What explains South Korean public opinion on nuclear weapons development? Despite the US security commitment, most South Koreans consistently support independent nuclear weapons development. To solve this puzzle, we investigate the mechanisms of security threat and security commitment under which individuals develop their opinion on nuclear proliferation. An original survey of 1,988 South Korean adults shows empirically supported correlates of South Korean public opinion on nuclear proliferation. Public support for proliferation is largely shaped by external security threats: nuclear threats from North Korea and China, but also the latent nuclear superiority of Japan. Public opposition to proliferation is fostered by the perceived credibility of the US security commitment, but not by its perceived effectiveness. The results provide insights into South Korean public opinion on nuclear proliferation and can inform the design of a nonproliferation policy tailored to South Korea.

Land expropriation is a common source of grievances and resistance from farmers in China. Based on survey data, we propose that farmers’ sense of relative deprivation is one of the causes. Our study focuses on compensation distribution in villages, where village collectives are the reference for comparison. Relative deprivation is measured by the ratio of farmer compensation to the standard government compensation; the gap between these is roughly the compensation retained by village collectives. The outcome variable is farmers’ willingness to participate in village governance. The empirical test is based on 2017 data from the Chinese Family Database of Zhejiang University and compensation standards data collected by the authors. Nearly 75% of respondents received less than standard compensation, which indicates widespread relative deprivation. And the greater the relative deprivation of farmers, the more willing they are to participate in village governance.

This study analyzes the rise of DC/EP (digital currency electronic payment) in China by proposing the concept of “recentralized authoritarian capitalism.” It first examines how recentralized authoritarian capitalism started in 2010 in the form of a recentralizing of regulations. After considering how the fintech firms have restructured their shareholding in response to the recentralizing regulations, I delineate how these firms further strengthen recentralized authoritarian capitalism, as exemplified by how Alipay has helped realize the Party’s plan to launch DC/EP.

Eliminating corruption is seen as a practice that supports democratic governance. We argue, however, that particular anticorruption politics in contemporary India can damage the project of democratic deepening, because elites often deploy these politics against the representation of the marginalized. Anticorruption politics can subvert democratic deepening by challenging as corrupt the means by which the parties of the marginalized mobilize resources to compete in elections and by selectively targeting lower-caste political leaders for indictment on corruption charges within an overall discriminatory politics of deservedness. Anticorruption governance by parties in power seriously hinders the provision of welfare to the poor because of the technocratic and centralizing character of the governance reforms. We argue overall that while corruption is indeed damaging to democracy, elite anticorruption politics can also represent a significant barrier to democratic deepening and welfare.

There has been a debate on how the state-driven anticorruption movement during the Xi Jinping administration has influenced state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Research has examined the relationship between corruption and economic development at the country level in Asia and has found paradoxically that economic growth and high corruption levels can coexist. However, the “Asian paradox” that appears at the country level may be a transitional phenomenon of the short term. Not many researchers have empirically compared individual firm-level performance before and after a strong anticorruption drive, drawing on relevant comparison groups. This study tests whether Xi’s 2012 anticorruption campaign improved SOEs’ performance. With a difference-in-differences method, it explores whether the anticorruption campaign had different effects on the financial performance of SOEs and non-SOEs (private companies). We find that the anticorruption initiative improved SOEs’ financial performance and benefited SOEs more than non-SOEs.

With its emphasis on organizational minimalism, how does ASEAN induce change in its members’ policies? This paper examines the impact of consensus within ASEAN on haze mitigation in the Indonesian archipelago. When ASEAN articulates its environmental initiatives with a strong consensus, this clarity in its norms incentivizes emulation. The stronger the consensus within the group, the more compelling it becomes for members to adopt the agreement. Such prosocial behavior reflects nudging. Strong ASEAN consensus is a precursor of nudging that leads to dimmer hotspots. This study draws on discourse analysis of ASEAN summit statements on the haze, R programming to analyze NASA data on the brightness of peatland hotspots, and a case study to illustrate the causal mechanism. The findings identify ASEAN’s role in environmental governance, particularly with respect to when consensus-based nudging is more or less likely to incentivize member states to curb transboundary haze.

