Speaker Series
Proposed Schedule, Fall 2013
Oct 11: 12:00-1:30 pm. Arts 230
R. Bin Wong, History, UCLA - Development in China (in comparative-historical perspective)
The Evolution of Good Governance Conceptions: formulating approaches to economic development and political reform.
This presentation considers the intentions and problems with World Bank good governance indicators as guides to development aid and outlines an alternative approach to linking economic development and political reform that combines two separate spheres of research and policy practice.
Before coming to UCLA in 2004, Bin Wong served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies at UC Irvine where he was also Chancellor's Professor of History and Economics. At UCLA he is responsible for overseeing and coordinating activities in five research centers and developing new initiatives in Asian Studies fields. Wong's own research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social change, especially since eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns. Among his books, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell University Press, 1997) is the best known. Japanese and Korean translations are under way. Wong has also written or co-authored some fifty articles published in North America, East Asia and Europe, published in Chinese, English, French and Japanese in journals that reach diverse audiences within and beyond academia. Recent publications include an essay "East Asia as a World Region in the 21st Century" in Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Oct 18: 12:00-1:30 pm. Arts 230
Lucan Way, Political Science, University of Toronto, specialist in democratization and non-democratic regimes
Pluralism by Default and the Sources of Political Competition after the Cold War
Lucan Way is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on democratic transitions and the evolution of non-democratic rule in cross-regional perspective. He is best known for his work on hybrid or competitive authoritarian rule. His book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. He has also published articles in Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Slavic Review, Studies in Comparative and International Development, World Politics, as well as in a variety of area studies journals and edited volumes. He is completing a book: Pluralism by Default and the Sources of Political Competition after the Cold War and is beginning a new project exploring the impact of violent revolutionary origins on authoritarian durability . He is on the Editorial Board of Journal of Democracy.
Oct 25: 2:30-4:00 pm. Arts 160
Andrew Wedeman, Political Science, Georgia State University
Double Paradox: Rapid Corruption and Rising Growth in China
Andrew Wedeman received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, where he heads the China Studies Program. Prior to this appointment, he was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), where he served as director of the Asian Studies Program and the International Studies Program. In addition, he has held posts as a visiting research professor at Beijing University, a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Sino-American Studies, and a Fulbright Research Professorship at Taiwan National University. His publications include Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China (Cornell), which seeks to explain why growth rates in China remained high even as corruption worsened in the 1980s and 1990, and From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism, and Marketization in China (Cambridge), which examines how local governments, speculators, and black marketers helped pull apart China’s command economy. He has authored articles in numerous academic journals including China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China; and China Review; and chapters in numerous edited volumes. Professor Wedeman is now beginning a new book project examining social unrest in China and its connection to corruption. Over the years, Professor Wedeman has lived in South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Cote d’Ivoire, Taiwan, and China, as well as traveling extensively in Asia.
Nov 1: 12:00-1:30 pm. Arts 230
Gabriella Carolini, Urban Planning, MIT - urban planning, water, and sanitation in Brazil and Mozambique
How does who you learn from matter? Exploring the Surge of South-South Cooperation in Urban Development in Mozambique
Gabriella Carolini is an Assistant Professor at MIT, where she sits on the faculty of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her research interests center on studying permutations of the dynamic relationship between social and fiscal responsibilities in the public sector, with a special emphasis on understanding the interactions of fiscal and administrative reforms with city planning for basic services and public health in vulnerable urban and peri-urban communities in the global South. She is currently working on a book which explores international policy mobility, learning, and the decentralization of South-South cooperation between Mozambique and Brazil. Before her appointment at MIT, Gabriella was an Assistant Professor at Rutgers and worked in various capacities with the UN Millennium Project, UNFPA, UN-HABITAT, Rockefeller Foundation, Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia’s Earth Institute, Oxford Analytica and a private management consultancy focusing on fixed income finance. She has studied and been an affiliated researcher in universities in Brazil, France, Mozambique, and the UK, and earned her doctorate in urban planning from Columbia University, where she was a National Science Foundation IGERT fellow in international development and globalization.
Nov 8: 12:00-1:30 pm. Arts 230
Carmen Diane Deere, Economics, University of Florida - gender and development; Latin America
Property Rights and the Gender Distribution of Wealth in Ecuador, Ghana and India
Dr. Carmen Diana Deere is Distinguished Professor of Latin American Studies and Food & Resource Economics at the University of Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a M.A. in Development Studies from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Deere was Director of the UF Center for Latin American Studies from 2004 to 2009, and previously was Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she was Professor of Economics. She is a Past President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and of the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS). Deere is the co-author of Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), winner of LASA’s Bryce Wood Book Award, as well as several other books. Among her co-edited volumes are two special issues of Feminist Economics, on Women and the Distribution of Wealth (2006) and on Gender and International Migration (2012). During 2009-2010 she was a Visiting Scholar at FLACSO-Ecuador, directing the UF-FLACSO study on Gender, Poverty and Assets, which included a 3,000 household survey on asset ownership in rural and urban areas. This project is part of a broader comparative study on the gender asset and wealth gaps which includes Ghana and India, a study initially funded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry’s MDG3 Fund and currently by UNWomen. Deere’s current research is on how gender inequality in asset ownership affects household outcomes such as decision-making and intimate partner violence. She is also conducting research on the factors that shape women’s ability to accumulate assets, including property regimes and the role of remittances, savings and access to credit.
Nov 15: 12:00-1:30 pm. Arts 230
Cedric Jourde, Political Science, University of Ottawa - African politics; political culture