Asian Politics & Policy最新文献

This policy review analyzes the international cooperation experienced in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically concerning vaccine cooperation. It examines the policy debates of vaccine cooperation within Indonesia from the government, parliament, religious organizations, civil society, and mass media. Although some feel pessimistic about vaccine cooperation, the results found that vaccine cooperation has a positive impact on Indonesia. This is because gradually after the highest COVID-19 cases in July 2021, the government continued to increase the vaccination rate and by the end of September 2021, Indonesia finally reached the lowest case numbers. Therefore, the vaccine cooperation between Indonesia and other countries proved to be effective in reducing the COVID-19 cases in Indonesia. International cooperation is necessary in times of crisis.

This article examines the roles of policy brokers in different settings of collaboration in Khon Kaen and Bueng Kan Cities in Thailand. It integrates the advocacy coalition and multiple stream frameworks to view how a policy broker in different collaborative settings would manage their preferred urban transport initiatives by conducting qualitative research methodology based on an embedded multiple case study approach. The results showed Khon Kaen City revealed a horizontal setting of local collaboration where the Khon Kaen Think Tank and Khon Kaen Transit System were key policy brokers that strategized light rail transit initiatives. These policy brokers were proficient in negotiating, financing, and locally-allied strategies. Bueng Kan City displayed a vertical collaboration where the Deputy Minister of Interior of Thailand was a crucial policy broker who held potential administrative and political powers to manage the desired policies. This study showed that several joint actors, as backing resources to policy brokers, were essential to horizontal collaboration, but they were less critical than the resources of the policy brokers in vertical collaboration.

The Van Fleet Mission's Report has long received much attention in Korea and Japan as a controversial document stating the United States' position on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute. However, linking the Report only with Dokdo/Takeshima is missing the forest for the trees. The Van Fleet Report's genuine importance with regard to the document's intention is that it was an intended blueprint for an American grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific. Its central objective was to organize an anti-communist bloc with Japan as its core and use it to counter the expansionist tendency of Chinese communism toward the Asia-Pacific and strengthen Korea, Japan, and the Philippines military capabilities.

This article examines how participation and mobilization of youth in politics has led to an unintended consequence: youth-led violence. We define youth-led violence as a particular form of political violence that emerged from an interplay between political power, domination, and rent-seeking behavior. To elaborate on youth-led violence between 1990 and 2018 in Nepal, we identified and analyzed push and pull factors that explain the dynamics and dimensions of why youth participate in politics and how it creates a condition where political violence is accepted and normalized.

How do small states create potent foreign policy? This article argues that small states like Taiwan, Mongolia, and Singapore create effective foreign policy by engaging in smart diplomacy. Smart diplomacy, we argue, is an approach whereby smaller states must choose rational foreign policy objectives in a targeted region they can attain through a mix of soft power and niche national branding. We further argue that for most small states, their foreign policy options are limited, and smart diplomacy is the most rational way forward. By analyzing Taiwan's New Southbound Policy as a framework for smart diplomacy, this article argues that a small state will need to engage in smart diplomacy as it seeks to engage its neighbors in the region on people-to-people basis rather than through traditional diplomacy. To achieve that, it would need a clear national brand and niche expertise it can offer its partners.

The digital divide and insufficient social capital of aging, undereducated, and low-income nonnetizens are usually explained by the underpopularization of e-government. This review article moves beyond the mainstream concern over resources and technicalities and seeks to explore the reasons for reluctance, from digital vulnerabilities to e-service. We examine the varying responses to the three e-services launched by the Hong Kong government during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, online vaccination registration, electronic consumption vouchers, and social distancing apps in smartphones, and find that their perception of trust and security could be the major reservation of e-service users. How could we understand the “values” they harbor, and in what circumstances would they be more accepting of the new inventories? Our findings from this developed society in the Asian context might assist policymakers in pushing e-government forward in the post-COVID era.

Although effective bureaucracies are seen as key for service provision in developing states, we still have limited explanations for their emergence. I argue getting these institutions right is a political, rather than technical, challenge based on a set of theoretical predictions for reform outcomes acknowledging the interaction between a state's political vulnerability and degree of bureaucratic independence. I apply these predictions to a controlled comparison of irrigation sector reforms in three Southeast Asian countries. The results demonstrate that the success of institutional reforms necessary to implement policies is contingent on both the degree of vulnerability experienced as well as the extent to which the bureaucracy can influence the policy-making process. In states with highly independent bureaucracies, reforms falter or are reversed due to bureaucratic resistance. This highlights the impact of politics in shaping second-generation reforms and suggest that researchers should pay greater attention to the role bureaucracy plays in forging institutions.