Scholars have pointed to the period 1958-1962 as the beginning of Taiwan's transition to export-oriented industrialization. Although the Nationalist Party (KMT) had traditionally supported state socialism, the KMT began to oversee economic reforms in the late 1950s, setting Taiwan on the course of export-led growth under a capitalist model. Using archival materials from both the United States and Taiwan, I argue that the reforms resulted from U.S. influence on how the KMT understood the role of economic development in its grand strategy. U.S. arguments succeeded in creating political support at the highest levels of the KMT leadership for a reform-oriented faction in the economic bureaucracy. This finding shows how an aid donor can promote economic reforms even when the recipient is strategically important for the donor: although threats to enforce conditionality may not be credible, the donor can influence the recipient through persuasion.

This article reexamines the period of the Japanese bubble (1985–1990) and emphasizes ill-supervised and ill-sequenced financial deregulation as a key proximate factor. Given the subsequent costs of this political choice, what explains such a path of domestic financial deregulation without the establishment of corresponding supervisory institutions? I argue that the suboptimal Japanese outcome represents the equilibrium point for political leaders who had to balance global pressures to deregulate the economy, corporate pressures to liberalize finance, and domestic resistance by an array of politically connected interest groups. The government chose ill-supervised financial deregulation as the path of least political resistance and the golden bullet that could both defuse trade tensions with the United States and readjust the Japanese political economy in a harmless way. Instead, as they interacted with other factors, the choices made in the early 1980s destabilized the Japanese system and carried the seeds of the ensuing financial crisis.

This article examines party platform change in a third wave democratic country, Taiwan, during its first fourteen years of full multiparty elections. A variety of datasets show that Taiwan's parties have moved from polarized positions toward a moderate center on all core electoral issues. However, the parties have not converged into indistinguishable catchall parties; instead they have instituted a state of moderate differentiation. The degree to which Taiwan's parties have moderated and been electorally successful has been intimately tied to the internal balance of power between election-oriented and ideologically conservative factions or leaders. In response to public opinion and electoral competition, Taiwan's election-oriented leaders attempted to drag their parties toward centrist positions. The key variable constraining convergent party movement and maintaining differentiation has been the strength of ideologically conservative party factions. When these ideologically oriented factions have held the upper hand in parties, they have promoted ideologically orthodox but often unpopular policies. Even when the election-oriented faction is in control at the party center, secondary factions have been able to constrain movement away from party ideals.

Past studies suggest that domestic public support for compliance with international human rights law can constrain governments to comply with human rights law. But the question remains: Why does the public care about compliance? Using a series of survey experiments in South Korea and the United States, this study finds that constituents are concerned about compliance in one issue area—such as human rights—because they believe it will affect the country's reputation in other domains of international law. Cross-national survey experiments demonstrate that past noncompliance negatively affects the South Korean public's second-order beliefs about the likelihood of future compliance across different issue areas. However, past noncompliance has a limited impact on the US public's first-order beliefs across different domains.

In this article, we propose a causal relationship between a region's communist revolutionary legacy before 1949 and the variation in private sector development after 1949. In the case of Zhejiang, the pre-1949 revolutionary experience led to the power struggle between two elite groups, the guerrilla cadre group and the southbound cadre group, in the province after 1949. As the weak side, guerrilla cadres were willing to protect local economic interests in exchange for local popular support, which improved their odds of political survival. As a result, in contrast with counties where the guerrilla forces were historically weak, counties with strong guerrilla forces before 1949 saw significantly more robust private sector development throughout much of the Mao and post-Mao periods. In this article we provide preliminary historical and statistical evidence to support this hypothesis.

In this article, I present a theory of conditional core-swing targeting that focuses on the competition for majority control in legislative elections to explain how presidents use their strong budgetary powers to manipulate the distribution of the national subsidy in South Korea. Presidents whose parties already possess a legislative majority are expected to favor core municipalities to strengthen the foundations of their majority constituency, whereas those who seek majority control are predicted to prioritize swing municipalities in an effort to cross the majority threshold. Presidents are also anticipated to respond to the electoral cycle by shifting subsidies to riskier municipalities when elections approach. Using a novel data set on national subsidy allocations that spans three decades, I find evidence in favor of the hypotheses. This article demonstrates that the beneficiaries of distributive favoritism are not fixed, and that politicians can engage in complex and varied targeting strategies to achieve their objectives.

