The 3/11 triple disaster, comprising the powerful earthquake, devastating tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power complex, has drawn worldwide attention to Japan's crisis management capabilities. This article lays out key concepts used in analyzing crises and addresses major trends in contemporary crisis management endeavors. It then turns to the Japanese case, identifying six key themes in the debates about the country's crisis management capabilities. In tracing and exploring past reform efforts, the article assesses characteristics and highlights perceived deficiencies in Japan's approach. The final part provides a brief overview of the case studies presented in this special issue, pinpointing recurrent themes and enduring problems observed in recent crisis management efforts.

The rise of China was not an issue in 1971 or 1972. Therefore, neither the United States nor Japan thought about the consequences of US–China and Japan–China rapprochement in the early 1970s (Kissinger, 2011). The diplomatic normalization between Japan and China took place in 1972 as an appendage of the United States–China rapprochement in 1971, at least in American eyes. At this time, the United States was waging war in Vietnam, while the Cold War was still at the heyday of massive nuclear buildups by the United States and the Soviet Union. China was in the midst of domestic turmoil called the Cultural Revolution, while facing the hostile Soviet Union. To ease their burdens, both countries concluded the surprising rapprochement. It was a great surprise to Japan because it had not been notified about this rapprochement even a couple of days before. In 1971, China entered the United Nations. Japan went ahead of the United States and had achieved diplomatic normalization by 1972. Japan wanted to develop a new market in China when its economy was booming whereby Japan wanted to alleviate the extreme of ‘leaning to one side’ (to the United States). China wanted to alleviate security threats coming from the Soviet Union (‘anti-hegemonism’) and to have Japan involved in the development of the half-frozen economy, especially with the massive Japanese official development assistance. On the disputed islands called Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands, the Japanese government wanted to settle the issue, but the Chinese government saw no immediate urgency to do so. In 1978, both the United States and Japan consolidated their ties with China, again with Japan going ahead of the United States. In December 1978, Deng Xiaoping came back into power, paving the road to ‘economic reform and the opening to the world’. His famous sentence, yangguan taohui (keep low profile, nurture strength), was propagated as the new Chinese policy line, both internally and externally (Vogel, 2011). He focused on economic development while keeping peace on all borders. China started to grow in the 1980s in a strident fashion, although voices for political reform were also on the rise. Such voices culminated in 1989 after the death of former Secretary General Hu Yaopang, a reformist who was dismissed from office in 1987 by Deng Xiaoping. On 4 June 1989, large numbers of demonstrators assembled in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, demanding more freedom and democracy. Deng Xiaoping ordered the all-out suppression of the dissidents. The Tiananmen Square massacre led to embargos by the West and by Japan. The embargos were lifted in 1991. Both Japan and Europe were keen on this. The Chinese economy then registered a two digit annual growth rate for two decades until 2011. Meanwhile the terms of the Japan–China Friendship Treaty of 1978 − that is China forgiving Japan for not paying indemnity − became known in China, giving rise to opposition to the Friendship Treaty in the 1990s. The United States was preoccupied with anti-terrorism after 9/11 in 2001, and the thought of growth in China in the 2000s scarcely came to mind. But by 2011, the growth of China was visible and tangible; a fact that no one can deny is that China is expected to surpass the United States in terms of Gross National Product sooner or later.

This paper investigates why some legislators tend to switch parties frequently – which is believed to undermine effective representation of citizen interests in democracies – while others tend to stay put. On the assumption that the ultimate goal of legislators is to be reelected, I argue that voters' demands for local/individual benefits, or pork, and legislators' lack of access to resources for such benefits are likely to lead the legislators to switch parties in order to improve their electoral chances in the subsequent election. By analyzing party switches by legislators from 1988 to 2008 in South Korea, where the president controls access to the pork pipeline, I find that the president's party members are less likely and independents are more likely to change party affiliations, irrespective of voter demands for pork or national public policies. However, I also find that opposition party legislators who are elected from less-developed districts, where voters tend to desire pork over policy, are more likely to switch parties than those elected from more-developed districts. These findings suggest that interaction between voter demands and party access to resources influences politicians’ party loyalty: voter demands for pork (or policy) tend to lead politicians to be less (or more) loyal to their current parties. Voter demands, however, have little impact on the party loyalty of those who are already in parties with access to the pork pipeline.

