In the early 2000s the Chinese government initiated a profound shift in how it sought to represent China at home and abroad. Whereas many scholars and China watchers argue that a newly assertive China emerged in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, I argue that this shift took place in the curriculum reforms nearly a decade earlier. An analysis of the evolution of textbooks used for primary Mandarin instruction shows that, starting in 2001, textbooks were developed to inculcate a perennial bond between an increasingly globalized population and its motherland. Specifically, I show how the emergence of filial nationalism was crafted in Mandarin-language textbooks, laying the groundwork for a new generation of Chinese youth to simultaneously feel pride for and loyalty to the motherland while preparing them for integration into a globalized world.
{"title":"Filial Nationalism in Global Competition: The 2001 Reform of Mandarin Textbooks","authors":"Manon Laurent","doi":"10.5509/2020933543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020933543","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 2000s the Chinese government initiated a profound shift in how it sought to represent China at home and abroad. Whereas many scholars and China watchers argue that a newly assertive China emerged in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, I argue that this shift took place\u0000 in the curriculum reforms nearly a decade earlier. An analysis of the evolution of textbooks used for primary Mandarin instruction shows that, starting in 2001, textbooks were developed to inculcate a perennial bond between an increasingly globalized population and its motherland. Specifically,\u0000 I show how the emergence of filial nationalism was crafted in Mandarin-language textbooks, laying the groundwork for a new generation of Chinese youth to simultaneously feel pride for and loyalty to the motherland while preparing them for integration into a globalized world.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"543-566"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5509/2020933543","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48410509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The United Nations (UN) introduced multiparty elections to Cambodia in 1993 in the hope of bringing about democracy in that country. Ironically, the two-and-a-half decades of uninterrupted elections have led to an ever-more authoritarian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Authoritarianism under the single-dominant party system began in 1997, but has intensified since 2017 with the ban on the leading opposition party. While concurring that repetitive elections have consolidated authoritarianism, this paper argues that elections are not merely tools that authoritarian leaders deploy to hold on to power. Elections are arguably mechanisms that have compelled the CPP to offer several extraordinary economic concessions since 2013; this is the first argument of the paper. The developments have created a win-win scenario for the rulers and the ruled—the authoritarian leaders prolong their rule, and the masses have more disposable income, among various benefits. The second argument is that such policy concessions are made only when the ruling party senses critical challenges from the opposition and voters. This paper contributes to the literature arguing that multiparty elections in electoral authoritarian regimes extract economic policy concessions.
{"title":"Repeated Multiparty Elections in Cambodia: Intensifying Authoritarianism Yet Benefiting the Masses","authors":"Sivhuoch Ou","doi":"10.5509/2020933567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020933567","url":null,"abstract":"The United Nations (UN) introduced multiparty elections to Cambodia in 1993 in the hope of bringing about democracy in that country. Ironically, the two-and-a-half decades of uninterrupted elections have led to an ever-more authoritarian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the\u0000 Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Authoritarianism under the single-dominant party system began in 1997, but has intensified since 2017 with the ban on the leading opposition party. While concurring that repetitive elections have consolidated authoritarianism, this paper argues that elections\u0000 are not merely tools that authoritarian leaders deploy to hold on to power. Elections are arguably mechanisms that have compelled the CPP to offer several extraordinary economic concessions since 2013; this is the first argument of the paper. The developments have created a win-win scenario\u0000 for the rulers and the ruled—the authoritarian leaders prolong their rule, and the masses have more disposable income, among various benefits. The second argument is that such policy concessions are made only when the ruling party senses critical challenges from the opposition and voters.\u0000 This paper contributes to the literature arguing that multiparty elections in electoral authoritarian regimes extract economic policy concessions.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"567-592"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43574455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper aims to capture the complex process through which former socialist North Koreans are remade as South Koreans. I argue that the process by which border crossers from North Korea are remade into post-socialist subjects is complex and multi-dimensional. I address the interlocked nature of institutions and subjectivities in citizen-making processes. On the one hand, it involves the institutionalizations of border crossers with the purpose of screening out "dangerous socialist subjects" for security reasons, followed by "post-socialist" education at Hanawon. On the other hand, it also entails the cultural dynamics of the citizen-making processes. Border crossers are taught not only about political democracy and the economic market, but the cultural learning of resilience to cope with hardship and uncertainty in South Korea. This paper finds two distinctive responses to the cultural learning of resilience—fear and rejection. In this sense, the institutionalizations and the cultural teaching of resilience have unintended consequences. These citizen-making processes raise the question of what characterizes normal subjectivity in a modern, marketized economy. Rather than accepting these normal assumptions as given and natural, this paper tries to uncover hidden assumptions and to problematize the arbitrariness of these normative assumptions. What appears normal, rational, free, and democratic can be actually accidental, temporary, absurd, and socially constructed. This paper attempts to challenge and demystify the meaning of rational, free, democratic, resilient, and normative citizenships that tend to be taken for granted.