Extant literature on democratization documents that ordinary citizens’ unconditional support for democracy is indispensable to democratic consolidation. Yet observers of nascent democracies have repeatedly witnessed that such support often hinges upon their economic conditions. This article argues that income levels have a conditioning effect on this relationship; the Korean poor see democracy as a tool for income redistribution and are less likely than the rich to support it when economic hardships appear to close windows of opportunities for such redistribution. Using survey data from the first round of the Asian Barometer Survey on South Korea, I find strong empirical support for this argument. The implication of this finding for broader literature on democratization is that the weakening of young democracies can be attributed to the poor in times of trouble, or the “weak link.”

In “Diversionary Dragons, or ‘Talking Tough in Taipei’” (Journal of East Asian Studies 9, 3: 369–398), Yitan Li, Patrick James, and A. Cooper Drury presented a newly created data set to show that Chen Shui-bian used independence rhetoric and confrontation with the mainland as a diversionary tactic in the face of domestic political difficulties. In the present exchange, Jonathan Sullivan challenges the authors' understanding of how the Democratic Progressive Party used the Taiwan independence issue—and the authors' interpretation of independence—and raises questions about the coding of press coverage as a means of identifying underlying preferences. The authors respond, concluding that the future use of such diversionary tactics is by no means foreclosed.

The past few years have seen an emergence of populist leaders around the world, who have not only accrued but also maintained support despite rampant criticism, governance failures, and the ongoing COVID pandemic. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte is the best illustration of this trend, with approval ratings rarely dipping below 80 percent. What explains his high levels of robust public support? We argue that Duterte is an ethnopopulist who uses ethnic appeals in combination with insider vs. outsider rhetoric to garner and maintain public support. Moreover, we argue that ethnic affiliation is a main driver of support for Duterte, and more important than alternative factors such as age, education, gender, or urban vs. rural divides. We provide evidence of Duterte's marriage of ethnic and populist appeals, then evaluate whether ethnicity predicts support for Duterte, using 15 rounds of nationally representative public opinion data. Identifying with a non-Tagalog ethnicity (like Duterte) leads to an 8 percent increase in approval for Duterte, significantly larger than any other explanatory factor. Among Duterte supporters, a non-Tagalog ethnicity is associated with 19 percent increase in strong versus mild support. Ethnicity is the only positive and significant result, suggesting that it strongly explains why Duterte's support remains robust. Alternative explanations, such as social desirability bias and alternative policy considerations, do not explain our results.

During the five democratic elections held in Taiwan from 1992 to 2004 inclusive, the formerly dominant Kuomintang Party (KMT) was temporarily supplanted by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as the nation's largest political party. Most explanations for this have focused on party fragmentation and the changing patterns of electoral competition it helped create. These are important factors, but they have not been tested empirically at the level where candidates won and lost legislative seats, the level of the election district. This article offers such an empirical test, and it will show that these two factors had a direct impact on the ability of DPP and KMT candidates to obtain legislative seats. We also show that these factors carried indirect impacts by hurting the ability of the KMT and DPP to nominate in a way that they would obtain all the seats that their obtained vote shares would allow.

In this paper, we examine the extent to which wartime violence against civilians during the Korean War affects people's current attitudes toward South Korea and other involved countries. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that compares the cohorts born before and after the war, we find that direct exposure to wartime violence induces negative perceptions regarding perpetrator countries. As many of the civilian massacres were committed by the South Korean armed forces, prewar cohorts living in violence-ridden areas during the war demonstrate significantly less pride in South Korea today. In contrast, postwar cohorts from those violent areas, who were exposed to intensive anti-communist campaigns and were incentivized to differentiate themselves from the victims, show significantly greater pride in South Korea, and greater hospitality toward the United States than toward North Korea, compared to prewar cohorts in the same areas and to the same cohorts born in non-violent areas.

More than ninety people died in political violence linked to the March–May 2010 “redshirt” protests in Bangkok. The work of the government-appointed Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand (TRCT) illustrates the potential shortcomings of seeing quasi-judicial commissions as a catch-all solution for societies struggling to deal with the truth about their recent pasts. The 2012 TRCT report was widely criticized for blaming too much of the violence on the actions of rogue elements of the demonstrators and failing to focus tightly on the obvious legal transgressions of the security forces. By failing strongly to criticize the role of the military in most of the fatal shootings, the TRCT arguably helped pave the way for the 2014 coup. Truth commissions that are unable to produce convincing explanations of the facts they examine may actually prove counterproductive. Following Quinn and Wilson, we argue in this article that weak truth commissions are prone to politicization and are likely to produce disappointing outcomes, which may even be counterproductive.

