Dr Nikolay Murashkin1
1Australian National University, Japan
Biography:
Nikolay Murashkin is a scholar of contemporary Japanese foreign policy and international relations in Asia Pacific. Nikolay is working for the Australian National University, while also maintaining visiting affiliations with Ritsumeikan University and JICA Ogata Research Institute. Nikolay's research outputs were published in his 2020 monograph ‘Japan and the New Silk Road: Diplomacy, Development, and Connectivity’, single-authored and coauthored peer-reviewed journal articles, edited book chapters, and policy papers. His research interests include Japan’s and East Asian development cooperation, modernisation, economic statecraft, international political economy of connectivity infrastructure and finance. He has earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Abstract:
This inquiry compares knowledge-sharing activities in Japanese and Korean development cooperation with three recipient countries in different regions: Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Ethiopia. I examine the evolution of approaches used by Japan and Korea in sharing their ‘development experiences’ with recipients. I focus on policy learning and paradigm maintenance in the approaches to development espoused by Japan and Korea, which are part of an increasingly competitive landscape of East Asian development knowledge-sharing alongside China and other ‘emerging’ donors with non-Western or post-colonial self-positioning. Extant literature has focused on either comparing Japanese and Korean (and/or Western) development aid policies in general or examined individually the performance of one of the countries in terms of knowledge-sharing. This study relies on long-term in-depth field interviews, participatory observation, primary and secondary sources, including local ones in Japan and Korea.
This research tackles the following questions: How and why do Japan and Korea share their respective development experiences in development cooperation with the three case countries? What are the similarities and differences between Japanese and Korean approaches to self-positioning as non-Western or formerly post-colonial donors and what kind of paradigm maintenance, if any, is taking place? How do they combine the knowledge-sharing component with development finance and with the private sector’s involvement?
Japan and Korea are established players in international development cooperation, which have stepped up and institutionalised knowledge-sharing activities over the past two decades. This step-up was a part of broader recent trend – an increase in development knowledge-sharing among East Asian donors, including China.