Sook Jong Lee – författare

This book considers how public diplomacy is employed as an instrument of statecraft by Middle Eastern and Asian governments to leverage soft power. Senior, mid-career, and junior scholars from academia and think tanks synthesise their expertise to deploy historical, geopolitical, and economic approaches in their analyses and observe how new practices of public diplomacy have been developed, tested, and applied in the two regions. Building and extending on the extant scholarship, which remains mostly focused on East Asia, it incorporates the Middle East not only as a recipient but also as a practitioner of public diplomacy. The thematic focus is underpinned by case studies of individual nation-states, enabling analysis of concrete examples that shed light on the evolution of Asia-Middle East ties.This volume is an essential reference for scholars and policymakers in the fields of international relations, international political economy, and area studies who seek to explore relations between these two geographical areas beyond traditional diplomacy.

This book examines South Korea’s recent strategic turn to middle power diplomacy, evaluating its performance so far in key areas of security, maritime governance, trade, finance, development assistance, climate change, and cyber space.

Populism is a contested concept when applied to Asia. In Populism in Asian Democracies: Features, Structures and Impacts, members of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) discuss the diverse subtypes of populism in 11 countries across Asia, their structural elements and societal impacts. Populism takes on different forms in Asia according to its target, rhetoric and strategy. Redistributive populism stems from income inequality and rural poverty while ethno-religious populism represents a continued struggle between majority and minority groups. Progressive populism emphasizes democratic governance over corruption and factional politics, and authoritarian populism rises from government incompetence. As ADRN shows, the 11 Asian democracies have adopted various subtypes—and hybrids—of such populism models, adding importance to regional cooperation in safeguarding democracy.