What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats? Despite the importance of this question for policymaking, democracy, and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups’ decisions. That is, central to interest groups’ decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politicians currently in power will continue to be in the future. We deduce logical, but totally contrasting hypotheses, about how interest groups lobby under such conditions of uncertainty and then test these using a heteroskedastic probit model that we apply to a unique longitudinal survey of interest groups in Japan. We find that when it is unclear if the party controlling the government will maintain power in the future, interest groups are more likely to contact the bureaucracy. When it is believed that the party in power will retain control for a considerable period, interest groups are more inclined to contact politicians. In addition, during times of government uncertainty, interest groups that are supportive of the governing party (or parties) are more likely to contact politicians and those that are less supportive will be more likely to contact bureaucrats.

We research the political impact of how users access the Internet. Recent research suggests that Internet usage may promote political participation. Internet usage is proposed to be beneficial because it increases activity in diverse politicized social networks and through greater access to information. Even though Internet usage may begin as a non-political activity, we outline several reasons to believe that it may spark later political participation. This impact, however, is likely to be non-existent in new forms of Internet browsing such as through mobile phones, where users do less full-scale browsing. The more difficult browsing interface of mobile phones reduces activity in chat rooms and in-depth browsing of online sources of information which promote participation. To test these ideas, we use nationally representative survey data from Japan, a country which has more pronounced usage of mobile phone browsing. Using a Seemingly Unrelated Regression Model, we also show that the chief determinants of using PC's over mobile phones for Internet browsing are age and education. We then show that PC-based Internet activity correlates with increased political participation, but mobile phone usage correlates with less participation.

This article asks the questions: Did the DPJ engage in crisis response and management differently than the LDP did? If so, why? If not, why not? In order to try to answer these questions systematically I use an inductive comparative method of choosing three equivalent ‘cases’ each under the LDP and the DPJ in which they responded to a similar type of crisis. The crises selected were Okinawa bases issues in 1995 (LDP) and 2009 (DPJ), Senkaku Islands under the LDP (2008) and DPJ (2010), and the Hanshin quake in 1995 (LDP) and Fukushima in 2011 (DPJ). This gave me a nice mix of intense, short-term cases to compare; one domestic (disaster-related), and two foreign (Okinawa bases with US; Senkaku/Daiyou conflict with China); coalition governments under LDP and DPJ (2009) of different kinds vs. single-party (other DPJ). A very brief description of each crisis will be followed by some generalizations comparing the two parties’ responses. I find that both parties had similar problems with information management, but that there were characteristic and predictable trade-offs of their different party decisionmaking structures and relations with the national bureaucracy. Finally, I mention some of the inherent structural problems of Japanese politics and policymaking that inhibit effective response regardless of the party in power.

After the end of World War II, East Asia gradually formed what can be referred to as a quasi-anarchical regional order. The quasi-anarchy system is defined by the anarchy system associated with a sub-hierarchical system, so this system possesses the characteristics of both anarchy and hierarchy in terms of security relations among states. The states in a quasi-anarchical order can be differentiated into three types according to the method through which they seek security. They comprise that of self-help states, the state that provides security guarantees to client states (security guarantor), and states that receive security protection from the security guarantor (client states) within the quasi-anarchy. The standard security relationship between states consists of two types: the first is a competitive security relationship; the second is a security-dependent relationship. The quasi-anarchical order in East Asia has restricted the continuance and positive effect of a rising China's reassurance policy through three mechanisms: dependence, reliance on support, and imitation.

The Malaysian electoral behaviour has for some time reflected the ‘partisan identification’ thesis. Since 1999, however, there has been a marked shift towards ‘secular dealignment’. Analyses of electoral and survey data reveal that although a significant number of Malaysian voters remained attached to the party they identified with, most of the electorate, however, are swayed by short-term factors. Though the economic issues played a role in the three elections, it is the leadership of the parties supplemented by the use of mass media that played a significant role in swinging the vote from one party to the other. The three elections in 1999, 2004, and 2008 can be categorized as evidence of secular dealignment: the 1999 elections substantially reduced the margin of gain by the ruling coalition; the 2004 elections reversed the opposition gain, while the 2008 elections resulted in the loss of two-thirds majority seats in the parliament habitually enjoyed by the ruling coalition and the emergence of a strong opposition coalition. This trend not merely continued but was much more stronger in the 13th Malaysian general election.

