Following the recent elections in Germany, Heinz Bude will explain the election results and discuss the current political climate in Germany in terms of the larger historical and global perspective.

The End of '68:

One could call it a return of the vanished. After German society determined that the Federal Republic had only become a western, liberal country as a result of the Uprising of 1968, debates continue on how to view this place of remembrance of the post-war period. This is due to a surprising actualization and sobering historization of the Uprising at an exhibition at the Berliner Kunstwerke. Here, the attractiveness of 1968 is directly linked to the RAF. Not the disparateness but the unity of protest and terror represents the lure of the matter. This re-labeling of 68 as a form of "radical chic" finds its confirmation in more recent historical research that proves that no firewall exists between 68 and the RAF. The terror of the RAF did not represent an inversion of the protest of 68, but was constitutive for the entire movement. There is no innocence, no learning, only the successful disappearance of a bout of tragic political passions.

Then what was 1968? What must dismay us in retrospect, and what has taken roots in the cultural superstructure? Perhaps the unfinished debate between Jürgen Habermas and Karl Heinz Bohrer must be resumed: What about 1968 was universalistic emancipation and what was extremist surrealism?

Dr. Kwon will examine the electoral effects of issue salience of unemployment. While increasing employment volatility has spawned exciting research, evidence of how unemployment affects voter choice is inconclusive. Professor Kwon refines partisan voting theory by focusing on issue salience of unemployment and the dynamics of voter choice. Voters are more likely to make a transition to support Left parties when they identify unemployment as the most important and salient issue, while there is no effect of issue salience of unemployment on loyal Left voter behavior. His study also examines voter heterogeneity in the link between issue salience and the probability of transition to Left. Analysis of a transition model using the 1997 Korean presidential election survey finds supporting evidence.

Hyeok Yong Kwon (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an assistant professor in political science at Korea University. Before joining Korea University, he taught at Texas A&M University. His research interests include political economy, voting behavior and mass public opinion, and political methodology. His recent works explore economic insecurity and the dynamics of voter choice in comparative perspective. Also, he works on the relationship between government partisanship and welfare spending in OECD countries. Previous publications include "Targeting Public Spending in a New Democracy: Evidence from South Korea" British Journal of Political Science (2005) and "Economic Reform and Democratization: Evidence from Latin America and Post-Socialist Countries" British Journal of Political Science (2004).

The pace of policy reform is important in new democracies, where the status quo policies, established by non-democratic regimes, may be far from the preferences of popular majorities. Slowing policy reform slows down governmental implementation of democratic policy mandates. This, in turn, may offset (at least partly) the positive effects of broader participation and greater accountability.

Whether the net impact of procedural reform is to accelerate or to slow policy reform depends on the particular procedures involved, and the political context. In this paper, the authors consider a procedure that, on the surface, appears likely to accelerate reform, thereby promoting change in the policy status quo. This is a sunset rule.

This paper focuses on the sunset rule adopted in South Korea, at the end of the Kim Young Sam administration. Kim's support for the sunset rule at the end of his term is puzzling. Why would a lame duck president support a rule that would seem to limit the life of the regulations passed in his own term?

Jeeyang Rhee Baum, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include comparative political institutions, administrative law, and bureaucracies with a particular emphasis on East Asia. Her most recent publications include: "Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-branch Delegation in East Asian Democracies", British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming) and "Breaking Authoritarian Bonds: The Political Origins of the Taiwan Administrative Procedure Act", Journal of East Asian Studies.

This event will be chaired by SIIS Senior Fellow and CDDRL Research Associate, Gail Lapidus. Speakers will include Professor Vladimer Papava, Member of Georgian Parliament, and Senior Fellow of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, Ambassador Archil Gegeshidze, Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, and Temuri Yakobashvili, Executive Vice President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.

Congressman Weldon represents the Seventh Congressional District of Pennsylvania. He is in his tenth term and is the most senior Republican in the Pennsylvania delegation. He is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a leading House supporter of a national missile defense program. The Congressman has worked to strengthen the dialogue between the US and North Korea for the past three years. He has worked closely with Ambassador Han of North Korea as well as former Secretary Powell and Ambassador Pritchard to urge both sides to continue their participation in the six-party talks.

General Cha achieved the rank of Lieutenant General in the Army of the Republic of Korea. He has had a distinguished career, serving both in the public and the private sector, including as policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification, director general of the Policy Planning Bureau and deputy minster for Policy, and as an assistant professor in international relations. He has a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Korea Military Academy, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Paris. He is the author of several books and articles on Korean security issues, published in both Korean and English.

Alina Mungiu Pippidi holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Iasi, Romania. She is a Professor of Political Communication at the Romanian National School of Government and Administration, a consultant for the World Bank and UNDP in Romania, and the Director of Romanian Academic Society. She is a former Shorenstein Fellow of Harvard University and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She has authored many books and articles on the Romanian transition, post-Communist political culture and nationalism.

Ryan Podolsky, CREEES MA Candidate, has recently returned from Kyrgyzstan and was a first hand observer of the dramatic events in March 2005 in Kyrgyzstan. Podolsky will speak on his impressions of the Kyrgyz "revolution."

This event is jointly sponsored by CDDRL and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Since the 1980s, simultaneous trends in Taiwan toward globalization and localization have contributed to people's construction of a past promoting local solidarity. Such rewriting of Taiwanese consciousness has relied heavily on a "rediscovery" of cultural traditions corresponding to Pingpu identity. (Pingpu identity is debated as an indigenous or a mestizo identity and used to claim that Taiwan is not Chinese.) Professor Pans examination of the development of Pingpu identity over the past ten years focuses on the 1996 event "We are All Pingpu" and uses both ethnographic and historical materials to analyze the role of Pingpu identity in rewriting Taiwanese conscious-ness.

Dr. Pan's research addresses the following questions: Who are the Pingpu? Why do some Taiwanese choose to be identified as Pingu while others do not? What is the significance of Pingpu identity for present-day Taiwanese consciousness? How has Pingpu identity been constructed? How and why do people rewrite the past when an identity is being created?

This is the final seminar in the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.