Changes to the institutional structure of trade policymaking are important to understanding why Japan remained largely on the sidelines of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) negotiations in 2010-2012. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) embarked on a series of changes to policymaking institutions, which initially empowered the prime minister and cabinet at the expense of pro-agriculture backbenchers in the ruling party. However, the potential for a breakthrough on farm trade substantially diminished as the institutional reforms were reversed, allowing political supporters of domestic farm interests once more to assert their voice and influence in trade policymaking. Tracing the process of DPJ government decision-making on the TPP reveals that ‘bringing the party back in’ was a major factor in preventing Japan's formally joining the TPP negotiations, despite the strong pro-TPP sentiments of DPJ prime ministers, thus limiting prospects for agricultural trade liberalization.

The Vientiane Action Program, issued in 2013, declared that the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will enhance integration, focusing on connectivity of member states by 2015. One of the policy tasks included in the Vientiane Action program, under the heading of Society, includes health and the environment. This special issue examines how ASEAN citizens evaluate their quality of life and environmentalism in order to help ASEAN achieve its goal of improving health and the environment by 2015 and beyond.

This study is an attempt to construct a quantitative link for international regimes with global leadership. The country's willingness to lead in solving global issues as the first mover in the formation of an international regime is measured and characterized by analyzing their ratification behavior in multilateral conventions deposited to the United Nations which shape ‘the rules of the game’ of the global community. For this purpose, a set of quantitative indicators, the Index of Global Leadership Willingness and the Global Support Index, was defined and calculated for each country based on its actual ratification year data for 120 multilateral conventions covering global issues such as peace and security, environment, commerce, communication, intellectual property protection, human rights, and labor. By proposing a framework of global leadership analysis, the study seeks to provide an empirical testing of the transformation of global governance towards cooperation without hegemony paradigm. The paper analyses changes in the leadership willingness indices of selected country groups, such as the G3, G7/8, and G20, over the century and finds that the will to drive the international agenda of these groups of leaders is in decline. Moreover, our study provides evidence to argue that our current world is actually without consistent global leadership across domains of the world affairs. Although several countries still show visible leadership in specific policy domains, such as environment and intellectual property, neither the G7/8 nor the G20 was playing a comparable role to those performed by the G3 a hundred years ago.

Most new democracies face a challenge of reshaping the political culture to support the new democratic political order. This can often be a long-term process, complicated by the Realpolitik of governing in a new political (and often economic) system. One of the mechanisms of cultural change is generational change. New generations socialized after a democratic transition are presumably educated into the political norms of the new democratic regime. However, one can also imagine that the young lack clear political cues because they grow up under a system in transition, or even reject the new order if it is accompanied by widespread social dislocation. The study of generational change in new democracies thus provides insights into the processes transforming a nation's political culture. We analyze generational change in the new democracies of East Asia using the Second Wave of the East Asian Barometer. We examine support for a democratic/authoritarian regime and the citizenship norms that underlie a democratic process (such as the rule of law and political tolerance). Our results yield evidence of significant generational change in regime norms in these new democracies, which suggests that the political culture is gradually being transformed.

A fundamental component of liberal democracy – citizen knowledge – has only recently been examined in Japan; rarer still are assessments of the impact of media consumption on political awareness. In this paper, we utilize two recent sources – the Japanese Election Studies III (JESIII) and GLOPE2005 – to address two related questions: (1) what factors influence Japanese political knowledge? and (2) is the changing media environment in Japan having an influence on what citizens know about political affairs? With regard to the first question, we find, in line with previous studies in the US context, that knowledge is explained by education, gender, and politically impinged employment as base factors, with interest, efficacy, and civic duty playing a role as second-stage behavioral factors. Evidence of other traits presumed to distinguish the more informed Japanese – dissatisfaction with politics and community mobilization context (living in urban areas, districts with higher voter turnout, and having larger social networks – remains mixed. Regarding the second question, we find that the effects of media exposure on knowledge vary. Where the GLOPE2005 finds an influence of regular newspaper reading, the JESIII indicates that watching a TV news program ‘often’ also boosts knowledge. The JESIII results reveal further that, ceteris paribus, regular exposure to NHK contributes to higher levels of knowledge at a rate that is comparable to a one unit increase in educational attainment. Conversely, we find that softer news programs (e.g., Fuji TV's Super News) have a depressive effect that appears to decrease knowledge as exposure accumulates. The direction of the causal arrow is not entirely clear. At the same time, our findings lend credence to previous work that raises concerns about the ‘infotainization’ of Japanese (and US) news programming (e.g., Taniguchi, 2007; Prior, 2005). Rather than demystifying or democratizing Japanese politics, softer programs may simply be perpetuating extant gaps between elites and the public.

