This paper explains how South Korea's democracy has controlled the military since 1993. It reveals why the overpowered military has not faded even after the eradication of Hanahoe and the consolidation of democracy in South Korea in its aftermath. The democratic control over the military is examined focusing on: (1) budget, personnel, organization; (2) the judicial system; (3) security and defense policy; (4) personnel affairs, roles, and responsibilities; and an explanation based on laws and institutions, the strategy of key actors, and historical conditions of military confrontation. Under South Korea's democracy, the military budget, personnel, and organization are only partially controlled, leaving military commanders with jurisdiction over the military's judicial system. This is a result of legal and institutional limitations, as well as resistance from the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and the military. In matters of security and defense policy, the president has taken the initiative to revitalize obsolete systems through political compromise with the military. The primary means for the president to control the military has been the personnel management of the MND and the military. The military is likely to pledge its allegiance to the regime instead of citizens because the former has control over personnel affairs, which has frequently led to unofficial private groups of military officers and their political interference. This case in South Korea shows that the way society controls the military sows the very seeds of risk and allows us to rethink the challenges in controlling the military in a democracy.

Previous studies have discussed the effects of electoral competition on corruption, but only a few explored the effects of political power shifts – the results of electoral competition. To fill the gap, this study tests hypotheses that three types of political power shifts (the shifts of individual local government heads, local government ruling party, and local council majority) reduce the corruption (overall, external, and internal), with a panel data set of 226 Korean local governments. The empirical study shows that only shifts in the local government head reduce internal corruption. The other dependent and independent variables do not have any significant relationships. This can be because of structural matters of Korean local politics such as strong mayor-weak council and the closed local elite networks.

The September 2006 military coup against the Thaksin government in Thailand has had a profound impact on Thai politics. It has arrested the process of democratic consolidation that was set in motion in the country in the 1990s. Although many of Thaksin's policies lacked the spirit of democratic governance, he was democratically elected and was ousted from power unconstitutionally. The entire tenure of Thaksin has brought to the fore two deep cleavages in Thailand. The first of these is the deep divide between the rural and urban electoral constituencies. The former provided a major vote bank with little bearing on the dispersion of power and resources that was effectively dominated by the latter. Thaksin and his populist policies effectively undermined the urban electorate and strengthened the rural constituency. The second and perhaps structurally more significant tension is that which has developed between the new business elite and the old establishment elite that comprise the monarchy, military, and the bureaucracy. This old elite has been at the forefront of displacing Thaksin through its fear of loss of control over the domestic political process. The drawn out confrontation that has spawned two social movements has significantly raised the country's political temperature and there is the real potential for the situation to deteriorate into violence. Despite these changes, a number of continuities unique to the Thai political situation continue to obtain as well.

One year ago the Japanese people pinned their hopes on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The figure shows public support ratings for the Koizumi cabinet as measured by periodic JiJi opinion surveys: He enjoyed a stellar 72.8% support rate immediately after taking office, and this climbed even higher to break the 78.4% mark the following month. Compared with the dismal 9.6% support for the cabinet of his predecessor, Mori Yoshirô (April 2000–April 2001), right before he bowed out, these sky-high numbers make it clear just how much faith the people were placing in the new administration.

This article focuses on the relationship between emotions and passions, on the one hand, and values, needs and rights, on the other. This relationship is indeed central to the social dimension of international politics. In this perspective, the article examines how emotions and passions can be at the same time effects and causes of the extent to which actors feel that their needs and rights are fulfilled or not. In the process, the article also explores the negative and positive features of emotions and passions, and their impact on the nature and dynamics of change in international affairs. Beyond this general approach to emotions and passions in connection with the social dimension of international politics and the questions of values, needs, and rights of actors and change, it concludes with the idea that there is also a contextual dimension to the generic argument developed in the article. This will have to be factored in for future research on case studies.

When the last opinion polls were published one year ago, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was enjoying a high approval rate despite Japan's poor economic performance. The poll conducted in June 2003 showed that 48.2% of the public supported the Koizumi administration, which is an exceptionally high number in comparison with the approval rates of historical LDP prime ministers and their cabinets. Only 29.5% of those polled expressed dissatisfaction with the administration. Today, however, public support for Koizumi is on a sudden decline. Just as Koizumi's managed to sustain public support throughout 2003, his loss of support in 2004 manifests a peculiar quality; he is now losing popularity despite Japan's significant economic improvement.

