China does not have a federalist system of government. Nevertheless, with deepening reform and openness, China's political system in terms of central–local relations is functioning more and more like federalism. Federalism as a functioning system in China has been understudied. This paper defines the political system existing in China as de facto federalism, and attempts to explore the sources and dynamics of this de facto federalism. China's de facto federalism was mainly driven by two related factors, i.e. decentralization and globalization. This paper argues that while economic decentralization in the 1980s led to the formation of de facto federalism, globalization since the 1990s has accelerated this process and generated increasingly high pressure on the Chinese leadership to institutionalize existing de facto federalism.

Over 40 years ago, Daniel Bell made the provocative claim that ideological polarization was diminishing in Western democracies, but new ideologies were emerging and driving politics in developing nations. This article tests the End of Ideology thesis with a new wave of public opinion data from the World Values Survey (WVS) that covers over 70 nations representing more than 80 per cent of the world's population. We find that polarization along the Left/Right dimension is substantially greater in the less affluent and less democratic societies than in advanced industrial democracies. The correlates of Left/Right orientations also vary systematically across regions. The twin pillars of economic and religious cleavages remain important in European states; cultural values and nationalism provide stronger bases of ideology in Asia and the Middle East. As Bell suggested, social modernization does seem to transform the extent and bases of ideological polarization within contemporary societies.

Two existing models are used to conceptualize the constrained and limited participation in the communist system. The mobilization model suggests that participation was so mobilized by the party/state that it was largely meaningless, while the disengagement model supports the idea that many communist citizens adopted non-participatory behaviors such as non-voting as a means of protest. This paper attempts to demonstrate the importance of a third model – the emergent democratic culture model. The survey results show that the participation index is in proportion to the number of elections in which a villager is involved; and a growing number of voters in Zhejiang are developing citizen-initiated participation, with rights consciousness.

This research finds that the level of participation is influenced by three major factors: the perceived worth of the election itself, regularity of electoral procedures, and the fairness of electoral procedures. It also finds that parochial political culture and political apathy still exist, and the emergent democratic consciousness falls short of an ideal democratic standard. While a highly democratic culture helps to develop village democracy, the apathetic attitude continues to support the authoritarian leadership and structure in many villages. The paper also gives an account of survey research in rural China and offers a thoughtful critique of the use of voting and non-voting as the sole indicator of political participation.

Are there significant variations across major religious faiths about the proper political roles of religion? Using recent World Values/European Values data from 63 countries we study the attitudes of mass publics on two separate aspects of this question. First, should religious beliefs be used as a criterion for selecting political leaders (dimension I)? Second, should religious leaders use their position for political influence (dimension II)? For dimension I we find that Muslims are somewhat more likely than followers of other faiths and denominations to say that religious beliefs are important in selecting leaders. The remaining results of our investigation somewhat weaken or modify this result. On dimension II we find that Muslims do not stand out as comparatively favorable towards the view that religious leaders shall use their position for political influence. Finally, we find a negative, albeit weak and somewhat irregular effect of education on attitudes towards a close link between religion and political leadership (dimension I). However, this effect holds up equally well for Muslims as for other denominations, suggesting that Muslims are not immune to the effects of secularization.

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.

Previous research (e.g., Horiuchi, Goldsmith, and Inoguchi, 2005) has shown some intriguing patterns of effects of several variables on international public opinion about US foreign policy. But results for the theoretically appealing effects of regime type and post-materialist values have been weak or inconsistent. This paper takes a closer look at the relationship between these two variables and international public opinion about US foreign policy. In particular, international reaction to the wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) are examined using two major multinational surveys. The conclusions of previous research are largely reinforced: neither regime type nor post-materialist values appears to robustly influence global opinion on these events. Rather, some central interests, including levels of trade with the US and NATO membership, and key socialized factors, including a Muslim population, experience with terrorism, and the exceptional experiences of two states (Israel, Albania) emerge as the most important factors in the models. There is also a consistent backlash effect of security cooperation with the US outside of NATO. A discussion of these preliminary results points to their theoretical implications and their significance for further investigation into the transnational dynamics of public opinion and foreign policy.

This article identifies how democracy and transparency in Thailand have been subverted since 2001. Specifically, it appraises the sentiments and trends that have been in place since 1993 to prevent a return to authoritarian government. Additionally, it also examines structures and policies that have thwarted democratic consolidation since 2000. The central hypothesis of the article is that there has been a structural weakening of democracy in Thailand under the Thai Rak Thai government since 2001. In other words, Thailand's democratic consolidation has been held in abeyance since the electoral victory of the Thaksin government.

This study utilizes an admixture of the institutionalist and agency approaches to make its case. There is sufficient evidence to discern since 2001 the direction and nature of state–society relations in Thailand and Thaksin has also undertaken a number of policies by way of elite strategic choices. Consequently, bringing these two approaches into strategic convergence obtains better and more comprehensive results of the state of democratic consolidation in Thailand, both from an elite as well as societal perspective for a more balanced approach. The evidence culled thus far suggests that, whereas Thaksin came to power using democratic means and in fact consolidated his democratic credentials after his second victory in 2005, domestic political and social developments reflect a weaker commitment to democratic ideals and its structural and cultural consolidation.