This article focuses on the relationship between emotions and passions, on the one hand, and values, needs and rights, on the other. This relationship is indeed central to the social dimension of international politics. In this perspective, the article examines how emotions and passions can be at the same time effects and causes of the extent to which actors feel that their needs and rights are fulfilled or not. In the process, the article also explores the negative and positive features of emotions and passions, and their impact on the nature and dynamics of change in international affairs. Beyond this general approach to emotions and passions in connection with the social dimension of international politics and the questions of values, needs, and rights of actors and change, it concludes with the idea that there is also a contextual dimension to the generic argument developed in the article. This will have to be factored in for future research on case studies.

We surveyed 2,221 rural residents in twenty towns across ten provinces in China. Structural equation models (SEM) found the quality of government, impartiality of institutions, and authoritarian values among citizens are the three main sources of citizens’ trust in local government. Among various types of recent institutional innovation and government reform, only a type that involves citizens in a formal electoral process, called ‘open nomination and direct election (ONDE)’, significantly improved trust in township-level government. Our models reveal that the movement of power to select local leaders from the hands of upper-level government to local residents erodes the influence of the so-called ‘traditional authority orientation’ among citizens, and enables them to assess trust level according to the competence of the government. Furthermore, elections reduce the trust-generating effect of institutional impartiality as citizens are enfranchised in the ‘input’ process of government, therefore emphasizing ‘outputs’ less.

This study examines the process by which the concept of quality of life has been increasing in importance as the key to ASEAN's socio-cultural integration. This study also focuses on the current trend that emphasizes subjective quality of life and clarifies that ASEAN has been moving toward including this perspective. Then, it analyzes the subjective quality of life of people in ASEAN in terms of self-assessment and the multidimensional World Health Organization Quality of Life metric by using data from the ASEAN Barometer 2009.

This paper presents an explanation for the breakdown of dominant party systems. In contrast to previous works that examine how ruling parties lose their dominant position as a result of interparty competition, this paper focuses on how they are undermined from within by factional conflict. Through an overview of dominant party systems in the postwar world, we show that most of the ruling parties suffered from major splits that significantly reduced their electoral strengths before their final electoral defeat. In order to explain why large groups of politicians decide to leave dominant parties that are likely to remain in power, we develop simple game-theoretic models of intraparty bargaining between party factions over the distribution of benefits from office. Our results suggest two mechanisms through which dominant parties break up. First, factional defections from dominant parties are likely to occur when they are experiencing a significant decline in public support. Second, factional defections are likely to occur when a non-mainstream faction is rapidly losing its bargaining power against the party leadership. Importantly, our results show that under certain conditions, dominant parties will break up even when their electoral prospects are much better than the opposition. We briefly discuss how these mechanisms can be applied to actual cases of dominant party systems.

Employing a two-level game framework, this study examines the decision-making process of the Hatoyama government on the replacement of the US Marine air base in Futenma, Okinawa. Before reaching the final decision to revert to the existing plan of relocating it to Nago City, the cabinet members explored different possible alternatives. Prime Minister Hatoyama simultaneously pursued different international and domestic goals. Misperception and miscommunication between Tokyo and Washington were at play. A two-level game framework provides a clear picture of what Hatoyama tried to pursue and why he failed.

