On the basis of seven questions asked in the AsiaBarometer survey conducted by the author in 2003 in ten Asian societies, Uzbekistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Korea and Japan, the author analyzes the key dimensions of social capital, permeating the ten societies, (1) general trust in interpersonal relations, (2) trust in merit-based utility; and (3) trust in social system and comes up with the five groups of societies on the basis of three major dimensions of social capital and comes up with the five groups of societies (1) China and Vietnam, (2) Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan, (3) Malaysia, Myanmar and India, (4) Japan and Korea, and (5) Thailand. Conceptual examinations are also done in relation to the work done by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Weltzel and broad empirical corroborations are noted.

This study explores the role that news coverage plays in the allocation of Japanese development aid. Conceptually, it is expected that democratic foreign policy officials, including those working in bureaucratic governmental structures will try to match the magnitude of their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of the recipient. News media salience serves an easily accessible indicator of that domestic political importance and, in the case of foreign aid, this suggests that higher levels of news coverage of a less-developed country will lead to higher aid commitments. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in Japanese aid distributions. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that separating grant aid from other forms of aid is critical for the empirical examination of the determinants of Japanese aid.

This study explores the individual-level activities of legislators in parliament, which have been largely ignored in the literature on parliamentary democracies. Individual legislators are extensively involved in parliamentary activities such as drafting private members’ bills and posing questions, even though these activities have only been considered to play marginal roles in parliamentary democracies. Moreover, their engagement varies significantly. By using unique data from Japan, this study demonstrates that the personal attributes of legislators affect their choice of parliamentary activities. Under electoral systems with intra-party competition, legislators use parliamentary activities as an important means to inform their constituents about what they can do for them and how they differ from other legislators. In elections, candidates cultivate personal votes by exploiting the image drawn from their personal attributes and, once elected, they behave in accordance with their attributes in order to maintain their electoral ground. Thus, they devote themselves to different activities in parliament. The data analyzed here support this argument. The results of empirical analyses show that legislators with local-level political experience engage in particularistic pork-barrel activities that will benefit their local interests, while legislators with legal-work experience allocate their time and energy to general policy-making activities that will enhance their public image and visibility as legal experts.

In parliamentary systems, legislative parties are the building blocks for executive coalitions. A standard assumption in the large literature on coalition politics is that legislative parties form fixed units from one election to the next. Under some conditions, however, this assumption falls flat. For instance, about one-fourth of legislators in the Italian lower house switched parties between 1996 and 2001. How is legislative party switching linked to the politics of executive coalitions? This paper examines how government composition affects the direction of party switching, and how party switching affects the reallocation of cabinet office. I devote in-depth scrutiny to Italy. Subsidiary country cases, chosen to maximize institutional variation, are Australia, Britain, Canada, France, and Spain.

The subject of this paper is the role of democratic deliberation as a policy instrument for district and local administrations in the urban village regeneration process. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between democratic deliberation and public policy making, and the theory of deliberative systems. Deliberation in the context of urban village regeneration is part of a complex, scalar, political-administrative system, with many actors whose activities are often not aligned. Although this configuration has authoritarian traits and operates largely without the protection of a strong and well-functioning rule of law, it is not all-sovereign. In fact, one of the most fascinating aspects of urban village deliberation is the way that reveals the limits of authoritarian rule in a modern national and international context. As we show, the Party encounters the same problems of technical, social, and institutional complexity, with the ensuing limits on vertical steering, as administrations in democratic countries. Using the case of Q village, we describe how hierarchical project management sits uneasily with village deliberation throughout the process. When officials attempt to curtail the legally mandated village deliberation process, they encounter stiff resistance and even a participation strike.

This paper examines the internal dynamics of Korean political parties to understand why the minority coalition government of Kim Dae-jung suffered from political stalemate or deadlocks in the legislature. It shows that a focus on the size of the government in terms of a majority status in the legislature does not offer a convincing explanation of why the Kim Dae-jung administration slid towards ungovernability. Instead better insights come from an analysis of party organization, an aspect of party politics rarely examined through in-depth analysis. The paper shows that in terms of the key dimensions of organization (leadership type, factionalism, funding, linkage role) Korean political parties fail to connect citizens to the political system.

Does political repression extinguish public support for opposition demands? Protest emerges as a consequence of grievances and political preferences expressed as demands. Although the literature on the repression–dissent nexus has primarily focused on whether repression effectively deters dissenting behavior, a limitation is that researchers do not often distinguish between behavior and preferences. One possible implication is that although the observable protest behavior can be reduced by repression, underlying opposition demands may remain intact or even be strengthened. Hence, the question of why repression should alter public preferences remains theoretically under-investigated, because there is limited micro-level evidence that captures changes in opposition preferences induced by a repressive episode. We fielded comparable conjoint experiments before and after the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in June 2020. Support for the demands was largely stable despite the sweeping powers of the law to curb protests, although some moderation of demands was observed. We outline avenues for future research on mechanisms and implications entailed by the effects of repression on preferences.

