Content: Despite the rapid global proliferation of think tanks, Western and particularly US institutes still attract the lion’s share of popular and academic attention. This workshop seeks to cast a light on the vibrant, and often influential, think tank communities that have sprung up in many nations across Asia, featuring dedicated contributions on China, India, Japan, Korea and Indonesia, as well as comparative studies. It encourages scholars from the region itself and abroad to study commonalities and points of divergence among think tank communities in various Asian countries, and ideally to explain causal mechanisms that shaped different outcomes. Selected contributions will be gathered for publication in a special issue of an Asian Studies journal. Furthermore, by discussing the development of think tanks in Asia among scholars and practitioners, important practical insights about the further construction of research capabilities across the region and their influence on domestic and regional policy-making can be gleaned.

Format: The workshop is co-organized by the German Institute of Global and Area Studies and Tsinghua University, and supported by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and will take place in Beijing on April 22nd and 23rd. It will start with a roundtable discussion on April 22nd that will focus on China’s recent initiative to build „new-type think tanks with Chinese characteristics“ and feature input from scholars and think tank leaders in China as well as perceptions from representatives of international institutes. The academic part of the workshop will take place on April 23rd and feature paper presentations organized into three to four panels, as well as a discussant’s input and a Q&A on each of them.

Participants: Lan XUE (Tsinghua University) Angang HU (Tsinghua University) Xufeng ZHU (Tsinghua University) Ray YEP (City University Hong Kong) Mu YANG (IPP, South China University of Technology) Jiang WU (Beijing Foreign Studies University) Ya LI (Beijing Foreign Studies University) Huihuang LIN (South China University of Technology) Ajoy Datta (Overseas Development Institute, London) Enrique Mendizabal (On Think Tanks, Lima) Ben Hillman (Australian National University, Canberra) Sebastian Maslow (Tohoku University, Sendai) Emanuel Yi Pastreich (Asia Institute, Seoul) Pascal Abb (GIGA, Beijing) Patrick Köllner (GIGA, Hamburg) Annapoorna Ravichander (CSTEP, Bangalore) Arushi Sen (CSTEP, Bangalore)

Organizer Pascal Abb, GIGA Beijing (contact person) Patrick Köllner, GIGA Hamburg ZHU Xufeng, Tsinghua University, Beijing

Timeline: Submission of abstracts 1 February 2016 Notification of acceptance 15 February Submission of papers 1 April Workshop 22-23 April