Little is known about health of the growing subpopulation of the working poor in Japan. We aimed to evaluate health status and healthcare utilization in relation to income among Japanese working adults. We conducted a one-month prospective cohort study using a health diary in working adults from a nationally representative random sample in Japan. Based on the government criterion, the working poor group was defined as earning an equivalent annual income of less than 1.48 million Japanese-yen. For health status, we measured symptomatic episodes and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). For healthcare utilization, we measured frequencies of visits to a physician or pharmacy, and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). We constructed multiple linear regression models for these measures adjusted for age, gender, and co-morbidity, using annual equivalent income as a 4-level categorical variable.

Of 3,568 participants originally enrolled in the study panel, 3,477 completed the survey (response rate 97%). For the purpose of the study, of the 3,568 participants, we analyzed 1,406 working adults who were 20–65 years old (mean age, 40.8 yr: 58.4% men). There were 106 (7.5%) working poor: 56 men (6.8% of working men) and 50 women (8.5% of working women). Compared to the highest income group, the working poor reported the greater number of symptomatic episodes and a slightly lower score of physical component of HRQOL (PCS8). The numbers of symptomatic episodes among the working poor and the highest income group during the 1-month study period were 9.79 (SD, 8.77) and 7.01 (SD, 7.34), respectively (p < 0.01). The PCS8 among the working poor was 48.71 (SD, 7.05) and it was 50.34 (SD, 6.55) among the highest income group (p < 0.01). There was no difference of healthcare utilization by the different levels of income.

We concluded that the working poor (7.5% of all working adults) more frequently report symptomatic episodes and show slightly poorer physical health status, compared to the highest income group. Healthcare utilization is not affected by income.

The 1990s is perceived in Japan as a lost decade, but it also was a decade of profound political, economic and institutional transformation. Books and articles reviewed here analyze this unprecedented change from diverse angles. Authors are in agreement that Japanese political economy has undergone major transformation in the 1990s. However, over the issue of how much and in what area those changes have occurred, authors take different standpoints. Also as to what would be the shape of future political setup, they provide us with divergent scenarios.

Urban elites and their relative income levels are windows on the emerging socioeconomic order in China. We add to the research literature a new view that economic sectors are the institutional contexts in which different elites seek their material gains. Conducting a trend analysis with 1988 and 1995 national surveys of urban China, we found that political, administrative, and managerial elites maintained consistently higher levels of income relative to professional elites, but this applied mainly to a monopoly sector of industries that were restricted to state operation. Managers in the open industry sector that allowed for free entry and exile experienced income declines relative to professionals within the sector, even though the former had moderately higher income levels than the latter in 1988 and 1995. All elite groups in the monopoly sector retained higher incomes than their counterparts in the open sector in 1995, but not necessarily in 1988.

This article examines whether democracy affects quality of life. Scholars have conducted surveys to investigate whether democracy is likely to lead to good quality of life. There are two contested views to the relationship: some suggest that democracy has a positive causal effect on quality of life, whereas others contend that democracy does not play such a role. Previous findings are supported by cross-national statistical analysis with aggregated survey data. However, aggregated survey data may cause ecological fallacy. Also, in order to ascertain the extant research, it would be beneficial to test the hypothesis by incorporating both individual- and country-level variables. Therefore, this paper applied hierarchical modeling to investigate the regularity. Both individual-level perception of democracy and country-level political regime data were incorporated in our empirical model. Our findings suggest that individual-level satisfaction with democracy has positive causal effect on one's quality of life, whereas the country-level characteristic of the political regime has no effect.

Taxation is considered an important reason for the persistent inequality in developing countries. Developing countries tend to rely heavily on revenue from regressive taxation on consumption, such as the value-added tax, and fail to use progressive income taxes for revenue. Thailand is a typical case of those developing countries. Scholars argue that the median voter model does not apply to the developing countries because their ineffective income taxation results from the weak representation of the poor. A close examination of tax politics in Thailand, however, demonstrates that the low revenue from income taxation in Thailand is attributed to the strong representation of the poor rather than the weak one. This study details the process of Thai tax reform based on interviews with policymakers in Bangkok. It traces changes in the country's tax regulations and uses tax data collected at both the local and national level. Tax reforms, particularly those on income taxes after the 1997 financial crisis, have resulted in a decreased tax burden on the poor as well as the rich.