This article examines the trajectory of Asian politics in terms of modernization and democratization. Going beyond broad generalizations about democracy's Third Wave, empirical evidence is adduced to show an affective orientation and lively appetite for democracy among Asian citizens and even states. However, in many instances, while the citizens are willing to democratize, the state is institutionally weak. Conversely, strong, high performance states ofen block the path of democratization. Historically speaking, modernity and its social and economic concomitants have been coterminous with the emergence and arrival of democracy, but, owing to socio-economic and historical disjunctures in Asian social fromations, such an emergence or arrival of democracy has remained tortuous and problematic. The institutionalization of middle-class driven ‘bourgeois’ democracy is clearly evident in many cases. However, civil society and political culture in some instances remain mired by a lack of political maturity and sophistication and a superficial attachment to economic performance. Many Asian politics have remained starkly authoritarian or simply undemocratic, even as modernization has advanced rapidly. Ultimately, the agency for democratization rests with a vibrant civil society. Again no necessary automatic correspondence obtains between modernization and the development of a vibrant civil society. The agency for such a social transformation has to be contestualized for different social formations. Finally, an important distinction has to be made between procedural and substantive democracy. For the latter to be sustained, it necessitates the engagement of citizens and civil forces on a multiplicity of social and political terrains outside of electoral politics.

This research tests if political discussion influences policy preference. The literature greatly stresses the non-rational nature of political decision-making. Rational policy preferences require learning specific details in a competitive political environment. Yet, research shows that most people do not have the skills to understand policy. Social networking is one way to help people understand policy. Social network influence on policy preferences, however, is mostly ignored. We show that the likelihood of supporting a policy increases when one's social network supports a party that advocates that policy. We control for the political knowledge of the respondent, network size, partisanship, ideology, socioeconomic, and policy-specific determinants. Examining data from the 2000 American National Election Study and Japanese Election Study 3, we find strong results in the United States, but mixed results in Japan. Additional research we perform shows a stronger social network influence in Japan.

For the first time in 20 years, the prefectural level 2001 LDP primaries offer a chance to reevaluate the relationship between Diet members and the LDP rank and file. Since 1982, scholars have agreed that Diet members use their support organizations to control how rank and file vote in LDP leadership contests; and the absence of any suitable data from the 1980s and 1990s has prevented a reassessment of this hypothesis in Japan's evolving political environment. This study uses regression analysis on prefectural-level primary ballot totals in order to measure Diet member influence over the rank-and-file primaries. The results suggest while national politicians did influence voters, their impact was too small to affect the outcome of the election. This implies that the relationship between LDP Diet members and the rank and file is changing and suggests directions for further study.

This article conducts a decision theoretic analysis of the effect of dual candidacy on voting decisions in the Japanese variant of the mixed electoral system, where each candidate can run in both a single-member district (SMD) and a proportional representation (PR) block, and dual candidates can be ranked either individually or equally in parties' PR lists: their post-election ranking is determined by their SMD votes. The model shows that dual candidacy differentiates the mixed system from merely the simultaneous use of the SMD and PR systems. That is, if an SMD candidate also runs in the PR block, it lowers voters' utility increment obtained by casting their SMD votes for him. If he is ranked equally in the PR list, however, SMD votes for him may help him win a PR seat against other equally ranked dual candidates, which enables dual candidacy accompanied by equal ranking to attract more SMD votes.

The year 1997 was critical for Thailand. A severe economic crisis hit in July calling into question years of economic growth and increasing prosperity. A few months later Thailand adopted a new Constitution that aimed at reforming the political system, and at making corruption and vote buying less prevalent. While this article shows that the economic turmoil was a prime catalyst for political change, it was not as simple as saying that public outcry over the economic crisis forced conservative parliamentarians into voting to accept the proposed constitution. While public outcry did matter, what is vitally important is that elite political leaders, the heads of the major parties, ministers, and generals, were renegotiating their alliances and ties both with one another, and with various groups in society that were pushing for change. Elite resignation to political pressure and policy shifts among the top leaders is what ultimately allows for the passage of the constitution and for Prime Minister Chavalit's departure. This article takes a closer look at Thai politics and tries to answer the following questions: Did the economic crisis lead to (meaningful) political reform and why or why not? Since the codification of the 1997 constitution has Thai politics become more democratic? It is my analysis that the consolidation of democracy was in reach in 1997 but today has slipped further from Thai citizens' grasp. The explanations, or the independent variables for both the successful reforms of the political system in 1997 and the backsliding away from democratization, are largely the same. When both internal and external pressures prod democracy along, reforms take place. When pressures are pushing in different directions democratic reforms become threatened. Internal pressures include the military, civil society, and the behavior and power of political and economic elites; and external ones are the IMF, national security concerns, and globalization in general. When conditions or variables change, and when elite priorities or preferences shift, as this article will show, we can see the results in Thai politics.

This paper aims to apply the methodology used in Inoguchi's former paper (2004c) and build on to the findings concerning social capital in Asia. The previous paper used ten Asian countries from the AsiaBarometer 2003 survey; this time we are using the 14 Central and South Asian countries – Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan – from the AsiaBarometer 2005 survey.

In July 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi successfully passed the legislation to dispatch ground SDF units to Iraq in the Diet. His top-down policy process was completely different from Japan's traditional bottom-up system, which Aurelia George Mulgan calls the ‘Un-Westminster System’ in which the bureaucrats in the ministries play a central role with the LDP being the only political power to negotiate with them. Mulgan also argues that the system has not changed despite recent institutional changes. On the contrary, this paper illustrates how Koizumi and his Cabinet took advantage of the strengthened authority of the Cabinet Secretariat to initiate policies, and successfully pushed the controversial national security legislation through LDP decision-making organs and the Diet by gaining support first from the coalition partners, presenting a new style of Westminster system.