What determines how ASEAN is perceived by the citizens of its member states? Most studies on ASEAN take a state-centric and elite-oriented viewpoint. We improve on this by bringing the people of ASEAN into the center of the analysis. Considering lessons from the European Union’s internal legitimacy crisis, we develop hypotheses on how skill-based economic interests, sociocultural beliefs, and assessments of national context shape people’s attitude to ASEAN. Our hypotheses are tested using the latest data from the Asian Barometer Survey, covering eight of the 10 ASEAN countries. We find that citizen confidence in domestic governance and a positive assessment of major extra-regional powers are associated with a closer identification with ASEAN. Our analysis also identifies age and gender cleavages. ASEAN affinity is higher among older rather than younger and male rather than female respondents. Our findings have important policy implications for the proponents of ASEAN.

Myanmar has suffered the world’s longest civil war, with continuous combat since shortly before the country’s independence from the UK in 1948. A new National Ceasefire Agreement has raised hopes that peace may finally be in sight. However, optimism should be tempered by a recognition the peace process has not built much trust, reduced the number of non-state armed groups in the country, their total size, or significantly improved their human rights behavior. This is demonstrated through an analysis of original data on the major non-state armed groups active in Myanmar between 1985 and 2017. Peace will require hard political work leading to disarmament, restraining the military, and reassuring the country’s ethnic minority groups that their rights and interests will be respected even without the threat of insurgent violence.

Efforts to denuclearize North Korea continue, but it is highly doubtful whether this goal will be reached. An often-expressed fear of a nuclear-armed North Korea is that it might use this capability to coerce reunification with the South on its terms. Though its leaders often speak of the desire for reunification, North Korea will not and could not pursue a successful nuclear coercion strategy because it carries an inordinate amount of risk, even for Pyongyang, which raises serious doubts about the credibility of its nuclear threats, the possibility of success, and the likelihood of pursuing such a strategy in the first place. And even if North Korea were to succeed, its efforts to integrate the South Korean economy would be a disaster, leading to the end of the North Korean regime.

In 2018 Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party announced four new proposals to amend the seven-decades-old and thus-far unamended constitution of Japan. These include adding a third paragraph to Article 9, as well as state-of-emergency provisions, support for students in need, and changes to the electoral system. By analyzing each proposal’s place in the debate on amendments dating back to the 1950s, I show that these very different proposals share one important feature that sets them apart from recent drafts aiming for wholesale reform of the constitution: they are relatively minimalist in nature. This new modesty is due to the necessity to win over other parties and voters, but it is also an attempt to cement rather than to change the LDP-made status quo.

At the 17th ASEAN Regional Forum in 2010, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi reminded everyone that “China is a big country and all the other countries are small countries; this is a fact.” Though Brunei is the smallest of all the ASEAN states in both population and GDP, the level of Chinese investment in the sultanate (cumulated direct investment and construction contracts divided by 2018 GDP) is much higher than in most other ASEAN states. This paper analyzes the Belt and Road stakes for both Brunei and China and Brunei’s response to the Chinese proposals, showing that in spite of its smallness, the sultanate still seems able to preserve its own interests to a certain extent, thanks to its balanced foreign policy and its financial resources.

Within international relations theory, there is significant disagreement on the nature and significance of leaders’ dispute outcome preferences. While many variants of realism assume that such preferences are relatively fixed and homogeneous, both the liberal and the constructivist schools view them as significant variables. This debate remains unresolved because, for the standard large-sample conflict data sets, there are no direct measures of leadership preferences over outcomes in given types of international disputes. Using a conflict bargaining experiment, we ask whether, after controlling for the effects of relative power and initial conditions, leadership preferences have a statistically significant impact. We use two different country samples—from China and the United States—to examine whether the impact of leadership preferences varies internationally. We find that realist-style preferences are a special rather than a general case, and that such differences have significant implications for understanding continuities and changes in Chinese and US foreign policies.

This article explores how the political connections cultivated by Pakistan’s business groups contributed to their rise as key actors in the corporate sector. Such connections have long been used by business groups in developing countries to secure access to economic rents from politicians in power. We examine the basis of selection of business groups for state patronage under military and civilian-led regimes, as well as the extent to which such ties have contributed to their rise as Pakistan’s leading enterprises. A historical analysis is provided of these groups, with a focus on a financial review of their publicly listed companies. We find that emerging business groups actively resort to rent-seeking activities by colluding with ruling elites, while also using multifaceted networking to protect and enhance their presence in the corporate sector.

Existing studies of the impact of economic development on political trust in China have two major gaps: they fail to explain how economic development contributes to the hierarchical trust pattern, and they do not pay enough attention to the underlying mechanisms. In light of cultural theory and political control theory, we propose adapting performance theory into a theory of “asymmetrical attribution of performance” to better illuminate the case of China. This adapted theory leads to dual pathway theses: expectation fulfillment and local blaming. Using a multilevel mediation model, we show that expectation fulfillment mainly upholds trust in the central government, whereas local blaming undermines trust in local governments. We also uncover a rural–urban distinction in the dual pathway, revealing that both theses are more salient among rural Chinese.

What areas of the country does the Chinese government prioritize for drinking water provision infrastructure? Chinese policy prioritizes ethnic minorities and minority autonomous areas due to concerns about inequality and interethnic harmony. However, the implementation is not always equitable or favorable for ethnic minorities. Drawing on a new data set of more than 10,000 drinking water projects, I explore how ethnicity and autonomy influence public goods provision in rural Guizhou Province. I find implementation concerns trump official policy priorities when it comes to drinking water infrastructure. Such facilities are more likely to be built in Han-majority areas, because implementation and project completion are easier for officials. The findings have implications for ethnic politics and public goods provision in nondemocratic contexts. They also demonstrate why regions with larger minority populations are often slower to develop and slower to receive better access to basic public services.

