The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. So says James Bacchus in his new book, Democracy for a Sustainable World: The Path from the Pnyx. Bacchus argues that global democracy and global sustainable development can only be achieved jointly. Beginning with a visit to the birthplace of democracy in ancient Athens, a hillside called the Pnyx, Bacchus explores how the Athenians practiced democratic participation millennia ago. He draws on the successes and shortfalls of Athenian democracy to offer specific proposals for meeting today’s challenges by constructing participatory democratic global governance for full human flourishing in a sustainable world.

International law and the international order are currently challenged on two fronts: externally, by the Global South; and internally, by the United States under its own leadership. What does this mean for the future? In his new book, The Law and Politics of International Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Jean-Marc Coicaud explores this question by examining the role of legitimacy in international life. Drawing on his first-hand experience in Asia, where he lived for nearly a decade, Coicaud also considers how regional powers—particularly China and Japan—may influence the reshaping of international law and the global order.

intensifying rivalry between the United States and China is reshaping the international order. The transactional diplomacy of the Trump administration is accelerating the erosion of established institutional guardrails. In this challenging moment, University of Tokyo Professor Ryo Sahashi says that Japan is working to reinforce global stability. Through careful management of its alliance with the US, proactive engagement with European and Indo-Pacific partners, and cooperation with Global South nations, Japan is trying to maintain regional balances, prevent conflict escalation, and preserve economic networks and free trade. Professor Sahashi will share his policy recommendations for how Japan and like-minded nations can collaboratively navigate the shifting global landscape.

The international legal order is fragmenting into multiple “geo-legal orders,” in which the interpretation and operation of international law will increasingly depend on the spheres of influence of leading states and political groupings. This raises a basic question: how will a multipolar international order work? What normative constructions will emerge to bind the new geo-legal orders together? Dr. Malcolm Jorgensen, a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, will share his current research in progress.

Japan’s post-World War II constitution has never been amended, but it has been reinterpreted in light of changing needs and understandings. This includes the constitution’s unique Article 9, in which Japan forswears military action except in self-defense. Changes in Japan’s national security environment in recent years –  including the rising military strength of its neighbor, China; Russia’s belligerence in Ukraine (relevant because of a longstanding territorial dispute between Japan and Russia); and developments related to the US security umbrella under the new administration – are increasing pressure on Japanese leaders to further evolve their understanding of Art. 9. A panel of three experts will discuss how Japanese politicians, policymakers, and scholars today think about Japan’s expanding security and defense cooperation with Europe while maintaining its identity as a pacifist country.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought a massive acceleration of the trade war with China that he began during his first term and that President Biden deepened. So far, Trump’s focus has been on tariffs, not exclusive to China. Biden introduced a complex array of US export, import, investment, and sanctions regimes more narrowly targeting China, each with distinct but overlapping rules. The resulting trade regime is difficult for American companies to follow and also increasingly relies upon cooperation and enforcement by other countries. Transshipment restrictions have become an onerous element of both US and Chinese measures. Particularly affected are East Asian countries that are usually regarded as US partners but rely on trade with both superpowers. Christina Davis, a professor of Japanese politics at Harvard University and director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and Pasha Hsieh, professor of law at Singapore Management University, will discuss the economic and political impact that US-Chinese rivalry is having on these countries, how much agency they have to comply or abstain from the superpower struggle, the impact on regional trade patterns, and whether these smaller countries may help lead the way back to a more unified rules-based trade order.

Beginning in the 1950s, Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) has been an important instrument for Japanese diplomacy.  However, this cold war strategy has evolved over the past two decades, in large part due to the rise of China, to include both national security challenges and the promotion of universal values.  How will Japanese ODA policy respond to the current challenge of striking a balance between promoting universal values and avoiding offense to recipient governments?  Can Japan play a special role as the developed world’s “ambassador” to the Global South? 

Private law scholars have viewed Anglo-American common law as the core infrastructure of modern capitalism the world over. But what happens when rising powers like China with very different legal and political systems begin investing abroad on a vast scale? Our speaker, Matthew Erie, associate professor at the University of Oxfordr esponded to this question by launching a six-year project, called China, Law, and Development, and inviting scholars around the world to participate in gathering empirical evidence about the legal underpinnings of China’s worldwide investments, and whether or how China has disrupted prior assumptions about the relationship between law and development. In this talk, he will introduce the concept of “law as infrastructure” to make sense of the strategies and challenges of the People’s Republic of China. Rather than a “clash of civilizations” or a world remade in China’s image, law as infrastructure points to a process of layering, assembling, and bundling different laws and legal regimes including new law that is integrated within existing frameworks, epistemic communities, and institutions, as well as the creation of new infrastructures in emerging sectors such as renewable energy.

China’s escalating coercion campaign against Taiwan is causing seismic shifts in strategic thinking across the region, perhaps nowhere more than in Japan. Although most discussions about the status and future of Taiwan focus on the China-Taiwan-US triangle, Japan arguably has as much or more at stake than the US. Japan’s first and third-largest trading partners are China and Taiwan, respectively. If hostilities broke out between the two, it would be difficult for Japan to remain on the sidelines. Yuki Tatsumi, director of the Japan Program at the Stimson Center, will explain Japan’s perspective on Taiwan, how it hopes to maintain the status quo, and how rising tensions have pushed it to dramatically revise its national security posture.