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.

Is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a pluralistic security community (PSC)? Does community cause security in Southeast Asia? In a PSC, member states are sovereign. So are the members of ASEAN. Before concluding that the ASEAN region is a PSC, however, one should distinguish between two versions: a thin or descriptive PSC, whose members share both a sense of community and the expectation of security, and a thick or explanatory version in which community has actually been shown to cause security. Depending on how a sense of community is defined, one may say that at certain times in its history, ASEAN probably has been a thin PSC. More recently, however, the cooperative identity of regional elites may have frayed, as democratization, especially in Indonesia, has incorporated non-elites into public life. Meanwhile the proposition that the assurance of security in Southeast Asia has resulted from this sense of community, that ASEAN is a thick PSC, remains to be proven.

This paper first reviews a number of epistemological and methodological issues relating to the estimation of party policy positions, particularly in a comparative context, with special reference to the methodology of ‘expert surveys’. It is argued that expert surveys, as systematic summaries of the views of country specialists, have a particular role in assessing the content validity of other types of estimates of party policy positions. The paper moves on to analyze the positions of Japanese political parties in a comparative context, using results from a new 47-country expert survey. Attention is paid both to the substantive policy content of the left–right dimension in Japan, and to the locations of Japanese parties in policy spaces, relative to the locations of comparable parties in other political systems.

The Singaporean patriarch Lee Kuan Yew popularized the argument that ‘Asian values’ derived from Confucian cultural traditions are inconsistent with the development of democracy in East Asia. There is an active scholarly debate over whether the hierarchic and deferential social authority relations of Confucian traditions are incompatible with support for democracy. Drawing upon the newest wave of the World Values Survey, we analyze public opinion in six East Asian nations and four Western democracies. We first assess orientations toward authority, and then link these sentiments to support for democracy. The results contradict the core tenets of the ‘culture is destiny’ argument in the Asian values literature, and offer a more positive view of the prospects for political development in the region.

Japan and the Republic of Korea have been going through a painful process of reconciliation since World War II. But with the momentum created by the FIFA World Cup and the high popularity of Korean pop culture in Japan, the trend shifted and the two countries seem to be enjoying a more amicable relationship. This paper aspires to understand when and how the steps toward reconciliation were taken between the two countries. The overarching research questions are: what steps were taken, and what channels of communication contributed to or hindered the process of reconciliation? Section 1 first lays the historical context of the dispute, and Section 2 assesses the diplomatic steps taken toward reconciliation by applying Assefa's reconciliation model, which leads to an analysis of discrepancy between the governments and the civil societies. Section 3 considers the impact of the FIFA World Cup in 2002, when momentum for friendship was reinforced by the various exchange activities at civil society level, as well as the Korean pop culture. The in-depth interview adds insights and public opinion polls clarify the perceived status of reconciliation. Section 4 concludes by returning to the more generalized issue of how communication between the two nation states has changed with the information technology, which is key to understanding the dynamism of the lingering reconciliation process.

In the early 1990s, the Commonwealth reformed its political structure to allow interference in domestic affairs of member states. This article examines whether such an institutional transformation has helped the organization to fulfil its purpose to work in the common interests of member countries and of their people. The article demonstrates that, while, as a consequence of post-Cold War globalization, concerns about the Commonwealth's political credibility and public perception have relaxed Commonwealth leaders' reluctance to accept legally binding norms of the organization, strong resistance to Commonwealth interference in internal affairs exists among developing member states. It is argued that, because the new Commonwealth political structure lacks legitimacy and is contrary to the real interests of the majority of members, institutionalizing the Commonwealth has not contributed to the formation of a collective identity among Commonwealth members and to the resolution of the problem of inequality within and without the organization.