Intense competition can compel lobbyists to exaggerate the benefits the government would see in tax returns and social welfare if agency officials allocate such resources to the lobbyist's members. This incentive to misrepresent grows when information asymmetry exists between lobbyists and government officials. A large body of literature has investigated how interest groups compete and interact, but it disregards the interdependency of interests between competing groups and associated strategic behaviors of other players. Our signaling model of lobbying reveals ways in which agency officials can compel lobbyists for competing interests to lobby truthfully and what the policy implications of this compulsion can be. We also present case-study evidence of how this works in practice.

In 2010–12, Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated without the Yasukuni Shrine or Chinese human rights violations in the forefront. To improve relations, attention should turn to what I label the ideological, sectoral, and horizontal dimensions of a national identity gap between these countries. They have each figured in the decline and offer more promise than the temporal dimension, with its symbols of wartime memories, and the vertical dimension, where sensitive Chinese internal affairs are at stake. The sectoral dimension comprises political, economic, and also cultural national identity, each of which has grown more intense in China, while cultural identity is still a force in Japan. Establishing an East Asian community is now the centerpiece in the hope that the horizontal dimension will be an impetus for mutual understanding, yet the notion of community is repeated with no sign of a shared vision of the outside world, whether the US role or the international arena and regionalism. With South Korea, their partner in trilateralism and North Korea's transformation at the crux of all three of these dimensions, this paper emphasizes the way divergent views of the peninsula keep growing in importance for bilateral relations. It suggests ways to reframe relations through cooperation over Korea. As difficult as Korean relations are for both states, it is a test case for their identity gap.

This article examines the crisis management capabilities of Japan's Self Defense Forces (SDF) in the areas of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, and disaster relief. The three types of overseas operations were all initiated by Japan as a response to international crises. While SDF crisis management capabilities for UN peacekeeping operations have steadily evolved, room for improvement remains. For example, Japan's commitment to logistic and rapid deployment missions could be strengthened. Regarding the second type of operations, counter-terrorism, Japan's crisis management capabilities were enhanced by the passing of a novel Anti-Terrorism Law in October 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. The law legalized a SDF oil-fuelling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan. Compared to the first two types of missions, SDF crisis management capabilities in disaster relief are the least controversial. This is due to the nature of the SDF as politically neutral and their humanitarian and non-military activities. This article highlights and compares the strengths and weaknesses of Japan's capabilities in the three types of SDF overseas operations. It demonstrates that a number of problem areas remain, including the need for legal amendment as well as the enhancement of public support and political consensus. The Japanese government and the SDF should face up to these challenges so that Japan can become better positioned to react quickly to crisis situations that require the dispatch of the SDF.

We examine the politics of financial crisis response in Japan and the United States. Many existing accounts of Japan's ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s have emphasized Japan-specific factors, such as structural problems, policy errors, and political dysfunction. We argue that Japan may have been subject to a form of first-mover disadvantage. Like innovation in the private sector, developing effective solutions to novel policy problems requires a messy process of discovery, experimentation, and repeated failure. Much as late-industrializing countries adapted the methods and technologies of early developers, second-movers can apply effective policies demonstrated by first-movers in a more targeted, efficient, and rapid manner. We show that the behavior of Japan and the United States during their respective financial crises is broadly consistent with this theory. In addition, policy adoption in the United States most clearly reflected lessons from Japan in areas where the lessons were considered clear and implementation was less politicized.

Negative campaign advertising is a major component of the electoral landscape, and has received much attention in the literature. In many studies, political scientists have tried to explain why some campaign ads contain more negative messages than others and to identify the determinants of this form of campaign behavior. In recent years, a number of studies have acknowledged the differences between alternative measures of negativity, but, in most cases, it is assumed that since these measures are highly correlated, they are unidimensional and essentially interchangeable. In this article, we argue that much of the debate in the literature over negative campaigning is a result of inadequate operationalizations of negativity. Although debates over negativity have often been framed in conceptual terms, there is a methodological explanation for why they persist We begin our analysis by constructing reliable scales of negativity, and model them with salient predictors reported in the literature as significantly associated with campaign attacks. Our findings show that scaling does matter, and while some of the explanatory variables are robust predictors of negativity, most of them are not.