{"title":"The Making of Post-Socialist Citizens in South Korea?: The Case of Border Crossers from North Korea","authors":"Jaeyoun Won","doi":"10.5509/2020933519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020933519","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to capture the complex process through which former socialist North Koreans are remade as South Koreans. I argue that the process by which border crossers from North Korea are remade into post-socialist subjects is complex and multi-dimensional. I address the interlocked\u0000 nature of institutions and subjectivities in citizen-making processes. On the one hand, it involves the institutionalizations of border crossers with the purpose of screening out \"dangerous socialist subjects\" for security reasons, followed by \"post-socialist\" education at Hanawon. On the\u0000 other hand, it also entails the cultural dynamics of the citizen-making processes. Border crossers are taught not only about political democracy and the economic market, but the cultural learning of resilience to cope with hardship and uncertainty in South Korea. This paper finds two distinctive\u0000 responses to the cultural learning of resilience—fear and rejection. In this sense, the institutionalizations and the cultural teaching of resilience have unintended consequences. These citizen-making processes raise the question of what characterizes normal subjectivity in a modern,\u0000 marketized economy. Rather than accepting these normal assumptions as given and natural, this paper tries to uncover hidden assumptions and to problematize the arbitrariness of these normative assumptions. What appears normal, rational, free, and democratic can be actually accidental, temporary,\u0000 absurd, and socially constructed. This paper attempts to challenge and demystify the meaning of rational, free, democratic, resilient, and normative citizenships that tend to be taken for granted.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"519-542"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47400955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the postwar period, Japanese workers came to symbolize the economic and cultural prosperity of Japan. In return for their hard work, they were rewarded with life-time employment and various fringe benefits. This postwar social contract of "corporate welfarism" minimized the social risks and personal career uncertainties of a fluid labour market. However, nearly 30 years of economic recession and neo-liberal reforms have undermined the postwar model of corporate welfarism. Structural and management reforms have been invoked to reengineer Japan's corporate practices and to "flexibilize" the workforce, thereby "freeing" employees while offloading social risks of economic uncertainties to individual workers. As a result, these Japanese workers are caught between the slippage of the older corporate ideology of corporate welfarism premised on long-term employment, and the rise of the new global ideology of neo-liberalism premised on labour mobility, in the process exposing them to new social risks and conditions of uncertainty. By focusing on mid-career and experienced workers whose expectations of long-term employment were directly affected by restructuring, this article sheds light on the various forms of "precarious employment mechanisms" that have been used to cut personnel costs while avoiding outright dismissal. Drawing from different cases of informants who have been subjected to various forms of restructuring, this article highlights the decoupling of Japan's welfare and employment systems and examines the mechanisms and experiences of "in-house unemployment" for employees in an increasingly hollowed-out corporate welfare society.
{"title":"From Employment Security to Managerial Precarity: Japan's Changing Welfare-Work Nexus and its Impacts on Mid-career Workers","authors":"N. Gagné","doi":"10.5509/2020933379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020933379","url":null,"abstract":"In the postwar period, Japanese workers came to symbolize the economic and cultural prosperity of Japan. In return for their hard work, they were rewarded with life-time employment and various fringe benefits. This postwar social contract of \"corporate welfarism\" minimized the social\u0000 risks and personal career uncertainties of a fluid labour market. However, nearly 30 years of economic recession and neo-liberal reforms have undermined the postwar model of corporate welfarism. Structural and management reforms have been invoked to reengineer Japan's corporate practices and\u0000 to \"flexibilize\" the workforce, thereby \"freeing\" employees while offloading social risks of economic uncertainties to individual workers. As a result, these Japanese workers are caught between the slippage of the older corporate ideology of corporate welfarism premised on long-term employment,\u0000 and the rise of the new global ideology of neo-liberalism premised on labour mobility, in the process exposing them to new social risks and conditions of uncertainty. By focusing on mid-career and experienced workers whose expectations of long-term employment were directly affected\u0000 by restructuring, this article sheds light on the various forms of \"precarious employment mechanisms\" that have been used to cut personnel costs while avoiding outright dismissal. Drawing from different cases of informants who have been subjected to various forms of restructuring, this article\u0000 highlights the decoupling of Japan's welfare and employment systems and examines the mechanisms and experiences of \"in-house unemployment\" for employees in an increasingly hollowed-out corporate welfare society.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"379-400"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5509/2020933379","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43112928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The rural pension system, co-financed by rural residents' contributions and government subsidies, is a remarkable institutional innovation in China. To better understand the establishment and policy design of this system, this article studies the local experimentation of (partly) government-funded new rural pension schemes prior to the national policy guideline issued in 2009. The focus is on the role of social learning as a crucial driving force in this process. Through a process tracing based on in-depth interviews in Daxing of Beijing and Baoji of Shaanxi Province, this article illustrates how local governments struggled to find suitable financing models for rural pensions, and relied primarily on hands-on experimentation and experiences. During the mobilization of participation in the schemes, the repeated and constant interactions between local officials and rural residents promoted a form of mutual learning that contributed to local policy adaptation and rural residents' internalization of the value and basic rules of contributory pension provision. The local experience had a cumulative impact on the ideational reorientation of the central officials regarding the state's financial role in provision. Specifically, the financing model in Baoji created new options that facilitated the reconciliation of a set of different concerns and objectives at the centre, notably fiscal affordability, wide coverage, and modest managerial burden, which, this article argues, was the major reason for the incorporation of this model into the national policy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the establishment of the rural pension system and its provisions on rural state-society relations in China.