This paper is a detailed case study of China's first direct election of the township heads, examining the driving forces for and obstacles to direct township election, and Chinese utilitarian approach toward local democracy. The paper discusses the prospect of direct township election in China and highlights the Chinese paternalist model of democracy being implemented in practice.

This study investigates the role of religion in shaping the norms of citizenship from a cultural perspective for an East Asian country that exhibits fundamental differences in social contexts from Western advanced democracies. Using data drawn from the Taiwan Social Change Survey, we find that the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Folk Religions are important for explaining the formation of the concept of being a good citizen. This study further examines the relationships between citizenship norms and various conventional and unconventional types of political participation. The empirical results herein suggest that duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship have significant differences in their effects on political participation.

Since 1993, coalition governments have replaced the 38-year-long, one-party dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (the LDP) in Japan. Except for one year, from 1993 to 1994, the LDP has remained a key party in successive governing coalitions, but the dynamics of party competition has been completely transformed since the period of the LDP's dominance. Although the LDP has survived to form a variety of coalitions ranging from a minority to an over-sized majority, since 1998 the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has continued to counter the LDP governments. The transformation of party systems in Japan accompanies the party switching of legislators and the mergers, breakups, extinctions, and formations of parties. In this regard, the Japanese case provides an interesting example to show how parties attempt to change the dynamics of policy competition by switching and reorganizing. Parties also attempt to shift their policy positions to attract public support and to gain a competitive edge in government formation. Using expert survey data about the policy positions of parties, this study explicates the dynamics involved in the reorganization of parties and the formation of governments.

Jean-Marc Coicaud's article begins by stressing the contemporary importance and the current trend of political apology. Recent political apologies offered in Australia and Canada to their indigenous populations form a significant part of this story. He then analyzes a number of intriguing paradoxes at the core of the dynamics of apology. These paradoxes give meaning to apology but also make the very idea of apology extremely challenging. They have to do with the relationships of apology with time, law and the unforgivable. The most intriguing of these paradoxes concerns apology and the unforgivable. Indeed, the greater the wrong, the more valuable the apology. But, then, the more difficult it becomes to issue and to accept an apology. This latter paradox is namely examined in the context of mass crimes, taken from Europe, Africa and Asia. As a whole these paradoxes are all the more intriguing considering what apology in a political context aims to accomplish, for the actor who issues the apology, for the one who receives it, for their relationship, and for the social environment in which this takes place. Jean-Marc Coicaud concludes his article by outlining what the rise of apology means for contemporary political culture.

Although the importance of public satisfaction is well documented, few studies have been conducted on the diversity of citizens’ evaluations of the various levels of government. This study explored hierarchical government satisfaction among the public in two culturally Chinese societies, namely China and Taiwan. Basing the analysis on the perspective of responsibility attribution, this paper proposes that the two publics’ distinctive perceptions, which are shaped by different information flows, lead hierarchical government satisfaction in the two societies in separate directions. This argument is supported by the empirical findings from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. The findings confirm that personal evaluations, including household economic satisfaction, democratic evaluation, and public service confidence, exert more influence over local government satisfaction in China, but conversely have a greater impact on central government satisfaction in Taiwan. Moreover, these evaluations are shown to affect hierarchical government satisfaction differently in the two societies. The evidence reveals that the two publics attribute blame for problems to different administrative objects: Chinese citizens tend to blame local governments, whereas Taiwanese citizens are inclined to criticize the central government.

This paper investigates why some legislators tend to switch parties frequently – which is believed to undermine effective representation of citizen interests in democracies – while others tend to stay put. On the assumption that the ultimate goal of legislators is to be reelected, I argue that voters' demands for local/individual benefits, or pork, and legislators' lack of access to resources for such benefits are likely to lead the legislators to switch parties in order to improve their electoral chances in the subsequent election. By analyzing party switches by legislators from 1988 to 2008 in South Korea, where the president controls access to the pork pipeline, I find that the president's party members are less likely and independents are more likely to change party affiliations, irrespective of voter demands for pork or national public policies. However, I also find that opposition party legislators who are elected from less-developed districts, where voters tend to desire pork over policy, are more likely to switch parties than those elected from more-developed districts. These findings suggest that interaction between voter demands and party access to resources influences politicians’ party loyalty: voter demands for pork (or policy) tend to lead politicians to be less (or more) loyal to their current parties. Voter demands, however, have little impact on the party loyalty of those who are already in parties with access to the pork pipeline.