Can contemporary liberal states formulate and pursue a “liberal” immigration control policy? Set against the backdrop of the experience of immigrant-receiving Western liberal democracies, this article examines this question by focusing on Japan. Its main objective is to map the under-studied case of Asia’s most liberal democracy, which is conventionally associated with an “at best illiberal” stance on immigration. I contend, first, that liberal immigration control policy is inevitably defined by approximation, and second, that Japanese policy outputs have become, albeit to varying degrees, more liberal in three fundamental domains of immigration control: the admission policy is increasingly open and unambiguous; the selection policy is gradually being racially decentered; and the removal policy is more attuned to migrants’ rights. However, this case also demonstrates that such an evolution generates inconsistencies across, and tensions within, the different policy domains, which underscores the contemporary liberal state’s general incoherence on immigration affairs.

Many scholars argue that democracy tames religious fundamentalism. This inclusion-moderation theory holds that when radical religious movements are incorporated in the democratic system, they have incentives to adhere to institutional frameworks to influence politics and access power. But despite these claims, we have witnessed a growing influence of religious fundamentalism in Asian democratic politics, with immoderation becoming prominent. Why have religious fundamentalist movements become influential in various democracies in Asia? How have they shaped policies? Using a most-different-systems approach, I investigate religious fundamentalism in two dissimilar democracies: Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia and Christian fundamentalism in South Korea. In both cases, I argue that religious fundamentalist movements facilitate immoderate politics through strong mobilization capacity, agenda-setting power, and framing. The study contributes to the inclusion-moderation literature through its discussion of religious fundamentalism and its cross-religious comparison.

Do presidential approval ratings affect exchange rates? The empirical purview of the vast literature on this topic has been confined to the run-up to elections. The importance of approval ratings in non-election periods has therefore been under-studied. Examining daily data on the exchange rate of the Korean won during the presidency of Park Geun Hye, we find that the won weakened (1) when Park’s ratings were low and (2) when they bounced back unexpectedly from a low level. This finding explains why Park’s impeachment did not lead to a serious panic in the won market. It seems that well before the impeachment, the exchange rate already reflected the market’s concerns about the uncertainty in the government.

Studies of local governance in China often point to nimble experimentation but problematic implementation. To reconcile these competing images, it is useful to clarify the concepts of experimentation and implementation and see how they unfolded in one policy area. The history of China’s Open Government Information (OGI) initiative shows that the experimentation stage sometimes proceeds well and produces new policy options, but may falter if local leaders are unwilling to carry out an experiment. And the implementation stage often poses challenges, but may improve if the Center initiates new, small-scale experiments and encourages local innovation. This suggests that the experimentation and implementation stages are not so different when officials in Beijing and the localities have diverging interests and the Center is more supportive of a measure than local officials. The ups and downs of OGI, and also village elections, can be traced to the policy goal of monitoring local cadres, the central–local divide, and the pattern of support and opposition within the state.

Why and how did the International Labor Organization and the military junta of Myanmar transform their relationship so dramatically, from confrontation to cooperation, between 2007 and 2010? What insights can be drawn from this case regarding the successful operation of an international organization in an authoritarian environment? By investigating the evolution of the military leadership’s perception, this article aims to demystify authoritarian decision-making and identify the interactive mechanisms operating between internal and external dynamics and between an authoritarian regime and an international organization. The qualitative fieldwork includes direct interviews with former top military government leaders, who provide valuable insights into the decision-making logic at the highest level.

In 2005, the single nontransferable vote system for legislative elections in Taiwan was replaced by a mixed-member majoritarian system, with an accompanying reduction in available district seats. In theory, by increasing the threshold of exclusion and placing the power of nomination in the hands of political parties, this reform should reduce vote-buying and local factionalism. We collected data on legislative nominees charged with vote-buying and on the local factional ties of candidates. Our results suggest that the reforms did reduce these problems. First, comparing the proportion of candidates charged with vote-buying before and after the reform shows a decrease in the second and third post-reform elections. Second, factional status predicts a candidate’s likelihood of running in consecutive elections before the reform but not after. Differences between factional and nonfactional candidates ceased to be significant after the reform, revealing the decreasing relevance of factions.

This paper examines how Macau, with a different political and legal system under the “one country, two systems” principle, fits into China’s securitization and what impact that has on its local governance. We argue that in recent years Macau’s legal system has gradually transformed into a means of social control. Through case files related to the Assembly and Demonstration Law drawn from the Court of Final Appeal, we demonstrate that although Macau is unlike Hong Kong, where dissidents are subject to severe repression, Beijing’s emphasis on national security has weakened the checks-and-balances function of Macau’s legal system and substantially narrowed the scope of freedom of speech, even though it is nominally guaranteed and protected by the Basic Law.

