Taxation is a critical part of state power and has evolved with modernization. Although tax systems are expected to converge as countries achieve economic development, there are variations in the scale and structure of tax revenues. A recurring question is which tax dominates state financing in democracies. Some scholars associate mature democracies with progressive income taxation, and others find that democracies have relied on regressive taxation on consumption. Learning from the history of tax development, this paper illuminates that countries in different democratic waves followed divergent paths of tax development in the process of modernization. The first and second wave democratizers established progressive income taxation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continued to rely on it. On the other hand, newly democratized countries came to rely heavily on the value-added tax, which was innovated in the mid-twentieth century, shortly before the beginning of the third wave of democratization. By shedding new light on the linkage between the development of modern taxation and the waves of democratization, the study demonstrates that the trajectory of modernization has shaped different tax systems.

Latin American fiscal policy presents a stark challenge to standard analytical models of political economy. Most importantly, since about 1990 the combination of drastic inequality, electoral democracy, and weak redistributive efforts appears to contradict the economists’ workhorse, the median-voter model, which predicts significant fiscal redistribution under these conditions (Meltzer and Richard, 1981; Profeta and Scabrosetti, 2008: 70–71; Huber and Stephens, 2012). However, recent innovations – a “basic universalism” in social welfare and a couple of progressive tax reforms – might be thought to bring the region more in line with the model's predictions, or perhaps those of other approaches. In short, this field could benefit from theoretical clarification. This paper evaluates the performance of median-voter and several other models in an attempt to explain longstanding differences in fiscal policy. It compares Latin America with other world regions, first and mainly, before examining variation across the region. It then turns its attention to the new developments in policy.

Since its democratization, South Korea has widened the population coverage of various social programs, yet the generosity of most programs remains shallow. Existing studies offer state/elite-centered explanations for this move toward a weak universalistic welfare state. I suggest that the move rather accurately reflects citizen attitudes as well: a majority of Koreans across economic classes support welfare state expansion, yet a large segment of the self-proclaimed supporters are unwilling to pay for the expansion. I argue that underlying such mixed attitudes is the perceived unfairness of the tax and transfer systems. More specifically, (1) the perception of unfair contribution vis-à-vis other taxpayers and (2) the perception of unfair fiscal exchange with the government significantly lower one's willingness to contribute to the welfare state. My analysis of a nation-wide survey lends support to my argument. My findings have important policy implications for the emerging economies where, despite a growing citizen demand for social protection, the fiscal support base for welfare state expansion is frail.

The relationship between taxation and welfare regime in Taiwan has largely been unexplored to date. This study argues that since taxation capacity of the state decides the fate of new welfare programs such as the public provision of long-term care, it also affects the trajectory of the welfare regime. Through the analysis of Taiwan's tax revenue structure and tax base, this study reveals that Taiwan, unlike many new democracies, has shone away from relying on goods and services taxes but at the same time continues to provide preferential tax treatment for the corporate world. The result has been the erosion of tax base which makes introducing new welfare programs extremely difficult even when new policies allow for credit-claiming. Therefore, the familialistic welfare regime persists because of a weakened taxation capacity. Furthermore, the political determinants of the weakened taxation capacity can be found in identity-based party politics, an influential capital vs acquiescent labor and the limited bargaining power of civil society.

Taxation is considered an important reason for the persistent inequality in developing countries. Developing countries tend to rely heavily on revenue from regressive taxation on consumption, such as the value-added tax, and fail to use progressive income taxes for revenue. Thailand is a typical case of those developing countries. Scholars argue that the median voter model does not apply to the developing countries because their ineffective income taxation results from the weak representation of the poor. A close examination of tax politics in Thailand, however, demonstrates that the low revenue from income taxation in Thailand is attributed to the strong representation of the poor rather than the weak one. This study details the process of Thai tax reform based on interviews with policymakers in Bangkok. It traces changes in the country's tax regulations and uses tax data collected at both the local and national level. Tax reforms, particularly those on income taxes after the 1997 financial crisis, have resulted in a decreased tax burden on the poor as well as the rich.