This paper explores the linkage between electoral systems and candidate selection methods (CSMs) by analyzing two innovations of CSMs in Taiwan and Japan: polling primary and kobo, respectively. With an assumption that parties’ CSMs reflect their strategies to win elections, this article offers the rationale behind why and how major parties in Taiwan and Japan adjusted their CSMs to meet the challenges posed by the transition of electoral rules in each country from single non-transferable vote (SNTV) systems to mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) systems. We argue that a party's choice of CSMs reflects its rationale for maximizing the prospects of winning under the given electoral rule, which counters the ‘no-finding’ conclusion in some previous large-N studies on the linkage between electoral systems and choices of CSMs. Additionally, our findings highlight the importance of institutional factors, such as electoral systems, in explaining CSM reforms in a comparative perspective.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries has fostered economic growth recently but in the process has encountered a number of serious problems regarding environmental destruction, such as the air and water pollution. In addition, due to rapid population growth and urbanization, there are emerging concerns about decline of the environment in those countries in the near future. One of the surveys that tries to measure the attitudes of ASEAN citizens on environmental issues is the ASEAN Barometer survey conducted in 2009. This paper aims to unfold how ASEAN citizens evaluate environmental problems and what underlie their evaluations using the aforementioned ASEAN Barometer survey. The results of analysis will mainly reveal the next three points: (1) Filipinos showed higher environmental consciousness; (2) people in a less developed country were more likely to worry about environment deterioration and showed more commitment to the environmental movement, but, at the same time, they were more reticent about their immediate ecological activities; (3) those who thought that central governments needed to commit more to environmental problems and should take greater responsibility for environmental deterioration. Those who expected regional international organizations to take more measures were more inclined to engage in environmental activities.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze people's confidence in political institutions in the so-called BRICS countries, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. I argue that the quality of macroeconomic indicators cannot explain the variation in political confidence between the five most dynamic new emerging economies, and that there is no substantial difference among the young, middle-aged, and senior-aged groups. By combing data from the Asia Barometer Survey and the World Value Survey, I provide two complementary approaches, one sociocultural and the other micropolitical, to reveal the factors that influence people's confidence in four major political institutions. The explanatory effects of these two approaches are mixed. Political identity and values, in most cases, have a significant impact on political confidence. On the other hand, high levels of interpersonal social trust, individual happiness, and satisfaction with living standards also show positive influences.

This study analyzed public opinion data for the 45 societies from the latest World Values Survey and found that Internet use promotes democratic support in democratic countries but not in authoritarian countries. In advanced democracies, democratic ideas and thoughts are freely produced and disseminated in cyberspace, and Internet users tend to absorb them. On the other hand, this online content is highly controlled by authoritarian governments in non-democratic settings, and Internet users are likely to be exposed to pro-government messages and entertainment, thereby nullifying the democratic utility of Internet use. These different social learning processes result in a global reinforcement effect of Internet use on democratic support. The results confirm that the Internet is a neutral technology and its effect depends on the political environment where it is used.

This paper explores preferences and attitudes related to fiscal federalism held by the ASEAN people in the context of environmental issues. Fiscal federalism would predict that local environmental problems will be handled more efficiently by local governments, while national environmental problems will be solved more efficiently by the national government. But it is not obvious whether citizens consider in the same way as economics theory predicts. To unveil this point, I address questions of whether those who have higher consciousness toward environmental issues at the neighbor or local level prefer local governments to decide environment policies, whether those who have more consciousness about environmental issues at the national level prefer the national government to decide the policies, and whether those who have higher consciousness toward environmental problems at global level prefer higher levels government such as the United Nations to decide the policies. By fitting multi-level probit regressions to cross-national survey data collected in ASEAN countries, I found the results supporting the hypotheses. The country analyses show the results which support the hypotheses in Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

This paper aims to develop a coherent analytical tool to explain the dynamics of Sino-Japanese pluralized leadership. Highlighting the constructivist concept of critical strategic practice, it argues that the nature of pluralized leadership is not fixed by existing social structures, but rather can be dynamically changed by potential leaders through critical reflection and actions to transform identities. It then suggests three possible types of pluralized leadership: collective leadership, competitive coexistence, and a blocking power relationship. These are determined by whether two leadership aspirants succeed in establishing institutionalized social networks and shared norms between them and whether a leadership aspirant gains a majority of followers for its leadership project. The paper shows that China and Japan have engaged in both competitive coexistence and a blocking power relationship through their critical strategic practice.

