This book is an outcome of the authors' almost 20-year project that is based on their genuine interest in Japan. They also received input from many senior Japan scholars based in the US and Japan. ...

This article analyzes the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in social protection in East Asia. The article focuses on two types of NGO roles in social protection—direct provision and indirect pressure—and examines how the relative proportions of the two types of roles vary by country in East Asia, depending on factors that are contextual (political democratization), pulling (developmental welfare state), or pushing (civil society). A comparative analysis of Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia reveals that each represents a differing mix of pressure and provision functions by NGOs in social protection. In Korea pressure seems to be the main role of NGOs; in Indonesia it is provision; while in Thailand pressure and provision are relatively evenly mixed. The study concludes with a summary of the research findings, discussion on the limitations of the paper, and suggestions for future research in order to develop more sophisticated accounts of NGO roles in social protection in East Asia.

Irrespective of the systems of government, a major question is: what are the views and perceptions of the bureaucrats about politics–bureaucracy relations? Aiming to address this problem, in this article an attempt has been made to undertake an empirical study of bureaucracy in Bangladesh. The study reveals that as a post-colonial structure, government bureaucracy is an essential and integral part of the administration in Bangladesh but the bureaucracies are always in a dilemma regarding their relationship with the political leaderships. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is neither normatively dichotomous with political neutrality nor abundantly cohesive or responsive to the political leaderships according to the perceptions of bureaucracy. Moreover, bureaucracy in Bangladesh is suffering from a moral puzzle between political neutrality and political responsiveness even though the bureaucrats are still in a dominant position in some cases.

This study explores the relationship between swing voters and alternation of governing party in Taiwan by using national survey data from the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. It finds that the electoral decision of swing voters always determines electoral outcome. Besides, swing voters make their vote choice based on different heuristics, whereas non-swing voters cast a vote solely based on partisan identification. Issue voting is one of the major heuristic of swing voters. Cross-strait economic integration and the referendum about membership of the United Nations were two determinative issues to swing voters in the 2008 presidential election. Alternation of the governing party succeeded in 2008 because the Democratic Progressive Party took the false step of proposing a referendum and the Kuomintang took advantage of promoting cross-strait economic integration.

Over the recent decades decentralisation has been an influential process for public sector reform. Like many countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Thailand have experienced a transitional period of decentralisation since the 1990s, but its corresponding results are considered to be poor, allowing for an increase in corruption associated with local elites and other interested parties. This article addresses the problem by focusing on Human Resource Management (HRM), with an emphasis on recruitment and selection in decentralised local governments, as there exists limited research in this area. Despite similar outlook of decentralisation reforms in these countries, the comparative analysis will illustrate differences in HRM policy arrangements between the central and local government, which reflect on the roots and backgrounds of the reform initiatives in each country. Moreover, empirical case observations at the local level from four case cities will present positive HRM practices, as well as the negative ones. Such evidence cannot be explained by contemporary theories on decentralisation, most of which doubt feasibility of the reform in developing countries.

America's Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century MICHAEL D. SWAINE Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011 400 pp., ISBN-10: 0870032577 Diplomacy, a...

Trust is an essential element of governance. Lack of trust in government engenders doubts regarding its competence, weakens its legitimacy, and creates difficulties in the process of governing. As suggested, declining trust was related to reflexivity. This article, based on a Hong Kong study, confirms that a lack of competence trust in the government's ability to manage work-related risks correlated with reflexivity. Self-identified social status also influences the degree of reflexivity and competence trust. The conventional approach to cultivating trust through managed social participation has been widely practiced, but the results have not led to an increase in competence trust in Hong Kong, even when the policy outcomes are positive. While recognizing that reflexivity and its impacts on trust are inevitable, this article argues that efforts should be made to develop critical trust through meaningful participation in the deliberative process.

This article uses the example of West Kalimantan to show some new ways of studying opportunities for violence, contributing especially to the so-called ‘sons of the soil’ conflict debate. By showing that the opportunity structure in West Kalimantan was not primarily material, but social, related to ways to circumvent fear of and norms against violence, this article attempts to update the theoretical premises of the traditional security studies approach to obstacles to conflict and opportunities for violence. The intention is to show how socially constructed realities are relevant in offering and denying opportunities for violence, and how the study of the meanings of actions reveals ways in which opportunities for violent demonstrative argumentation are born in local conflict discourses. The case study shows how powerful narratives enable the justification of violent action and how identities and violent policies mutually constitute each other. This way the empirical evidence calls for understanding the generative and constitutive sources of violence, which are not simply mechanistic causes of conflict.

There is a certain ambiguity in the definition of regions and this can be seen in the relationship between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Timor-Leste. This article discusses how regional actors have adopted and re-shaped the externally-imposed geographic and political definitions of Southeast Asia. These definitions were stabilized through the institutionalization of policies and practices of exclusion and inclusion which have affirmed the legitimacy of certain entities in the organization (i.e. being ASEAN), the acceptability of certain behaviours (i.e. acting as ASEAN), and the appropriate interpretive frames with which to solve problems (i.e. seeing as ASEAN). This enabled ASEAN to present a modicum of cohesion even while it facilitated the exclusion of East Timor as a ‘legitimate’ political actor in Southeast Asia. Over time, however, these definitions were destabilized by a convergence of external crises and increasing inconsistencies within ASEAN. As ASEAN embarks on redefining the Southeast Asian ‘community’, Timor-Leste is trying to demonstrate its bona fides by ‘becoming’ an ASEAN state with the requisite institutional capabilities, and ‘acting’ and ‘seeing’ as an ASEAN state in order to generate a positive consensus on its membership.