What effect do natural disasters have on political participation? Some argue that natural disasters decrease political participation because of the way they reduce individual and group resources. Others argue that they stimulate political participation by creating new social norms. Previous studies have been limited both by their focus on a specific disaster type and a lack of regional variation. This article advances the literature by assessing the effect of the 2011 triple disaster in Japan on political participation at both the individual and district level. Drawing on multiple sources of data, I use a difference-in-differences identification strategy to show that the 2011 triple disaster in Japan resulted in a 6 percent increase in participation in political groups in regions heavily affected by the disaster, and a 2.5 percent increase in voter turnout in districts in prefectures that were significantly affected by the disaster. The results also show that the effect at the individual level is largely confined to individuals with large social networks, suggesting that the effect of natural disasters on political participation is a combination of their direct and indirect impact on variables that operate through different subpopulations. Directions for future studies are suggested.

This research note explores an increasingly prominent, but often neglected, communication group in China's cyberspace—the online “influential” (big Vs or verified users)—who shape public perceptions, including on foreign policy issues. Examining threads on Sino-Japanese relations on Weibo reveals a diverse ecosystem that includes not only established media agencies and government agencies, but public intellectuals, whose role and presence are quite central. An analysis of the content of posts finds that influentials have similarly diverse viewpoints on Sino-Japanese relations; some have broken with the conflict-focused discourses that have prevailed on Weibo, reflecting a competing narrative espousing the need for greater pragmatism towards Japan. The findings call into question the argument that social media necessarily trends toward greater nationalism.

The common assumption of legislative politics is that the majority party structures procedural rules to suit its interests. In a presidentialized context, however, presidential electoral incentives prevail over majority party's incentives when voting on procedural rules changes and the threat of punishing majority-party defectors is not credible when those defectors vote with the presidential candidate. To test these claims, I analyze the case of the procedural reform in the South Korean National Assembly. The case study reveals that 1) the leading presidential candidate of the ruling majority Saenuri Party compromised on the procedural reform bill that imposes restrictions on the majority party's cartel arrangement due to presidential electoral incentives; 2) a significant number of Saenuri Party members defected from the majority of their co-partisans to vote with the presidential candidate; and 3) career advancement ratio and re-nomination ratios demonstrate that those defectors were not punished afterwards.