In this article, I examine two contemporary cases in which the same foreign adversary, North Korea (DPRK), violated the sovereignty of neighboring states. I use a comparison of South Korean and Japanese reactions to political captivity to assess institutional performance in democratic states and ways in which these dynamics are connected to international politics. We see how “captivity narratives” can be differentially constructed and deployed and how policy capture can be achieved by determined political actors. Civic groups in both countries worked to mobilize political support, frame the issue for the media, and force policy change. In Japan, politicians were more willing to use the abduction issue for domestic political gain than in Korea, where the political class was determined to prevent human rights issues (including abductions) from interfering with their larger political agenda, including improved relations with the DPRK.

Comparative politics has witnessed periodic debates between proponents of contextually sensitive area studies research and others who view such work as unscientific, noncumulative, or of limited relevance for advancing broader social science knowledge. In Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis, edited by Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu, a group of bright, young Southeast Asianists argue that contextually sensitive research in Southeast Asia using qualitative research methods has made fundamental and lasting contributions to comparative politics. They challenge other Southeast Asianists to assert proudly the contributions that their work has made and urge the rest of the comparative politics discipline to take these contributions seriously. This symposium includes four short critical reviews of Southeast Asia in Political Science by political scientists representing diverse scholarly traditions. The reviews address both the methodological and the theoretical orientations of the book and are followed by a response from the editors.

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.

This article argues that Indonesia's Constitutional Court has played a significant role in that country's transformation from a violence-prone polity into Southeast Asia's most stable democracy. The Court has advanced institutional conflict resolution mechanisms and expanded democratic rights—two achievements identified by Linz and Stepan as major indicators of a consolidating democracy. Building on models developed by Ginsburg and Horowitz, my analysis also illustrates why the Court has been able to defend its autonomy and become an agent of democratization. While sharing Ginsburg's emphasis on high levels of power diffusion as a key reason for the Court's success, this article moves beyond such an approach. Most importantly, it suggests that the judges' “judicial activism”—as expressed in a number of controversial but popular decision—increased Indonesian society's support for the Court to such an extent that is has now become largely invulnerable to attempts of external intervention.

East Asia has increased its formal institutional linkages in both the economic and security arenas. This article addresses three questions concerning this expansion. First, why has the number of institutions increased? Second, why is there so little overlap in the purposes and memberships of these many new bodies? Third, why have most regional institutions achieved such limited policy successes? The article demonstrates that the bulk of the new economic institutions represent collective responses to generalized pressures from globalized finance, whereas the new security bodies deal with regionally endogenous problems of a highly particularistic character. Furthermore, most regional bodies in East Asia still reflect the preeminence of individual state strategies rather than any collective predisposition toward multilateralism per se. East Asian regionalism thus represents a complex “ecosystem” of institutions whose future is likely to see the enhancement of some and the diminution of others through a process referred to here as “institutional Darwinism.”

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.

We explore in this article an institutional foundation of agricultural protectionism in Japan, a country long recognized as resisting international pressures to open up its rice market. Using our qualitative analysis of postwar politics of agricultural protectionism and a simple formal model, we argue that farmers in Japan have stronger incentives to mobilize electoral support for the governing party in multimember district systems than in single-member district systems, because the marginal effects of mobilization on policy benefits are different under these electoral systems. Our empirical findings corroborate this claim and provide implications for the gradual changes in Japan's farm policies occurring after the electoral reform in 1994.

Particularistic spending has played a storied role in Japanese politics, but during the last decade of LDP rule, expenditures on roads, bridges, agricultural projects, and the like steadily lost ground to more programmatic outlays on social welfare, science and technology, and public order (but not defense or foreign aid). Prime Minister Koizumi played an important role in this shift, but the trends preceded him and continued under his much weaker successors. The end of the Cold War, increasing foreign investment, and the weakness of the domestic economy probably played mostly minor roles in the decline of particularism. The aging of Japanese society, not least in rural areas, created direct pressure for programmatic spending, while partisan upheaval, the growing share of floating voters, and reforms to the electoral and administrative systems created both an incentive and a greater capacity to redirect attention to the concerns of median voters.

The years since 2004 have been marked by a level of insurgency in the southern region of Thailand unknown for decades. An accurate perspective on this conflict requires a deeper understanding of differences between the Buddhist and Muslim Thais of the region than has been evident in public and academic discourse. This study utilizes data from a survey taken in 2006, of attitudes and political orientations across all regions of Thailand, including an independent sample of the southern region. The data indicate that southerners are different from the rest of Thailand, whether Buddhist or Muslim; that Malay-speaking Muslims are different from other Muslims; and that sympathy for the insurgency lies not in religion, but in defending practices associated with loyalty to specific forms of Malay culture that characterize the region.

