We address how democracy has influenced the ways in which the Korean state has managed the issue of labor-based collective action and suppression thereof. During the authoritarian period, the state, through specialized riot police, frequently, and violently, cracked down on protest movements and other forms of collective action. During democratization and post-democratic consolidation, private specialists in violence, operating with the consent of the state, began to replace public forces on the front lines, while working in concert out of the view of the public. Although such state/non-state collaboration in the market for oftentimes illegal violence has been addressed in scholarship elsewhere, we demonstrate through detailed evaluation that the extant explanations are largely incomplete, as they fail to capture the effects of changing relative levels of state-based autonomy from societal and corporatist influence.

‘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.

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 paper explores the time-inconsistency problem of audience costs in international disputes. The nature of democracy makes it difficult for leaders to back down from earlier diplomatic positions in an international dispute, out of fear of domestic political costs. Few studies have addressed the temporal aspect of such costs. This study argues that election timing impinges on the extent to which the audience cost mechanism works, and consequently, on state conflict behavior. While competitive elections are central to the political accountability inherent in a democracy, voters typically lack enough opportunities to punish unsatisfactory leaders in a timely way, because of fixed election timing, and also may disregard foreign policy missteps that occurred in the distant past. Democratic leaders therefore have an incentive to choose strategically, with the electoral calendar in mind, when selecting a form of conflict behavior. Leaders can retreat from their demands without paying high audience costs when the upcoming election is in the distant future. To test this argument, the authors conduct a natural experiment featuring territorial disputes between Russia and two Baltic republics – Estonia and Latvia. Despite the commonalities in the disputes, as well as in their political systems and socioeconomic backgrounds, the governments of the two Baltic countries showed a sharp contrast in their diplomatic decisions. This paper argues that only the temporal gap in electoral timing can explain this variation, imparting the ironical implication that frequent democratic elections can obstruct peaceful conflict resolutions, and that excessive democratization may well hinder the very goal of peace.

How democratic is contemporary Indonesia? While analysts differ, Indonesian citizens, when asked in systematic public opinion surveys conducted regularly by the authors since 1999, consistently express strong support for democratic principles and also believe that their country's democratic performance is high. Support for democratic performance is highly correlated with support for government performance, as measured by perceptions of the condition of the national economy and political system. At the same time, higher levels of education and income, in Indonesia as in other countries, have created a considerable number of critical citizens, that is, citizens who value democracy but are critical of its performance. On our evidence for Indonesia, it is members of this group who are the most motivated and best prepared to demand a higher level of democratic performance from their elected officials.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. (James Madison, 1788)

Democracy is not only a (polyarchical) political regime but also a particular mode of relationship between state and citizens, and among citizens themselves, under a kind of rule of law that, in addition to political citizenship, upholds civil citizenship and a full net work of accountability. (Guillermo O'Donnell, 1999b)

The article focuses on the issue of patterns of religious engagement among Indian Hindus during last decade. It tries to look at both the issue of private religion practiced in the form of offering puja at home and public religion seen in terms of participation in Katha, Satsang, Bhajan-Kirtan etc. by Indian Hindus. Sizeable numbers of Indian Hindus offer puja every day; sizeable numbers of them are also engaged in public religious activities. This is more prevalent among the urban, educated, upper-caste, upper-class Hindus compared to their counterpart. Along with factors, which influence religious practices, is gender. Hindu women are more religious compared to the Hindu men. Similarly, upper-caste Hindus practice religious activities more regularly compared to other Hindus. There is hardly any change in patterns of engagement in religious activities among Hindus over the last five years. The levels of engagement in religious activities also have an impact on voting behavior. The higher the engagement in religious activities, the greater is the support for the BJP and vice versa. Between the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, there had been a decline in the vote share of BJP due to its declining popularity amongst all the Hindu voters, but the decline in the support for the BJP is much sharper amongst highly religious Hindus compared to those who are not so religious. Along with other factors, this may be one of the important factors that led to the defeat of BJP in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The article draws evidence from the National Election Study 2004 and 2009 conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies during these two elections.

Why study Japan? Research on contemporary Japanese politics and foreign policy faces headwinds from the relative geopolitical decline of Japan and scholars skeptical about single-country studies. An overview of Japanese politics publications in English-language journals over the past four decades suggests the subfield remains active and robust. However, there is still room to grow. I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many challenges before others in the international system. As such, studying Japan can inform both scholars and policymakers about the political challenges other countries are likely to confront in the future. In turn, scholarship on Japan offers a critical opportunity to develop theoretical insights, assess early empirical evidence, and offer policy lessons about emerging challenges and the political contestation surrounding them. I consider the reasons why Japan so often emerges as a harbinger across issue areas and suggest areas for ongoing scholarly attention.

