Political polarization has been a growing concern in Japan, particularly in recent years with the upsurge of nationalism and populism. However, little research has examined how it relates to the political behavior of the Japanese people. Using data from the 2005–2019 Japanese Electoral Studies (JES), this study shows that political polarization manifests itself in different ways depending on the specific policy domains that citizens perceive as divergent. Specifically, I discover that people who perceive higher levels of policy divergence between left- and right-wing parties on domestic and international policies are more likely to vote and participate in politics through publicly accessible networks, while there appears to be no evidence showing that perceiving high levels of policy divergence on economic issues has a meaningful effect on any type of political participation. Implications of these findings as well as directions for future research are discussed.

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.

A major focus of the democratic backsliding literature has been on “executive aggrandizement” in electoral, institutional, and civil societal arenas. An influential explanation of the strength of opposition to aggrandizers contends that the more democratic accountability remains despite illiberal stratagems, the stronger the pushback is likely to be. A single-country temporal comparison of three aggrandizing Philippine presidents—Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Rodrigo Duterte—demonstrates that this view not only fails to account for stark variation in opposition, it predicts the reverse of what actually occurred. Despite election fraud, constitutional manipulation, and protest crackdowns, Marcos Sr. and Arroyo confronted stronger pushback. By contrast, opposition against Duterte gained little traction although elections remained competitive, institutions were left largely intact, and there was little repression of peaceful protests. This suggests that opposition efficacy is more dependent on how effectively it can contest democratic legitimation claims used to disguise autocratization.

Despite increasing scholarly attention to backlash against feminism, little is known about anti-feminist movements in East Asia. This study examines the 2022 South Korean presidential election campaign, in which the political parties sought to capitalize on political resistance to the perceived advance of feminism. This embrace of male grievance as a political force was arguably led by former People Power Party (PPP) chairman Lee Jun-seok, leading commenters to argue that support for Lee is rooted in misogyny. We examine this claim empirically by drawing on a novel survey to estimate the association between misogynistic attitudes, measured through devaluation, perception of women as manipulative, and distrust, and support for Lee. We find that misogynistic attitudes are positively correlated with support for Lee, but not with presidential vote choice. We interpret this as suggesting that the association between misogyny and support for Lee is a manifestation of the desire for symbolic representation. We discuss the implications of how this association can further influence the gender divide, both in Korea and beyond, and conclude with recommendations for further research.

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.

This study examines the Kōmeitō's strategies for policy influence within the coalition framework with its coalition partner, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) during the period of Second Abe Administration (2012–2020). As a junior coalition partner, Kōmeitō faces unity–distinctiveness dilemma, where it must accommodate policy demands of the senior partner while appeasing its core support base, Sōka Gakkai. This article argues that the junior partner's strategies for policy influence are determined by two factors: overlap/distinctiveness of policy inclinations and the positive/negative issue associations measured by the level of involvement in decision-making, i.e. portfolio allocation. Three cases are analyzed to elucidate the diversity of Kōmeitō's policy influence, the strategies of which range from corrective moderation, to nudging, to threats, all utilized to maintain a balance between reinforcing “distinctiveness” from the senior partner and consolidating coalition coherence to sustain competence within the coalition framework.

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.

US legislators show a remarkable variation in how many bills and resolutions they sponsor and cosponsor to support Taiwan. I argue that legislators’ perception of China and their partisan identity play a crucial role in shaping their support for Taiwan. To test my hypotheses, I conducted a quantitative analysis of all Taiwan-specific bills and resolutions introduced from the 110th to 116th House of Representatives. The results indicate that legislators who view China as a security threat to the US or a non-democracy and a human rights violator exhibit a higher level of support for Taiwan. However, seeing China as an economic challenger has the least significant effect. Furthermore, although there is a general consensus that Taiwan is a bipartisan issue in Congress, my research demonstrates that Republicans display a greater level of interest in supporting Taiwan compared to Democrats.

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.

This research examines how Beijing uses social media to publicize donations and engage in nation branding as it responds to the global backlash sparked by Covid-19. It argues that self-reports of medical donations aim to enhance China’s national brand, leading to an expectation that reports about donations will primarily target countries more severely affected by the virus. To test its claims, the research analyzes over 55,000 tweets published by Chinese diplomatic missions. The results—controlled for Chinese donation exports—show a positive and significant relationship between self-reports of medical donations and the host’s spread of Covid-19. In contrast, donations are not correlated with political or economic allies. A comparison of government (CCP, ministries, etc.) and non-government donors (immigrants, firms, etc.) shows that only donations by the latter are positively correlated with the spread of the virus. This research advances our knowledge of Chinese diplomats’ online political behavior.