Leading theories of transitions from single-party dominant systems begin with economic crisis, the party's loss of patronage resources, and elite-level defections. The multiparty elections that are then held exert no independent effect, but instead register neutrally the party's decline and the democratization of politics. This article, however, shifts attention from the dominant party to citizens and elections in noncrisis conditions. It argues that citizens assess on key dimensions the dominant party's legitimacy or worthiness of support. Further, where they grow critical of its policy outputs, they scrutinize more closely its conformity to procedures. And as they anticipate that their voting preferences will be thwarted by electoral manipulations, they vote in protest, perhaps producing a “liberalizing electoral outcome.” Elections, then, do not simply indicate the dominant party's decline. By deepening alienation, they help citizens to cause it. Analysis is set in Malaysia, long an exemplar of single-party dominance, but recently a case in which the government was dealt a striking electoral setback.

Extant research on immigrant incorporation pays little attention to variations among immigrants from the same ethnic origin. A main purpose of this study is to address this research void by exploring how differences in the pre-emigration socialization context for immigrants from a politically divided homeland may affect their participation in mainstream-oriented and homeland-regarded politics. I posit that experiences Asian immigrants have in different political systems before crossing the Pacific may result in different relationships they maintain with their homeland as well as different attitudes toward homeland government and policies they develop after the crossing; and this, in turn, may affect how much they participate in politics on both sides of the Pacific. However, through the process of resocialization, I also suggest immigrants' political behavior may be influenced by their degree of exposure to the host society as well as by their connectedness with its institutions. Using data from the 2007 Chinese American Homeland Politics survey, I focus on the experiences of US immigrants of Chinese descent from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to test these hypotheses.

Business interests are overrepresented in Hong Kong's nominally democratic political institutions. Many in Hong Kong perceive this as evidence of the existence of “collusion between government and business,” a phenomenon that has stirred public concerns in the city since its sovereignty transfer. Although anecdotal accounts abound, no systematic analysis has been conducted to evaluate the validity of this perception. In this article I use a rich firm-level dataset to offer the first systematic assessment of the effects of political connections on firm performance in Hong Kong. I define politically connected firms as firms that have stakeholders concurrently holding a seat on the Election Committee, a constitutional body that elects the city's chief executive. I found evidence, though not overwhelming, consistent with the “collusion” hypothesis: political connections do improve firm performance measured by return on equity and market-to-book ratio. The improvement is unlikely due to unobserved confounding factors such as firms' inherent ability. As for the origin of the political connections, the data show that a firm's economic power has little predictive value of its connections to the Election Committee. Rather, number of employees matters; firms that hire fewer workers were more likely to gain a seat on the 1997 Election Committee. This result may suggest that Beijing plays a more dominant role in the formation of political connections—that serve Beijing's co-optation needs rather than the interests of powerful firms that may have a desire to “capture” the state.

The Asian values debate has been long on speculative advocacy but short on empirical validation, with statistical tests emerging only lately. This study explores two questions: whether Asians indeed hold distinct cultural attitudes when compared with non-Asians and whether these cultural attitudes and beliefs identified as Asian values form coherent dimensions among Asians. The study first identifies four dimensions of Asian values based on a review of various Asian values discourses: familism, communalism, authority orientations, and work ethic. The findings from the empirical analysis based on multilevel models and factor analysis return mixed support for the Asian values hypothesis. Although East Asian respondents do exhibit strong work-related values compared with those from other regions, commitment to familial values and authoritarian orientations are actually lower among East Asians. Also, while preference for strong leadership and parental duty do turn out to form distinct sets of attitudes among South and Southeast Asians, the four dimensions do not constitute a clear value complex in the minds of East Asians.

Previous research claims that associational membership produces social capital. Employing the first wave of the Asian Barometer Survey conducted in 2003, this study investigates the development of social capital and its political consequences in South Korea. Rather than study simple association membership, I examine the quality of civil society (defined as associational commitment and interaction) that individuals pursue through membership. This, I believe, provides a close test of the theoretical impact of social interactions on political participation. The findings indicate that there is a positive association between voluntary activity and two modes of political activity (voting and campaign participation) in different ways and to varying degrees. Associational membership is a significant predictor of voting. In the case of the quality of social capital, associational interaction (talking politics with group members) turns out to be significant in encouraging participation in election campaigns. Overall, my findings on the role of social capital support Putnam's argument that group interactions foster democratic participation.

Soviet and East European documents provide significant revelations about the interactions of North Korea and its allies. First, they show Pyongyang's longstanding interest in obtaining nuclear technology and probably nuclear weapons. Second, they reveal that North Korea's leadership consistently evaded commitments to allies on nuclear matters—particularly constraints on its nuclear ambitions or even the provision of information. Third, North Korea's words and deeds evoked substantial concerns in Moscow and other communist capitals that Pyongyang, if it obtained nuclear weapons, might use them to blackmail its partners or risk provoking a nuclear war. When aid from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not forthcoming, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea sought to bypass Moscow and obtain assistance from the Kremlin's East European clients and, when that proved fruitless, from Pakistan. The absence of international support reinforced the logic of self-reliance and “military first,” pushing North Korea to pursue an independent line with respect to its nuclear weapons. These patterns cannot be extrapolated in a linear way, but they surely suggest reasons for caution by those hoping to engage North Korea in a grand bargain.