This paper examines how Japanese leading politicians cope with the communication problems posed during televised political interviews. Based on data gathered during the year 2012–13, the paper replicates and modifies the Theory of Equivocation to detail the responsiveness of national and local level politicians (and for comparison also of non-politicians) to interview questions. Its main focus is on the extent to which Japanese politicians equivocate during televised programs, and the reasons underlying this equivocation. Overall, the paper aims to identify the motives behind interviewees’ equivocation, thereby to also assess the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of political communication in Japan.

As a rising power, China has become actively involved in regional bilateral/multilateral arrangements in the post-Cold War, especially post-crisis (1997– 98 financial crises) era, and this has attracted much attention from within and outside East Asia. Diverse understandings of China's regional ambition have appeared, especially since the launch of the China-ASEAN free trade agreement (FTA). Aiming at deciphering the ideas behind China's regional thinking, this paper argues that China's perspective on regionalism is a broadened economic regionalism, which is basically economic-centered, because economic performance is vital both to its long-term strategic target and to its internal social stability. This economic regionalism will last for some time because China will be a developing country at least in the mid-term, which means China will have to focus more on its economic performance. In practice, China will engage bilaterally or multilaterally with others through its FTA strategy. Thus, China cannot be a main contributor to East Asian integration as expected, owing to the inward-looking nature of its economic regionalism. Also, the institutional integration of East Asia needs the effort of all the players in the region.

Contemporary Hong Kong is riven by serious political and social polarization. Hong Kong's problem does not lie in ideological differences among citizens; rather, the major issue is that people of different political stripes view each other as enemies. In this study, we conducted two experiments to compare the impacts of deliberation and discussion on political depolarization. In study 1, we invited participants of opposing views toward the Article 23 legislation and conducted a 90-min discussion session. The participants were divided into two groups: deliberation and causal discussion. The deliberation group received an information booklet on the issue and had to strictly follow rules of deliberation whereas the causal discussion group had no such stimuli. In study 2, we used video recordings from study 1 and presented the videos to two groups of participants. One group of participants watched the deliberation video and the other group watched the causal discussion video. The main finding of the study is both deliberation and causal discussion had mixed effects on reducing political polarization. After discussion, issue attitude and issue polarization remained largely the same, but people's attitude toward others with opposing views became more favorable and affective polarization was reduced. No systematic differences were found between deliberation and discussion. And watching discussion and deliberation will deliver similar effects but to a lesser extent.

In China, the public has gradually shifted their focus from GDP growth to quality-of-life issues, which imposes new challenges for the government. The food safety problem, as a salient issue, is one such example. This article analyzes how food safety problems affect ordinary Chinese people's trust in the government and their attribution of governmental responsibility using nationally representative survey data. As food safety risks are unequally distributed in China, the political impact of food safety problems varies among people of different socioeconomic statuses. The results show that food safety problems weaken the public's trust in both the central and local governments, but this negative effect is attenuated among people with a low level of education. Moreover, the Chinese public tends to attribute major responsibility to the central government rather than local governments when perceiving the severity of food safety problems, and this tendency becomes stronger for the low-income population. The results deepen the understanding of the local-central political trust patterns and the political implications of food safety problems in China.

Theories of governance and Chinese understandings

There is a vast and eclectic literature about many forms of governance, including markets, bureaucratic hierarchies, associations and different types of networks. The Commission on Global Governance, for example, defines governance as ‘the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken. It includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest’. Thus, ‘at the global level, governance has been viewed primarily as intergovernmental relationships, but it must now be understood as also involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs), citizens' movements, multinational corporations and the global mass of dramatically enlarged influence’.

This article analyzes the institutional patterns of eight young democracies in Asia. The analysis originates from Lijphart's majoritarian-consensus framework. It illustrates that neither Lijphart's two-dimensional democracy pattern, nor an alternative pattern exists in Asia. Instead, the review of possible causes for the lack of conformity between Lijphart's patterns of democracy and the reality of the situation in Asia support the criticism in existing research literature regarding some of Lijphart's main assumptions and major conclusions. Furthermore, Asian realities provide only partial support for Lijphart's advice that the consensus option is the more attractive option for countries that designed their first democratic constitutions.

This article argues that major cases of electoral reform across democracies in Asia in recent years can be explained as institutional measures aimed at curbing corruption and ‘money politics’. More specifically, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand rid themselves of their extreme candidate-centered electoral systems as a means to encourage politicians to invest in ‘clean’ collective party labels, while Indonesia discarded its extremely party-centered electoral system to increase the accountability of individual politicians. The article thus disagrees with scholars who argue that recent electoral reform should be understood as part of a wider project by Asian governments to engineer a majoritarian form of democracy. Instead, the comparative analysis shows that democracies across Asia, in line with global trends in institutional design, have been ‘normalizing’ their electoral systems, moving them closer towards the ideal of electoral ‘efficiency’.