Competing interests among big powers played a role in the making of World War II. But, and not separated from this, another element had a serious impact: the sense of psychological insecurity experienced, each in its own way, by Germany and Japan in the context of their quest for recognition by other major powers – Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States – and the implications this had internationally. In connection with their material conditions (internal and international) compared to other great powers, this pushed Germany and Japan to embrace policies that were ultimately self-defeating. It led them to see and assess themselves, others, and the international environment in conflicting terms and, faced with the unwillingness of other big powers to accommodate them to the extent they wanted, to overplay their hand, with lethal outcomes as a result.

This article follows two previous articles published in this journal.1 It is a case study that focuses on Germany and Japan, and the making of World War II. In the first section, it begins with highlighting the overall relevance of this case study in the context of the analysis of emotions and passions in international politics. In the second section, it shows that both for Germany and Japan a sense of psychological insecurity regarding their international status and their urge to catch up and compensate, put them on a collision course with the great powers of the period. In the third part, the article explains how, in time, this contributed to the fact that Germany and Japan embraced negative and exclusionary political emotions and passions that translated into belligerent policies. In the fourth section, as a way to conclude, the article touches upon how a better understanding of the nature and role of emotions and passions in international affairs can encourage a psychology of peace, and international peace altogether.

This paper argues for a reappraisal of extant scholarship on delegation in the domain of financial regulation. Through an examination of Japan's experience with financial regulation between 1992 and 2003, it is demonstrated that crisis-induced institutional development entails a shift toward a more flexible, trustee-type bureaucratic structure. While the logic presented in this paper is far from a universally applicable theory of institutional change, it calls into question the relevance of more conventional approaches to the origins of delegation of authority, notably the approach that uses unified and divided government as a key variable. A renewed emphasis on the role of extra-political sources of transfers of authority inside the executive, and also between the legislature and the executive, therefore, is in order.

In a democracy, it is essential that agents respond to their principals. Because the principals have some control over the agents, the agents are supposed to be loyal to the principals’ wishes. For example, in the context of an election, voters (principals) can hire and fire their representatives (agents), while lawmakers should represent their constituency and legislate accordingly. On this basis, power is delegated from principals to agents and the chain of delegation makes government work, from voters (principals) to legislators (agents), from legislators (now, principals) to ministers (agents/principals), to bureaucrats (agents/principals), and to street-level public servants (agents).

The political trajectories in Southeast Asia are much more complex than neat theoretical models would suggest. In particular, the diverse experience of post-authoritarian states are far from linear – often moving forward, backward, and forward again, or stalling for a number of years. Political trajectories can thus be uneven and erratic, as exemplified by Thailand's military coups, graduating from hegemonic to competitive electoral authoritarian rule in Singapore and Malaysia and lingering within the zone of low-quality democracy as characterized by Indonesia's poor governance and neo-patrimonial dynamics. Indeed, since 2014, Freedom House no longer classifies Indonesia as ‘Free’, following the passage of legislation restricting the activity of civil society and the human rights violations against religious minorities. Similarly, Thailand lost its ‘Free’ ranking in 2006 and the Philippines in 2007.

This article examines perceptions of military and defense expenditure as held by Asian students. By using quantitative data from the Asian Student Survey1 of 2008 it addresses the following questions: to which areas would Asian students like to see their government allocate more or less resources and, specifically, how supportive of defense and military spending are Asian students. This study finds that data concerning one country have appeared deviant. While designating the strongest will to increase defense and military spending among all countries sampled in the survey, Chinese students from leading universities (N = 800; Pekin and Renmin universities in Beijing; Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong university) also exhibit the lowest levels of perceived military threats. The rest of the paper explores the ‘puzzle’ of Chinese students by generating and testing a null hypothesis. In it, Chinese students' high demand for military spending is associated with an aggressive design, whereby anti-foreign, unilateral, and nationalist sentiments coincide. After refuting the null hypothesis, the paper advances an alternative explanation that links students' inclination with the call to modernize the People's Liberation Army.

This article is about the contestation of two different forms of nationalism in Singapore during and after two elections in 2011. Manufactured nationalism is top-down, state-defined and economically driven, concerned mainly about accumulation of national wealth through globalization that would eventually ‘trickle down’ to the masses. This view is promoted by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). The PAP projects Singapore as a state born out of the party's triumph over colonialism, racial violence, and communist insurgency. Popular nationalism, on the other hand, is bottom-up and people driven, concerned about local issues concerning national identity, social cohesion, and an appreciation (or at least an understanding) of local heritage. Proponents of popular nationalism emphasize a common beginning (birth of independent Singapore on 9 August 1965), shared historical memories (local heritage), several elements of a common culture (such as the use of Singlish), and an association with a specific ‘homeland’ (born and raised in Singapore and, for males, the completion of conscription). They view Singapore as a nation-state with a unique and evolving identity destabilized by a liberal immigration policy. The elections generated considerable attention due to the gains by the opposition parties and the public airing of frustrations against the PAP government. These frustrations are strongly driven by the influx of new migrants, especially those classified as ‘foreign talent’ by the PAP government. In this article, I argue that popular nationalism has emerged in twenty-first century Singapore and examine the debates over the future of Singapore during and after the elections.

