Toward China's “Hub and Spokes” in Southeast Asia? – Diplomacy during the Hu Jintao and First Xi Jinping Administrations

This article reviews China's diplomacy toward Southeast Asia and ASEAN chronologically from the 1990s to 2015, focusing on the changes that occurred during the second half of the Hu Jintao Administration and the further policy adjustments made during the first Xi Jinping Administration. While there are still many uncertainties regarding the policies, and many aspects are still in progress, this study provides an outline of the current period of change in China's relations with Southeast Asia and China's more active engagement in relations with ASEAN from the late 1990s through the early 21st century.     

Measuring the Impact of Lotteries on State per Pupil Expenditures for Education: Assessing the National Evidence

State‐operated lotteries have recently been asserted by public administrators and academicians as panaceas for eradicating revenue disparities existing across public school districts in the American states. The purpose of this research project is to empirically test the hypothesis that lottery revenues raise the state expenditures for public education. A state‐level national dataset, which includes fifty American states over the period 1977–1997, was used for the analysis. Pooled time‐series cross‐sectional and ARIMA modeling was employed to test the hypothesis. This study finds that lottery revenues had a positive influence on state per pupil expenditures for education. The evidence for the impact of lotteries on state per pupil expenditures for education was robust and statistically significant.     

A bibliometric review of the technology transfer literature

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This study explores academic research on technology transfer (TT) and the related themes. The TT field has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent...     

South Korea's elusive middlepowermanship: regional or global player?

South Korea aspires to a larger regional and global role, fuelled by economic success, and complemented by cultural and diplomatic achievement. However, a gap exists between the rhetoric and reality of its foreign policy. This paper examines Seoul's middle-power activism. It poses questions about the conceptual deficit of ‘middle power’, proffering an operational definition in illuminating the characteristic identity formation of middle powers. It analyses how the Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak governments sought to articulate their respective middle-power foreign policy aspirations. Finally, it investigates how domestic political and institutional conditions shape Republic of Korea foreign policy, and identifies policy implications.     

The roles of community seed banks in climate change adaption

Although community level seed-saving initiatives have been around for about 30 years, until recently they have received little attention in the scientific literature on climate change adaptation and plant genetic resources. Based on research experiences from various countries, this article argues that community seed banks can enhance the resilience of farmers, in particular of communities and households most affected by climate change. Community seed banks can secure improved access to, and availability of, diverse, locally adapted crops and varieties, and enhance related indigenous knowledge and skills in plant management, including seed selection, treatment, storage, multiplication, and distribution.     

How Asian countries understand policy experiment as policy pilots?

Policymaking based on the classical experimental design is regarded as a golden rule in the field of public policy. Despite the methodological superiority of randomized control experiment, the practices of policy experiment differ across countries, reflecting the different intentions of policymakers. This paper reviews how policy experiments are practised in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Singapore. As our review suggests, the term ‘policy pilot’ is preferred to ‘experiment’ as the former is considered as an exemplar proposed by the central government. At the same time, the selection of pilot sites depends on central government’s political and practical (rather than methodological) consideration. Moreover, the utilization of policy pilots does not solely depend on the success of the pilot programme or the effect size per se. As the policymaking process is a complex endeavour involving multiple streams of actors, resources, and solutions, Asian countries use policy pilot results to get ideas on how different actors respond to policy, instead of a determinant of policy decision. Therefore, we conclude that Asian countries emphasize less the rigorousness of experimental design than the possibility of pragmatic utilization of policy pilots.     

The choice of electoral systems in new democracies: a case study of South Korea in 1988

Most theories about electoral system choice are based on the experiences of Western European countries, many of which shifted from majority/plurality rule to proportional representation (PR) at the turn of the twentieth century. This article aims to explain the choice of the South Korean legislative electoral system in 1988 as an example of electoral institution choices in new democracies, which may be different from those in the Western European countries. Through analysing multiple steps leading to the choice of a single-member district plurality voting system, this article suggests three potentially generalizable findings. First, in new democracies, labour parties can only induce old parties to shift to a proportional representation system if they have mobilized the working class prior to democratization. Secondly, parties in the developing world at times face unusual systems that are neither majoritarian nor fully PR. Under such unusual systems, party size would not be a reliable predictor for the party's preference over electoral institutions. Finally, when parties choose a legislative electoral institution in a presidential system, parties tend to prefer an institution that helps them in the subsequent presidential election even though the institution might harm them in the upcoming legislative election.