Esther E. Song

Esther E. Song

Associate Professor

Research

My research centers politics of China, authoritarianism in East Asia (China and the Korean penninsula), and international affairs in Asia-Pacific more broadly. 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.

During my doctoral studies at Stanford, I investigated NGO-state relations in China, focusing on the evolution of civil society and NGO policies and its effect on political trust. This research led me to undertake Mandarin Chinese language training at Tsinghua University (2014, 2015), conduct fieldwork in Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan (2015-2018), where I interviewed grassroots NGOs and neighborhood-level government institutions. My project also led to a pre-doctoral fellowship at the School of Development and Public Policy at Fudan University (2017-2018). There, I conducted an original survey on citizen perceptions of social services outsourced to NGOs and their impact on political trust. This research was funded by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). The findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Chinese Political Science Review, Asian Politics & Policy, and and as a book chapter in Critical Issues in Contemporary China (Routledge). I am currently developing a book project based on my doctoral research.

My second area of research investigates personalism—how executives personalize power—and politics within personalist autocracies. This research draws from literature on comparative authoritarianism, autocratization, democratic backsliding, and insights from Northeast Asian countries like China and the two Koreas. The findings have been published or forthcoming in Journal of East Asian Studies, Democratization, and Korea Observer.

During my post-doctoral period at GIGA, I started a third strand of research on international affairs in the Asia-Pacific, with special focus on China’s foreign policy and US-allies’ reaction to China’s influence in the region. This research draws theories from works that examine intersection between public opinion, media, and foreign policy; and empirical evidence from surveys and computational text analysis. My findings have been published or are forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals such as Asian Survey, Asian Perspective, the Journal of Chinese Political Science, and Australian Journal of International Affairs. I have also contributed to policy outlets such as The Diplomat and East Asia Forum.

Aside from these topics, I am also interested in China’s discursive framing of democracy and overseas propaganda, social science knowledge production in China, and far-right activism and anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea.

Peer-reviewed Publications

Civil Society and NGO Policy in China

China’s Foreign Policy

Authoritarianism in East Asia

International Affairs in East Asia (Korea - China Relations)

Book Chapters

“Changes in State-Civil Society Relations in China during Hu and Xi.” In Czeslaw Tubilewicz (Eds.), Critical Issues in Contemporary China. Routledge, 2023. (with Runya Qiaoan)

Media & Policy

Works in Progress