Analysts have generally offered two explanations for China's no-devaluation policy during the Asian financial crisis. The first is China's good economic fundamentals and the renminbi is not fully convertible. The second is China's foreign relations' imperative. China was endeavouring to seek favourable entry conditions into the WTO and improve relations with its Asian neighbours. At the same time it sought to exploit the undercurrent of resentment in Asia towards the role played by the US during the crisis. Policy making in China has become more institutionalized in the post-Deng era, but these explanations ignore the role of China's domestic bureaucratic actors in exchange rate policy making. This paper examines the exchange rate regime preferences of China's key economic ministries and their influences in exchange rate policy making and argues that Party leaders were able to adopt a no-devaluation policy throughout the crisis because China's key economic ministries actively supported or acquiesced to that policy.

More than 50 studies have examined the programmatic incumbent support hypothesis, which posits that once enacted, programmatic policies increase electoral support for the incumbent. Despite the careful attention to causal inference in this work, empirical findings have been strikingly inconsistent. We make the case that these inconsistent results are likely explained by incumbents' strategic responses to the enactment of a programmatic policy. Specifically, incumbents have good reasons to distribute different amounts of non-programmatic goods to voters who do and do not receive a programmatic policy. To examine this conjecture, we turn to the case of Japan, where municipalities receive allocations of non-programmatic goods and vary in their eligibility for a programmatic policy (a snow subsidy) according to plausibly exogenous factors. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design, we find that municipalities receiving the programmatic policy receive systematically more non-programmatic goods than municipalities that do not.

Since the 1950s, Taiwan and China have utilized foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy. After Taiwan's forced withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971, diplomatic and aid-giving competition with China became more intense. As a result, Taiwan's and China's struggles to gain supporters have been reflected in foreign aid strategies. Taiwan's bid for the UN and the WHO, and the issue of diplomatic recognition empirically demonstrate the utilization of aid to obtain diplomatic support from recipient countries, and, frequently, any decisions are heavily influenced by the competition it experiences with China. Theoretically, this highlights an important relational framework for analyzing foreign aid decisions – particularly the management of foreign relations of small states or middle powers simultaneously influenced by greater powers and aid recipient states.

Using data from ICDF and related reports, we observe geographically concentrated patterns in the distribution of Taiwan's aid recipients from 1988 to 1997 – mostly in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In contrast to China's foreign aid which emphasizes infrastructural development, the spirit of Taiwan's economic development aid programs often took the form of technical cooperation. However, a high percentage of aid went to countries with diplomatic ties to Taiwan. With civil society development and increased international activities of Taiwanese NGOs in humanitarian relief and development projects after 2000, we find a new emerging set of geographical aid distribution patterns that expand beyond countries that recognize Taiwan. In addition, while the process of incorporating civil society into foreign aid work was initiated by the ICDF the following decade, Taiwanese NGOs have increasingly demonstrated autonomous international agendas, funding, and direction, as well as the formation of civil society alliances that work on common international development issues.

The institutional changes to the developmental states in South Korea and Taiwan have been well-documented. This paper offers a theory to recount the states' actual transformation processes in these two cases. Advancing existing insight that the state's transformation process is shaped by the emergence of either concentrated or dispersed economic interests, I argue that a crucial process behind the transformation of the developmental state is a democratic transition of a country motivated by ruling elites' strategic choices. Specifically, a democratic transition in a developmental state is shaped by two consecutive elite decisions: (1) the decision to initiate democratic transition in response to the democratic mobilisation of the middle class; (2) the decision to introduce democratic elections in response to an electoral threat from opposition elites. This process of democratic transition facilitates the emergence of state policy constraints by transforming the political foundation of the state.

