Japan’s Shifting Military Priorities: Counterbalancing China’s Rise

This article analyzes the most recent phase of Japan’s security policy reform, focusing on its shifting priorities towards the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Japan–US alliance since mid-2010. From a realist perspective, it argues that these shifting military priorities first and foremost represent a traditional counterbalancing response to China’s rise. Conforming to the logic inherent in balance of threat theory, it moreover argues that this balancing behavior is explained by a confluence of two primary factors, namely Japanese perceptions of aggressive Chinese behavior in the maritime domain and concerns relating to the changing distribution of capabilities in China’s favor.     

Singapore’s 2015 General Election: Explaining PAP’s Resounding Win

Abstract

While Singapore’s 15th general election came about as expected, the ensuing results did not. In view of the opposition’s performance in the 2011 general election and the general sense that the ruling party had done well despite its performance being anything but sterling, the results were somewhat shocking. Even the leaders of the ruling party were caught by surprise at the party’s ability to garner 70% of the valid votes, 10% more than in the previous election. While many factors played a role, it was the opposition parties that lost the election rather than the ruling party that won it. Most of the opposition parties were rejected by the voters on grounds of not being worthy of support. The leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party, also suffered as many voters feared that it might perform too well to the detriment of the ruling party. In the end, the 2015 general elections strengthened the one-party-dominant state in Singapore and the quest for greater political representation was placed on the back burner.     

Singapore’s Phantom Workers

In 2009, the Singapore state prosecuted a string of businesses for listing fictitious local workers on their books in order to stretch their foreign worker entitlement. These “phantom” worker scams, prevalent since the 1980s, appear out of place in Singapore – a country with a strong international reputation for its government’s efficiency and strict legal enforcement. This paper examines the state’s prosecutions of the phantom worker scams in the context of the exceptional economic and political stresses in 2009, when Singapore was most severely affected by the global economic crisis, in order to address the employment regime in Singapore. It argues that the belated efforts to tackle the phantom worker scams reflected the pro-business state’s reluctance to tackle illegalities crucial to facilitating employers’ otherwise unlawful access to wealth and resources in Singapore.     

Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis

Among many problematic issues surfacing in reformist Myanmar is a citizenship crisis with four main dimensions. First, in a state with fragile civil liberties, skewed political rights and limited social rights, there is a broad curtailment of citizenship. Second, Rohingya Muslims living mainly in Rakhine State are denied citizenship, and other Muslims throughout the country are increasingly affected by this denial. Third, designated ethnic minorities clustered in peripheral areas face targeted restrictions of citizenship. Fourth, the dominant Bamar majority concentrated in the national heartland tends to arrogate or appropriate citizenship. The result is growing social tension that threatens to undermine the wider reform process. To examine this crisis, the article sets Myanmar in a comparative context. In particular, it considers how multicultural states in the developed world have sought to manage a political switch from racial or ethnic hierarchy to democratic citizenship. Drawing on global experience with multiculturalism and enabling civic integration, it advances a series of policy options focused on rights, duties and identity. It argues for domestic political leadership, backed by global political support, to address Myanmar’s citizenship crisis.     

Pearson’s Mission: Revisiting Noel Pearson’s Revisionist History of Hope Vale

In 2000, Noel Pearson drew on his experiences of growing up on the Hope Vale, the Guugu Yimidhirr–speaking community that emerged from the Cape Bedford mission in the south east of Cape York, to write a revisionist history of the region. Indigenous communities were “strong, if bruised” in the wake of colonisation, he argued, but had descended into chaos since the 1970s because alcohol and welfare benefits had undermined the formerly resilient Aboriginal norms of “responsibility”. This paper offers a critical review of this politically potent account of the past, drawing on alternative oral histories, ethnographies and ethnohistories of Hope Vale, including Pearson’s own honours thesis (1986). Without challenging this sketch of his own experience, nor the sincerity of his nostalgia for the mission of his youth, I argue that Pearson’s more recent retellings are selective. In particular, his revisionist history overlooks evidence of drug abuse in the early colonial period and overstates both Guugu Yimidhirr agency in the process of missionisation and the uniformity and representativeness of the community that developed at Cape Bedford. Finally, I offer some possible personal, philosophical and political explanations for Pearson’s shifting approach to the past.     

China’s National Identity and the Root Causes of China’s Ethnic Tensions

This paper seeks to examine the People’s Republic of China’s (China) self-defined national identity and the consequences on China’s ethnic relations with its ethnic minorities. This paper argues that China’s identity is equated with the identity and culture of its ethnic Han Chinese majority—a narrative originally constructed by the Chinese state which its ethnic Han Chinese majority since indulges in. However, this hegemonic narrative is at the root of interethnic issues and tensions in China today, as further ethnic tensions stem from the resistance of ethnic minorities against Sinicization and the imposition of this “Chinese” identity against them. These phenomena thus both indicate what I term a weak “internal soft power appeal” of Han Chinese Confucian culture for ethnic minorities living in the PRC, and imply that China must adopt a different, more inclusive national identity if it were to maintain ethnic stability in the long term.     

