SEMINAIRE DE LA FONDATIONFRANCE-JAPON DE L’EHESS

Series of Lectures by Kenji Hirashima(The University of Tokyo, Institute for Social Science)
June 2011

 ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kenji HIRASHIMA is Professor of Comparative Politics(European Politics) at the Institute of Social Science (ISS),The University of Tokyo. Among his recent publications,
one can quote: The Emergence of European Governance(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004) [in Japanese], European
Political History (Tokyo: The Society for the Promotion ofThe Open University of Japan, 2010) [in Japanese], andGermany and Japan after 1989. Reform Pressures andPolitical System Dynamics, ISS Research Series No. 33,February 2009, co-edited with Roland Czada.

 PROGRAM

June 8th, 5 pm - 7 pm
“East Asian Regionalism in a Comparative Perspective”
EHESS, 105 boulevard Raspail 75006 Paris, room 7 (2nd floor)
New regional organizations and new integration projects have been rapidly expanding in East Asia
since the 1990s. Parallel to this development, ‘comparative regionalism’ has found increasing
resonance in EU studies. Yet, integration studies have not fully come to terms with inter-regionalcomparison. Most often, European regionalism is stylized in a static way as a legalistic model incontrast to Asian informal and non-legalistic approaches. This presentation seeks to enlarge the scopeof integration studies by comparing East Asian regionalism with the EU from a dynamic and historicalperspective. For this purpose, the presentation will shed new light on the historical processes thatcreated the ‘founding settlements’ of the EEC. In light of the early European experiences, a series ofregional institution-building measures in East Asia involving ASEAN, APT and APEC could beconsidered as part of an enduring search for a more viable regional integration.
Organizers (EHESS): Sébastien Lechevalier (CRJ), Michael Werner (CRIA) & Bénédicte Zimmermann(CRIA)

June 16th, 11 am - 1 pm
“Japan in Fiscal Crisis: Explaining the Japanese Exceptionalism”
EHESS, 105 boulevard Raspail 75006 Paris, room 9 (2nd floor)
It is a well-known fact that Japan has an unmanageable public debt problem. The debt is a legacy ofmassive stimulus spending during the 'lost decade’ of the 1990s, as well as a series of pump-priming
packages against the recession after the Lehman shock in 2008. It is truly remarkable that Japan has
so long relied on conventional policy measures, repeatedly abandoning efforts of fiscal consolidation.
Why has consolidation policy not been pursued coherently in Japan? What are the political reasons forthis recurrent and deepening fiscal crisis of Japanese exceptionalism? Taking into account suchconditions as the hardship specific to Japanese political economy or the past policy legacies, thepresentation tries to elucidate the peculiarities of the Japanese state that retard political changes inspite of institutional reforms.
As a part of the collective seminar of Centre de recherches sur le Japon « Histoire du Japon moderneet contemporain : permanences et ruptures »Organizers (EHESS): Guillaume Carré (CRJ) & Sébastien Lechevalier (CRJ)

June 21st, 4 pm - 7 pm
Roundtable with Rachel Guyet“Employment Strategy and Labour Markets in Europe: a view from Japan”
CERI, 56 rue Jacob 75006 Paris, room Jean Monnet

Kenji Hirashima “Stalking the Unknown Beast: Policy Change and the EU”
What is the European Union? This presentation approaches the EU from the perspective of policychange. While the term ‘policy change’ is far from unambiguous, the ways major policies are changed
should provide an important key to understanding the nature of the polity in which such changes takeplace. The major policy change in focus in this presentation will be the ‘European Employment Strategy’(EES), which was developed from the employment title newly inserted into the Treaty of Amsterdam(1997).

Rachel Guyet “European Labour Market Institutions: Resilience to the Crisis?”
The aim of the presentation is to analyze to which extent the European labour market institutions
resisted to the crisis. It deserves to be analyzed considering the short term and the long term impacts
that the crisis may have brought about in Europe and the changes in paradigm it has resulted inregarding the degree of fragmentation of the European labour markets and the governance of thelabour market policies.
Organizers: Rachel Guyet (CERI, CoesioNet) & Sébastien Lechevalier (FFJ, EHESS)PROCHAINEMENT
 International symposium “After the global crisis, whichmodels of growth?”
Organized with the Canon Institute for Global Studies
September 20th 2011, 10 am - 5 pm
Nikkei Hall (1-3-7 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo)

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