This article employs a simple model of sophisticated voting under incomplete information and explores the strategic contexts of the vote on political reform bills in Japan. The government-sponsored political reform bills were voted down by the defection of government coalition members in the House of Councillors before a final compromise was reached in the joint committee of both houses and passed subsequently. In contrast to the accepted view that the defectors were short-sighted sincere voters, I show that Japan's institutional arrangements created an uncertainty about the agenda in the legislative process and led to the sophisticated voting behavior of pivotal voters whose preferences were different from the party leadership. The analysis underscores the importance of sophisticated voting for the empirical study of Japanese legislative politics.

With the emergence of new information and communication technologies, scholars and politicians view the Internet as a means both to govern and to bring citizens, especially younger generations, closer to the political process. Given the tremendous impacts of the Sunflower Movement on Taiwanese politics, this paper sets out to dynamically examine whether and to what extent the Internet inspired offline electoral and non-electoral participations of Taiwanese young adults. While the younger generation's Internet usage for political causes significantly encouraged their voting turnout in the 2014 election, a similar effect was not detected in either the 2012 or 2016 presidential and legislative elections. The estimated statistics not only show the particular effect of the Sunflower Movement on young adults' voting turnout and participation in self-help activities in the 2014 election, but also reveal that the fast-changing and diverse Internet domain did not have a long-lasting influence on young citizens' political engagement in the offline world.

The Vientiane Action Program, issued in 2013, declared that the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will enhance integration, focusing on connectivity of member states by 2015. One of the policy tasks included in the Vientiane Action program, under the heading of Society, includes health and the environment. This special issue examines how ASEAN citizens evaluate their quality of life and environmentalism in order to help ASEAN achieve its goal of improving health and the environment by 2015 and beyond.

This article sheds light on a relatively unexplored aspect of the Northern Territories dispute by examining the views of residents in Nemuro – the symbolic frontline in Japan's Northern Territories Reversion Movement (NTRM). The NTRM began in this northern periphery as a movement of divergent attitudes but was soon coopted by the Japanese government for political reasons. Local opposition to the government's four island en bloc policy existed in some quarters but was largely kept in check by state largesse. However, as a result of demographic and socioeconomic changes, dissent is slowly emerging in Nemuro. There are signs of an emerging disjuncture between national policy and local aspirations. This disjuncture has both theoretical and policy implications. Theoretically, this paper is congruent with politico-institutional arguments emphasizing the impact of the regulatory regime in shaping civil society organizations. From a policy perspective, public opinion in Nemuro indicates a potential avenue for compromise in Tokyo's negotiating strategy, although pressure for change is unlikely to emerge from the bureaucratized NTRM.

The positive influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on host countries' economic growth has been widely debated. Given the mixed empirical evidence, scholars have sought to find the economic preconditions under which FDI spillovers are likely to occur and facilitate economic growth in the host countries. Those preconditions are not exogenously dictated but largely shaped by governments' policy preferences. Particularly in autocracies, an autocrat's policy preferences are the driving force that determines whether a host country is likely to be equipped with growth-friendly institutions and policies. We argue that such economic institutions and policies are dependent on the time horizons of autocrats in power. Our empirical analysis covering 64 autocratic countries from 1970 to 2005 supports our main argument that FDI has a positive effect on growth when autocratic time horizons are sufficiently long, and positive FDI spillovers mainly occur through the protection of property right institutions.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries has fostered economic growth recently but in the process has encountered a number of serious problems regarding environmental destruction, such as the air and water pollution. In addition, due to rapid population growth and urbanization, there are emerging concerns about decline of the environment in those countries in the near future. One of the surveys that tries to measure the attitudes of ASEAN citizens on environmental issues is the ASEAN Barometer survey conducted in 2009. This paper aims to unfold how ASEAN citizens evaluate environmental problems and what underlie their evaluations using the aforementioned ASEAN Barometer survey. The results of analysis will mainly reveal the next three points: (1) Filipinos showed higher environmental consciousness; (2) people in a less developed country were more likely to worry about environment deterioration and showed more commitment to the environmental movement, but, at the same time, they were more reticent about their immediate ecological activities; (3) those who thought that central governments needed to commit more to environmental problems and should take greater responsibility for environmental deterioration. Those who expected regional international organizations to take more measures were more inclined to engage in environmental activities.