Since the boat clash incident in September 2010, tensions have persisted between Japan and China over the sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Although territorial issues can easily become national symbols and used against other countries, nationalism hampers diplomatic concessions essential for diverse international resolutions. Greater the attention the public pays to such issues, lesser the room governments have for maneuvering. The Japanese and Chinese administrations will find it difficult to extricate themselves from the current deadlock if each party merely continues to assert its sovereignty over the islands. This study examines the possibility of expanding both countries’ common interests in the East China Sea by focusing on the fisheries issues that triggered the 2010 incident. Japan and China have not fulfilled their obligation – as stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – to conserve biological resources in their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The New Japan–China Fisheries Agreement (2000) established vast special water zones in the middle of the East China Sea instead of demarking the EEZs between the two countries. However, the Joint Fisheries Committee established in accordance with the agreement has not worked to prevent overexploitation and to maintain sustainable development of fishery stocks in the zones. Thus, this paper proposes that Japan and China launch an initiative for effective control of fishing resources in the East China Sea, most preferably in collaboration with related neighboring parties.

Despite a relatively healthy financial sector, the Japanese economy contracted 6.3% in 2009 during the global financial crisis (GFC) after the Lehman shock, the starkest drop among the OECD countries. Since then, the Japanese economy has been slow to recover, although the Japanese government has implemented multiple economic stimulus packages with a high aggregate value.

By tracing the Japanese government's response to the GFC in the critical months of October 2008 through the end of 2009, this study argues that the Japanese government failed to manage the crisis decisively due to institutional constraints derived, ironically, from the experiences that Japan gained from a series of financial crises in the 1990s and 2000s. Financial crisis fatigue constrained the supply of Japan's fiscal and monetary measures against the GFC and slowed political response. Furthermore, it made Japanese society unresponsive to these measures.

This study examines the extent to which there has been a rise in ideologically based politics in Japan due to the decline in factionalism in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The study is based on two cases studies. The first is based on the notion of ‘Koizumi's children’ recruited by former Prime Minister Koizumi and his allies, who were heavily discouraged from joining a faction. The second model is based on an analysis of a junior MP groups which have played a role in the internal management of the LDP independent of established party organizational structures.

The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Prime Minister Naoto Kan took this crisis seriously, and made himself personally involved with damage control, especially during the first week. This study examines the responses to the incident by the prime minister's office.

Universal wisdom is that crises are better handled at the level closest to which they occur. Shifting the decision making to the higher authority is needed when a crisis spills over the local boundary or when the local authority fails to deal with the situation. This is called ‘upscaling’.

Frustrated by the lack of communication coming from the bureaucracy and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Kan upscaled the decision making and began micromanaging damage control. The upscaling, however, did not contribute to improvement in the accident situation in most cases. Even in one case, it exacerbated it.

On the other hand, upscaling made a significant difference when the TEPCO officials considered withdrawing from the accident. By upscaling to the higher authority, Kan stopped their withdrawal. After the establishment of a joint headquarters with TEPCO, the political leaders, instead of upscaling, moved down to a closer level to the accident and successfully coordinated the recovery work.

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to ‘hide its light under a bushel’ and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage.

This article presents results from a nationally representative survey conducted in Taiwan in November 2011 that explores Taiwanese attitudes toward China and the world. It demonstrates that while ‘blue’ (KMT) and ‘green’ (DPP) supporters maintained different attitudes towards China, few Taiwanese supported reunification. Taiwanese attitudes towards other countries, the sources of Taiwanese party identification, and policy implications for cross–Strait relations are also explored.

This paper attempts to examine the paradigm shift in ASEAN from a state-based to a people-based organization. We argue that by adopting a people-based organization, ASEAN now enters an era of Neo-Communitarianism replacing the Old Communitarianism of the old generation of ASEAN. By using communitarian perspectives, we look at the continuities and changes in ASEAN with regard to how it deals with issues involving their members. Three important issues namely the debates on intervention principle; the adoption of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community; and the inclusion of human rights are seen as the signposts where ASEAN departs from their Old to a Neo-Communitarianism. Although there have been a lot of challenges to the realization of the people-based organization, we see that the dynamics of debates and the active participation of the community in the debates show good prospects for the new paradigm to realize. In this paper, we use debate on the formation of ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), to show the involvements of people in setting the agendas for the future ASEAN.