The notion of governance: a multi-level phenomenon

There is a substantial literature on governance, but little agreement on precisely what it means, as a result of which the term is often used in different ways. A sophisticated and flexible formulation is offered by The Commission on Global Governance, which defines governance as ‘the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken. It includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest’ (1995: 2).

In 2009, after decades of single party rule under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan had its first taste of a real alteration of power. However, just 3 years later, the LDP regained control of government with no significant challenger in sight. Historically, LDP dominance is a common tale, but its resurgence in recent years poses a significant puzzle in Japanese politics. What exactly has contributed to the LDP's return to power? In the years that have passed, the LDP's strength has come from a combination of cash, clientelistic networks, and strong candidates, but recent research has found that Japanese politics has become more programmatic and party-focused. While LDP dominance since its return to power in 2012 can be attributed in part to its candidates, I find that the appeal of the party label has played a large role in securing the LDP's large majorities.

Globalization has led to a redefinition of the functions and roles of the state. Based on data drawn from a cross-national social survey, this article examines the influences of globalization on the public's attitudes towards their state in Australia, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States, by focusing on satisfaction with government performance and demands on the government. The six countries differ extensively in their sociopolitical and technological situations, as well as in the experiences of their people with globalization in terms of the following aspects: connectivity with the world through personal ties and digital means, English language capacity, and support for the forces of globalization. There are also huge disparities in the public rankings of government performance and demands for expanding government spending in a wide range of policy areas. Our analysis reveals that, although both intra- and inter-country variations in the influences of globalization on public attitudes towards the state are not particularly prominent, those who support globalization not only are more inclined than others to be satisfied with the government's performance, but also demand more government intervention.

The objective of the paper is to examine the role of the two donor agencies, the IMF and the World Bank in the formulation of social welfare policies in the post-independence Sri Lanka. The ideologies of the two major parties in Sri Lanka, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), became the determining factor in the formulation of social welfare policies before 1977. In this context, the IMF and the World Bank played two different roles before 1977. Meanwhile, the ideological gap existed between the two major parties began to disappear after 1977 with the introduction of liberalized economic policies. The IMF and the World Bank played an important role during the post-1977 period. There was evidence that these funding bodies influenced in the formulation of social welfare programmes under the two major parties. The guideline recommended by these two organizations adversely affected the subsidized rice ration, one of the major welfare programmes, in the country.

This study summarizes and discusses the trends and main features of South Korean studies on Japan's economy and business since the 1960s. I consulted 271 publications (articles and books) for this study. Academic and individual publications comprise 69.7% (189 publications) of the total; public and corporate research institutes 30.3% (82 publications). Therefore, academic and individual researches constitute a majority of the publications. The most pressing issues for South Korea are those of business administration, such as Japanese corporate governance, Zaibatsu, and Japanese firms, which have been mainly studied by academic and individual researchers. The second most important issues are those of international economics such as FTA, FDI, and the trade deficit between South Korea and Japan, mainly researched by government research institutes and individual researchers. Although more interest seems to have shown in the Japanese economy and business since the 1990s, the number of Ph.D. holders who studied economics and business in Japan has been keeping very small portions compared with other majors. In order to attract more students from Korea, the Japanese graduate system for economics and business studies needs to be more globalized and competitive.

Japan during the interwar period was more globalized in many ways than it is now. Japan prospered under the liberal international order. The Japanese people at the time believed that the country needed more land overseas to feed the increasing population, but the growing mainland economy gave jobs to the most Japanese population. The benefits the colonies conferred were not great, but some Japanese, particularly military and civil personnel in the colonies, were major beneficiaries. Japan was among the first to recover from the Great Depression, and by the middle of the 1930s was in a full employment situation. Japan did not need to export its population to other countries or to acquire territories through military action. The military expansion into China and the shift to a controlled economy in Japan and Manchukuo benefitted those who supplied goods to the military and obeyed the authorities. Such benefits, though, came at the expense of Japanese taxpayers and consumers, who were oppressed and were unable to criticize the military. The benefits gained from the military clampdown and a controlled economy were quite visible, but the benefits of the liberal international order often cannot be clearly seen. Japan still had a chance to recognize the true benefits of the liberal international order and the false benefits of colonization, military expansion, and a controlled economy, but could not. Wilsonian-Taisho moment was lost at the end of the 1930s.

