In politically divided environments like Thailand, affective polarization (AP) and social distrust threaten democratic stability and hinder consensus-building. Using an original survey (N = 2,016) conducted in 2021 during intense political turmoil, we examine how perceived ideological differences and media consumption shape AP. Our findings show that perceived—rather than actual—ideological differences drive out-group animosity, affecting trust in policymaking, political discourse, and attitudes toward justice. We also highlight the role of echo chambers created by the consumption of one-sided media that exaggerates polarization and amplifies hostility toward the out-group.

Research on the relationship between inequality and political engagement has yielded varying conclusions. Some studies suggest that inequality fosters political action, while others indicate the opposite, and some find no significant connections. This study demonstrates that individuals’ reactions to inequality are influenced by their attribution of the causes of low income. Based on a survey of over 3,700 residents in Hong Kong, a region known for its high levels of inequality, this research finds that blame attribution significantly affects intentions to participate in collective action. Individuals often attribute income inequality to three types of factors: structural, fatalistic, and individualistic. Those who attribute inequality to structural factors are more likely to engage in collective and disruptive actions, whereas those who attribute it to personal factors are less likely to participate. Consequently, reducing inequality can contribute to social stability by decreasing the potential for collective action.

Party-based authoritarian regimes have often demonstrated remarkable resilience throughout wars, revolutions, and state-building processes. Yet how they consolidate authority in newly emerging socioeconomic fields that arise from the (partial) liberalization of socioeconomic policies remains insufficiently explored. This study examines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) penetration into new socioeconomic organizations in the non-public sector, showing how it balances political control with socioeconomic vitality. We identify three strategies—coercion, indoctrination, and incentivization—framed within a process-oriented, three-step model that highlights ongoing CCP-organization dynamics rather than one-sided penetration. Drawing on resource dependence and organizational field theories, we explain both the Party’s strategic choices and organizational responses. This process has generated institutional isomorphism in the non-public sector, where party-building is increasingly viewed as a means of securing legitimacy and enhancing performance. Our analysis contributes not only to understanding CCP adaptability but also to broader debates on how authoritarian ruling parties consolidate authority in emerging fields.

What explains China’s decision to sign an alliance treaty with North Korea in 1961? The treaty was redundant to deter the United States and South Korea because China had credibly established its resolve and capability to defend North Korea after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The treaty even increased the risk of China’s entrapment in a Korean conflict. This article develops a triangular theory of alliance formation to show that China’s signing of the treaty was intended to drive a wedge between North Korea and the Soviet Union, not to deter South Korea and the United States. China was thus willing to incur more risk to neutralize North Korea from a pro-Soviet position. This article tests the theory by process tracing events in the China–North Korea–Soviet Union triangle from 1948 to 1961 with a plausibility probe of the China–North Vietnam–Soviet Union triangle from 1954 to 1965. The article concludes with implications for the contemporary China–North Korea–Russia bloc and the study of alliance politics in the Asian context.

Political apologies have become an important tool for addressing historical injustices, yet their effectiveness—especially in international contexts—remains debated. Prior scholarship has highlighted the limitations of simple verbal apologies and emphasized the importance of tangible and observable measures. What remains unclear, however, is why such measures enhance sincerity. I argue that their effectiveness hinges on the extent to which they are perceived as requiring effort in crafting and delivering apologies. This study examines whether—and if so, how—perceived effort shapes evaluations of sincerity, drawing on two pre-registered survey experiments in South Korea that used the same survey instrument and vignette treatments, in which respondents evaluated apologies issued by Japan for its colonial rule. The results demonstrate that apologies accompanied by concrete reparative measures are perceived as involving greater effort, which in turn elevates both credibility and sincerity. These findings underscore the importance of designing political apologies that are both symbolically meaningful and visibly effortful in international historical disputes.

How does China strategically allocate foreign aid to increase its influence on South China Sea disputes? We posit that China uses foreign aid as a tool of strategic appeasement to manage militarized interstate disputes, particularly targeting claimant states with smaller winning coalitions that are more susceptible to aid influence. The results of our empirical analysis show that China is more likely to allocate aid to the ASEAN SCS claimants with a smaller winning coalition. These findings not only support the notion of foreign aid as a strategic tool employed by China to mitigate tensions in the South China Sea but also highlight the vulnerability of certain recipient states. This article contributes to the foreign assistance and conflict literature by examining the conditionality of claimant donors’ decisions to provide foreign aid to other claimant recipients.

