Ample empirical evidence suggests that Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs), which are the core credit institutions in rural China, are not accountable to their member households. This article argues that this conundrum can be explained by an institutional analysis of the credit cooperatives using the multiple principals-agent framework: the credit cooperatives as agents are accountable to multiple heterogeneous principals—with multiple conflicting objectives. The multiple principals are (1) the County RCC Unions, which exercise control using the evaluation criteria on which the remuneration of grassroots RCC officers is assessed; (2) local party secretaries, who exert influence through top personnel appointment and dismissal in the credit cooperatives; and (3) member households, which are a “collective” principal. In a multiple-principals scenario, the “collective” principal has weaker control over the agents due to the “collective action” problem.

Despite its embedded ambiguity, conventional wisdom tends to prevail over time. This may be because old adages recurrently embrace some ingredients of truth. As James A. Mathisen highlights, conventional wisdom plays a significant role in constituting knowledge as a starting point. For many people, numerous adages (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer; birds of a feather flock together) are most commonly perceived as true. More interestingly, the accuracy of the two folk wisdoms appears to be more salient in culture-producing industries, including the motion picture industry. Concomitantly, the two adages have long been connected to diverse societal phenomena and sociological knowledge.

Who attempts to influence policymaking through authoritarian assemblies and why are some delegates considerably more active in doing so than others? Drawing on original data from provincial People's Political Consultative Conferences (PPCCs) in China, this study adopts a delegate-centered perspective and develops a theory of delegates’ activity in authoritarian assemblies. It argues that delegates’ activity can be explained by a combination of both cooptation theory and an understanding of delegates’ position within the authoritarian regime and hierarchy. The results highlight that core elites with more direct means of influencing policymaking will forego assemblies. Yet, peripheral elites lack other institutional channels of access to decision-makers and have to voice their demands in authoritarian legislatures. This study highlights the need for disaggregating groups of actors in authoritarian politics and offers an alternative view of cooptation particularly relevant for closed authoritarian regimes.

Almost two decades after the initial victory of Thai Rak Thai, scholars still debate the forces behind Thaksin's rise to power. I revisit these debates and argue for a more explicit analysis of dynamics over time. I distinguish analytically between the founding moment of TRT's first victory and the subsequent reproduction of its dominance. I argue that TRT's financial muscle was a sufficient condition for its 2001 victory, that institutions merely contributed to the scale of its victory, and that its platform was not decisive. Once in power, however, institutions were instrumental in allowing TRT to complete its term, but more important for its long-term dominance was the rapid implementation of its campaign promises, which created a mass constituency that in turn made Thaksin-linked parties resilient at the polls despite institutional reforms designed to weaken their electoral performance.

We argue that the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea, in which 304 passengers perished, was a result of the mode and process of privatization of South Korea's maritime police and rescue services. Through the development of a nuanced theory of privatization and use of a novel conceptualization of corruption, coupled with empirical analysis, our study shows that the outcome was symptomatic of a wider trend of systematic bureaucratic rent-seeking. A pro-active private sector ready to capitalize on the opportunity, in conjunction with a permissive political environment, resulted in a reduction of state capacity, with devastating consequences.

This study examines whether a degree of autocracy and high quality of bureaucracy—two mechanisms often discussed in the context of Covid-19 responses—provide a meaningful explanation for East Asia's relative success compared to the rest of the world at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Our multiple regression analysis for 111 countries supports our expectation, as East Asia as a region is significantly and negatively associated with confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths compared to the rest of the world, and its interaction with the quality of bureaucracy further contributes to the negative association. In sum, this research highlights the important role of East Asia's regional characteristics in pandemic responses.

South Korea's economic takeoff in the 1960s triggered a scholarly debate over the causes behind its economic growth. Neoclassical economists and “statist” scholars focused on government policies toward the industrial sector, but as this article shows, they have neglected to consider the political economy behind the government's targeting of the agricultural and livestock sectors for export promotion. In fact, the South Korean government's support of export-led growth—aimed at the rural sector as well as industry—transformed the nation's agricultural and livestock institutions from instruments of development and export promotion into protectionist mechanisms. This article discusses how complete market liberalization would have resulted in more efficient resource allocation and reveals how political considerations affected the institutional arrangement in the South Korean countryside and the subsequent liberalization of agricultural and beef markets.

The historic June 2000 summit and subsequent exchanges between North and South Korea have added a new dimension to not only South-North Korean relations but also the situation in Northeast Asia as a whole. On one hand, the thawing South- North Korean relations has generated great optimism among those who see it as an irrefutable sign of North Korea's intention to join the rest of the world as a constructive player. At the other extreme, it is seen as a deceptive, if not desperate, act on the part of North Korea to reap economic gains and lower the guard of South Korea and its allies, principally the United States. Perhaps a more realistic assessment lies somewhere between these polar analyses.

Ever since the destruction of Hiroshima in 1945, states all over the world have been faced with the issue of whether or not to acquire the ‘absolute weapon’ for themselves. The question of ‘going nuclear’ has been especially acute on the Korean peninsula, with its history of conflict, division and great power meddling. Has any one of the two Koreas, or both, ever attempted to acquire nuclear weapons? Did either of them decide to abandon that quest? If so, when and why? These are the questions that motivate this paper.

Almost exactly a half-century following the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korea president Kim Dae-jung made a historic visit to Pyongyang for the first-ever summit meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas in June of 2000. A decade following the collapse of communism in the rest of the world, Kim's journey would inevitably be judged in history as a potential starting point for the end of inter-Korean confrontation. Three days following direct, broad-ranging discussions with his counterpart, Kim Jong Il, Kim Dae-jung confidently returned to Seoul with an inter-Korean summit declaration promising enhanced efforts at reconciliation and inter-Korean exchange. Upon his return to Seoul, Kim Dae-jung declared that there would be “no more war” on the Korean Peninsula. The next task was to institutionalize an array of exchanges and inter-Korean interactions designed eventually to lead to national reconciliation.

What determines the public evaluation of South Korean president? Is it a temporal cycle of presidential tenure, the economy or political events? This paper explores these questions by examining the case of President Kim Dae Jung who enjoyed high popularity in the early phase of his tenure but experienced consistent decline of popularity after 18 months in office, much like his predecessors did. The paper argues that the high and low of public support for the president is not simply a function of the temporal cycle and that the fluctuation of public rating is strongly influenced by the public's consideration of economic matters and corruption scandals. In the case of the current South Korean president, one's performance in resuscitating the economy could not rescue a president besieged by one corruption scandal after another. Also, the improved economic conditions did not save Kim Dae Jung's public approval rate from tumbling, because reforms failed to alleviate the economic hardship felt by the lower class. All of this demonstrates that the public does separate economic and political issues and weigh them disproportionately in evaluating presidential performance.

Northeast Asia constitutes a “regional environmental security complex” wherein the actors and societies are enmeshed together in a web of positive and negative externalities with respect both to environmental problems and efforts to solve them. The three sets of environmental issues relevant to the security architecture can be summarized as follows: damage to and destruction of peaceful relations, stability and order of the state-based system of international relations caused by environmental decay and resource scarcity; threats to human security rooted in environmental decay and resource scarcity; and damage to and destruction of environmental integrity caused by instability and conflict. Environmental degradation can degrade human security by damaging the health of human populations; economic security by impacting adversely on local, national, regional and international economies; and national security by undermining stable relations among countries. Equally, though, recurring patterns of human, economic and national behavior can deplete the earth's resources and degrade the physical environment.