Research

My research interests span across topics such as civil society and NGO policy, authoritarianism, and international affairs in East Asia with a regional focus primarily on China and secondarily on the two Koreas. I have experience using a wide variety of methods including fieldwork, surveys, statistical analyses, and text analyses. More recently, I am using computational methods to collect data and applying text mining to uncover discourse and narratives, as well as quantitative analysis of survey data and survey experiments to gauage micro-level causal effects.

Publications

1. Song, E. E. and Ines Miral. 2023. Personalization of Executive Power after COVID-19 in South Korea. Korea Observer, 54(4), 641-670. [Link]

• Funded by German Research Foundation, DFG “COVID-19 and Executive Personalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the MENA Region”
• Part of the research presented at Computational Social Science Workshop, Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, Seoul South Korea October 2023

2. Song, E. E. 2023. COVID-19, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Foreign Policy Attitudes in South Korea. Asian Survey.[Link]

• Previous version presented at Sinophone Borderlands: Global Views on China Conference, Palacky University; ISA Montreal 2023

3. Song, E. E. and Joanne Yang. 2023. China’s Adherence to International Human Rights Treaties: an Empirical Assessment. International Area Studies Review. [Open Access Link]

• Cited by The Conversation

4. Song, E. E. 2023. Air Pollution Coverage, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Attitudes towards Foreign Policy in South Korea. Journal of Chinese Political Science. [Open Access Link]

• Working versions presented at 2019 APSA Washington D.C. [iPoster]; GIGA Workshop on Foreign Policy 2022
• Partially funded by Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
• Part of the research presented at “Workshop of the World” to “Systemic Rival”? International China Narratives in Politics and Economics since 1945, Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS), Hamburg Germany

5. Song, E. E. 2023. Long-Term Effects of Authoritarian Repression: Evidence from the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea, 1980. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 8(1), 364–380. [Open Access Link]

6. Song, E. E. 2022. How Outsourcing Social Services to NGOs Bolsters Political Trust in China: Evidence from Shanghai. Chinese Political Science Review. 1-27. [Open Access Link]

• Previous versions presented at 2019 MPSA Chicago; 2019 Bay Area Comparative Urban Politics Workshop, UC Berkeley; 2019 China Social Science Workshop, Stanford University
• Funded by Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University; Center for Philanthrophy and Civil Society (PACS) at Stanford University

Media

1. Turcsanyi, R. and Esther E. Song. South Koreans Have the World’s Most Negative Views of China. Why?. The Diplomat, December 2022.

• Covered by more than 20 media outlets in South Korea including KBS, SBS, MBC, Joongang Ilbo, and Chosun Ilbo
• Cited by The New York Times

Policy

1. Song. E. E. 2023. Rising Anti-China Sentiment Supports South Korea’s Alignment with the US. GIGA Focus Asia. [Open Access Link]

On-going Research

Beijing December 2015

Civil Society & NGO Policy Under Authoritarianism

Book Project
NGOs, the State, and Legitimacy in Contemporary China

What explains the growth of the NGO sector in China during the recent decades? Departing from previous works that focus on the angecy of societal actors, I draw attention to state incentives in promoting the growth of the civic sector. The state initiatives that led to the increase emerge during the two periods: the early 2000s, when NGOs were used as vehicles of bureaucratic streamlining, and the post-2011 period, when NGOs are promoted as service deliverers at the grassroots level with the ultimate goal of minimizing social instability. Three questions addressed in my book-length dissertation are: (1) why has the party-state created institutional space for NGOs? (2) what explains the variation in the success of bureaucratic streamlining that involves the use of NGOs to downsize the bureaucracy in the early 2000s? (3) How is the party-state promoting the growth of service-oriented NGOs in the post-2011 period, and what are the effects of these services on citizens’ perception of the state? Drawing on theories of public sector reform, authoritarian politics, and non-state service provision, and evidence from fieldwork, text analyses, government statistical data and an original survey conducted in the field, my project comprehensively demonstrate how an authoritarian state such as China can counterintuitively utilize non-governmental organizations and civil society to serve its interests.

Book Chapters

• “Changes in State-Civil Society Relations in China during Hu and Xi.” With Runya Qiaoan. In Czeslaw Tubilewicz (Eds.), Critical Issues in Contemporary China. Routledge. submitted to the editor.

Working Papers

• Song, E. E. The Political Origins of NGO Sector Expansion Under Authoritarianism: Evidence from Case Comparison of Three Post-Communist Countries.

• Song, E. E. Explaining the Expansion of the NGO Sector in China: Through the Lense of Adaptive Corporatist Governance. under review.

• Intellectual and Public Discourse on Civil Society in China Under Xi (2013-) (with Runya Qiaoan)

  • Partially funded by Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

China and the International Order

My second research agenda lies in understanding how China interacts with the liberal international order, in particular the human rights regime and the maritime regime.

• Domestic and International Signaling during Foreign Policy Conflict: Maritime Disputes in China (with Sung Eun Kim). under review.
  • APSA Los Angeles 2023; GIGA Workshop on Foreign Policy, November 2023; GIGA Workshop on Foreign Policy, October 2023.

Personalization of Executive Power

• Personnel, institutions, and power: Revisiting the concept of political personalization (with Mariana Llanos, Thomas Richter, David Kuehn, Martin Acheampong, and Emilia Arellano) GIGA Working Papers
  • Previous versions presented at Workshop on Personalization of Executive Power, GIGA Hamburg Germany; European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, Prague Czechia 2023; APSA Los Angeles 2023
  • Funded by German Research Foundation, DFG “COVID-19 and Executive Personalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the MENA Region”
• Career Transition Data on Elites in North Korea (with Jacob Reidhead and Jeongsue Park). under review.
  • Previous versions presented at MPSA, Chicago; Stanford Network Forum, Stanford University; ECPR Prague 2023; All Souls College, Oxford University April 2024.
  • Curating a database on career transitions of approximately 500 elites from 1948-2020
  • Partially funded by Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

Methods in Text-as-Data

• An Exploration of the Effect of Article Length on the Gender Citation Gap (with Ingo Rohlfing and Barbara Ellynes Zucchi Nobre Silva)
  • Previous versions presented at APSA, Los Angeles 2023
  • Funded by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

China and Democracy

Albeit being a non-democratic country, the Communist Party of China has not neglected the idea of ‘democracy’ - the earliest discussion of democracy goes back to 2009 when Yu Keping, advisor to Hu Jintao released an essay “Democracy is a Good Thing”. More recently, the idea of democracy has been again mentioned in the white paper released by the CCP before the Democracy Summit headed by President Biden in December 2021. This project aims to examine the history of how democracy has been interpreted in China and how it is being used as a legitmizing tool for the CCP. In addition, this project also aims to examine how “democracy with Chinese characteristics” affects international audience and their interpretation of China’s soft power.