Asian Politics & Policy最新文献

Local policy experimentation was a driving force behind China's economic progress, but its results in the field of social policy are more ambiguous. This article takes a lesson-drawing perspective on the transfer of international hospital payment reforms to Chinese cities, focusing on the Urban Employees' Basic Medical Insurance. We distinguish two waves of reform. The first wave was driven by local government initiatives dominated by simplified versions of international models which lacked strong prospective payment components (inspirations) and protected local bureaucratic and hospital interests. The second wave was driven by central government intervention dominated by syntheses and adaptations with strong prospective payment components and was more oriented toward patients' interests. Data were collected via expert interviews, administrative documents, academic studies, and newspaper articles. We find that elements of social policy are transferred depending on central–local interaction, with pressure from the center needed to overcome local bureaucratic self-interest.

East Asian policy transfer and diffusion is conceived as following a “flying geese” model but transformations in the region challenged this hierarchical leader-follower relationship between countries. Based on the articles in this Special Issue, this article seeks to nuance the flying geese dynamics of policy transfer. New types of transfer agents afford a different view of agency in policy transfer. Modes of governance and administrative traditions increasingly shape transfer dynamics and its tempo. Historical relations between countries increasingly affect the perception of legitimacy and appropriateness of policies to be borrowed. Most cases point to the transfer of specialized and successful models or recipes within national and subnational entities. There is a notable variety of temporalities in transfer, often intermediated by experimentation and an active but often limited “search” for solutions. We conclude by presenting an agenda for future research about policy transfer and diffusion beyond the flying geese model in East Asia.

Conventional research on global cities and policy transfer focuses on global cities in developed democracies. How Asian global cities innovate and transfer social policy has received less scholarly attention. I argue that transnational policy transfer (TPT) has occurred between more mature global cities in Asia and emerging global cities in China in the post-reform era. Empirically, this article examines the policy domain of affordable housing (AH) and identifies two mature models of AH provision: asset-based welfare (ABW) in Singapore and public rental housing (PRH) in Hong Kong. It then traces how these models were transferred in three emerging global cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. While Shanghai has favored Singapore's ABW model, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have prioritized Hong Kong's PRH model. By selecting three cases with different political-administrative statuses, this article shows how authoritarian politics can interact with the agency of global cities in shaping varying TPT trajectories.

This article verifies three conditions in its aim to confirm the influence of Japan's experience on the introduction timing and policy model of South Korean long-term care insurance (LTCI). First, the LTCI systems in Korea and Japan agree in terms of their core principles. Both are based on a separate social insurance system and ensure financial sustainability at the expense of service quality in response to the need to elevate expenditure. Second, the policymaking process reveals the reference relationship between the two systems. The advocacy coalition for LTCI suggested introducing an LTCI based on Japan's experience. However, their rationale was constrained due to the bounded rationality of policy learning. Finally, this article demonstrates that the rival arguments cannot completely explain the introduction of the Korean LTCI without considering the bounded learning argument. Consequently, the results of this study indicate that policy learning is critical to welfare development in latecomer welfare states.

Many documented cases of policy transfer in Asia involve small and medium enterprises as well as public enterprises but little is known about how and why these local private actors participate in transnational policy transfer networks. We propose a relational view of policy transfer to examine how agency is exercised in these kinds of transfer networks. We develop a typology of the engagement of these private actors—solutionist and entrepreneur—based on their relational position in the policy transfer process and illustrate its usefulness using two cases of policy transfer between: (1) Yokohama (Japan) and Cebu (Philippines) and (2) Singapore and New Clark City (Philippines). A common theme in these networks is the diffused nature of agency where local private actors are pulled in to provide epistemic resources.

This article analyses the impacts of an international cooperation project in the field of “eco-city” development in China, using a policy transfer perspective. It explores the relationship between policy transfers and paradigm shifts and discussing the thesis of a “Chinese art” of policy transfers, according to which Chinese policymakers operate a form of cherry-picking that prefers technical recommendations over policy or procedural recommendations and is dictated by “national self-interest.” Based on a longitudinal study of the transfer of a renewal paradigm to a Chinese city, Yangzhou, the study shows that the transfer resulted in significant policy change, going beyond technical aspects. Therefore, the thesis of “Chinese art” is not confirmed. However, a full-fledged paradigm shift was not observable as elements of the old paradigm are still present. Policy transfers can thus result in paradigm shifts, but their institutionalization is likely to be slow and gradual.

The literature of electoral reform explains politicians' preferences and social forces such as working-class power or expansions of the suffrage are the major factors that bring about a change in electoral rules. However, we argue that generational replacement and electoral issue effects lead politicians to introduce a new electoral system for their electoral survival in future. By examining Japan's surveys for pre- and postreform elections, we show that the entrance of new generation and salient issue concerns dissolve electoral bases of political parties and finally give rise to a change in the rules of the game for the greater electoral stability that political elites desire.

For centuries, Java-based rulers employed economic, political, and military measures to control the myriad islands lying in the eastern reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. Following Indonesia's transformation into a presidential democracy, the country's leaders modified this strategy and sought to maintain regional control by implementing economic and political decentralization measures on a massive scale. These measures also gave the eastern populations an appreciable influence on presidential elections. However, population projections and recent election data indicate that inhabitants of eastern Indonesia may become electorally marginalized because the region's population growth is being far outpaced by that of Java and Sumatra. Such marginalization could lead to social unrest, separatist movements, and other malevolent behaviors that threaten the country's democracy. To address this scenario, this article suggests that implementing a presidential voting framework based on the US Electoral College could strengthen Indonesia's democracy by significantly empowering voters in the country's eastern provinces.