North Korea today is a most unusual post-socialist state. Market actors and market prices are integral to economic life, but private property remains illegal, and private enterprise outside the household is de jure non-existent. In such an institutional context, some market processes are more autonomous in relation to the state, while others are more embedded within state structures. In this article, we offer a theoretical account of the shape that North Korea's market economy has taken, developed from a set of fishing industry case studies. We note four broad categories of enterprises: closely embedded, loosely embedded, semi-autonomous, and autonomous. By relative autonomy/embeddedness we mean control over fixed assets, cash flow, and operational decisions such as wage and price setting. We postulate three major determinants of embeddedness/autonomy: (1) relative strategic resource scarcity between state and market actors, (2) monitoring costs, and (3) institutional evolution that reflects these realities, though to varying extents.

What drove the East Asian tide of democratization during the “Third Wave?” Instead of focusing on a single-factor explanation, we perform qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) on fourteen cases in the region of East Asia from 1980 to 2000 and find three parallel pathways: (1) overthrow model, which features the positive effects of mass mobilization against authoritarianism under a deinstitutionalized authoritarian regime; (2) urban pressure model that works under an institutionalized authoritarian regime; and (3) inside-out model, in which democratization is triggered by the joint forces of domestic and international conditions under both types of regimes. These results demonstrate that the authoritarian status quo ante is an important determinant of democratic transitions.

In the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of “partial fiscal decentralization,” in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party.

Overhaul of administrative procedures is an important part of most democratic transitions, and procedural regularization and transparency are often seen as steps toward the consolidation of democracy. Administrative procedures affect policy decisions, but whether particular procedural reforms facilitate or hinder democratic responsiveness depends on the details of the procedure and the political environment. In this article, we examine a particular procedural reform: the adoption of a sunset provision in Korea as part of an omnibus administrative procedures package at the end of Kim Young Sam's presidency. A sunset provision might be seen as clearly promoting democratic responsiveness by requiring the winner of the most recent election to explicitly decide whether to keep or drop old rules and regulations. Alternatively, it might be seen as limiting a democratically elected leader's ability to change policy in accordance with his mandate, by requiring expenditure of effort and resources just to maintain a status quo. We argue that the second interpretation applies to the Korean case. We use a spatial model and evidence from regulatory decisionmaking to argue that Kim Young Sam favored the sunset provision because it would constrain the policy decisions of future presidents. Our model offers an explanation for why Kim Young Sam would propose a sunset provision that limited the life of his own regulations.

This article examines the political economy of Chinese overseas development finance for coal fired power plants. In just over a decade China's two major policy banks provide more financing for overseas coal-fired power plant expansion than any other public financier in the world economy. We show how China's overseas surge in public financing for coal fired power plants is a function of a number of domestic push and foreign pull factors. Excess capacity, environmental regulation, and structural change are push factors that converge with rising demand for energy, pockets of coal abundance, and the lack of financing in Western capital markets for coal fired power plants. Fragmentation across the Chinese system and the demand for coal outside China's borders allow for a decline sector on the mainland to become a global Chinese powerhouse.

This article presents evidence that high-ranking public officials in the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in South Korea affect local budget allocation. Applying a regression model on a uniquely constructed panel dataset, I found that the growth rate of the per-capita National Subsidy, which is a subcomponent of the national budget susceptible to discretionary behaviors, increases approximately 7 percent in the hometowns of high-ranking bureaucrats. To validate these findings and address causality, I conducted a battery of auxiliary robustness checks, which yielded confirmatory results. This study also found that enhancing transparency in the budget allocation system can alleviate concerns about bureaucratic hometown favoritism, providing suggestive evidence of bureaucrats’ rent-seeking behaviors without government transparency.

