This study examines whether a degree of autocracy and high quality of bureaucracy—two mechanisms often discussed in the context of Covid-19 responses—provide a meaningful explanation for East Asia's relative success compared to the rest of the world at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Our multiple regression analysis for 111 countries supports our expectation, as East Asia as a region is significantly and negatively associated with confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths compared to the rest of the world, and its interaction with the quality of bureaucracy further contributes to the negative association. In sum, this research highlights the important role of East Asia's regional characteristics in pandemic responses.

The existing literature on the relationship between political parties and social movements draws mainly from European cases, and has rarely captured the kinds of relationships that may exist in other parts of the world. This article addresses the gap by shedding light on the dynamics of party–movement relationships in Thailand. We examine the connections between two Thai political parties and a variety of protest movements. Our analysis demonstrates that Thailand's Move Forward Party and its predecessor the Future Forward Party can be classified as movement parties, but that they operated differently. While Future Forward was a clandestine movement party, concealing its origins in grassroots activism, Move Forward later revealed its activist roots and underwent a transformation from a clandestine to a fully fledged movement party. This change was triggered by two emerging conditions: the rise of student-led mass movements and collective demands for radical change that had been ignored by other political parties.

This article traces ROK–US negotiations for the termination of the ROK's nuclear weapons program. It was not solely an issue of ROK–US relations; France and Canada, other allies of the United States, were also involved in the ROK's nuclear weapons development. When an ally (ROK) attempted to develop nuclear weapons and another ally (France) pursued commercial interests by exporting nuclear technology, the US-led non-proliferation regime was put at risk. Therefore, the US had to coordinate the interests of its allies. In particular, it attempted to dissuade France from exporting nuclear technology with the support of another ally (Canada). By examining how the US endeavored to coordinate diverse interests, this study ultimately demonstrates that one of the prerequisites for establishing a successful non-proliferation regime led by the US was how to dissuade its ally from seeking financial gain through the export of nuclear technology and instead persuade them to support US-led non-proliferation regime building.

Many studies have been conducted on the link between Confucianism and democratic values in East Asia, but they have failed to account for the complex character of Confucianism and the possible impact of political systems. This study re-measures Confucian values into four dimensions—authoritarianism, familialism, collectivism, and harmoniousness—based on data from the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer survey. It then uses a multi-layer linear regression model to examine the relationship between the Confucian cultural values and the democratic values held by people in six East Asian societies at both the macro and micro levels. The findings demonstrate an asymmetrical pattern in the relationship between the various dimensions of Confucian cultural values and the democratic values of East Asia, collectivist values do not affect democratic values, while familial and authoritarian values have a significant and negative correlation with democratic values. Harmonious values have a significant and positive correlation with democratic values. In addition, there is a significant positive correlation between democratic institutions and the democratic values, and the relationship between the values of harmoniousness and collectivism and democratic values varies across countries with different political systems. This offers insightful material for reflection as we reconsider the connection between Confucianism and democracy in East Asia.

The “environment–economy trade-off” is a key question in research on public opinion on environmental policies. While evidence from Western economies suggests that individuals are more supportive of environmental initiatives when the macroeconomic situation is favorable, little is known about how environmental policy preferences are shaped by economic factors in East and Southeast Asian countries. Using a survey dataset consisting of 12 countries based on the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), we investigate how environmental policy preferences are associated with multiple aspects of economic consideration. In a pooled multilevel analysis, we find that personal economic conditions and perceptions are more consistently associated with greater support for environmental initiatives than objective and subjective national economic conditions. However, an analysis of the heterogeneous effect shows that the effect of individual economic situations is only partially identifiable among lower-middle or upper-income countries in our sample, signaling the complexity of qualifying the relationship between economic considerations and environmental attitudes in a cross-country context.