State revenue production since the third wave of democratization contrasts sharply with the experiences of the first and second waves of democratization. The late democratizers tend to adopt and raise revenue from a regressive tax on consumption (the value-added tax: VAT), which is more compatible with economic development in global markets but is considered as unequal taxation. How does the weak redistributive (i.e., regressive) effect of this form of taxation affect the welfare of people? We build on the conventional wisdom that democratic accountability through multiparty contestation improves human development. Focused on taxation, we argue that an increasing state financial capacity contributes to an increase in human development, even when electoral contestation is absent. Empirical analyses employed a reduction in infant mortality as an indicator for the improvement of human development and demonstrate the counter-intuitive effect of the VAT on human development. Despite the effect of weak redistribution, the VAT contributes to human development in countries with less democratic accountability. The results also show that the state's financial capacity to secure tax compliance, rather than a mere increase in tax revenue, intervenes critically in such development in countries since the third wave. We conclude that the increased state financial capacity with regressive taxation is expected to promote human development in newly emerging democratic states.

Japan's labor market has been under severe strain over the past few decades, driven by its protracted economic recession, a series of labor market reforms, and changing labor management practices. Confronting these new challenges, an increasing number of young people have had extreme difficulties in searching for decent and stable jobs in the labor market, trapped in the vicious cycle of precarious employment. This paper examines the deterioration of employment and labor market conditions for Japan's youth after the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s and the government's policy efforts to address these concerns, especially since the early 2000s, a period during which it has initiated a wide array of youth employment and labor market policies. In particular, it analyzes variations in policy target group and goal across different measures and evaluates the effectiveness and limitations of these programs in dealing with youth problems in the labor market. This paper argues that while the government has promoted various policy tools to help young people become economically and socially independent individuals, it has gradually shifted its policy focus toward human capital development for growth and industrial competitiveness as a way of revitalizing Japan's troubling economy.

This study addresses why small parties nominate candidates to run in the district elections and how nomination of district candidates could influence small parties’ share of party votes in Taiwan. Previous studies on party's strategic entry in the mixed electoral system demonstrate the existence of ‘contamination effect’ in various Western democracies. While ‘contamination effect’ suggests that party would gain more proportional representation (PR) seats by increasing its number of candidate nomination in the single-member-district (SMD) races, we contend that small parties should also take the strength of nominated candidates into consideration. Nominating strong candidates in SMD competitions could generate positive ‘spillover effect’ to party's PR tier. By focusing on the 2016 Taiwan legislative election, our findings suggest that first, small parties need to fulfill the institutional requirements in order to qualify for running in the party-list election; second, the ‘contamination effect’ exists in Taiwan, but it is conditional; and finally, candidates’ strength creates positive ‘spillover effect’ on party's proportional seats.

The political survival of Kim Jong-un's regime in North Korea has been a major international concern since his accession in 2012. While international research has endeavored to diagnose the stability of the regime based on its limitations and weaknesses due to political, economic, and international factors, studies based on baseline theoretical models of leadership stability have rarely been undertaken. This paper employs selectorate theory to address this issue, by identifying the selectorate and winning coalition in North Korea and illustrating their relationships with Kim Jong-un's political survival. To reexamine the analytical framework and results, this study has undertaken in-depth interviews with high-level North Korean defectors who have served in key power apparatuses of Kim Jong-il and/or Kim Jong-un's regime. It analyzes how frequent co-optation of top aides, economic ideologies, and policies are utilized for political survival. It further explains the correlation of his political survival with the party-dependent bureaucracy, internal reign of terror, development of nuclear capacity, and continuous military provocations. However, as the regime further intensifies the reign of terror, the possibility of a coup d’état by the selectorate and coalition cannot be completely ruled out.

