Walter Hatch

Areas of Expertise

• Comparative regionalism and regionalization

• Politics and economy of Japan

• Chinese Civil Society

• Japan-U.S. and Japan-Asia relations

Personal Information

Walter Hatch, professor of government, is an expert on Asian politics as well as comparative political economy and global security. Academia is his second career; he spent years as a journalist, mostly as a political and investigative reporter for The Seattle Times but also as stringer for CBS News. Now he teaches, researches and writes about government-business networks in Japan, civil society in China, international relations in East Asia, regional trade agreements, war memory and reconciliation, and U.S. military bases in Japan and Korea.

Current Research

•  Sino-Japanese Cooperation and Conflict
• Japanese and German Efforts to Achieve Reconciliation
• U.S. military basing politics
• Comparative Empires

Publications

Ghosts in the Neighborhood: Why Japan is haunted by its past and Germany is not, U Michigan Press, 2023

Asia’s Flying Geese: How Regionalization Shapes Japan, Cornell University Press, 2010

Asia in Japan’s Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance, Cambridge University Press, 1996

“European integration, Asian subordination: U.S. identity and power in two regions,” in Min-hyung Kim and James Caporaso, Power Relations and Comparative Regionalism: Europe, East Asia and Latin America (Routledge, 2022).

“Connected Channels: MNCs and Production Networks in Global Trade, in Lisa Martin,” ed., Handbook on the Politics of International Trade, Oxford University Press, 2015.

“Bloody Memories: Affect and Effect of World War II Museums in China and Japan,” Peace & Change, Vol. 39 No. 3, July, 2014.

“Activism with Chinese Characteristics: Navigating the Sloping, Uncertain Terrain of Civil Society in China,” in IUP Journal of International Relations, Vol. VIIII No. 1, January 2014.

“Organizing Civil Society in Russia and China: A Comparative Approach,” in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 26 No. 4, December 2013.

‘Hoping for Hegemony: Why Obama Changed Direction on Financial Reform and Embraced Retro-Liberalism,” IUP Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7 No. 4, October 2013.

“Turning Asian, Turning Western: A Study of Japanese Identity from a Gramscian Perspective,” Pacific Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, July 2010.

“When Strong Ties Fail: U.S.-Japanese Manufacturing Rivalry in Asia,” in Ellis Krauss and T.J. Pempel, eds, Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia-Pacific, Stanford University Press, 2004.

“Japanese Production Networks in Asia: Extending the Status Quo,” in William W. Keller and Richard J. Samuels, eds, Crisis and Innovation in Asian Technology, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

“Exporting the State: Japanese Administrative and Financial Guidance in Asia,” Social Science Japan Journal (University of Tokyo), October 2002.

“Regionalization Trumps Globalization: Japanese Production Networks in Asia, in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill, eds, Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, Oxford University Press, 2000.