I examine a relatively underexplored aspect of Japan's early postwar history and seek to explain why attempts to establish a Japanese-style central intelligence agency (JCIA) in the 1950s were unsuccessful. I evaluate three competing explanations drawn from the level of international politics, focusing on US power resources and influence as well as liberal and constructivist styles of analysis—alliance politics, sectionalism, and the norm of antimilitarism—in order to shed light on the historical origins of Japan's intelligence apparatus, which is relatively underdeveloped and underfunded compared to other middle powers. It highlights the primacy of domestic factors over structural causes in explaining the decision not to establish a JCIA. In particular, I argue that the JCIA proposal failed primarily because of attacks on important proponents that, while sometimes driven by seemingly rational organizational interests, were nevertheless legitimated by growing antimilitaristic sentiments shared by elites from the political center to the left of the ideological spectrum. The newly emerging norm of antimilitarism was predicated largely on a fear of constraints on recently acquired civil and political liberties. These fears, manifested most prominently in vocal Diet and media opposition, were compounded by the norm of secrecy—an important element of intelligence activities—which served to heighten further speculation about the malign intent of postwar Japan's reconstituted intelligence system.

Apart from a short period in the 1980s, the People's Republic of China has been almost completely excluded from access to military and sensitive dual-use civilian-military technologies from the United States and its allies. But in an era of globalization and convergence in the civilian and military technological domains, this compartmentalization of the economic and security arenas has become increasingly difficult to maintain and justify. Major trading countries are caught in the dilemma of balancing restrictions on high technology and other sensitive trade and investment with China against the benefits of deeper ties with the world's second-largest economy. In examining the trade-offs between economics and national security for the United States, the European Union, Israel, and Japan, it becomes clear that China's rise and growing economic and strategic influence introduce new complexities and challenges for controlling militarily relevant technology and knowledge transfers.

South Korea is the only nation to become an important donor nation after being a recipient of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for several decades. In 2010, it became a member of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee, and while it has continued to use its experience as a former ODA recipient to inform its distribution practices, it also has evolved its ODA policies in response to changes in international norms and the imperatives associated with being a DAC-member nation. We know that, while policies may change, actual ODA disbursements—which nations are selected as recipients and receive ODA in what amounts—may lag or even remain unchanged. In this paper, we use the case of South Korea to determine how actual ODA disbursements change in response to policy changes. To accomplish this, we use a selection model to conduct a statistical analysis of South Korea's ODA disbursements using dyadic data from 1987 to 2016. Our results indicate that, while there has been continuity in terms of which nations receive South Korean ODA, there were also notable changes in its disbursements. Specifically, the ODA policy changes the South Korean government enacted did result in an altered profile of nations that were targeted by South Korea as ODA recipients.

Interest groups and other organizations are crucial vehicles for voter mobilization, but variations in their capacities are not well understood. To clarify the ways in which vote mobilization capacities vary, I analyze vote mobilization in two private-sector industrial unions supporting the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The Japanese Federation of Textile, Chemical, Food, Commercial Service and General Workers’ Union (UA Zensen), has a very large membership but mobilizes few votes. The Confederation of Japan Automobile Worker's Unions (JAW), on the other hand, has fewer members but mobilizes more votes. In this article, I argue that unions whose constituent units operate company towns are most successful in mobilizing votes. Organizational capacity –independent of membership size – matters in the electoral arena. Using data from House of Councillors elections, I show that those industrial unions that include many enterprises with company towns have advantage in voter mobilization.

Segregation has long been recognized as a source of ignorance which breeds negative feelings and hostility. This view maintains that interactions between members of different groups can foster social bonds and promote positive group relationship. Employing recently collected survey data, this study examines the effect of cross-Strait contacts on Taiwan citizens’ negative views toward Chinese citizens and the Beijing government. The empirical results show that casual encounters have no effect on the island residents’ general perception of China. Serious interactions in the form of friendship moderate their unfavorable feelings of Chinese citizens but have no effects on the perception of a hostile Beijing. Unless contacts can invoke true social bonds, frequent interactions do not have transformative effects on individuals’ political views. The moderating effect of contacts at the personal level is not transferable to a political entity when the latter is perceived as a suppressing agent.

