Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies最新文献

This study examines the role of high-yielding maize varieties as one of the key drivers of smallholder farmers’ market participation in a highly subsistence rural economy. The analysis is based on the End-of-Program Survey data collected by the Seeds of Life program in 2016 covering 700 households in rural Timor-Leste. The results reveal significant positive impacts of technology adoption on farmers’ market participation. Households where women are relatively more active in agriculture than men are more likely to engage in agricultural commerce. The results also show a positive impact of technology adoption on maize productivity. These findings present the first empirical evidence of the causal link between technology adoption and market participation choices.

Although there has been substantial literature on the economic impact of labour legislation in the world, the number of studies related to Vietnam is, surprisingly, very small. Our article provides the first evidence on the link between labour law and various labour market outcomes using the Vietnamese context. We examine how labour supply, earnings and social protection outcomes adjusted to labour contract reform under the 2012 Labour Code. The study uses three waves of the Vietnam Labour Force Survey to examine both medium-term and short-term impacts of the reform. Difference-in-differences and fixed-effect techniques are utilised. Overall, we find that the law change significantly affected hours worked, work absenteeism, monthly allowance and incidence of bonuses among contracted workers. However, the effects on workers’ monthly wages, overtime remuneration and other allowances, and the social protection-related outcomes were not clear in the short run.

A vast literature debates the causes, workings and consequences of democracy: a Google Scholar search returns some 3.6 million studies on the subject; by way of contrast, studies on authoritarianism or populism barely reach 350,000. Importantly, the expansive interest in democracy is not merely academic. Instead, studies on democracy are irrefutably empirically driven. Earlier work on the causes and effects of democracy—such as when, why and how do democratic transitions occur, and who are the proponents of transitions—was spurred in no small part by the expansion of liberal democracies in the Second Wave of democratisation following World War II that, set against the backdrop of economic crises and the rise of fascism that preceded the war, saw economic booms and an expanding middle class in the United States and across Europe (Huntington, 1991; Lipset, 1959; Moore, 1966).1 These themes persisted through scholarship on the Third Wave of democratic transition between 1974 and 1990, with voluminous works on the relationship between democracy and economic development explaining or predicting the spread of democratisation in Southern Europe, Latin America, and East and Southeast Asia, which appeared to coincide with economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s in these regions (Huntington, 1991; O'Donnell et al., 1986; Przeworski, 1991; Remmer, 1991). Notably, events on the ground in the Third Wave also brought new research pursuits, such as the regional and international diffusion of democracy, the effects of democracy on economic growth, and popular support for democracy (Bratton & Mattes, 2001; Brinks & Coppedge, 2006; Helliwell, 1994; Pevehouse, 2002).

Unsurprisingly, then, recent trends of democratic stalling, reversals, backsliding and deconsolidation are driving the latest research about the quality and depth of democracy, which may be defined as the extent to which democracy in practice approximates its philosophical foundations of ‘government by the people’ (Fishman, 2016).2

Recent studies of democracy have called attention to the need for more robust and systematic evaluation of democratic variability, democratic consolidation, or the demise of democracy, with an emphasis on political factors that have received little attention beyond earlier generations of work (Haggard & Kaufman, 2016, p. 126; see also Diamond & Morlino, 2004; Foa & Mounk, 2017; Fuchs & Roller, 2018; Kadivar et al., 2020; Yap, 2006).

The articles in this special issue respond to these calls for new treatments. In particular, we point out the need to take account of local or subnational3 politics and their consequences in studies of democratic quality and depth.

There are at least four reasons to s

This article presents the first-ever ranking of public policy schools in the Asia-Pacific region based on their research publication output. We used Scopus as our bibliographic database to assess the publication output of 45 schools between 2014 and 2018, based on affiliations listed on the publications rather than current faculty. The results show substantial variation in terms of research output; elite research schools are located in China, Australia, and Singapore. Ranking by total citations, three schools stand out—the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, the Lee Kuan Yew School at the National University of Singapore, and the School of Public Policy & Management at Tsinghua University in China. Ranking by impact factor shows that the School of Government at Peking University and the Melbourne School of Government at Melbourne University are the two top-ranked schools, but because of their relatively small research output in this period, their true rank is very uncertain.