Taxation is a critical part of state power and has evolved with modernization. Although tax systems are expected to converge as countries achieve economic development, there are variations in the scale and structure of tax revenues. A recurring question is which tax dominates state financing in democracies. Some scholars associate mature democracies with progressive income taxation, and others find that democracies have relied on regressive taxation on consumption. Learning from the history of tax development, this paper illuminates that countries in different democratic waves followed divergent paths of tax development in the process of modernization. The first and second wave democratizers established progressive income taxation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continued to rely on it. On the other hand, newly democratized countries came to rely heavily on the value-added tax, which was innovated in the mid-twentieth century, shortly before the beginning of the third wave of democratization. By shedding new light on the linkage between the development of modern taxation and the waves of democratization, the study demonstrates that the trajectory of modernization has shaped different tax systems.

Success in SNTV requires not merely winning but also coordinating votes. Governing parties often reap coordination advantage thanks to their control of the state and its resources. Since governing parties in authoritarian states enjoy greater control over the state and its resources, we argue that they should also enjoy magnified coordinative advantages in SNTV election. Of course, authoritarian regimes often use state resources to win more votes; we argue that, in SNTV, in addition to winning more votes, those votes can also be distributed more effectively. We demonstrate our claims using election data from both local and national SNTV elections in Taiwan from 1954 to 2005.

This paper focuses on people's attitudes towards democracy and authoritarian regimes in Myanmar and whether the extent to which they prefer democracy is moderated by the severity of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. If people view the authoritarian regime's capacity to take swift action favourably, their opposition to it may be lower. We explored this hypothesis by conducting a survey of 756 individuals in Myanmar in June 2022 that incorporated a vignette experiment. A hypothetical scenario of Myanmar society in 2023 was presented with a two-by-two design – the conditions of the government (election is restored or not) and the pandemic situation (good or bad) were randomly varied, and the respondents were asked to report their favourability of the hypothetical scenario. The results reveal: (1) regardless of the pandemic condition, respondents prefer democracy to authoritarian regimes by a wide margin; and (2) the extent to which democracy is preferred is lower when the COVID-19 condition is more severe. Similar results were obtained from supplementary analyses using a conjoint experiment.

Existing explanations of international financial liberalization tend to understate the economic and political importance of related policies governing domestic financial markets. Further, these approaches often fail to specify fully the links between the international economy and domestic politics. Initial financial liberalization is often ‘domestic bank-centered’, i.e. it preserves a privileged position for weakly regulated domestic banks as the capital account is opened. On the other hand, there is much greater variation in later-stage financial policy developments, particularly following banking or currency crises. Adequate explanations should be able to explain, not just the initial pattern of financial liberalization, but also subsequent policy developments. This paper's main refinement is to explore the nature and implications of ‘dispersed’ interest group preferences. Initially more passive, poorly organized dispersed groups are viewed as the key link between the economic effects of crisis and variation in crisis-response policies. The explanatory value-added is explored through case studies of financial sector policy change in South Korea, Mexico, and Hungary.

The Republic of Fiji Islands has been under military rule since December 2006. Yet, the regime of Frank Bainimarama is not really like any other military regime in the world, nor does the 2006 coup resemble the earlier military interventions in the country. It is attempting development without freedom, but can it succeed? It is important to recognize that dictatorships can be of very different kinds. What happens with the Bainimarama regime will have a major impact upon the Pacific scene, not only for the Fiji Islands but also for the Pacific Forum and the role of China in regional integration. And the course of future events will depend much upon what strategy Fiji's strongman chooses and what kind of constitution is put in place.

Korean political parties have been organizationally unstable for decades, even after 1987 when a democratic transition from authoritarian military-based politics was achieved. Many studies have argued that the instability has been caused by the Confucian culture of Korean politics. This paper suggests a different view of the political phenomenon: Korean party instability has been due to the ‘cue-chasing behaviors’ of self-interested politicians, rather than Confucian morality. This study examines the proposition with a historical exploration of Korean political parties between 1987 and 2012.

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election.

The governance of Russia is important in a multiplicity of ways. As the successor state of the Soviet Union, it retains characteristics of a global superpower, including a nuclear arsenal and a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations. As a country with land or sea borders extending from Japan and China across Central Asia to the boundaries of an enlarging European Union, Russian affairs concern neighbours across much of the globe. As a land rich in natural resources such as oil, gas and gold, controllers of these resources have significant assets in the international economy. As a political system that has made a massive turn from a post-totalitarian one-party state to a government holding free competitive elections, the Russian Federation is a leading example of a regime in transformation. Above all, as the primary institution affecting the lives of more than 140 million people, the governance of Russia is important to its citizens.

