“You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egoistical selves.”
- Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro-
PROF. MOTOSHI SUZUKI
I'm a professor of international political economy at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
MY LATEST RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Globalization and the Politics of Institutional Reform in Japan, Edward Elgar, April, 2016.
Motoshi Suzuki
Globalization and the Politics of Institutional Reform in Japan illuminates Japan’s contemporary and historical struggle to adjust policy and the institutional architecture of government to an evolving global order. This focused and scholarly study identifies that key to this difficulty is a structural tendency towards central political command, which reduces the country’s capacity to follow a subtle allocation of authority that ensures political leadership remains robust and non-dictatorial. The author argues that it is essential for a globalizing state to incorporate opposition parties and trans-governmental networks into policy-making processes. Providing an in-depth analysis of the theories of institutional change, this book introduces readers to a wealth of perspectives and counterarguments concerning analysis of political decision-making and policy adjustment on both the national and international scale.
Games of Conflict and Cooperation in Asia, Springer,
March 2017.
edited by Motoshi Suzuki andAkira Okada,
Professor, Institute of Economic Studies
Kyoto University
This edited volume analyzes conflict and cooperation in specific areas importance to the strategic management of international relations in Asia, using the concept of instrumental rationality. In each chapter, instrumental rationality is operationalized using game-theory to illuminate the conditions and consequences of strategic interdependencies between players (individuals or states) who try to maximize their discrete interests or expected utilities through institutional strategies. As is commonly known, institutional analysis is two-fold. In this volume, several authors view institutions exogenously, and analyze how institutions influence the players’ choices and outcomes. They are concerned mainly with how the players use existing institutions strategically, to maximize their expected utilities. In contrast, other authors regard institutions as endogenous, and analyze how and why new institutions are created in relation to the players’ preferences, despite the constraints inherent in informational uncertainty and transaction costs. In both cases, states’ institutional behaviors can be viewed as strategic, and analyzed in game theory terms. What this means is that cooperation is context-bound, and can be generated for contemporary Asia through creative institution-building endeavors, despite adverse structural constraints.