Dynastic politicians, defined as those whose family members have also served in the same position in the past, occupy a sizable portion of offices in many parts of the world. We develop a model of how dynastic politicians with inherited political advantages affect electoral outcomes and policy choices. Our model predicts that, as compared with non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts, despite the larger amount of distributive benefits they bring. We test the implications of the model using data from Japan between 1997 and 2007.

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election.

Recent research claims that local party organizations are essential for new parties seeking organizational stability and national-level electoral success. Yet new parties which emerged in Japan since the 1990s have failed in building nation-wide networks of local organizations. The article asks how these parties sought to expand locally and why their attempts have been largely unsuccessful. It finds evidence that under certain conditions (in urban areas and multi-member districts, or when controlling local chief executive offices and endowed with inherited resources) new parties have been more successful in standing and winning seats in regional elections. Regions with these favorable conditions are few, however, resulting in the overall weakness of the new parties’ local organizations. The study also disconfirms expectations that a party's control of national government should result in their improved representation at the local level. The article contributes to elucidating the incentives and dynamics of building party organizations in terms of local elected offices for newcomer parties in Japan. It hints at similar challenges for entrepreneurial parties with few social roots in other established democracies.

No theory seems to describe accurately and explain competently the new, unusual, and idiosyncratic Northeast Asian regional order phenomenon. It is because Northeast Asian specialists like the blind men have seen only one of the parts of the ‘Elephant’ or a part of what is taking place in Northeast Asia. This paper attempts to employ a new, more appropriate, more productive analytical tool to understand and navigate efficiently the Northeast Asian regional order. The main objective of this paper is ‘the rise of China and Northeast Asian regional order’, what it is and what is taking place in the empirical world when we say that something we call ‘the rise of China and Northeast Asian regional order’ is taking place.

This article reconsiders how to judge judicial independence by using the Japanese judicature, one of the allegedly-most dependent judiciary branches. In their influential work, Ramseyer and Rasmusen (2003) argue that judges who once belonged to a leftist group take longer to reach a ‘moderately prestigious status’ under the long-term conservative rule of Japan. Their method does not, however, deal appropriately with the possibility of judges not reaching this position because the judge dies, retires early, or is still at the early stage of her career. Ramseyer and Rasmusen also mistakenly assume that all judges will eventually obtain this position. This article develops a survival analysis model of judicial careers and attempts to solve the problems of censoring, left truncation, and split population. We also offer a way to utilize a matching procedure to estimate average treatment effects on censored time-to-event as well as event occurrence. We re-analyze a corrected version of Ramseyer and Rasmusen's data using their and our methods. One of the most important findings is that, contrary to what Ramseyer and Rasmusen argue, leftist judges are not discriminated against in terms of the timing of promotion.

Singapore's long-serving People's Action Party (PAP) government suffered from a major electoral setback in the 2011 general election and subsequent by-elections. The high-growth population policy, underpinned by the influx of migrants and foreign workers, has strongly fuelled the groundswell of public discontent and is commonly perceived to have contributed to widening income disparities, wage stagnation, and cost of living pressures. This article attempts to make sense of the PAP leadership's dogged commitment to the high-growth population policy despite the electoral backlashes and policy criticisms by prominent public intellectuals and others closely connected to the PAP establishment. It considers Singapore's high-growth population policy and widening income disparity within the context of the authoritarian developmental state's shift away from the ‘growth with equity’ social compact. The article also examines the impact of widening income inequality and other policy lapses on the legitimacy of the PAP government as the clamor for a renewed social compact based on ‘growth with equity’ gathers momentum in the repoliticized polity.

Singapore's strategic play to secure international wealth management market share has been very successful. Serious questions, however, were raised in relation to this ascendency as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC, beginning in 2007) drove the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (US) to become proactive in clamping down on tax evasion and other areas deemed by them to be undesirable within the international financial system. This paper will examine the Singapore government's decade-long growth policy of its wealth management sector, and how it has been impacted upon by international regulatory responses. Further, it examines how in stark contrast to the EU and the US, Indonesia has been far less successful in its diplomatic efforts to have Singapore address financial diplomacy issues (tax evasion and ill-gotten gains from corruption) in relation to Indonesian citizens residing in Singapore. This article will argue, however, that Singapore's less than robust response to Indonesia's constant requests for action maybe to the long-term detriment of Singapore itself.