How do institutionalized memories of historical trauma shape contemporary political attitudes? This study examines how emotionally evocative reminders of past violence influence public opinion. Drawing on a survey experiment in South Korea, I test how symbolic narratives of Japanese colonial repression affect emotional responses and downstream political views. The results show that while these reminders evoke strong emotions—especially anger and fear—they do not directly alter attitudes toward national identity or policy. Instead, anger, more than fear, consistently predicts both inclusive orientations, such as increased national pride, and exclusive preferences, including support for protectionist policies. These findings suggest that historical trauma influences political behavior not by providing new information but by activating internalized emotional frameworks. The study contributes to research on the legacy of political violence by identifying discrete emotions as key mechanisms linking collective victimhood to divergent political responses.

As many democracies face aging populations, concerns about how to serve senior citizens’ policy interests become increasingly important. Despite seniors forming a growing share of the electorate, they often receive limited legislative attention as a group. How does an aging electorate influence the representation of seniors, and how does this influence vary across different electoral contexts? We argue that the high turnout rates and consistent political preferences of seniors reduce their electoral impact in competitive districts. Therefore, we expect lawmakers’ responsiveness to the relative size of the senior population to vary depending on electoral competitiveness. We test our hypothesis using the case of South Korea, one of the most rapidly aging societies globally. Analyzing over 20,000 bills from the 21st National Assembly in South Korea, we find that a larger senior population is not consistently associated with senior-related legislation. Legislators in competitive districts are less likely to sponsor such legislation, prioritizing bills with broader voter appeal. In contrast, those in safer districts are more responsive to aging constituents. These findings suggest that demographic size alone does not ensure political influence; the electoral context plays a decisive role in shaping substantive representation in aging democracies.

There has been a decade-long debate in the studies of Malaysian politics on whether there is indeed an urban–rural difference when it comes to elections. Studies using aggregated election data suggest stark differences in parties’ performance in urban and rural electoral districts, while studies relying on survey data tend to downplay urban–rural differences in voting patterns. Notwithstanding the ecological fallacy problem inherent in studies using aggregated election data, the consistent differences between studies using individual and aggregated data are puzzling, and cast a shadow over our understanding of electoral politics in Malaysia. This article argues that in Peninsular Malaysia the urban–rural differences supported by aggregated election data may have been overestimated due to results being driven by a few large urban centers. Combining survey data from the fifth wave of Asian Barometer and aggregated election data from the fourteenth general election in Malaysia, this article demonstrates that both kinds of data in fact point to the same conclusion. Once we specifically control for inter-state and local heterogeneity in population density, the association between population density and party performance attenuates.

Taiwan’s partisan politics have long centered on Cross-Strait relations with Mainland China, yet over the past decade, cultural and moral issues—such as same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and surrogacy—have introduced new axes of division and intensified polarization. This article traces how civic groups and party actors during the same-sex marriage campaign and the Sunflower Movement framed and mobilized moral debates, and it uses two decades of Taiwan Social Change Survey data to show the rise of issue partisanship around civil rights and family values in the mid-2010s. These cultural cleavages persisted through 2020 without displacing Cross-Strait relations as the dominant divide. Taiwan’s case illustrates how cultural polarization can develop within a geopolitically constrained democracy and East Asian context, contributing to comparative debates on culture wars and partisan polarization.

Public opinion surveys are an indispensable tool for studying politics in Southeast Asia. But publicly available data are often in short supply in the region. To this end, we introduce SIKAP, a harmonized and open-access dataset of 58 weekly surveys (N = 95, 923) conducted in advance of, during, and in the aftermath of the 2024 Indonesian general election. We describe the data collection procedures and assess the quality of the sample. We demonstrate its utility by analyzing the effects of two political events on Indonesian voters’ attitudes in almost real time. First, we show that a constitutional crisis in August 2024 where the coalition of then President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) defied the Constitutional Court’s rulings led to a sharp but ultimately temporary decline in the public’s approval of Jokowi. Second, we show that voters who supported candidates other than Prabowo Subianto in the general election report large and persistent declines in support for democracy in the aftermath.

This article examines how China’s central political inspections indirectly enhance municipal provision of invisible public goods. Such goods (e.g., underground pipelines, drainage systems) eludes reliable public assessment through daily observation. Drawing on Mani and Mukand, we emphasize their two defining attributes: (1) conditional evaluation (public judgment requires specific triggers like extreme weather), and (2) temporal accountability lag (delayed quality assessment). Unlike technical business inspections, political inspections prioritize provincial leaders’ political loyalty, generating cascading deterrent effects on municipal officials. Confronting heightened career risks, rational local officials strategically reallocate resources to rectify undersupplied invisible goods. Empirical analysis leveraging the first wave of nationwide inspection data confirms this causal mechanism.