In the wake of the intensifying Sino–Japanese rivalry in Asia, a new third-party market cooperation (TPMC) framework emerged in late 2018. The new mechanism was inaugurated around the time of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Beijing, displaying new attempts at Sino–Japanese economic diplomacy. Nonetheless, this article highlights the absence of major cooperative outcomes and suggests a pessimistic vision of TPMC's future, as three pairs of politico-economic gaps have led to asymmetries in the approaches adopted by China and Japan. First, a government-to-government policy asymmetry occurred between China's initiatives and Japan's responsiveness, as the latter merely utilized the TPMC as a temporary diplomatic tool to restore bilateral relations in late 2018 and appeared to have lost its policy momentum in the following years. Second, asymmetries in business modes and investment management between the two countries' enterprises have led to technical barriers in materializing the two governments' agreements into specific TPMC business collaboration. This study illustrated a project of Sino–Japanese collaboration in building a high-speed railway in Thailand, and saw this failed case as a warning for existing gaps of commercial modes. Third, both countries are now confronted with domestic underdeveloped public–private partnerships between state and private sectors. This article also aims to provide some policy-oriented implications for steadily implementing the Sino–Japanese TPMC in the future.

While vaccine hesitancy has become a salient issue, few studies have examined the influence of international collaboration and vaccine developments on people's attitudes towards vaccines. The international collaboration especially with China has been an integral part of the field of influenza. In recent years, attitudes towards vaccines and China are both heavily politicized in the USA with a deepening partisan divide. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to be vaccine hesitant, and they are also more likely to view China negatively. At the same time, the USA has economic, security, and medical collaboration with Japan and most Americans display a very positive view of the country. Thus, does a more international collaboration or more country-specific vaccine development have an influence on US vaccine hesitancy? This study conducts a survey-embedded question-wording experiment to assess the roles of US–China and US–Japan collaboration and partisanship in people's willingness to get the flu vaccine. Despite the previously successful and effective US–China collaboration, this study finds that respondents especially Republicans are much less likely to receive a US–China flu vaccine than a US–Japan or USA alone. Interestingly, both Democrats and Republicans are as willing to receive a US–Japan vaccine as USA alone. These results point to critical roles of partisanship and international relations.

Lottocracy and epistocracy have received deeply insightful attention as political regimes. Herein, by conducting an experiment using an online survey, we explored the extent to which public opinion is receptive to political decisions under various regimes regarding two environmental policies: education policy and environmental tax policy. By doing so, we examined whether the presence of tax burdens affected the acceptability of political regimes, i.e., electoral democracy, lottocracy, and epistocracy. Our results revealed that decisions based on lottocracy and epistocracy were significantly less acceptable than those based on electoral democracy. Nevertheless, lottocratic and epistocratic decisions were more acceptable regarding the issue of environmental tax policy. The difference was mainly attributed to people's rejection of environmental tax policy offsetting their rejection of lottocracy and epistocracy. This suggests, first, that decisions based on electoral democracy increase policies' acceptability if they do not involve taxation, and second, that the status of whether or not a decision is electoral does not significantly affect policy acceptability if taxation is involved, whereas on the other hand, people are sensitive to differences between the regimes if the policy does not involve taxation.

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.

Why do people's preferences towards trade liberalization fluctuate? And why do we observe the eventual return of public support towards free trade? The traditional literature in international political economy has typically calculated individuals' preferences based on their comparative advantage as income-earners, which arises from their specific or general skill level or employment status. What needs to be taken into account, however, is that their economic preferences are constructed based upon their intertwined identities as both income-earners and consumers. We designed and conducted an experiment in Japan (2015) that would impartially elicit answers regarding respondents' daily consumption patterns or (and) employment concerns rather than deliberately or artificially informing them of the potential benefits or harms of trade liberalization. The results display that consumer priming offsets negative impacts arising from employment priming. The consumer effect reduces individuals' concerns on income level or employment when they are exposed to consumer and employment primings simultaneously. Furthermore, our subgroup analyses reveal that the consumer effect remains even among those experiencing economic fragility such as low income or job insecurity. This suggests that potential losers have incentives to support free trade by appreciating consumer benefits.

The current study explores the relationship between housing wealth and political outcomes at the regional level in South Korea, providing insights that extend beyond the scope of previous research, which has primarily concentrated on individual or macro levels. It focuses specifically on district-level dynamics within the unique context of South Korea to uncover the underlying mechanisms of housing politics. The findings indicate a clear trend: as the average price of apartments – a key indicator of housing wealth – rises in a district, there is an increased tendency for residents to support candidates from the conservative party. Furthermore, the data-driven analysis highlights the significance of housing wealth amidst various regional characteristic variables, particularly in its capacity to distinguish the target regions. By employing comprehensive data and a multi-dimensional analytical approach, this study unravels the intricate relationship between housing wealth and political outcomes within a regional context. In doing so, it greatly enhances our understanding of the impact of housing wealth on political outcomes, bridging the gap between individual behaviours and national trends, and underscoring the pivotal role of housing wealth in shaping regional political dynamics.