This article demonstrates that ubiquitous references to ‘power’ in English-language foreign policy discourse can be understood in the light of the inclination in international relations theory to place power on a par with capability. It makes two claims: that such a concept of power is ill-fitted for foreign policy analysis; and that much clarity would be gained by following the Japanese example of terminological pluralism and thus abandoning ‘power’ as a catch-all term. Foreign policy analysis would benefit from adopting a concept that takes power to reside in specific relationships. Its adoption would moreover dissolve a power paradox associated with the analysis of Japan's post-Cold War foreign policy.

This article deals with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a point of contention in US relations with Germany and Japan. Both countries rank among America's closest allies, but – quite contrary to the US – they have also been supporting the establishment and operation of the ICC, although each to a different extent. The article analyzes the reasons for the three countries’ diverging attitudes and policies towards the establishment and operation of the Court, and contrasts Germany's and Japan's handling of the ICC issue vis-à-vis the US. It suggests that Berlin's idealistic position and full ICC support on the one hand, as well as Japan's cautious and pragmatic approach on the other, are both rooted not only in their individual evaluations of the ICC's institutional design, but also the varying degrees of their bi/multilateral orientation and the extent of their ‘dependence’ on US security commitments.

Woodrow Wilson's name remains forever entwined with the Paris Peace Conference and efforts to transform geopolitics after 1918. Despite recent emphases on the power of this so-called ‘Wilsonian Moment,’ initiatives by the American president remain controversial, and his principal global legacy has come to be defined as the rise of nationalism in the developing world. In the historiography of modern Japan, Wilson and the Paris Conference have long been identified less as opportunities than as challenges, embodied unmistakably in Prince Konoe Fumimaro's 1918 condemnation of the conference and the proposed League of Nations as beneficial only to the USA and Britain. Reading back from 1931, historians of modern Japan have located in the Versailles settlement seeds of an epic new expansionary effort from the Manchurian Incident to the destruction of Imperial Japan. This paper, by contrast, analyzes the interwar years on their own terms and, in so doing, locates the structural foundations of a dramatic Japanese national departure. Wilson is more than a ‘moment’ in interwar Japan. Embraced at the very moment that a largely agricultural and regional nineteenth-century Japan becomes a twentieth-century industrial state and world power, it is potent enough to withstand the illiberal tide of the 1930s and 40s to blossom again after the Second World War.

Albeit with little reference to Woodrow Wilson, Yanaihara Tadao, the Chair of Colonial Policy at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1920s and 1930s, and a pious Christian, adapted the core ideas of Wilsonian liberalism such as national self-determination, multilateralism, and democracy to the political and legal framework of imperial Japan. Yanaihara advocated the principle of autonomy for the Japanese empire to transform itself into the core of a liberal international order. He articulated that the combination of colonialism and unfettered capitalism had detrimental effects on the colonized and advocated for a Japanese empire that reflected the voice of its colonized people. However, having seen little improvement in the status of the colonized, Yanaihara increasingly regarded Japanese pan-Asianist ideas in the 1930s as a cover-up of Japanese expansionism. Almost abandoning his earlier ideas about empire as a multiethnic society, he criticized Japan's military venture as economically unprofitable, and policies toward Manchuria as stoking the rise of Chinese nationalism. He advocated for the normative framework advanced by the Mandate System of the League of Nations as a way toward the universalization of sovereignty, and protection of stateless populations. The failure of the Wilsonian moment in Japan forced Yanaihara out of Tokyo Imperial University but also strengthened his inclination towards liberal internationalism.

The concept of late development is ubiquitous in political science. Scholars generally use the term to explain the state's role in the economy based upon the timing of a country's industrialization. Many consider Japan a quintessential example of state-driven late development. This article surveys the late development theories of Alexander Gerschenkron and Alice Amsden. It then appraises these theories based upon Japan's experience, demonstrating that neither accurately describes the state's role in Japan's industrialization.

To be clear, the argument is not that the state played no part in Japan's economic development. The question is whether late development offers an effective conceptual tool for explaining the causes, content, and timing of state action. There are many possible explanations of Japan's industrialization. Late development is only one of them, and not a very good one.