For the first time in 20 years, the prefectural level 2001 LDP primaries offer a chance to reevaluate the relationship between Diet members and the LDP rank and file. Since 1982, scholars have agreed that Diet members use their support organizations to control how rank and file vote in LDP leadership contests; and the absence of any suitable data from the 1980s and 1990s has prevented a reassessment of this hypothesis in Japan's evolving political environment. This study uses regression analysis on prefectural-level primary ballot totals in order to measure Diet member influence over the rank-and-file primaries. The results suggest while national politicians did influence voters, their impact was too small to affect the outcome of the election. This implies that the relationship between LDP Diet members and the rank and file is changing and suggests directions for further study.

There is a consensus that the post-war Japanese foreign policy is based on the Yoshida Doctrine or Yoshida Line, which refers to the strategies of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who relied upon US military security, and maintained limited defense forces while focusing on economic recovery and growth. This paper reconsidered the Yoshida Doctrine, referencing multiple related arguments and evidence, reaching a conclusion that post-war Japanese foreign policy should not be called the Yoshida Doctrine or Yoshida Line. The Yoshida Doctrine is an analytical concept created by researchers in the 1980s to justify Japanese foreign policy. This was done in response to the domestic and foreign criticism of low-level military spending, despite the flourishing economy. The Yoshida Doctrine differs from other foreign policy doctrines and has no merit for being called a doctrine. Furthermore, the ideas supporting this doctrine are not based on definitive proof; rather, they merely represent Yoshida's image, and a spurious correlation, drawn between limited defense spending and high-economic growth. The analysis carried out in this study reveals that the Yoshida Doctrine is fundamentally flawed. As a result, this study insists that it is necessary to abandon the Yoshida Doctrine as a base for future research on Japanese diplomacy.

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.

The current efforts of Moscow and Tokyo to unblock the territorial impasse are complicated by some barriers of a socio-psychological character, including mutual mistrust and contradictory images of past events. Public opinion surveys reveal predominant vectors in Russo-Japanese relations, which the authors believe strongly correlate with the evolution of the contradictory images. Apparently, these images surprisingly exhibit interrelated ‘mirror’ dynamics connected with the independent variable – events happening in bilateral relations. Apparently, these images surprisingly exhibit interrelated ‘mirror’ dynamics connected with the independent variable – events happening in bilateral relations. The authors also investigate how public opinion has a real impact on politics and relations between states. In the authors’ opinion, Russia and Japan definitely do not have major unresolved problems in their bilateral relations, with the exception of the territorial problem. However, why is the public so suspicious of Russia? Can the territorial dispute be the only reason? It is far from that. The analyzed arguments give grounds to believe that it is very difficult for Japan and Russia to find a mutually acceptable solution, as their relations are not free from suspicion and mutual mistrust which are deeply rooted in the history of their relations. It will be much easier to overcome the mistrust and, accordingly, to reach agreement on the territorial issue when they manage to calmly analyze the historical grudges, understand their nature and origin, and realize that this is history, which has no contemporary value.

This article asks the questions: Did the DPJ engage in crisis response and management differently than the LDP did? If so, why? If not, why not? In order to try to answer these questions systematically I use an inductive comparative method of choosing three equivalent ‘cases’ each under the LDP and the DPJ in which they responded to a similar type of crisis. The crises selected were Okinawa bases issues in 1995 (LDP) and 2009 (DPJ), Senkaku Islands under the LDP (2008) and DPJ (2010), and the Hanshin quake in 1995 (LDP) and Fukushima in 2011 (DPJ). This gave me a nice mix of intense, short-term cases to compare; one domestic (disaster-related), and two foreign (Okinawa bases with US; Senkaku/Daiyou conflict with China); coalition governments under LDP and DPJ (2009) of different kinds vs. single-party (other DPJ). A very brief description of each crisis will be followed by some generalizations comparing the two parties’ responses. I find that both parties had similar problems with information management, but that there were characteristic and predictable trade-offs of their different party decisionmaking structures and relations with the national bureaucracy. Finally, I mention some of the inherent structural problems of Japanese politics and policymaking that inhibit effective response regardless of the party in power.

For years Myanmar has been caught in a political stalemate generated both by deadlock between the military government and the democratic opposition, and by polar differences between China and the United States. In searching for ways forward, analysts might therefore want to look beyond these dominant actors. This article considers the contribution that a regional power, Japan, could make to political change. It examines first political stalemate in Myanmar, second Japan as a regional power, third Japanese engagement with Myanmar, fourth Japan and resolution of the Myanmar problem, and fifth future possibilities. The argument is that strong historical ties and good relations inside and outside Myanmar put Japan in a pivotal position. As part of its reassurance diplomacy in East Asia, Japan should take the lead in tackling this regional problem.

