SPEAKER: Robert Pekkanen, Associate Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Deptartment of Political Science at the University of Washington.
TOPIC: Japan: A Year After the Tsunami
Professor Pekkanen, will discuss politics, economics, demographics, Japan’s role in the region and its relations with the USA. His first book, Japan’s Dual Civil Society:
Members Without Advocates (Stanford, 2006) won the Ohira Prize in 2008. Pekkanen’s fourth book examines party organization and theories of institutional change and origin through the case of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (Cornell University Press, 2010). Pekkanen is currently co-PI on a major research projected funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate parties’ nomination strategies and legislative organization in eight countries. Pekkanen has interviewed over 50 members of the Japanese Diet, and shadowed several in the past few elections. He himself has been interviewed by media including PBS’s “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” The Christian Science Monitor, Asahi Shimbun (Japan), USA Today, and radio programs in the USA,China, Jamaica and Australia.