PROFILE
I am an associate professor here at GSIS. I joined the faculty in 2016 after nearly a decade working in Singapore. My interests in politics are broad. I’m especially keen to better understand the interplay of informal power relationships and formal political arrangements. Most of my research focuses on Korean and Chinese societies. Through research on those places, though, I try to engage in wider discussions about politics in Asia and the developing world. One stream of my work examines the resistance of poor people in Korean and Chinese cities to central state projects. Another offers a reinterpretation of South Korea’s democratization through a focus on elite management of political institutions. I am also interested in approaches to Asian studies that begin with intra-regional comparisons and connections.
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Mar. 2016 – Present
Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University
Jul. 2010 – Dec. 2015
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Jan. 2008 – Jun. 2010
Visiting Fellow, Department of Political Science, NUS
Aug. 2006 – Dec. 2007
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, NUS
EDUCATION
2006.
Princeton University, Politics, PhD
Dissertation: “Internal Migration and State Retreat in Chinese and South Korean Industrialization.”
2003.
Princeton University, Politics, MA
2000.
University of Washington, International Studies and Political Science (with distinction), BA
CURRENT RESEARCH
I am involved in a number of ongoing projects. A first examines the legal regulation of political parties in East and Southeast Asia. A second project, a collaborative one, examines relations between the state and political parties in Asia. We are now preparing a book on The Party-State Nexus in Asia. I am additionally a participant in collaborations on authoritarian legality, North Korea’s external ties, and the Cold War in Asia. I am also overseeing data collection in East and Southeast Asia for a political finance database managed by International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). I am also completing a book that tells Korean Cold War history from the perspective of a Seoul broker of violence.
PUBLICATIONS
[Books]
- Erik Mobrand, Top-Down Democracy in South Korea (University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2019). Manuscript edited (not proofed), moving to production stage (as of Sept. 2018).
- Erik Mobrand, The Life and Representations of Kim Tu-han: Justifying Violence on Korea’s Cold War Frontiers (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2019). Contract signed, manuscript to be delivered.
[Journal articles]
- Erik Mobrand, On Parties’ Terms: Gender Quota Politics in South Korea’s Mixed Electoral System, Asian Studies Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (April 2019).
- Erik Mobrand and Kristoffer Tingbacke, Nordic Representations of North Korea: A Study of Newspaper Sources, Review of Korean Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Dec. 2018).
- Erik Mobrand, On Parties’ Terms: Gender Quota Politics in South Korea’s Mixed Electoral System, Asian Studies Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Dec. 2018).
- Erik Mobrand, Limited Pluralism in a Liberal Democracy: Party Law and Political Incorporation in South Korea, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2018): 605-621.
- Erik Mobrand, The Local Dimension in the Industrialization-Democratization Connection: Scale, Opposition Demands, and Ruling Party Transformation in Taiwan and South Korea, Journal of Northeast Asian History, (Summer 2017).
- Erik Mobrand, The Street Leaders of Seoul and the Foundations of the South Korean Political Order, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (March 2016): 636-674. 2
- Erik Mobrand, The Politics of Regulating Elections in South Korea: The Persistence of Restrictive Campaign Laws, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 88, No 4 (Dec. 2015): 791-811.
- Erik Mobrand, Legitimizing and Contesting Exclusion: Discussions about Shiminhua in Urban China, China: An International Journal, (Aug. 2015).
- Erik Mobrand, Reverse Remittances: Internal Migration and Rural-to-Urban Remittances in Industrializing South Korea, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Feb. 2012).
- Brad Williams and Erik Mobrand, Explaining Divergent Responses to the North Korean Abductions Issue in Japan and South Korea, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 2 (May 2010).
- Erik Mobrand, Endorsing the Exodus: How Rural Leaders Backed Peasant Migrations in 1980s Sichuan, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 18, Issue 58 (Jan. 2009).
- Erik Mobrand, Struggles over Unlicensed Housing in Seoul, 1960-1980, Urban Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Feb. 2008).
- Erik Mobrand, Mobilization or Repression of Migrants in Urban China? Hometown Networks, Leadership, and Lessons from International and Historical Comparisons, Journal of Comparative Asian Development, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall 2007).
- Erik Mobrand, Politics of Cityward Migration: An Overview of China in International Perspective, Habitat International, Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 2006)
MEDIA
[NHC2022] Optimism, Cynicism, and Democracy
[NHC2022] Optimism, Cynicism, and Democracy
