Date and Time: July 17th (Tues.) 16:00 – , 2018
Venue: Tonan-tei (Room.no 201) on the 2nd floor of Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, CSEAS.

Moderator: Prof. Yoko Hayami, CSEAS

Topic: The Sustainable Development Goals and the Future of Southeast Asia
Speaker: Professor Ronald Holzhacker from University of Groningen

Abstract:
The international community has come together to pursue certain fundamental, common goals over the coming decade to 2030 to make progress toward ending poverty and hunger, improving social and economic well-being, preserving the environment combating climate change, and maintaining peace. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been agreed to by states, which have in turn adopted national targets and action plans.

We are interested in the governance and implementation of these goals in Southeast Asia, in particular the difficulties in the shift from the international to the national, the multi-level challenges of implementation, and the involvement of stakeholders, civil society, and citizens in the process. We have brought together a group of scholars from across Southeast Asia to research these issues within the region and ASEAN. We explore the issues in developing (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar), middle-income (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines) and advanced countries (Singapore, Brunei) in the region. The perspectives on governance and the SDGs emerge from the fields of political science, international relations, geography, economics, health and law.

About the speaker:
Prof. dr. Ronald Holzhacker, Professor of Comparative Multilevel Governance and Regional Structure at the University of Groningen, Netherlands is in the Faculty of Spatial Science, Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, and the Faculty of Arts, Department of International Relations and International Organization. An American scholar, he holds a PhD from the University of Michigan in political science, and a JD from the University of Minnesota Law School. He is broadly interested in questions of governance, human rights, and the interaction between civil society organizations and institutions in political systems. He is founding Director of the Groningen Research Centre for Southeast Asia and ASEAN (SEA ASEAN) located in Groningen and Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
He leads an inter-disciplinary team of scholars and 18 PhD researchers engaged in theoretically driven comparative research focused on governance, societal impact, and sustainable society in Southeast Asia. He is published in such journals as Law & Policy, Comparative European Politics, Journal of European Integration, European Union Politics, Nations and Nationalism, Party Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, and the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration. He is co-editor of numerous books over the past decade, most recently Decentralization and Governance in Indonesia (New York: Springer 2016).

He is currently planning a book launch and conference scheduled for late October 2018 in Brussels, with key-note speakers from the EU, ASEAN, and UN ESCAP. He is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia, delivering lectures and meeting with scholars at the Southeast Asia and ASEAN centres at the leading universities in the region. This is his third trip to Japan, having first visited during an event with former Vice President Walter Mondale, with whom he previously working on the 1984 Presidential campaign. He later returned for conferences of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).