This article assesses the role of local councils as a conduit for democratic consolidation through the examination of the legislative performance of the members of a South Korean metropolitan city council. We collected data on ordinance proposals in Busan Metropolitan Council from 2006 to 2018 (the 5th to 7th Councils) and analysed, first, the effects of individual attributes of local council members on legislative performance through negative binomial model analysis and, second, the effects of legislative networks on council members' performance. Three findings contribute to the literature: first, the number of proposed ordinances by council members increased over time, while those by the mayor decreased in the same period, suggesting an erosion of executive dominance of policymaking in local councils. Second, female and newly elected council members are most active in legislative proposals, which underlines that these members are more connected to the electorate than long-serving incumbents. Third, network analyses show increasingly diverse and multi-centred communities behind ordinance proposals; this suggests a move from personalistic politics to institutionalised politics.

This article aims to shed light on the impacts of peri-urbanisation processes across two case studies in Port Numbay within the Province of Papua. Five methods were used to gather data: focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, archival research, ethnographic observations, and remote sensing imagery and geospatial analysis tools. The results generated insights into: (1) the lasting legacy of historical transmigration and decentralisation policies that have influenced the processes of peri-urbanisation in shaping the social and economic conditions within peripheral communities; (2) how peri-urbanisation has impacted biophysical environments including social-ecological systems and environmental health systems; (3) a range of peri-urbanisation trends (land clearing, deforestation and expansion of settlements over time). The article tests an interdisciplinary method for monitoring processes of peri-urbanisation. It concludes that approaches to decentralisation, health service delivery and sustainable development interventions into peri-urban zones should consider local conditions. Recommendations for policy and further research are also provided.

In this article we comprehensively document aid volatility (short-term changes in aid flows) and aid fragmentation in the Pacific. We study two types of fragmentation: fragmentation across countries and fragmentation across projects. Our research draws on a new dataset compiled by the Lowy Institute. The dataset includes aid flows to the Pacific from non-traditional donors such as China. This allows us to undertake the first-ever study of Pacific aid volatility and fragmentation factoring in non-traditional donors. We contrast the Pacific with other regions, finding that while fragmentation across donors is less in the Pacific, project fragmentation is worse, as is aid volatility. We find fragmentation across donors is increasing in the Pacific. We find a similar trend for fragmentation across projects. We find no evidence that non-traditional donors such as China are driving these trends. However, we find some evidence that non-traditional donors give more volatile aid.

Malaria elimination has been a recurring policy goal in Solomon Islands and has historically succeeded in attracting substantial donor support. Drawing on literature review and key informant interviews, we examine the influence of foreign aid on malaria control and elimination efforts in Solomon Islands between 2002 and 2016, as a unique case study of an Asia-Pacific country with high malaria burden and high donor funding. While aid appears to have contributed to reduced malaria prevalence, the ways in which aid was delivered in the short term had health systems impacts with implications for the elimination agenda. Key areas that will be critical to the future pursuit of malaria elimination in Solomon Islands include: integration of the vertical malaria program, while strengthening provincial-level service delivery; maximising incentives of performance-based financing modalities; and policy alignment between donors and domestic actors. We conclude by discussing principles exemplified in the case study of broader relevance to malaria-endemic countries.

Lao PDR's push for large infrastructure-led economic growth has been delivered through a significant amount of financial leverage and a build-up of sovereign debt obligations. The government now finds itself in danger of a sovereign default. This article traces the roots of this debt crisis over the past decade, focusing particularly on the role of hydropower. A significant share of infrastructure lending to Laos has been through Chinese policy banks. We argue that over-lending to dam projects focused on the domestic energy market has been at the core of Laos' debt situation. Through 2020 the Lao Government has undertaken a series of restructuring measures, including privatisation of state assets, engaging in debt renegotiations with China, and attempts to secure new short-term credit. We outline a range of other options Laos has to reschedule or restructure their sovereign debt, and offer policy targeted recommendations focusing on reforms in the energy sector.

This article examines how people's confidence in their governments changed in the context of South Korean decentralisation. South Korea provides a unique case to answer the question because it is one of the world's most rapid modernisers and has maintained autonomous local systems across three decades of decentralisation. Analysing data from the first and fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey in a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model, we find that the trust function of the local governments correlates with the trust function of the national government in 2003 and then disappears in 2015. We understand this finding as a piece of indirect evidence that South Korean local autonomy encourages local government trust, which does not reflect merely trust in the national government. This article also discusses the need for normalisation of the National Assembly, the creation of regional political parties and the dispersion of presidential power.