In recent years, some Japanese prime ministers have exhibited a nationalistic tendency, particularly in their foreign policies. The increasing nationalistic appeal by recent leaders marks a sharp contrast with previous leaders, who were unwilling to cause friction with other countries and thus took more centrist positions. More interestingly, those recent leaders, including Koizumi Junichiro, previously adopted a more modest stance. This article seeks to explain the increase in nationalistic appeal, particularly between 2001 and 2006, among Japanese leaders by focusing on some important changes in the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP's) presidential election procedures. Drawing on the study of US primary elections, I argue that the increase in the weight of rank-and-filers' votes vis-à-vis the LDP Diet members' votes in the LDP presidential election encouraged some candidates to take more ideologically extreme positions. In other words, much like US primaries, the LDP presidential elections can have a tendency to pull some candidates toward extreme positions.

What explains the passage of Thailand's landmark universal healthcare (UHC) policy? In separate contributions, Selway and Harris emphasized the role of electoral rules and political parties, on one hand, and “professional movements” of developmentally minded state bureaucrats on the other. Which is correct? In this article, Selway and Harris respond to each other's work. While Selway agrees that the actions of the professional movement constitute an underappreciated necessary condition for universal healthcare in Thailand, he argues that Harris overstates the role of the movement in implementation. Harris defends his position and maintains that an institution-focused account is insufficient, arguing that the actions of Thailand's Rural Doctors’ Movement not only explain universal healthcare but also gave rise to the very electoral rule changes that Selway argues were so critical to facilitating universal coverage. Selway responds to these criticisms, and the two researchers jointly consider implications for causation, qualitative research, and policymaking theory.

North Korea is widely seen as having among the most corrupt governments in the world. However, the Kim family regime has not always been so accepting of government wrongdoing. Drawing on archival evidence, this study shows that Kim Il-sung saw corruption as a threat to economic development and launched campaigns to curb it throughout the 1950s. I find that these campaigns were at least somewhat successful, and they contributed to post-Korean War reconstruction and rapid development afterwards. So when and why did the regime shift from combating corruption to embracing it? I argue that changes in the country's economic system following the crisis of the 1990s, especially de facto marketization, made corruption more beneficial to the regime both as a source of revenue and as an escape valve for public discontent. This study's findings contribute to our understanding of the politics of corruption control in authoritarian regimes.

The 2014 Sunflower Movement succeeded in blocking Taiwan's Congress from ratifying the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA), a bill that proposed to liberalize trade with China. Since most of the participants in this movement were students and NGO members, they had limited economic and political resources to influence policy change, which makes their success in stopping a trade deal remarkable. Many attribute this important success to an elite alliance with politicians inside the government, fueled by a personal rivalry between political elites. However, I argue that changing public opinion is the more important force behind the creation of the alliance. With original data from interviews with political elites, their staff members, and activists in Taiwan, in addition to secondary information, I confirm public opinion to be the major reason for the political alliance. This case illustrates that in some circumstances, public opinion outweighs the importance of elite rivalry in influencing political elite decision-making, and it could represent a key mechanism of democratic policy-making.

This article aims to understand the policies of three major Northeast Asian states toward the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court (ICC) that it established. Using a unique measurement tool, it traces the interactions of South Korea, Japan, and China with the Court since negotiations on its formation in the late 1990s. Included in this analysis is a focus on how Northeast Asian states have responded to recent efforts to bring North Korea into the Court's orbit for that country's military actions in 2010 and its human rights record over several decades. Data is based on publicly available documents as well as interviews with diplomats, legislators, legal experts, and activists in Japan, South Korea, and China conducted in 2015.

I have written elsewhere: “Where there exists a critical mass of scholars working on similar sets of questions—critiquing and building on one another's work—knowledge accumulation is more likely to occur.”1 It is with this statement in mind that I proceed with my response to Michael Nelson's thoughtful critique on my previous article (see Allen Hicken, “Party Fabrication: Constitutional Reform and the Rise of Thai Rack Thai,” Journal of East Asian Studies 6, no. 3 [2006]: 381–407). Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal, I will focus on three of the most interesting and challenging of Nelson's theoretical critiques. The first substantive issue concerns the charge of omitted variable bias—specifically, in reference to the omission of local political groups from a macro-institutional account. The second and third criticisms are more methodological. First, can we or should we ascribe motives to political actors? Second, how can we use counterfactuals to solve problems of observational equivalence?

In the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of “partial fiscal decentralization,” in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party.