Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: After the World War 2, due to the legacy of defeated nation, bi-polar structure of the cold war and control of U.S.-Japan alliance, Japan had presented somewhat passive foreign/security policy. However in the post-cold war era, since 1990s, Japan happens to exhibit active policies concerning foreign relations and security. This pattern can be found in debates over ‘normal state', amendment of the ‘peace constitution’ and the ‘Self-Defense Forces'. Japan also aims to change the traditional status quo of U.S.-Japan alliance to some extent. This paper will speculate the changing tendency of Japan's foreign and security policy line in 1990s. To be more specific, the focus is on the Japan’s East-asianalization.
This paper examines Japan’s foreign policy toward East Asia in 1990s. First, content analysis is used to examine the speeches spoken by Foreign Minister of Japan. (“Policy Speech by Minister for Foreign Affairs to the National Diet”) Especially, it focuses on the durability of the policy. The result shows that Japan’s foreign policy in 1990s maintains its interest in East Asia. Different from other studies, the Asianalization by Japan has been steadily progressed with slight differences in its character and weight in the 1990s.
On the other hand while East-asianalization appears and maintains, U.S.-Japan relation that is main pillar of Japan’s foreign policy, remains unchanged. Second, in this study through the analysis of the Prime Ministers’ and Foreign Ministers’ annual speeches in the National Assembly, it was intended to show that the Asianalization by Japan after the Cold War had been continued and was one of the major changes in the foreign policy.
Actually the U.S.-Japan relationship has been standing firm independent of the reinforcement of the East Asia directivity after the Cold War. Accordingly it has to be recognized that the East Asia directivity was rather a supplementary measure rather than replacement of the U.S.-Japan relationship. The conflicting phenomena in the reality of East Asia is that in spite of the reinforcement of the East Asia directivity, the dissensions about history and territory are still occurring in the East Asian region between Japan and other regional countries. Especially after 9/11, Japan is taking serious view toward the U.S. Even with this conflicting situation the East Asia directivity of Japan has been continued.

Publication Type: Extended Abstract
Abstract: This case study is part of a larger research project with the overall aim to investigate the integration of politics in a visual culture. The principal objective is to operationalize the concept of ‘mediated visibility’ (Thompson 1995, 2000) by examining a clear-cut case of political scandal, and by focusing on how the varying power relations between media, politicians and citizens are represented in visual and verbal media discourse. The politician in focus is Jan O Karlsson, Swedish social democratic minister of migration and foreign aid during the years 2001-2003. The ”Karlsson affair” was defined and remembered through the catching phrase ”dooing a whole poodle”, implying that he was forced to roll over and humiliate himself in front of the ”fourth estate”. It is of principal interest because it explicitly thematizes the power relations between media, politics and citizens. The analyses have been carried out within the general framework of discourse analysis, centering on actors, power relations, statements and modes of address in verbal and visual representations. Following Tomlinson´s (1999) argument that media scandals are highly context-dependent, we argue that the political scandal in case must be understood within the framework of a deeply rooted Swedish political culture, with strong emphasis on egalitarian, collective and puritan values. If "scandal theorists” mainly have looked at the importance of media to political scandal, we turn the perspective around and consider the importance of political scandal to the media themselves.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper falls under the general heading of the political psychology of war and peace. Its particular focus is on the conditions under which hard-line political leaders become peacemakers. It takes as an intellectual target of research opportunity the actions of Israeli prime ministers in the long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, examining in depth and comparing two prime ministers who remained hard-liners (Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin Netanyahu) and two who evolved into peace makers (Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin). My fifth Israeli case is Ariel Sharon, whose was just recently elected to a second term as Prime Minister. Will he maintain his iron fist in attempting to maintain security through military force alone? I will be observing any signs of change on his part, as he has accepted the eventuality of a Palestinian state and has recently made overtures to the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen. I ground my analysis in an explicit political psychological formulation and explore the generality of that formulation. Most of the literature on international conflict and its resolution ignores the impact of political leaders on war and peace. In effect such scholars take a rational choice approach, positing that all leaders will react in the same manner to common environmental stimuli. Moreover, those scholars who are attentive to leaders tend to assume that leaders have stable political predispositions that make them resistant to change. From this it would follow that a change of leadership is necessary for a nation to shift from a hard-line to a strategy of peace making. This paper contrasts with the formulation that leaders have to be replaced for enduring rivalries to be resolved in that it argues that some leaders undergo changes (Ronald Reagan is an obvious example), and above all develops a theory about why and how such changes come about. I go beyond arguing that, in general, leaders matter, by analyzing more specifically what it is about their belief systems and personalities that can ultimately make a difference to their country's foreign policy, especially toward a long standing enemy. I find that, while probably no hardliner can stand completely still in the face of important changes, only hardliners who adhere to ideologies which have specific components that act as obstacles to change, and who have an orientation toward the past, may need to be replaced for dramatic policy changes to take place. Although a change in the opponent and in the environment may be necessary for a leader to change his image of an enemy, a combination of three additional elements act as sufficient causes: 1) either a weak link to an ideology or adherence to an ideology which does not have the components I articulate as obstacles 2) a present or future individual time orientation 3) either a flexible cognitive system or exposure to a significant advisor with different views of the opponent. The factors that are included in ideologies that decrease the chances for changes in the enemy image are: specific ideological goals that contradict those of the enemy; a long, optimistic time horizon that prevents adherents from believing that peace is urgent or from perceiving policy failure; a perception that the world is hostile; and a view that security is possible without peace. The difference in ideology and in personality between the five Israeli prime ministers analyzed had a significant impact on their images of the enemy, their perception of and reaction to the intifada and to the Gulf War, and ultimately on their ability to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In recent years, charges of hypocrisy have been leveled at international institutions, often as part of a critique of their neo-liberal ideology. In the case of the World Trade Organization, for example, critics have pointed to the hypocrisy of the rich states, who preach the gospel of liberalization while strenuously protecting key economic sectors such as agriculture and textiles. Hypocrisy is often viewed as the prerogative of the powerful states, of the norm-setters in international organizations. Organizational hypocrisy has also been viewed as a way to sustain the legitimacy of an international organization by thinly disguising the disparities of influence based on power with a veneer of sovereign equality and multilateralism. Less attention has been given to the uses hypocrisy might have for the poorer and weaker states in the international system. This paper explores the extent to which poor states have paid lip service to WTO norms which they have no intention of upholding, and asks whether such practices might provide these states with a degree of policy autonomy that, if the norms of the trade regime are taken at face value, they would not otherwise enjoy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Operational codes --- agent-level belief systems which focus upon the perceived possession and use of power by self and others in foreign affairs --- are key causal mechanisms in international politics. While often used to explain strategic interaction and international conflict, operational codes have more rarely been employed to explain policy dispositions toward cooperation in the creation and maintenance of international institutions. This is in spite of the recognition by prominent institutional theorists that research into supranational cooperation needs "to go beyond institutional theory's analysis of institutional strategies to explain variations in state preferences (and) develop...theories that begin with individuals" (Keohane and Martin 2003). We suggest in this paper that operational code analysis can provide the microfoundations of theories of institutional cooperation between states. We test this proposition through analysis of the preferences of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Tony Blair toward the widening and deepening of the economic and political aspects of the Europen Union over the last twenty five years. The operational codes of the three prime ministers are recovered through content analysis of the entirety of their statements on European matters in the House of Commons. A link to policy outcomes is made through the reconstruction of key decision making episodes from this period.