{"title":"Local Policy Experimentation, Social Learning, and Development of Rural Pension Provision in China","authors":"Ting Huang","doi":"10.5509/2020932353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020932353","url":null,"abstract":"The rural pension system, co-financed by rural residents' contributions and government subsidies, is a remarkable institutional innovation in China. To better understand the establishment and policy design of this system, this article studies the local experimentation of (partly) government-funded\u0000 new rural pension schemes prior to the national policy guideline issued in 2009. The focus is on the role of social learning as a crucial driving force in this process. Through a process tracing based on in-depth interviews in Daxing of Beijing and Baoji of Shaanxi Province, this article illustrates\u0000 how local governments struggled to find suitable financing models for rural pensions, and relied primarily on hands-on experimentation and experiences. During the mobilization of participation in the schemes, the repeated and constant interactions between local officials and rural residents\u0000 promoted a form of mutual learning that contributed to local policy adaptation and rural residents' internalization of the value and basic rules of contributory pension provision. The local experience had a cumulative impact on the ideational reorientation of the central officials regarding\u0000 the state's financial role in provision. Specifically, the financing model in Baoji created new options that facilitated the reconciliation of a set of different concerns and objectives at the centre, notably fiscal affordability, wide coverage, and modest managerial burden, which, this article\u0000 argues, was the major reason for the incorporation of this model into the national policy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the establishment of the rural pension system and its provisions on rural state-society relations in China.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"353-377"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5509/2020932353","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43128503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Within the institution of family welfare in the People's Republic of China, the role of the child as future caregiver is so deeply institutionalized as to be almost invisible to policy makers and family members. This article explores institutional responses to the death of a child after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake to demonstrate how this taken-for-grantedness of the child caregiver role has opened up bereaved parents to social risk, and how actors must perform institutional work to "repair the breach" of the loss of a child in a family. Findings show that after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, policy actors took steps to manipulate entrenched family welfare resources, including the population and family planning regulations, to enable bereaved parents to have another child. In so doing, they sought to patch and restore meaning to the family welfare institution, enabling it to continue autopoiesis and resist institutional change in the face of exogenous shock. Use of policy and the positive representation of the policy outcomes in the state-led media enabled sensegiving to be imbued into an otherwise emotionally conflicted decision to try to conceive again soon after the loss of a child.