In the aftermath of the 2006 and 2014 Thai coups, observers declared the resurrection of the bureaucratic polity. Bureaucrats, though, remained influential even during the period of 1992–2006, when elected politicians were thought to command the Thai state. Bureaucratic involvement in politics poses a challenge for dominant political science theories of politician–bureaucrat relationships, which draw heavily from principal–agent frameworks. I apply agency theory to Thailand, testing three different hypotheses derived from the theory. Examining legislative productivity and control over bureaucratic career trajectories, I find that elected politicians increasingly acted as principals of the Thai state from 1992 through 2006, and to a lesser degree from 2008 to 2013. Thai bureaucrats, though, have frequently engaged in the political sphere, blunting political oversight and expanding their independence vis-à-vis politicians. This suggests that the principal–agent model overlooks the range of resources that bureaucracies can bring to bear in developing countries, granting them greater autonomy than anticipated. As such, theories of the politician–bureaucrat relationship in developing states need to better account for the mechanisms through which bureaucrats exercise policy discretion and political influence.

This article explains the political significance of the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia, the quasi-youth wing of the ruling Cambodian People's Party in Cambodia. I argue that pro-regime events organized by the youth wing are a form of state mobilization designed to help the ruling party pre-empt the threat posed by the country's growing youth population. In doing so, the youth wing draws upon the monarchy, culture, and nationalism to regenerate the ruling party's legitimacy claims to make them more appealing to the target group. The article contributes to our knowledge of how authoritarian regimes mobilize citizens to maintain power.

South Korea and Taiwan have developed very different sets of election campaign regulations. While both countries had highly restrictive campaign rules during the authoritarian era, they have diverged since democratic transition. South Korea still imposes numerous restrictions on campaigning activities, but Taiwan has removed most of the restrictions. We explore the causes of these divergent trajectories through comparative historical process tracing, focusing on critical junctures and path dependence. We find that incumbency advantage and containment of new opposition parties were the primary objectives of introducing stringent regulations under the authoritarian regimes in both countries. The key difference was that, during the democratic transition, legislators affiliated with the opposition parties as well as the ruling party in South Korea enjoyed the incumbency advantage but that opposition forces in Taiwan did not. As a result, the opposition in Taiwan fought for liberalization of campaign regulations, but the South Korean opposition did not.

Drawing insights from legislative, electoral and welfare studies, the article investigates whether and to what extent electoral competition affects incumbent politicians’ overpromising of social welfare benefits. For this, Taiwan is chosen as the case and the article examines the fate of elite-level social welfare legislative proposals in the period between 1992 and 2016. Findings drawn from quantitative bill sponsorship patterns demonstrate that political elites tend to propose failure-prone social welfare bills during election periods. Moreover, this tendency grew even more clearly in tandem with the rising levels of electoral democracy. The article argues that the overpromising of social welfare benefits is likely due to cognitive biases on the voter side allowing politicians to make promises without necessarily facing the negative consequences of under-delivery. The article contributes to the comparative welfare state literature by adding much-needed nuance to the existing debates on the relationship between democratic deepening, electoral competition, and the development of welfare politics.

This article assesses the relative importance of partisanship in explaining level of citizens' political engagement within a multivariate framework. In particular, we examine if the relative worth of partisan attachment in explaining civic engagement differs systematically between East Asian emerging democracies and established democracies. We find that partisanship in East Asia exerts just as much influence on citizens' engagement in politics as in established democracies. The global trend in which interest associations and social movements are becoming vigorous competitors to parties for the opportunity to represent and mobilize citizens in democratic process has also spread to East Asia.

There are two opposing views regarding the prospects of establishing a regional environmental regime in Northeast Asia. The first view considers the environment as a dependent variable of progress towards regionalism and suggest that regional environmental cooperation is impeded by political rivalries, historical animosities and economic disparities among Northeast Asian countries. The opposing view treats the environment as an independent variable of sustainable regionalism. The premise of this view is that inter-state environmental cooperation can become a confidence building measure that will pave the way for improved regional relations. Regardless of which view proves in the end to be right, the high environmental interdependence of countries in Northeast Asia makes it imperative to create a framework to promote greater cooperation within the region. Given that the region lacks institutions for region-wide dialogue and cooperation, the formation of an effective regional environmental regime will be a long-term process. However, the process itself is pivotal as it can increase dialogue and exchanges from which a regional environmental regime can evolve, and hopefully, if given the political opportunity, will promote security and peace in the region.