In recent years many former heads of foreign governments have visited China, appearing at various forums, conferences, and other events. China’s engagement with these former leaders may appear to be a form of public diplomacy, but even more importantly it has been a strategy of political legitimation adopted by the Chinese Communist Party. Based on an original database of hundreds of cases, we provide a systematic analysis of the visits of former foreign leaders to China and of their role as external validators for the party-state and its policy initiatives, particularly the Belt and Road Initiative. By shedding light on the Party’s search for external consent and support, we seek to fill a significant gap in the literature, which tends to focus narrowly on the domestic sources of legitimacy and domestic strategies of legitimation.

The Chinese Communist Party stresses the regime’s role in presiding over the unity of China’s minzu (ethnic groups) and their shared stake in China’s prosperity. However, an examination of the quality of interactions between Han and ethnic minorities illustrates the regime’s vulnerability to counterclaims based on these lived experiences. This paper conducts a case study of Han–Hui relations to argue that physical separation between Han and Hui prevents the two groups from interacting in ways that transmit substantive knowledge about the differences between the groups. Instead, interactions perpetuate stereotypes and distrust. By continuing to push narratives about the unity of all groups and shared family relations, the state highlights the shortcomings of its own policies, and undercuts its own legitimating narrative.

In just over six years, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has swiftly expanded to vast swaths of the globe, with as many as 138 countries signing on. In 2017, President Xi Jinping’s signature project was incorporated into the Chinese constitution, assuming extraordinary significance as the “project of the century.” China has couched the program in multilateral terms, with a promise of shared benefits through road and maritime connectivity projects, reviving the ancient Silk Road and revivifying the spirit of commercial, cultural and academic exchange. Cooperation among member countries is envisaged in policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds. However, an active debate has ensued surrounding China’s motivations and the initiative’s potential outcomes for the host countries. Against this backdrop, I examine the economic implications for host countries and regions, using a geo-economic analytical framework.

This study analyzes the attitudes of core policy stakeholders in South Korea to multiculturalism and immigrant integration policies, as well as the factors affecting such attitudes, and suggests theoretical and policy implications. I conducted a survey of public officials, program operators, and academics. The responses suggest that public officials, program operators, and academics in Korea have more positive expectations for immigrants’ societal contributions and less fear of social clashes or conflicts due to increasing immigration, compared to the general public. They prefer the assimilationist model, which means that immigrants fully adopt the Korean culture and language as a matter of integration policy. The study sheds light on the stakeholders’ attitudes to multiculturalism and immigration integration policy, how their views differ from the general public, and the causes and policy implications of these differences.

This article examines Japan’s trade policy on significant geo-economic developments by focusing on its engagement in three large free trade agreements: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the Japan–EU Economic Partnership Agreement. Under the Abe administration, Japan has produced successful outcomes in mega-FTA strategy, concluding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Japan–EU Economic Partnership Agreement in 2018. The making and diffusion of high-standard rules were given high priority in Japan’s mega-FTA strategy, and Prime Minister Abe’s political leadership in employing his political allies and executive aides and managing the opposition activities of veto players has enabled his administration to produce these successful outcomes.

A powerful pro-Palestinian transnational advocacy network has emerged in Malaysia since the Gaza war of 2008–09. Taking the cooperation between the Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia, the Islamist Hamas, and the United Malays National Organisation as an example, I analyze the network and argue that the three actors are engaging there to promote the Palestinian struggle for an independent state but at the same time, each actor is using the network to pursue its own interests.

Bangladesh continues to face a threat from Islamic terrorism. However, the drivers of this phenomenon remain under-studied. Research has traced terrorism in Bangladesh to wider processes of Islamization; a political context marked by conflict between the country’s two main political parties and by authoritarian governance; the institutional weakness of the Bangladeshi security and justice system; and international factors, such as the Afghanistan War, influences from the Gulf, and more recently the Rohingya refugee crisis, as well as the increased interest of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in South Asia. Based on an analysis of the literature and interviews, I argue that while the growth of terrorism in Bangladesh has been a complex process in which all of these factors have interacted, different constellations of them have been decisive at different historical stages.

We use spatial econometrics on a unique data set covering 229 Korean regions to analyze the outcome of Korea’s 2017 presidential election. We see strong statistical evidence of spatial correlation, suggesting that neighboring regions vote similarly, which is in accord with findings in the international context. Our findings are distinct in that we see little evidence that Korea’s 2017 outcome was driven by the economic disparities between the southeast and the southwest, a highly sensitive political issue in the country. Voters’ region of origin and age are the two most important factors in vote choice, irrespective of the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of their regions.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is often portrayed as the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. While much attention has been devoted to its geopolitical repercussions, its impacts on Pakistan’s federal system and interprovincial relations have not yet been explored. Organized around interviews conducted in 2015, 2018, and 2019, this article demonstrates that the construction of the economic corridor is acting as a centripetal force in Pakistan’s federal structure, despite the potential for such a large external investment to redress the disparities between provinces.

This paper discusses the dynamics between Myanmar’s peace process, its mismanagement of the Rohingya crisis, and China’s strategic interests in Myanmar. It examines how internal ethnic conflicts in Myanmar will transpire and the implications for China’s grand strategy of One Belt One Road in the region.

In the South China Sea territorial disputes, China has shifted from a delaying strategy characterized by strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity and an increasingly assertive stance. Yet, this power play, asserting sovereignty over a large portion of the South China Sea, has not prompted a decisive push-back from regional states or major powers, raising the question of what kind of norms China will bring to the regional order and indicating the difficulty of building rules-based order in a region characterized by unbounded power politics in a twenty-first-century Hobbesian struggle.