Economics is now a large part of foreign policy. (George Yeo, May 2005, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Singapore)

Singapore Inc's new growth strategy in a whole range of services from real estate as a new asset class to lifestyle, taps millionaires and billionaires who value privacy, political stability, and sensitivity to money laundering implications. (Low, 2010: 171)

This paper makes three related points. First, Japan has played an instrumental role in helping to define the shape and substance of multilateralism in Asia in ways deeper than scholarly literature on Asia's regional architecture has allowed. A key driving force behind Japan's contributions is the perceived utility of multilateralism in facilitating Japan's engagement of and/or balancing against China. Second, Japan has been able to achieve this because of the United States' support for Asian multilateralism and Japanese security interests. In the immediate post-Cold War period, Japan facilitated US participation in regional arrangements such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN Regional Forum. But Japanese ambivalence over its dependence on the United States was also apparent in Tokyo's attempts to exclude Washington from the newly formed East Asia Summit in late 2005, despite Japan's felt need to balance China. Japan's reliance on quiet diplomacy and an implicit regional leadership has equally been instrumental to its achievements in regional integration. Third, in the light of Japan's longstanding aim to become a normal military power and adopt a more assertive policy toward China, Japan‒US security ties are likely to deepen with negative consequences for Asian multilateralism. However, if its ties with China and South Korea worsen over their islands disputes in the East China Sea, Japan risks undermining its relations with the United States. How Japan balances its normalization with a continued engagement with multilateralism could be key to a stable and secure Asia.

This paper examines the prospects of ethnic politics and consociationalism in Malaysia, in terms of their structures and capabilities. Towards this end, the Barisan Nasional's (BN) policies from 2008 to 2013, the BN's and the Pakatan Rakyat's (PR) 2013 electoral strategies, and the results of the 2013 election will be analysed. As political parties in both the BN and the PR have generally represented ethnic interests and identities, an ethnic-based political structure has been maintained. A consociational political system, which is based on an ethnic-based political structure, has been adopted by both political coalitions. An examination of the 2013 election results indicates that the BN's ethnic politicking as a vote-gathering device has become ineffective. The BN's consociationalism has suffered from a legitimacy deficit, particularly within ethnic minority communities. However, it may be premature to claim that the Malaysian political culture is on the cusp of transcending the BN's paradigm of ethnic politics and consociationalism. The shift from ethnic politics will generate stronger momentum when the PR parties are incorporated into one political party.

Does direct democracy enhance political efficacy? This article examines the effect of direct democracy on political efficacy. Normative theorists have suggested that direct democracy has educative effects on citizens, such as promoting political efficacy. While a number of studies have examined the corresponding hypothesis, their empirical findings are not clear-cut. This study attributes the inconsistent results to two problems of the existing studies: the employment of cross-sectional data and the heterogeneity of popular vote issues. This study closes this gap by examining the effect of direct democracy in local politics on political efficacy in a more systematic and controlled way. More concretely, it utilizes the Japanese case: In the first decade of this century, more than 400 Japanese municipalities held a popular vote for the first time because the Japanese national government promoted municipal merger. Therefore, the Japanese case provides multiple popular votes on comparable substantive topics that can be conceived as an homogeneous treatment. By applying multilevel modeling to panel survey data, this study demonstrates the causal effect that the popular vote increases the level of internal political efficacy.

In recent years much has been said about how new democracies are backsliding or have regressed since the turn of the century when hope and optimism about the future spread of democracy was widespread. However, ideas that democracy would spread were based on institutional and governance indicators rather than from the perspective of everyday citizens. When we look at public attitudes towards democracy during this period, we can see that such optimism was perhaps misplaced or premature. Drawing on findings from the AsiaBarometer and the World Values Survey, this research finds that public attitudes during this time were not overly convinced by democracy and certainly not yet satisfied with their government's performance in terms of providing basic democratic freedoms and independence.

Previous studies on international reconciliation have focused on the security and economic interests of the countries involved, treating reconciliation as an end-goal rather than an ongoing process. This study divides the process of reconciliation into three stages. ‘Procedural reconciliation’, which refers to the mending of international relations through institutional change, is the most basic. In the ‘material reconciliation’ phase, the perpetrator(s) provides the victim(s) – either at the individual or state level – with economic compensation for inflicting harm. The third stage, ‘ideational reconciliation’, is reached when the perpetrator acknowledges past wrongdoings and when civil and cultural exchanges are carried out smoothly.

This study delves into the relations between South Korea and Japan. Even though reconciliation between South Korea and Japan is vital to achieve stable peace in Northeast Asia, the topic has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Former studies have focused on bilateral relations, but few have discussed the two countries' path towards reconciliation. In this study, readers will find an in-depth analysis of the ties between South Korea and Japan from an international reconciliation perspective, one which will help them understand how the two nations have worked towards understanding and how much they have achieved to date. The study also suggests a roadmap to reach the final stage of reconciliation and identifies the policy changes needed to get there.

The ‘keep it simple, stupid’ slogan, or the KISS principle has been the basic guideline in agent-based modeling (ABM). While the KISS principle or parsimony is vital in modeling attempts, conventional agent-based models remain abstract and are rarely incorporated or validated with empirical data, leaving the links between theoretical models and empirical phenomena rather loose. This article reexamines the KISS principle and discusses the recent modeling attempts that incorporate and validate agent-based models with spatial (geo-referenced) data, moving beyond the KISS principle. This article also provides a working example of such time and space specified (TASS) agent-based models that incorporates Schelling's (1971) classic model of residential segregation with detailed geo-referenced demographic data on the city of Chicago derived from the US Census 2010.

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.