Asia and Pacific
Instead of the usual view of a one-man decision-making process, McEachern proposes a "post-totalitarian institutionalist" model in which three bureaucratic actors with different views -- the party, the military, and the cabinet -- compete to shape the information and options available to Kim Jong Il and the ways in which his decisions are implemented.
Hung's meticulous research reveals the struggles over values and power behind the granite surface of revolutionary China's new look.
Wang's thesis is that China has a strategic culture that is predominantly peaceful and defensive but that this culture has little influence over the country's grand strategy.
Brinkley cuts a clear narrative path through the bewildering, cynical politics and violent social life of one of the world's most brutalized and hard-up countries.
Countering the prevailing view of Northeast Asia as constantly in crisis, Calder and Ye document the region's intensifying economic, cultural, and human interactions; its expanding financial and environmental interdependencies; and its growing policy coordination, especially among China, Japan, and South Korea.
The Tulip Revolution that overthrew President Askar Akayev's government in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 entered the honor roll of "color revolutions." But Radnitz argues that this was not a case of civil society rising up spontaneously to overthrow an authoritarian elite.
The scholar-diplomat Bush argues cogently that China will "widen its Eastern strategic buffer" -- in the East China Sea and on the islands (Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands) located therein. In doing so, it will alter the status quo and increase the likelihood of a clash between the Chinese military and the Japanese forces already there.