Why did Japanese Prime Minister Abe impose controversial export restrictions after rulings by the South Korean Supreme Court on wartime forced laborers? This article answers this question through the lens of domestic symbolism in economic sanctions studies. We argue that domestic political calculations led the Japanese government to adopt hawkish measures against South Korea. Abe wanted to ensure continued support from his constituents and to win the upcoming election. A series of political reforms since the early 1990s have empowered the prime minister and made LDP politicians pay more attention to public opinion than to factional topography. Strong anti-Korean sentiment among the Japanese public reduced the leadership’s concerns about the audience costs of economic countermeasures. Through an examination of the interplay among various domestic actors over the policy measure, this study provides insights on how domestic symbolism can serve as an origin of foreign policy decision-making in democracies.

The Chinese government’s cover-up of the origins of the new coronavirus, and its more openly prideful and aggressive foreign and human rights policies, triggered a dramatic deterioration of foreign views of China in 2020. That year also witnessed a significant increase in anti-Chinese/Asian prejudice around the world. Could the former have shaped the latter? Drawing on theories of prejudice and ideology, and using an Autumn 2020 13-nation European survey about China, this paper explores whether increasingly negative attitudes toward Chinese government policies prejudiced European views of local Chinese students, tourists, and communities. It finds substantial evidence of a spillover effect, an effect which is stronger among conservative Europeans than among progressive Europeans more motivated to avoid prejudice. The paper concludes with thoughts on the danger that China’s prideful “wolf warriors” pose for Chinese students, tourists, and local Chinese communities confronting prejudice in Europe today.

Long considered a smoker’s paradise, Japan passed its strictest regulations yet on indoor smoking in 2018 with revisions to the Health Promotion Law and a new ordinance in Tokyo. Timed for the Tokyo Olympics, both reforms made smoking regulations stronger and more legalistic despite reflecting distinctive policy paradigms in their particulars. The national regulations curtailed smoking in many public spaces but accommodated smoking in small restaurants and bars. Tokyo’s stronger restrictions emphasized public health protection by exempting only eateries with no employees. I argue that fully understanding these contemporaneous reforms requires analyzing insider activists: state actors who participated in the tobacco control movement or had sustained interaction with it during earlier reform waves. Case studies drawing on interviews and movement and government documents illustrate the mechanisms insider activists can access because they straddle multiple fields. This article contributes to scholarship about ideas, policy entrepreneurship, and the blurry line between insiders and outsiders in policymaking.

Research has shown that major international events can produce a “rally ’round the flag” effect that boosts citizens’ support for an American president. This study examines such an effect in Taiwan, when the country was confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that citizens who previously disapproved of the president did become more likely to gather around their leader. The public’s support was contingent on the president’s ability to handle the crisis. This is one of the few studies on this effect conducted outside the US, and its findings represent a significant step toward broadening the scope of analysis.

The Chinese Communist Party has been surprisingly successful in carrying out its plans in the face of various challenges in the post-Mao era. Compared to their central counterparts, the operating patterns of local institutions in tackling such difficulties have been less examined. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the party’s management of provincial standing committees (PSCs). As the highest level of local collective leadership, the PSC essentially sets the agenda for the province. Using a new database of PSC members from 1980 to 2016, this study provides a systematic illustration of the historical composition of provincial collective leadership. Instead of making drastic changes, the party has subtly shifted the roles of provincial leaders: it has redefined the role of the vice party secretary, adjusted the number of posts in the provincial government, and raised the level of professionalism.

This article applies Distelhorst and Fu’s (2019) typology of citizenship performances to an original sample of 200 online Mayor’s Mailbox letters to examine how scripts of citizenship differ between richer and poorer areas of China. Using a mixed-methods approach, I find that letters in more developed areas are significantly less likely to present the writer as a submissive subject, but no more likely to frame complaints in terms of rights and legality. I also find that many letter writers behave as “constructive citizens” by stressing their interest in helping the authorities improve local governance. These findings challenge linear understandings of the value shift that follows development, and suggest that the focus on contention in the literature on citizenship under authoritarianism overlooks other, more cooperative forms of political participation in consolidated autocracies.