Since a May 1990 general election that saw the National League for Democracy (NLD) secure a landslide victory and the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) respond by reinforcing its dictatorship, Myanmar has been in political stasis. Although progress has been made on some fronts, notably in relations between the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military junta is now known, and the insurgent rebel armies with which it long fought civil wars, the uneasy political deadlock that settled on the country some 15 years ago has not been broken. Furthermore, within a complex internal context, the standoff between the two major protagonists from 1990 remains critical. Now, as then, the NLD, brandishing democratic legitimacy, charismatic leader Aung San Suu Kyi and latent popular support, confronts the military junta, wielding guns, power, and fear.

Few events have drawn as much interest from the academic community as the breakdown of Soviet-style socialism in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This paper might be classified as yet another in a continuous flow of scientific contributions, inspired by the collapse of communism. And this is indeed the case, but only in an oblique way.

Using 2003 Asian Barometer Survey study data, this paper examines the economic voting model in the 2002 presidential election in South Korea. The core emphasis of the paper is on an investigation of the relative effects of different dimensions/scopes of economic evaluations on voting behavior, namely whether one form of assessment (e.g., pocketbook vs. sociotropic) can have similar consequences for electoral participation as others. The findings indicate that the overall economy is salient for Koreans to shape their political choices. In other words, voting behavior in Korea depends on how she or he thinks the national economy has been for the past five years. Also found is that voters’ perceptions of their own personal financial situations did not matter much as a predictor of voter choice.

In Korean society, regionalism has deep historical roots and has had a great influence on elections. A historic event occurred in 2014 when a conservative party candidate, Lee Jung-hyun, was elected as a member of the National Assembly in Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do, where liberal parties have been in the midst of powerful political influence. This was possible because voters responded to the candidate's appeal to vote based on benefits to the local economy, that is, securing greater funding from the central government. Exploiting the synthetic control method, this article identifies how this different choice has affected the budget of the local district. The results show that the community budget has increased dramatically, and a battery of robustness checks also supports these basic results. On the basis of the empirical evidence, the study suggests the possibility of overcoming a long-standing parochial regionalism in Korean politics through economic voting and its practical benefits.

Culture is a demanding word, particularly when it is used in the context of the contemporary academic discipline of international relations (IR). It is often employed in order to distinguish one identity from another, allegedly illuminating idiosyncrasies embedded in a particular society or group of people. The essentialized understanding of culture is also detectable in the case of the current debate on the non-Western international relations theories (IRT). Non-Western politicians and scholars often employ the term culture in order to distinguish their values from alleged Western values. However, culture has another important function mainly advanced by a left-wing Kyoto School philosopher Tosaka Jun, that is, culture as a mirror for critical reflection for morality (Tosaka, 1966). This article is based on Tosaka's argument that culture has an important function for moral reflection beyond that of a mere means to identify one's distinctiveness from the West, and it criticizes Japan's soft power diplomacy or the total absence of it from that point of view. It also argues that this absence is the result of the soft power discourse's over-simplified interpretation of culture that results in confrontation between the West and the rest, particularly when it is employed in non-Western IRT discourses. Towards the end, I examine Miyazaki Hayao's films, Princes Mononoke in particular, as examples of cultural works facilitating a moment of critical reflection, and I extract embedded messages of relevance to critical reflection on contemporary IR literature, particularly non-Western literature.

How do state identities and their accompanying norms affect security behaviour especially when states consider forming alliances or alignments? Are middle powers different from great powers in their security norms and preferences? This article identifies dependency and activism as two ‘identity norms’ that constitute and reproduce medium-sized states as bona fide middle powers. This article argues that, due to the identity norms of a middle power, Japan and South Korea are reluctant to form a bilateral alliance between themselves and their efforts to socialize with China do not necessarily contradict their security relationships with the United States. The first section focuses on the norm of dependency to illustrate whether Japan and South Korea sought to strengthen bilateral alignment in the event of major security crises, provoked by China and North Korea. It argues that a middle power is not disposed to strengthen alignment with another middle power in the event of a national security crisis because of its entrenched norm of dependency on a great power. The second section elaborates the norm of middle power activism. Both Japan and South Korea have engaged in diplomatic efforts to enmesh China in a number of multilateral security mechanisms in order to hedge against the relative decline of US influences in East Asia.

This study examines the effects of civic consciousness and civil disobedience on individual attitudes toward, and participation in, contentious politics. Using the newly collected survey data on civic consciousness and civil disobedience in Taiwan in 2015, this study finds that both civic consciousness and civil disobedience are significantly associated with individual support for and engagement in contentious politics. Specifically, people with strong civic consciousness and civil disobedience are more likely to support the Sunflower Movement and take part in contentious political activities such as rallies, marches, and strikes. The findings imply that as the ideas of civic consciousness and civil disobedience prevail in a democracy, the public will be more likely to choose to use contentious political activities to express their opinions instead of institutional and legal approaches when the government is unable to respond to public needs in a timely manner.

