Asian Politics & Policy最新文献

How do forms of trust influence South Korean views of North Korean arrivals? While a broad literature addresses the institutional and generalized social trust impacting a range of public perceptions, this has not been extended to views on North Korean arrivals. Meanwhile, research on views of arrivals often relies on only one measure for what are likely complex concerns. Through the use of a 2021 Korean Social Integration Survey, we find evidence of institutional and social trust positively influencing overall views of arrivals, with mixed results on the impact on proximal tolerance of arrivals, suggesting that policy efforts to enhance trust as a means to improve integration efforts may fail to produce substantive improvements for arrivals.

Very little research has focused on types of cooperation between different civil society organizations at the domestic level. This article fills this gap by developing the distinction between organization-based and society-based cooperation. Examining Hong Kong's unique political system, the paper highlights both types. The Save Our Country Park Alliance (SOCP) exemplifies organization-centric collaboration, requiring consensus among diverse NGOs, which can hinder decision-making. Conversely, the Save Lantau Alliance (SLA) demonstrates society-centric cooperation with flexible, quick mobilization through core active member organizations and collaboration with pro-democratic groups. Despite the 2020 National Security Law forcing many liberal organizations to disband, the SLA persists in its efforts to preserve Lantau, though it faces increased challenges in an environment hostile to society-based activism. This distinction enhances our understanding of civil society alliances in varying political contexts.

Nepal introduced federalism in 2015 with three levels of government: federal, provincial, and local. The preamble of the constitution mentions that the country's new federal system of government shall address three key perennial political and policy problems: (i) centralized governance structure, (ii) geographically disbalancing developmental approach, and (iii) social injustice leveraged by caste-based social structures and unequal economic opportunities. This research is an attempt to understand the first 5-year tenure of provincial governments (2017–2022) regarding their efforts to attain the aforesaid constitutional aims. Findings indicate that provincial governments operated in ambiguity during their first electoral tenure, resulting in no tangible outcomes. Instead, they generated rather pessimistic public impressions about provincial government structure in Nepal. The research contributes to broadening the insights on intermediary government mechanisms across federal countries, with empirical evidence from Nepal.

What might the foreign policy of a potential Trump presidency or that of a Harris presidency look like, and what could their respective implications for the Indo-Pacific be? The likelihood that Trump will revive his “America First” doctrine, including his trade war with China, suggests that the region may be in for another bumpy ride from a “Trump 2.0.” A Harris presidency will likely continue Biden's policy in engaging deeply (but selectively) with the Indo-Pacific, while “de-risking” America from China and resisting Chinese efforts to delimit the global commons and deny others access to it. Whether led by Trump or Harris, it is likely that the United States will proactively take on China but in slightly different ways. In either instance, Southeast Asia stands to benefit if the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries play their cards right, but it will be in terms of their perceived usefulness to America's effort to counter China.

The dependency relationship in economic and trade cooperation between countries has long been a subject of ongoing debate among scholars of international relations. Albert Hirschman proposed his theory, known as the “Hirschman effect,” which examines how profit-making groups influence the foreign policies of nations. However, this article contends that interest groups alone cannot fully account for the Hirschman effect. Through examining cases involving Southeast Asian countries and China, it becomes evident that security needs and interest preferences collectively influence the strength of the Hirschman effect between small and large countries. Specifically, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines illustrate varying degrees of the Hirschman effect, with Cambodia exhibiting a positive effect, Malaysia demonstrating a composite effect, and the Philippines displaying a negative effect.

On August 31, 2021, 20 years after the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, President Biden announced the completion of the United States (US) withdrawal from Afghanistan. The difficult conditions of the withdrawal raised major questions about US credibility, as images from Kabul were broadcasted around the world. Pundits, scholars, and former decision makers warned that reputational damages incurred by Washington could lead Chinese decision makers to reassess the credibility of US commitments in the Indo-Pacific. Few studies have, however, examined how China interpreted the Afghanistan withdrawal. This article proposes to fill this gap. It argues that though Chinese observers did see the Afghanistan withdrawal as caused by a lack of US resolve, this perceived lack of resolve did not translate into general reputational costs for the United States and, consequently, calculations made by Chinese observers about US credibility in the Indo-Pacific region remain largely unimpacted by the Afghanistan setback.

What explains the exponential growth of the number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China during the recent decades? Moving beyond the extant literature that focuses on the strategic relationship between NGOs and the local state, this article argues that the growth can be also attributed to the central state which has focused on the promotion of different types of NGOs throughout time. The proactive role of the central state has become more conspicuous under the Xi Jinping administration where the party-state plays a more active role in maneuvering the growth of a service-oriented third sector. This adaptive strategy has led to the counterintuitive phenomenon of an increase in institutional space for NGOs in authoritarian China, especially the social service-oriented NGOs in recent years. This article draws from theories of institutional change to explain the process through which the central state has expanded institutional space for NGOs throughout time.