Values and elements of popular culture play an important role in shaping and implementing the foreign policy of Iran. In this paper, using content analysis and after explaining the characteristics of Iranian identity, the author seeks to investigate the implications of Iranian social beliefs on foreign policy. In other words, the author sets out to explore whether the perceptions and attitudes of Iranian identity at different historical periods have been the basis according to which Iranian politicians have followed the same model or not? For this purpose, three major components, the influence in the regional area, xenophobia, and conspiracy theorythat are complementary in nature, have been selected. Research findings illustrate that the long history of societies like Iran has been the raison d'etre for the recurrence of social beliefs and values in various political eras of such societies.

There is a question that has not been raised in the literature on Japan's regionalism: Why does it have a strong tendency toward making the boundary of the proposed East Asian community fluid? By looking back beyond the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of the 1940s, a method hitherto untried, the paper shows that this Japanese propensity was also present in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, both then and now, Japan did not and does not have a firm adherence to an ideology. These are two similarities between the pre-World War II period and the present (from the 1960s). On the other hand, Japan's present international situation is very different from its pre-World War II position. The paper uses the logic of the ‘most different cases’ comparative method, which states that in two cases that are different in most aspects but the same in some, one or some of the similarities may explain the other similarity or similarities. It concludes that in both periods, the lack of a firm commitment to an ideology explains Japan's prejudice toward boundary fluidity. This explanation has the potential to contribute to a more comprehensive, if not yet a general theory of Japan's approach to regionalism because it applies not only to the present, but to the past as well. And it has to be stressed, the past refers not only to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of the 1940s but also to the decades before.

Since the outbreak of the Great Recession triggered by the Lehman shock in 2008, writings on American decline have proliferated. World-renowned scholars and commentators have all pointed out that the American hegemony or empire is rapidly coming to an end, and that as a consequence the world is in greater turmoil than ever (for example, Zakaria, 2008; Friedman and Mandelbaum, 2011; Kupchan, 2012; Bremmer, 2012). Although there are differences among various works, most commentators predict a bleak prospect for the future.

In the contemporary world order, one of the most attention-getting issues is the recent consolidation of defense and strategic engagement between China and Russia, specifically since the early 2010s. Throughout a critical juncture angle, this study attempts to explain what led to the reinforcement of these China–Russia relations, and how their strategic ties have evolved. This study argues that the three critical junctures driven by the USA – the US Pivot to Asia, the Ukraine Crisis and the US-led sanctions against Russia, and the US THAAD deployment to Korea – aggravated China and Russia's perception of threat from the USA, which contributed to the incremental China–Russia strategic and defense ties.

‘Gender (jenda)’ is a troublesome loanword in Japan. While this term has been prevalent in feminist and scholarly circles, it has evoked confusion in the government and stimulated a backlash from the ultra-conservatives against gender equality. Japanese reactionaries have attacked the concept of gender because of their anxiety about cultural destruction – I thus call them the ‘old guard’. Focusing on a dispute over the term ‘gender’ between feminists and the old guard, this paper examines the changes in the term's usage and meanings in the Japanese political context. I first shed light on Japan's reaction to the newly arrived term ‘gender’, outlining different attitudes towards gender between the feminist/scholarly circles and the government. Secondly, I discuss the old guard's condemnation of the concept of gender, in which they distort its significance in order to diminish its positive impact on society. I then scrutinize the old guard's reasons behind their attack on the concept of gender. My findings reveal that the old guard, whose political cause is to protect traditional Japanese culture, asserts that gender equality damages this culture. Moreover, I refute their emphasis on Japan's uniqueness, demonstrating that Japanese women's traditional virtues under the patriarchal family system are not peculiar to Japan. To gauge how the concept of gender has been interpreted politically, I highlight legislative debates about the term ‘gender’. In doing so, I elucidate the extent to which the concept of gender has infiltrated Japanese society through the dispute.