Mobrand, Erik


Full-Time Professor


Mobrand, Erik /

Professor of Korean Studies


Office : Room 513, Bldg. 140-1

Tel. (82-2) 880-5069 Fax.

E-mail : erikmobrand@snu.ac.kr

Assistant Contact : jwxnicole@snu.ac.kr

Profile

Erik Mobrand (PhD, Politics, Princeton)

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.

Recent publications

  • Erik Mobrand, Top-Down Democracy in South Korea (University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2019).
  • 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, 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.

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.

Book

  • Erik Mobrand, Top-Down Democracy in South Korea (University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2019).

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, 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.
  • 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). 

Book chapters

  • Erik Mobrand, Authoritarian Legality after Authoritarianism: Legal Governance of Parties and Elections before and after Democratic Transition in South Korea, in Authoritarian Legality in Asia, edited by Hualing Fu and Weitseng Chen (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • Jamie Davidson and Erik Mobrand, Rule-making and rule-breaking: Electoral corruption in Asia, in Routledge Handbook of Corruption in Asia, edited by Ian Scott and Ting Gong (New York: Routledge, 2016).
  • Erik Mobrand, Unlicensed Housing as Resistance to Elite Projects: Squatting in Seoul in the 1960s and 1970s, in Public Goods versus Economic Interests: Global Perspectives on the History of Squatting, edited by Freia Anders and Alexander Sedlmaier (New York: Routledge, 2016).
  • Erik Mobrand, South Korean Democracy in Light of Taiwan, in Democratization in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia? Local and National Perspectives, edited by Kate Zhou, Shelley Rigger, and Lynn T. White, III (New York: Routledge, 2014).
  • Erik Mobrand, Chinese Urban Migration and Politics, in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2013).

 


Recent commentary

  • Erik Mobrand and Hyejin Kim, Assemblyman’s Death Highlights Limits of Pluralist Politics, Asia Times, 29 July 2018.
  • Erik Mobrand, ‘America’ takes a new meaning in South Korea, The Diplomat, 6 July 2018.
  • Erik Mobrand, South Korea’s Local Elections Underscore a Political Shift, The Geopolitics, 3 July 2018.
  • Hyejin Kim and Erik Mobrand, Hasten Thaw on the Korean Peninsula: Singapore and Southeast Asia have roles to play, Channel NewsAsia, 31 May 2018.
  • Erik Mobrand, Decisive and determined is how Moon Jae-in’s 100 days will be remembered, Channel NewsAsia, 19 August 2017.
Faculty Directories

Expertise

Politics and development; Political sociology; Democracy and democratisation; Korean politics and society; Chinese politics and society

Courses

Politics of Development; Democracy in Asia: Power, Institutions, and Meanings; Modern Korean History and Society

Awards