{"title":"The Death of a Child: Institutional Maintenance of Family Welfare after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in the People's Republic of China","authors":"Alison Lamont","doi":"10.5509/2020932305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020932305","url":null,"abstract":"Within the institution of family welfare in the People's Republic of China, the role of the child as future caregiver is so deeply institutionalized as to be almost invisible to policy makers and family members. This article explores institutional responses to the death of a child after\u0000 the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake to demonstrate how this taken-for-grantedness of the child caregiver role has opened up bereaved parents to social risk, and how actors must perform institutional work to \"repair the breach\" of the loss of a child in a family. Findings show that after the 2008\u0000 Wenchuan earthquake, policy actors took steps to manipulate entrenched family welfare resources, including the population and family planning regulations, to enable bereaved parents to have another child. In so doing, they sought to patch and restore meaning to the family welfare institution,\u0000 enabling it to continue autopoiesis and resist institutional change in the face of exogenous shock. Use of policy and the positive representation of the policy outcomes in the state-led media enabled sensegiving to be imbued into an otherwise emotionally conflicted decision to try to conceive\u0000 again soon after the loss of a child.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"305-326"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42027911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social insurance in mainland China long catered to populations that were assumed to remain in one place permanently. In recent decades, however, internal and transnational labour migration has been on the rise. Building on existing research about internal migrants' social security, this study asks how different groups of external labour migrants cope with the social risk shifts induced by mobility. It focuses on documented migrants from UN member countries; from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao; and on undocumented migrants. It employs the resource environment approach, which integrates a transnational perspective and acknowledges informal sources of security. Focusing on healthcare, the study argues that informal practices affect the majority of external migrants irrespective of nationality or migration status, protecting expatriates from double coverage, causing low-income migrants to fall through the gaps, but also enabling access to healthcare for undocumented migrants. Despite mandatory participation, effective migrant coverage of the Urban Employees' Social Insurance (UESI) remains low. The system is highly decentralized with incomplete internal and external portability, and cities have considerable leeway over their own migration and welfare regimes. Migrants from more socio-economically developed areas tend to have a greater reliance on public services and security from the sending areas, or on high-end private alternatives. Conversely, as the example of Nigerian traders illustrates, undocumented migrants piece together their protective arrangements from individual networks and community institutions. Religious organizations from the Global South also reach out transnationally and provide informal protections to migrant communities. This study employs a mix of ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and descriptive statistics.
{"title":"External Migrants under Mainland China's Informal Welfare Regime: Risk Shifts, Resource Environments, and the Urban Employees' Social Insurance","authors":"Armin Müller","doi":"10.5509/2020932281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020932281","url":null,"abstract":"Social insurance in mainland China long catered to populations that were assumed to remain in one place permanently. In recent decades, however, internal and transnational labour migration has been on the rise. Building on existing research about internal migrants' social security,\u0000 this study asks how different groups of external labour migrants cope with the social risk shifts induced by mobility. It focuses on documented migrants from UN member countries; from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao; and on undocumented migrants. It employs the resource environment approach,\u0000 which integrates a transnational perspective and acknowledges informal sources of security. Focusing on healthcare, the study argues that informal practices affect the majority of external migrants irrespective of nationality or migration status, protecting expatriates from double coverage,\u0000 causing low-income migrants to fall through the gaps, but also enabling access to healthcare for undocumented migrants. Despite mandatory participation, effective migrant coverage of the Urban Employees' Social Insurance (UESI) remains low. The system is highly decentralized with incomplete\u0000 internal and external portability, and cities have considerable leeway over their own migration and welfare regimes. Migrants from more socio-economically developed areas tend to have a greater reliance on public services and security from the sending areas, or on high-end private alternatives.\u0000 Conversely, as the example of Nigerian traders illustrates, undocumented migrants piece together their protective arrangements from individual networks and community institutions. Religious organizations from the Global South also reach out transnationally and provide informal protections\u0000 to migrant communities. This study employs a mix of ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and descriptive statistics.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"281-303"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44842240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyzes agricultural reform as an element of broader shifts in the Japanese welfare regime. In postwar Japan, agricultural support and protection served as a "functional equivalent" to welfare provision in rural and semi-rural areas. However, an ongoing agricultural reform process has put pressure on aging smallholders and on JA, the powerful organization of agricultural cooperatives. This article investigates how these local actors have responded to an increasingly hostile socio-economic and political environment. To address this question, the article focuses on hamlet-based collective farming, which is a form of agricultural production that can reproduce the welfare character of the postwar support and protection regime on the local level. Based on field research in several rural and semi-rural communities, the article argues that the functions and the local proliferation of hamlet-based farming are shaped by village institutions: hamlet-level norms and rules governing land use and agricultural cooperation, as well as social ties between hamlets, local co-ops, and local governments. While the integration of village institutions into local cooperative and administrative structures can support a systematic local proliferation of collective farming, municipal and cooperative mergers have rendered such comprehensive local responses more complicated. More generally, the article proposes to investigate local acts of recombining community ties and norms with changing macro policies as a promising analytical angle to understand the ongoing renegotiation of East Asian welfare regimes.
