Patricia Maclachlan

Patricia L. Maclachlan received her PhD in comparative politics from Columbia University and is now Professor of Government and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (Columbia University Press, 2001) and The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871–2010(Harvard University Asia Center, 2011). With Sheldon Garon, she co-edited The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Cornell University Press, 2006). She is also the co-author, with Kay Shimizu, of Betting on the Farm: Institutional Change in Japanese Agriculture (Cornell University Press, 2022) and Governing Food Security in Japan (Cambridge Elements in Politics and Society in East Asia, forthcoming).

Maclachlan has served on the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, the American panel of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), the board of trustees and editorial board of the Journal of Japanese Studies, and the editorial board of Asian Survey. Her courses at UT cover Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy, the international relations of East and Southeast Asia, the political economy of East Asia, and comparative political institutions.