This study examines the political dynamics that shape legislators' policy positions on importing US meat into Taiwan during the past decade, focusing on the cases of US beef in 2012 and US pork in 2021. The trade policy surrounding this issue has become politically contentious, involving conflicting national interests and constituency preferences. Legislators face a dilemma, torn between prioritizing the interests of their constituents and aligning with their party's interests. The central argument posits that legislators affiliated with the ruling party are more inclined to advocate for or adjust their stances to support the removal of import bans on American meat, while those associated with the opposition party tend to exhibit a greater reluctance to endorse such a stance. Factors such as the legislators' constituent's interests, district vs party-list affiliations, the urban–rural divide, or education level do not consistently explain legislators' positions on the US meat trade policy. To examine these arguments, this study employs a mixed-method approach, incorporating quantitative analysis and two case studies of individual legislators. The findings of this study offer empirical support for the central proposition.

Candidates from established political families are more likely to win than their non-dynastic counterparts because their political inheritance often includes significant advantages in resources and reputation. Yet dynastic candidates also bring their own set of experiences and qualities to the game. Is it the case that their individual characteristics can explain their electoral success, or is their success due to their family legacy? Theoretically, how and when are political resources transferred to the new generation? We examine these questions by looking at non-incumbent candidates in city and county council elections in Taiwan from 2009 to 2014, drawing on unique data on politicians' backgrounds. The profile of dynastic candidates differs from that of non-dynastic candidates: they are younger, have less electoral experience and list experience in different sorts of organizations and jobs. However, these differences are not what drives their electoral success; indeed, they tend to win despite these qualities rather than because of them. Even after controlling for candidate quality, dynastic status remains a powerful predictor, conveying roughly a 20 percentage point increase in the probability of winning. This suggests that while dynastic candidates accrue some of their advantage long before they run for office, a large part of the inheritance is transferred during the campaign.

Political trust, which signifies the belief in the responsible exercise of power by political institutions, is a fundamental prerequisite for democratic legitimacy. However, even amidst a democratic deficit, the public's trust in the military can remain firm. This study aims to illuminate the prevailing trend and potential factors influencing public trust in the military in Taiwan from 2001 to 2022. The trajectory of trust in Taiwan's military implies fluctuating trust levels in response to the varying intensity of external threats. However, in general, confidence in the armed forces remains higher than that in other political institutions, a trend that is also observed in other nations. The statistical evidence demonstrates substantial support for both cultural and institutional explanations of political trust in the military in Taiwan throughout the initial two decades of the twenty-first century. However, the institutional explanation appears to be more robust than the cultural explanation. Notably, statistical results on trust in the government are consistent across all six survey rounds, with institutional factors showing higher overall significance in the pooled dataset compared to cultural factors, thereby emphasizing the institutional perspective.

The study of party systems tends to focus on individual parties and overlooks factions and other sub-party units. Although the impact of the district magnitude on the number of electoral parties is well established, the electoral rules incentives on party subunits have been overlooked. Using electoral results at the district level, we assess the effect of the district magnitude on the effective number of parties and effective number of factions competing in elections and with legislative seats in Colombia (1958–1990). By focusing on parties and factions, we produce empirical evidence from 444 datapoints to support the claim made elsewhere that roots of multi-partism were present throughout the period studied, including under the National Front (1958–1970), where only two parties were permitted. The district magnitude impacts the number of parties and the number of party subunits, but its effect is stronger on the former. When the National Front came to an end and electoral rules were modified in the 1970s, there was an increase in party factionalism and new parties in the years before multiparty system rules were enshrined in the 1991 constitution.

Many democracies have questioned the policy effectiveness of parliamentary petitions because the legislative approval of petitions does not legally bind follow-up measures that lead to petition realization. This study examines the connection between a legislature's adoption of petitions and ex-post policy implementation, using data from an original mail survey of previous petitioners at the prefectural level in Japan. Regression analysis and empirical insights from case studies suggest that the disclosure and transparency of the petition process, especially the issuance of progress reports, enhance officials' commitment to petitions' broad goals, leading to greater accountability, which, in turn, facilitates increased petition realization. These findings imply that citizens in Japan can expect democratic responsiveness to function, partly through the parliamentary petition system after an election.