This paper delves into the shifts in the foreign policy of Russia, considering what has determined Russia's grand strategy orientation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also attempts to offer an explanation of why Russia becomes discounted with the ‘constitutive and normative structure’, and how its foreign policy shifted toward the anti-status quo orientation, especially after the color revolutions. The main purpose of this paper is to explain the shift in Russia's foreign policy, from the search for the ‘greatpowerness’ status via different enhancement strategies in light of status quo in the ‘revolutionary decade’, to revisionism after the color revolutions in Commonwealth of Independent States region (2003–2005). To substantiate this, the study uses process-tracing and document analysis to show the changes in Russia's foreign policy. As demonstrated in this paper, power rendered is unable of directing or disinclined to direct its policies toward status quo, due to internal effects of perceived ‘status immobility’ resulting from the failure of several status enhancement strategies. Accordingly, the shift in Russia's foreign policy was a result of changing the Russian perception from status inconsistency to status immobility.

For the last few decades, the discipline of international relations has been littered with anarchy. Since Waltz's Theory of International Politics, it has been assumed that states are formally equal sovereign unitary actors operating in an anarchic world system and that their identities and interests are defined by the very existence of anarchy. This article shatters this conception. It offers a ‘hierarchical worldview’ in order to illustrate that the very concepts of state, sovereignty, and anarchy are discursive creations inherently tied to the practice of hierarchy. I use a case study of Japanese national identity to illustrate this practice. The narratives of Japan as an autonomous and sovereign state were inextricably linked to Japan's hierarchical relationship toward Asia and the West (pre-war) and the USA (post-war). Japan's sovereignty and autonomy were then formulated within the practice of hierarchy.

In this article, I describe an important aspect of the intellectual tradition of Japanese political theory while focusing on the Japanese scholar Fujita Shōzō’s political and scholarly activities. Not surprisingly, he has been chiefly considered a thinker or a historian of ideas, due to his being a pupil of Japan's brightest political scientist, Maruyama Masao. It must be stressed, however, that his scholarly works do not confine his academic scope to their ingredients; they are composed of theoretical requisites for the disciplinary activity of political theory, as can be seen particularly in his early contributions. He requires his theory to constitute integral aspects of practice, experience and perspective on the basis of his political concerns and practices in terms of detachment realism. From this perspective, I explore how Fujita changed his primary purpose from criticising Japan's ‘Tennō system’ (Tennōsei) to criticising its ‘high-speed growth’ (kōdo seichō) by highlighting the psychological transformation of his self-critical and self-reflective political thinking and acting according to his optimistic state of ‘hope’ (kibō) and his pessimistic state of ‘despair’ (zetsubō), especially in terms of his early work.

The rapid proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has prompted numerous studies on why states seek PTAs. However, very little research examines why states vary in choosing different forms of PTAs, while states’ decisions to enter bilateral or multilateral PTA affect the global, regional, and national political economies. This paper thus finds global patterns regarding which pairs of states are more likely to enter bilateral or multilateral PTAs. Based on a wide range of existing research, the paper begins with hypothesizing different effects of economic and political factors that give rise to these PTAs during the last two decades. The empirical analysis then tests these hypotheses. The result shows stark differences in pairs of states joining the two types of PTAs. Bilateral PTAs are more likely to develop between democratic states with a large market size and the World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. Multilateral PTAs tend to form between less democratic states with greater political affinity.

This paper compares Japanese and Chinese infrastructure development strategies in post-Soviet Central Asia (CA) by analyzing the similarities and differences in the approaches of the two Asian economic powers. This paper develops several arguments with respect to the Japanese and Chinese approaches to infrastructure development in CA. This paper argues that the discourse of mutually exclusive interests in China and Japan's development of various infrastructure-related projects in CA is empirically unproven. Most of the Chinese engagements emphasize the creation of energy and transportation infrastructure (construction), while Japan's main areas of focus are the maintenance, modernization, and rehabilitation of current infrastructure. Thus, this paper suggests that China positions itself as CA's leading economic partner, while Japan is CA's leading assistance provider. These two roles have different implications. Furthermore, the current infrastructure engagements of Japan (from assistance to partnership) and China (from exploitation to contribution to the region) in CA demonstrate both countries’ attempts to adjust and search for new opportunities.