This article traces the development of major ideas about integration in Europe. It examines the historical development of, and competition between, ideas about the EU, exploring the clash of integration models and ideals. It draws on the visions of European unity that led to the creation and development of the EU. Regional integration in the EU is distinctive and not necessarily ‘exportable’. The article examines governing norms, material interests, power, and security. It demonstrates that the narrative of shared experience and history formed part of a need to both overcome hyper-nationalism and to share sovereignty, while also privileging some memories. EU norms are also enshrined in a distinctive institutionalized structure, based on a co-existence of national and EU interests and a balancing among often competing interests.

Based on data collected from a representative-sample survey conducted in five Chinese cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Hangzhou) in the middle of 2008, this study examines the behavioral orientations of Chinese middle class toward the local elections which are held in urban areas, and the attitudinal orientations of Chinese middle class toward the current regime. The results indicate that there is a strong division within the group of the middle class, especially along the lines of the relationship with the state. Therefore, this study suggests that the Chinese middle class is a class without a shared class identity.

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to ‘hide its light under a bushel’ and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage.

How does repression on opposition protests affect citizens' institutional trust under dictatorships? There has been a burgeoning literature investigating empirically both long- and short-term impacts of protests and their repression on citizens' political preferences in both democratic and nondemocratic contexts. Yet, the literature tells us relatively little about how the above question could be answered. This paper tries to answer this question by taking advantage of a recent natural experiment in Hong Kong when Beijing suddenly adopted the National Security Law (NSL) in June 2020 to repress dissidents' protest mobilization. Our findings are twofold. First of all, the NSL drove a wedge in the Hong Kong society by making the pro-establishment camp more satisfied with the post-NSL institutions on the one hand, while alienating the pro-democracy camp who lost tremendous trust in them on the other. Second, our study also reveals that one's trust in institutions is significantly associated with the regimes' ability to curb protesters' contentious mobilization. The Hong Kongers who had higher confidence in the NSL to rein in protests would also have a greater level of trust than those who didn't. The effect, however, is substantially smaller among pro-democracy Hong Kongers except for their trust in monitoring institutions. As Beijing is transforming Hong Kong's current institutions from within hopes of bringing about a new political equilibrium, our study helps provide a timely assessment of Hong Kong's institutional landscape and sheds light on how likely this strategy can work.

Japan constitutes a very interesting and paradoxical case from the point of view of the place of trust in the processes of institution building and institutional dynamics. This problem has, of course, been the basic thrust of Durkheim's emphasis on the importance of precontractual elements for the fulfillment of contracts seemingly dealing with purely ‘utilitarian’ considerations. But this crucial insight – and problematic – has not been systematically followed up in the social science literature. Only lately it has been again taken up – initially, perhaps paradoxically – from within various rational choice approaches which have come to recognize that continuity of patterns of social interaction and of institutional frameworks cannot be explained by purely rational-utilitarian considerations (Braithwaite and Levi, 1998; Kramer and Tyler, 1993). At the same time the more recent analyses have also pointed to some of the complexities, paradoxes; and problems of the construction of trust in social interaction and institution building.

Japan's labor market has been under severe strain over the past few decades, driven by its protracted economic recession, a series of labor market reforms, and changing labor management practices. Confronting these new challenges, an increasing number of young people have had extreme difficulties in searching for decent and stable jobs in the labor market, trapped in the vicious cycle of precarious employment. This paper examines the deterioration of employment and labor market conditions for Japan's youth after the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s and the government's policy efforts to address these concerns, especially since the early 2000s, a period during which it has initiated a wide array of youth employment and labor market policies. In particular, it analyzes variations in policy target group and goal across different measures and evaluates the effectiveness and limitations of these programs in dealing with youth problems in the labor market. This paper argues that while the government has promoted various policy tools to help young people become economically and socially independent individuals, it has gradually shifted its policy focus toward human capital development for growth and industrial competitiveness as a way of revitalizing Japan's troubling economy.

The world population of Muslims has increased exponentially in the past decade. Why is the world's Muslim population growing so quickly? This study offers a new theoretical perspective: the growth of the worldwide Muslim population is a result of a series of terrorist campaigns that inspire non-Muslims to convert to Islam. For empirical testing, this study employs a cross-national, time-series analysis of 152 countries from 1970 to 2007. Although there is lack of data on conversions that follow terrorist campaigns for a direct test of the theory, this study finds a correlation between terrorist attacks and growth of the Muslim population. This finding is robust and consistent even after controlling for salient demographic reasons for growth, such as the level of fertility and immigration.

Patrick Fournier and Masaru Kohno (2000) have considered some apparent differences between my view of strategic voting in Japan (Cox 1997) and Steve Reed's (1990). I think they succeed in showing these differences to be small in most instances. Along the way, they note some problems with the use of the S–F ratio. In this note, I comment briefly on this latter issue.