{"title":"Japan's Changing Regional World of Welfare: Agricultural Reform, Hamlet-based Collective Farming, and the Local Renegotiation of Social Risks","authors":"Hanno Jentzsch","doi":"10.5509/2020932327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020932327","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes agricultural reform as an element of broader shifts in the Japanese welfare regime. In postwar Japan, agricultural support and protection served as a \"functional equivalent\" to welfare provision in rural and semi-rural areas. However, an ongoing agricultural reform\u0000 process has put pressure on aging smallholders and on JA, the powerful organization of agricultural cooperatives. This article investigates how these local actors have responded to an increasingly hostile socio-economic and political environment. To address this question, the article focuses\u0000 on hamlet-based collective farming, which is a form of agricultural production that can reproduce the welfare character of the postwar support and protection regime on the local level. Based on field research in several rural and semi-rural communities, the article argues that the functions\u0000 and the local proliferation of hamlet-based farming are shaped by village institutions: hamlet-level norms and rules governing land use and agricultural cooperation, as well as social ties between hamlets, local co-ops, and local governments. While the integration of village institutions into\u0000 local cooperative and administrative structures can support a systematic local proliferation of collective farming, municipal and cooperative mergers have rendered such comprehensive local responses more complicated. More generally, the article proposes to investigate local acts of recombining\u0000 community ties and norms with changing macro policies as a promising analytical angle to understand the ongoing renegotiation of East Asian welfare regimes.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5509/2020932327","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43090848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Indonesia is a country of significant inequalities, but we know little about how Indonesians feel about the gap between rich and poor. Comparative research suggests that negative perceptions of inequality can erode public support for democratic institutions. Using survey data, we explore the relationship between inequality and support for democracy in Indonesia. We find Indonesians are divided in their beliefs about income distribution. But this variation is not determined by actual levels of inequality around the country, nor by people's own economic situation; instead, political preferences and partisan biases are what matter most. Beliefs about inequality in Indonesia have become increasingly partisan over the course of the Jokowi presidency: supporters of the political opposition are far more likely to view the income gap as unfair, while supporters of the incumbent president tend to disagree—but they disagree much more when prompted by partisan cues. We also find that Indonesians who believe socio-economic inequality is unjust are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward democracy. We trace both trends back to populist campaigns and the increasingly polarized ideological competition that marked the country's recent elections. The shift toward more partisan politics in contemporary Indonesia has, we argue, consequences for how voters perceive inequality and how they feel about the democratic status quo.
{"title":"Inequality and Democratic Support in Indonesia","authors":"Burhanuddin Muhtadi, Eve Warburton","doi":"10.5509/202093131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/202093131","url":null,"abstract":"Indonesia is a country of significant inequalities, but we know little about how Indonesians feel about the gap between rich and poor. Comparative research suggests that negative perceptions of inequality can erode public support for democratic institutions. Using survey data, we explore\u0000 the relationship between inequality and support for democracy in Indonesia. We find Indonesians are divided in their beliefs about income distribution. But this variation is not determined by actual levels of inequality around the country, nor by people's own economic situation; instead, political\u0000 preferences and partisan biases are what matter most. Beliefs about inequality in Indonesia have become increasingly partisan over the course of the Jokowi presidency: supporters of the political opposition are far more likely to view the income gap as unfair, while supporters of the incumbent\u0000 president tend to disagree—but they disagree much more when prompted by partisan cues. We also find that Indonesians who believe socio-economic inequality is unjust are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward democracy. We trace both trends back to populist campaigns and the increasingly\u0000 polarized ideological competition that marked the country's recent elections. The shift toward more partisan politics in contemporary Indonesia has, we argue, consequences for how voters perceive inequality and how they feel about the democratic status quo.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"93 1","pages":"31-58"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5509/202093131","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47769991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Understanding how citizens participate in politics is important because it shapes political culture and the tenor of democracy. The standard research framing of Pacific politics, centring around institutions both formal and informal, fails to fully account for the myriad of ways in which non-elite Pacific Islanders experience and relate to politics in their daily lives. This scholarly approach results in limited engagement with informal sites of politics and non-elite engagement with these sites. We argue that what is missing is a research approach that focusses on how ordinary people actively and purposefully participate in politics in the region, and what it means for Pacific Islanders to be citizens who participate in politics. The concept of political participation provides a more fruitful entry point to fully understanding the changing political dynamics of the region.
{"title":"Revisiting the Concept of Political Participation in the Pacific","authors":"K. Baker, J. Barbara","doi":"10.5509/2020931135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2020931135","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding how citizens participate in politics is important because it shapes political culture and the tenor of democracy. The standard research framing of Pacific politics, centring around institutions both formal and informal, fails to fully account for the myriad of ways in\u0000 which non-elite Pacific Islanders experience and relate to politics in their daily lives. This scholarly approach results in limited engagement with informal sites of politics and non-elite engagement with these sites. We argue that what is missing is a research approach that focusses on how\u0000 ordinary people actively and purposefully participate in politics in the region, and what it means for Pacific Islanders to be citizens who participate in politics. The concept of political participation provides a more fruitful entry point to fully understanding the changing political dynamics\u0000 of the region.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70801696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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