The East Asian democracies (EAD) of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have received little attention from the international political science community working on populism. By analyzing the last two to three decades of research on EAD we look for clues to help us explain why there is so little interest. In our review we encounter cases of eclectic conceptualization, suboptimal data, innovative categorization, binary analytics, and even political bias, all of which may weaken the persuasiveness of the respective research in the eyes of critical colleagues. Our key finding, however, is that all studies on EAD implicitly refer to local political standards as the baseline from which alleged populist behavior is identified and labeled. In direct comparison, the populist characteristics of East Asian politicians appear to be less pronounced than those of sledgehammer populists like Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez, or Boris Johnson. Consequently, scholars working on the latter may be less curious about the former. Our findings, therefore, confront us with the question of what to use as a baseline for the measurement of potentially populist phenomena. We argue for the application of what is locally considered standard political behavior and conclude that such a practice has the potential to draw more attention to cases from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

A major focus of the democratic backsliding literature has been on “executive aggrandizement” in electoral, institutional, and civil societal arenas. An influential explanation of the strength of opposition to aggrandizers contends that the more democratic accountability remains despite illiberal stratagems, the stronger the pushback is likely to be. A single-country temporal comparison of three aggrandizing Philippine presidents—Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Rodrigo Duterte—demonstrates that this view not only fails to account for stark variation in opposition, it predicts the reverse of what actually occurred. Despite election fraud, constitutional manipulation, and protest crackdowns, Marcos Sr. and Arroyo confronted stronger pushback. By contrast, opposition against Duterte gained little traction although elections remained competitive, institutions were left largely intact, and there was little repression of peaceful protests. This suggests that opposition efficacy is more dependent on how effectively it can contest democratic legitimation claims used to disguise autocratization.

This research examines how Beijing uses social media to publicize donations and engage in nation branding as it responds to the global backlash sparked by Covid-19. It argues that self-reports of medical donations aim to enhance China’s national brand, leading to an expectation that reports about donations will primarily target countries more severely affected by the virus. To test its claims, the research analyzes over 55,000 tweets published by Chinese diplomatic missions. The results—controlled for Chinese donation exports—show a positive and significant relationship between self-reports of medical donations and the host’s spread of Covid-19. In contrast, donations are not correlated with political or economic allies. A comparison of government (CCP, ministries, etc.) and non-government donors (immigrants, firms, etc.) shows that only donations by the latter are positively correlated with the spread of the virus. This research advances our knowledge of Chinese diplomats’ online political behavior.

US legislators show a remarkable variation in how many bills and resolutions they sponsor and cosponsor to support Taiwan. I argue that legislators’ perception of China and their partisan identity play a crucial role in shaping their support for Taiwan. To test my hypotheses, I conducted a quantitative analysis of all Taiwan-specific bills and resolutions introduced from the 110th to 116th House of Representatives. The results indicate that legislators who view China as a security threat to the US or a non-democracy and a human rights violator exhibit a higher level of support for Taiwan. However, seeing China as an economic challenger has the least significant effect. Furthermore, although there is a general consensus that Taiwan is a bipartisan issue in Congress, my research demonstrates that Republicans display a greater level of interest in supporting Taiwan compared to Democrats.

Despite increasing scholarly attention to backlash against feminism, little is known about anti-feminist movements in East Asia. This study examines the 2022 South Korean presidential election campaign, in which the political parties sought to capitalize on political resistance to the perceived advance of feminism. This embrace of male grievance as a political force was arguably led by former People Power Party (PPP) chairman Lee Jun-seok, leading commenters to argue that support for Lee is rooted in misogyny. We examine this claim empirically by drawing on a novel survey to estimate the association between misogynistic attitudes, measured through devaluation, perception of women as manipulative, and distrust, and support for Lee. We find that misogynistic attitudes are positively correlated with support for Lee, but not with presidential vote choice. We interpret this as suggesting that the association between misogyny and support for Lee is a manifestation of the desire for symbolic representation. We discuss the implications of how this association can further influence the gender divide, both in Korea and beyond, and conclude with recommendations for further research.

Political polarization has been a growing concern in Japan, particularly in recent years with the upsurge of nationalism and populism. However, little research has examined how it relates to the political behavior of the Japanese people. Using data from the 2005–2019 Japanese Electoral Studies (JES), this study shows that political polarization manifests itself in different ways depending on the specific policy domains that citizens perceive as divergent. Specifically, I discover that people who perceive higher levels of policy divergence between left- and right-wing parties on domestic and international policies are more likely to vote and participate in politics through publicly accessible networks, while there appears to be no evidence showing that perceiving high levels of policy divergence on economic issues has a meaningful effect on any type of political participation. Implications of these findings as well as directions for future research are discussed.

This study examines the Kōmeitō's strategies for policy influence within the coalition framework with its coalition partner, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) during the period of Second Abe Administration (2012–2020). As a junior coalition partner, Kōmeitō faces unity–distinctiveness dilemma, where it must accommodate policy demands of the senior partner while appeasing its core support base, Sōka Gakkai. This article argues that the junior partner's strategies for policy influence are determined by two factors: overlap/distinctiveness of policy inclinations and the positive/negative issue associations measured by the level of involvement in decision-making, i.e. portfolio allocation. Three cases are analyzed to elucidate the diversity of Kōmeitō's policy influence, the strategies of which range from corrective moderation, to nudging, to threats, all utilized to maintain a balance between reinforcing “distinctiveness” from the senior partner and consolidating coalition coherence to sustain competence within the coalition framework.