Korea is one of the most complex, critical, and yet understudied of Japan's foreign policy relationships. While much attention in US policy and academic circles has focused on Japan's future relations with China as the key variable for regional stability in the twenty first century, an integral part of the security dynamic in East Asia has been driven by the Japan–Korea axis. In the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century, two major power wars in Asia (i.e., Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese) had this relationship as a proximate cause. During the cold war, the Japan–Republic of Korea (ROK) axis facilitated the American presence as an Asia-Pacific power and security guarantor. And in the post-cold war era, outcomes in the Japan–Korea (united or still divided) relationship are critical to the shape of future balance of power dynamics in the region and with it, the future American security presence. How then should we be thinking about future Japanese relations with the Korean peninsula? What are Tokyo's hopes and concerns with regard to Korea? How do they view the prospect of a united Korea? Is there a Japanese ‘grand strategy’ regarding the peninsula?

This paper aims to address an important yet under-studied issue – how does violence from the side of the protestors affect overseas support for a democratic movement? The importance of this question is twofold. First, while violence and radicalization are not exactly unfamiliar territories for scholars of contentious politics, they do not receive as much attention when their effects spill beyond the domestic arenas. Second, this study seeks to examine international solidarity with democratic movements at the civil society level, which differs substantially from the conventional elite-centric approach when it comes to the intersection between democratization and international relations. Against this backdrop, this paper considers the relationship between violent tactics employed by the protestors during the anti-extradition movement and the sentiment expressed by people elsewhere towards the protests. To this end, a total of 9,659,770 tweets were extracted using Twitter Application Programming Interface during the period of 1 June 2019–31 January 2020. Leveraging computational methods such as topic modelling and sentiment analysis, findings in this paper demonstrate that a majority of foreign Twitter users were supportive of the protestors while held relatively negative sentiments against the government as well as the police. In addition, this study reveals that, broadly speaking, violence might cost a democratic movement by its international support, but could also garner more attention at times. Despite its restricted scope, this paper hopefully will shed some useful light on the dynamics underlying international solidarity for a democratic movement abroad as well as the complex mechanisms of interactions between people who protest at home and those who observe from overseas.

Previous studies had no consensus on whether a ‘mandate-divide’ exists between district and party-list legislators under the mixed-member system. I argued that previous studies ignored the role of the party. This article aims to explore the legislative consequences of the 2005 electoral reform and the role of parties in Taiwan. I analyzed the roll-call votes, considering abstention and absence as potential defection, along with interviews. The data cover from the fifth to eighth Legislative Yuan, two periods each before and after the electoral reform. The findings show that district legislators tended to defect from the party line than list proportional representation (PR) members in pre- and post-reform periods. However, district legislators only tended to be absent from the voting than list PR members after the electoral reform. Mandate-divide was present throughout the period, but differences were more salient before the reform. Besides, evidence stressing the influence of parties was revealed in the interviews. Party leaders enforce various punishments to enforce party discipline. The role of party became more important after the electoral reform. District legislators have higher absence rate after the electoral reform because they need to engage more in constituency service or avoid expressing their position on controversial issues. The ruling party tends to sanction the absence when they have majority in parliament.

In 1997, the Japanese Diet revised the Bank of Japan law thereby granting the central bank greater independence in monetary policy making. The revision was an attempt by Japan's political class to weaken the authority of the powerful Ministry of Finance over the central bank and augment its own influence. The Bank of Japan, however, gained more autonomy than politicians ever intended, leading to frequent confrontations between the government and the central bank over monetary policy. This paper explores the new strategic relationship that emerged between the Bank of Japan and government and the nature of monetary policy implemented in the post-reform period. We demonstrate that several factors contributed to the Bank's unexpected ability to enhance its independence: the astute leadership of the first post-reform governor Hayami Masaru; the Bank's ability to turn politicization of monetary policy to its advantage; and its pursuit of a ‘power through knowledge’ strategy achieved by augmenting its own research capacity. On a theoretical level, our findings show that the passage of a new legal framework only marks the completion of one stage of institutional change and the start of the next; post-enactment politics have as much importance as pre-enactment politics in shaping outcomes. In the post-enactment phase, various factors, including the state of the economy and informal institutions or processes, matter greatly and may shift the direction of institutional change away from the intended path.