Culture is a demanding word, particularly when it is used in the context of the contemporary academic discipline of international relations (IR). It is often employed in order to distinguish one identity from another, allegedly illuminating idiosyncrasies embedded in a particular society or group of people. The essentialized understanding of culture is also detectable in the case of the current debate on the non-Western international relations theories (IRT). Non-Western politicians and scholars often employ the term culture in order to distinguish their values from alleged Western values. However, culture has another important function mainly advanced by a left-wing Kyoto School philosopher Tosaka Jun, that is, culture as a mirror for critical reflection for morality (Tosaka, 1966). This article is based on Tosaka's argument that culture has an important function for moral reflection beyond that of a mere means to identify one's distinctiveness from the West, and it criticizes Japan's soft power diplomacy or the total absence of it from that point of view. It also argues that this absence is the result of the soft power discourse's over-simplified interpretation of culture that results in confrontation between the West and the rest, particularly when it is employed in non-Western IRT discourses. Towards the end, I examine Miyazaki Hayao's films, Princes Mononoke in particular, as examples of cultural works facilitating a moment of critical reflection, and I extract embedded messages of relevance to critical reflection on contemporary IR literature, particularly non-Western literature.

How do state identities and their accompanying norms affect security behaviour especially when states consider forming alliances or alignments? Are middle powers different from great powers in their security norms and preferences? This article identifies dependency and activism as two ‘identity norms’ that constitute and reproduce medium-sized states as bona fide middle powers. This article argues that, due to the identity norms of a middle power, Japan and South Korea are reluctant to form a bilateral alliance between themselves and their efforts to socialize with China do not necessarily contradict their security relationships with the United States. The first section focuses on the norm of dependency to illustrate whether Japan and South Korea sought to strengthen bilateral alignment in the event of major security crises, provoked by China and North Korea. It argues that a middle power is not disposed to strengthen alignment with another middle power in the event of a national security crisis because of its entrenched norm of dependency on a great power. The second section elaborates the norm of middle power activism. Both Japan and South Korea have engaged in diplomatic efforts to enmesh China in a number of multilateral security mechanisms in order to hedge against the relative decline of US influences in East Asia.

The political landscape in Malaysia has been changing since the late 1990s with a gradual rise in resistance from civil society and the opposition parties. Domestic politics have become more contentious recently, particularly evidenced by the advent of a strong civil society and a multi-cultural opposition coalition. Thus, the social capital stimulated by ICTs and CSOs has played a vital role in strengthening and empowering the role of the opposition parties in Malaysia. This study seeks to understand how ICT-driven social capital has facilitated the surge in the opposition movement by situating the political use of social capital in a broader socio-political context. Hence the dramatic political change has been intertwined with the dynamics of social capital and creation of a public sphere accelerated by the rapid growth of ICTs in the country. By analyzing recent voting patterns, this study demonstrates that ICT-driven social capital does have a great impact on the changing political landscape in Malaysia, particularly in shaping voting behavior and political participation of Malay and non-Malay citizens in domestic politics.

This article analyses the discourse of three prime ministers – Koizumi, Aso, and Hatoyama – to explore how each leader identified the political self and constructed and promoted a particular relationship with the voter before the general elections. The outcome indicates the emergence of a new political communication style based on a party–citizen relationship as business–consumer. Whereas Aso's patron–client discourse pinpoints the role of the responsible and bureaucratic state in protecting Japan, the business–consumer discourse of both Koizumi and Hatoyama demonstrates the entrepreneurial leaders’ willingness to listen to individuals in order to meet their needs and expectations. We speculate that the social norms and values of the business–consumer model might have played a role in attracting a large number of unorganized voters to Koizumi in 2005 and in turn to Hatoyama in 2009.