The role of the court system in national policymaking has long been a central issue in democratic theory. Two contending theories, the traditional view and the realist one, have been offered to explain the influence of the judiciary compared to other political institutions. Looking at the subject from Dahl's realist perspective, it is hypothesized that supporters of the ruling majority generally have a favorable attitude toward the courts, ceteris paribus. This study sheds some light on the issue of public support by examining the public's evaluation of the judicial system in Taiwan. It evaluates the impact of political factors (especially party identification) on public support for the judiciary, based on the results of a national survey carried out in 2014 to assess public attitudes toward the courts and other political institutions. The findings reveal that, compared with other institutions, the courts enjoy a relatively high degree of popular confidence. The results also confirm the realist view that supporters of the policymaking majority generally hold favorable attitudes toward the judiciary, whereas opponents of the ruling coalition tend to express lower levels of diffuse support for the courts.

On 19 December 2012, Park Geun-Hye won the presidential election in Korea. How should we understand the surprising comeback of ‘the strong man's daughter’ in a country that has been touted as having experienced a successful transition from dictatorship to democratization? To answer this question, it is necessary to reformulate modernization theory, of which Korea has been cited as a ‘dream case’. Modernization theory is overly process-oriented; a process of economic growth leads to a successful democratization with a temporal gap. However, when we take into account the question of agency, which was missing in modernization theory, a series of interesting questions arise. First, who led the process of modernization in the Korean case? Second, who led the process of democratization? Finally, what happens if the temporal gap between modernization and democratization is relatively short so that ‘modernizers’ and ‘democratizers’ occupy the same political landscape? In such a scenario, we should expect a society deeply divided between the two agencies of modernization theory. The recent return of ‘the strong man's daughter’ is the latest symptom of increasing social divisions between modernizers and democratizers in contemporary Korean society.

This article aims to explore the effects of quasi-SNTV (Single Non-transferable Vote) under the Largest Remainder Proportional Representation (LRPR) in Legislative Council (LegCo) elections in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) after the British handover of 1997. Although the quasi-SNTV results from the inability of political parties to control their candidates, the Democratic Party (DP) and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) can obtain more seats in total than they could by coordinating around one single list if they can successfully control their party label and the political camps can coordinate different parties and candidates. The quasi-SNTV in Hong Kong is notable for the strategic coordination found in its alliances, a key aspect that differentiates it from Colombia's quasi-SNTV. The DP's failure can be attributed to its internal conflicts and the lack of coordination among the pro-democracy alliances. In contrast to the democratic camp, which lacks any overriding authority to coordinate different parties and candidates, the pro-China's united front machinery facilitates coordination and helps the DAB perform better than the DP in quasi-SNTV.

Since the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan's (LDP) return to power in late 2012, there has been on-going discussions regarding the possibility of revising the Japanese constitution. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has made numerous remarks regarding his intention to implement significant changes. Understandably, amendments to the controversial Article 9 as well as to the Article 96 have become the main points of interests for both journalists and scholars. Judging by the LDP's constitutional draft from 2012 there are other significant changes that the ruling party would like to implement. This article mainly analyses the proposed amendments regarding the position and significance of the emperor, national flag, and anthem, as well as separation of the state and religion. Based on textual analysis of the draft and analysis of the remarks made by Abe Shinzō regarding changing the constitution, this paper argues that, if implemented, the proposed changes would symbolically link contemporary Japan with its pre-1945 past. Furthermore, both the LDP's constitutional draft and leading politicians’ comments regarding the necessity of those amendments fit into a much broader narrative regarding Japan's historical past, and signify another attempt to reconstruct collective memory of both the Pacific War and occupation years.

Democratic transitions in Asia have received widespread interest in the political science literature since the 1990s. The Thein Sein-led government that came into power in 2010 in Myanmar has undertaken wide ranging reforms that has altered the country's political landscape. They include evolving a working relationship with the political opposition, freeing political prisoners, and the granting of amnesty to political exiles to encourage their return, the negotiation of ceasefire agreements with almost all of the ethnic insurgent armies and the inauguration of the Myanmar Peace Centre. Nonetheless, the county continues to suffer from ongoing developments that retard the process of democratization as well. A confluence of interest between the NLD, ethnic groups, and civil society organizations also prompted attempts to change the 2008 Constitution and its by-laws that prevented Aung San Suu Kyi from running for the country's presidency. That attempt and the potential for reform were scuttled by the August 2015 ‘coup’ against Thura Shwe Mann. The NLD's overwhelming victory in the November elections has significantly strengthened Suu Kyi's position and all major political actors including those from the military have been conciliatory towards the election outcome and there is cause for cautious optimism. After 6 months in power, the policy priorities of the new government are also clearer.

In profiling Asian societies, such classical authors as Hegel, Marx, and Wittfogel have had considerable influence on the subject. They adopted power-centered approaches in characterizing Asian societies. This manuscript adopts the evidence-based approach with a bottom-up angle in constructing a people-centered typology of Asian societies. People's daily life satisfaction in 29 Asian societies is factor-analyzed with varimax rotation, society by society. Using the first two dimensions of factor analysis for each society, five types of Asian society are constructed: Ab, Ac, Ba, Bc, and Ca, where A means materialism in the primary, b means postmaterialism in the secondary, B means postmaterialism in the primary, a means materialism in the secondary, c means public sector dominance in the secondary, and C means public sector dominance in the primary. Ab societies include: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Japan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Ac societies include: China, South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Mongolia. Ba societies include: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan. Bc includes Brunei, the Philippines, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan. Ca societies include: Singapore and the Maldives. Responses to questions about lifestyle priorities are also provided to corroborate and reinforce the above typology. Applicability of this method is open to non-Asian as well as Asian societies.