Imperialism’s effects on China

Abstract

Three years ago in this journal, James Peck argued that “the professional ideology of America’s China watchers” has tended to blind them to certain approaches to modern Chinese history that might be labelled “revolutionary Marxist” interpretations. As an example, Peck argued that the China watchers have explained China’s nineteenth and early twentieth century difficulties (prolonged economic and military weakness, failed reforms and revolutions) by reference to internal factors (culture, social structure), while a revolutionary Marxist perspective would seek explanations in the effects of imperialism. He provided several examples of the types of effects imperialism may have had on China: “The power of the metropolitan countries to block the formation of vital domestic industries in the dependent countries competitive with their own operations; the domination of mercantile over industrial capital; and the subordination of the economic life of a dependent nation to the severe fluctuations of the primary commodities market.” But he did not have space in his article, which was primarily concerned with a critique of existing work in the China field, to provide a fuller outline of what the imperialism approach to modern China might involve.     

Is Putin’s popularity real?

Vladimir Putin has managed to achieve strikingly high public approval ratings throughout his time as president and prime minister of Russia. But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters? We conducted a series of list experiments in early 2015 to estimate support for Putin while allowing respondents to maintain ambiguity about whether they personally do so. Our estimates suggest support for Putin of approximately 80%, which is within 10 percentage points of that implied by direct questioning. We find little evidence that these estimates are positively biased due to the presence of floor effects. In contrast, our analysis of placebo experiments suggests that there may be a small negative bias due to artificial deflation. We conclude that Putin’s approval ratings largely reflect the attitudes of Russian citizens.     

Sri Lanka’s Long Constitutional Moment

Constitutional change in Sri Lanka has been a vexed issue and one mired in party politics for many years now. Particularly intractable difficulties have surfaced over whether the country should jettison the semi-presidential form of government, introduced in 1978, in favour of a Westminster model under which the prime minister would enjoy greater powers. The recent presidential and parliamentary elections, which saw a decisive shift in the popular mood, have brought the debate over constitutional reform into sharp focus and have already led to a number of important initiatives by the new government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena. This article assesses the implications of those initiatives and examines the key challenges that remain to be addressed. It argues that the ‘constitutional moment’ created by the combined outcome of the two recent elections has the potential for further, far-reaching reform.     

Introduction: Understanding Thailand’s Politics

ABSTRACT

Thailand’s politics from the mid-2000s has seen considerable conflict and contestation, with seven prime ministers, two military coups, and scores of deaths from political violence. This article, as well as introducing the eight articles in the Special Issue, examines various aspects of this tumultuous period and the authoritarian turn in Thai politics. It does this by examining some of the theoretical and conceptual analysis of Thailand's politics and critiquing the basic assumptions underlying the modernisation and hybrid regimes perspectives that have tended to dominate debates on democratisation. While the concepts of bureaucratic polity and network monarchy shed light on important political actors in Thailand, they have not grappled with the persistence of authoritarianism. In theoretical terms, the article suggests that it is necessary to understand historically specific capitalist development as well as the social underpinnings that establish authoritarian trajectories and reinforce the tenacity of authoritarianism.     

Reza Shah’s journey into exile

On September 16, 1941, three weeks after British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in the Second World War and occupied the country, Reza Shah abdicated the throne in favor of his son, quit Iranian soil and boarded a British ship to go into exile. The British refused to allow Reza Shah to choose his own place of exile (South America) and sent him to the island of Mauritius. This article examines British thinking that resulted in the choice of Mauritius as the place of exile. It traces Reza Shah’s journey across Iran as he prepared to leave the country; details the composition of the large party of family and staff that accompanied him; provides an account of Reza’s Shah’s reminiscences and reflections at this difficult and emotion-laden moment when he was forced to surrender power, and describes the ‘stooped and aged man’ he had become. It ends with the arrival of the ship carrying Reza Shah and the royal party in Mauritius.     

Taiwan’s Pivot to the Indo-Pacific

This article analyzes the Indo-Pacific pivot currently being pursued by Taiwan. It moves from theory application to policy analysis. Theory is applied in the shape of classical and critical geopolitics, social constructivism theory, social identity theory, role theory, strategic narrative theory, and balance of threat theory. Disputed identity and perceptions run through such theory application. Policy analysis is applied to Taiwan’s reaching out to South-east Asia, Australia and India via its New Southbound Policy, to Taiwan seeking entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to Taiwan reactivating the Austronesian Forum, and to Taiwan embracing the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework being pushed by Japan and the US. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerges as the clear driver behind Taiwan’s Indo-Pacific pivot. The article concludes by judging the effectiveness of Taiwan’s pivot, against the shadow of increasing pressure from the PRC to curtail such regional space sought by Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific.