Book Project

My book manuscript, The President’s Dilemma in Asia, addresses how presidents in new democracies make top executive appointments facing institutional challenges.

Through quantitative analyses of more than 1,500 cabinet ministers' profiles and in-depth interviews with prime ministers, vice presidents, party leaders and cabinet ministers in South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, my research contributes new approaches overlooked in the Latin American presidential politics literature as well as original data on presidential cabinet formation in East Asia.

This research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK), the Association for Asian Studies, the Korea Foundation, the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paramadina University in Indonesia, and the School of Social Sciences at UC San Diego.

The manuscript is under contract with Oxford University Press and is expected to be published in late 2022.