Esther E. Song

Esther E. Song

Associate Professor

Research

My research centers on civil society and NGO policies in China, China’s foreign policy, and international affairs in Asia-Pacific. My other research area is authoritarianism and personalization of power. 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 based on my doctoral research.

In my post-doctoral period at GIGA, I started a second 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.

My third 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, Korea Observer, and GIGA Working Paper.

Peer-reviewed Publications

Song, Esther E., Jacob Reidhead, and Jeongsue Park. 2025. “Introducing Career Transition Data on Elites in North Korea.” Journal of East Asian Studies.

Song, Esther E. “South Korea’s Narratives on China: Evidence from Elites, Masses, and Scholars.” 2025. Asian Perspective, 49(2), 379-396.

Song, Esther E. and Sung Eun Kim. 2024. “China’s Dual Signaling in Maritime Disputes.” Australian Journal of International Affairs, 1-23.

Song, Esther E. 2024. “Explaining the Expansion of the NGO Sector in China: Through the Lense of Adaptive Corporatist Governance.” Asian Politics & Policy, 1-18.

Song, Esther E. 2023. “Air Pollution Coverage, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Attitudes towards Foreign Policy in South Korea.” Journal of Chinese Political Science, 28, 571–592.

Song, Esther E. 2023. “COVID-19, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Foreign Policy Attitudes in South Korea.” Asian Survey, 63(5), 823–850.

Song, Esther E. and Joanne Yang. 2023. “China’s Adherence to International Human Rights Treaties: an Empirical Assessment.” International Area Studies Review, 26(3), 252-268.

Song, Esther E. 2023. “Long-Term Effects of Authoritarian Repression: Evidence from the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea, 1980.” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 8(1), 364–380.

Song, Esther E. and Ines Miral. 2023. “Personalization of Executive Power after COVID-19 in South Korea.” Korea Observer, 54(4), 641-670.

Song, Esther E. 2022. “How Outsourcing Social Services to NGOs Bolsters Political Trust in China: Evidence from Shanghai.” Chinese Political Science Review, 9, 36–62.

Book Chapters

Qiaoan, Runya and Esther E. Song. 2024. “Changes in State-Civil Society Relations in China during Hu and Xi.” In Czeslaw Tubilewicz (Eds.), Critical Issues in Contemporary China. Routledge.

Media & Policy

Why aren’t South Koreans studying in China anymore?. East Asia Forum, May 2024.

South Koreans Have the World’s Most Negative Views of China. Why?. The Diplomat, December 2022 (with Richard Turcsanyi).

Rising Anti-China Sentiment Supports South Korea’s Alignment with the US. GIGA Focus Asia, 2023.

Works in Progress

Mapping the Concept of Civil Society in China (with Runya Qiaoan)

Public Opinion on Cross-Strait Tensions in South Korea (with Doyoung Lee)

Personnel, institutions, and power: Revisiting the concept of political personalization (with Mariana Llanos, Thomas Richter, David Kuehn, Martin Acheampong, and Emilia Arellano).

Succession Politics in North Korea: The Strategic Role of Personnel Management (with Jacob Reidhead)