible in its tactics, impractical in its proposals, and impotent in influencing governmental decisions. Pempel explains the bases of this characterization, then argues that it overemphasizes certain kinds of behavior while ignoring others and that it fails to note the real dilemma of the opposition parties, for whom both …
Japanese foreign economic policy: The Domestic Bases for International Behavior
By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and…
Policymaking in Contemporary Japan
The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan
Policymaking in Contemporary Japan
Patterns of Japanese Policymaking. Experiences from Higher Education
Multinationalism, Japanese Style: The Political Economy of Outward Dependence, by Terutomo Ozawa
Patterns of Japanese Policymaking: Experiences from Higher Education
Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism.
Miti and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. by Chalmers Johnson
Tradition and Change in Postindustrial Japan
Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism
Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism
In a comparative framework, Pempel analyzes six major areas of domestic policy-making in Japan administrative reform, policy, labor relations, social welfare, environmental policy, and higher education. Each case is accompanied by selected readings translated from official government documents and the writings of critics of official policy.The book offers an unusually strong point of view, one that is sure to invite debate. Pemple attempts to unr…
"The Unbundling of "Japan, Inc: The Changing Dynamics of Japanese Policy Formation
T. J. Pempel, The Unbundling of "Japan, Inc.": The Changing Dynamics of Japanese Policy Formation, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Issue: A Forum on the Trade Crisis (Summer, 1987), pp. 271-306
Trading Technology: Europe and Japan in the Middle East
Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes
In this collection of original essays, thirteen country specialists working within a common comparative frame of reference analyze major examples of long-term, single-party rule in industrialized democracies. They focus on four cases: Japan under the Liberal Democratic party since 1955; Italy under the Christian Democrats for thirty-five or more years starting in 1945; Sweden under the Social Democratic party from 1932 until 1976 (and again from …
Bureaucracy in Japan
Japan, the first Asian country to enter the ranks of the industrialized democracies, provides an excellent case study of a non-Western, but highly modern, national bureaucracy. As such, it provides a useful, informative, but culturally different, country for comparative purposes, whether with the United States specifically or with other industrialized democracies more generally. —Because of the central role that the Japanese bureaucracy has playe…
Political Parties and Representation: The Case of Japan
Japan, the non-Western world's first country to introduce and continue a parliamentary system of government, and one of the most stable democracies in the industrialized world today, provides an excellent case for the study of political parties and representation. —It was the first non-Western country to introduce a parliament in 1890 and mass male suffrage in 1925. —Political parties and popular elections were an important basis for governance i…
Of Dragons and Development
Economists could profitably treat academic publishing as a lagging economic indicator. Just as the Tokyo stock market hit its peak in late 1989, books on Japan's economic sucess began to pour off the presses; they still thrive today despite the fact that in the intervening three years, the Tokyo market has dropped over 50 per cent. In a like manner, academics are suddenly blessed with a plethora of studies of the countries presumably following in…
Japanese Democracy and Political Culture: A Comparative Perspective
Japan is an excellent case for the comparative study of the connections between democracy and culture. —It is a country with a well established system of constitutional democracy with roots in the nineteenth century. Politically, the country has been constitutionally and electorally democratic for the entire period since the end of World War II. —Democracy in Japan also has strong social and cultural underpinnings. Despite a hierarchical Confucia…
Douglas E. Ashford
His initial scholarly publications were in the politics of North Africa, especially Morocco and Tunisia. He also was actively concerned with local government and its role in contemporary democracies. In addition to his own scholarly contributions in local government, Professor Ashford was active in organizing and editing research in this field. He organized and also contributed two volumes in a major series on the comparative public policy of adv…
Political science (61 works) · Economics (40 works) · Law (40 works) · Politics (38 works) · Political economy (31 works) · Law (25 works) · Japanese History and Culture (24 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Development economics (17 works) · China (15 works)