• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.127-165
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• 2014

This article regards the phase of political confrontations in Thailand and Burma as a prolonged and inconclusive political struggle between national revolution forces and civil revolution forces. It argues that in Thai case, anti-monarchy constitutional revolution has led to a right-wing national revolution based on state nationalism consolidating capitalist economic system by Sarit's military coup, while in Burmese case, anti-British imperialism movement in colonial era has resulted in a left-wing national revolution grounded on state nationalism associating with socialist economic system by Ne Win's military coup. It is also interesting to note that the two cases experienced state nationalism denying autonomous civil society as a process of nation-building in spite of their contrasting ideologies. In both cases, it became inevitable to have national revolution forces clinging to official nationalism and state nationalism confronting with civil revolution forces seeking popular nationalism and liberal nationalism. In particular, unlike Burmese society, Thai society, without colonial history has never experienced a civil war mobilizing anti-colonial popular nationalism including ethnic revolt. This article considers Dankwart Rustow's argument that national unity as a background condition must precede all the other phases of democratization, but that otherwise its timing is irrelevant. In this context, Thai democratization without national unity which began earlier than Burmese is taking a backward step. For the time being, there would be no solution map to overcome severe political polarization between the right-wing national revolution forces defending official nationalism cum state nationalism and the civil revolution forces trying to go beyond official nationalism towards popular nationalism cum liberal nationalism. In contrast, paradoxically belated Burmese democratization has just taken a big leap in escaping from serious and inconclusive nature of political struggle between the left-wing national revolution forces to defend official nationalism cum state nationalism and civil revolution based on popular nationalism cum liberal nationalism towards a reconciliation phase in order to seek solutions for internal conflicts. The two case studies imply that national unity is not a background condition, but a consequence of the process of political polarization and reconciliation between national revolution forces and civil revolution forces.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.217-227
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• 2020

Purpose - Against the backdrop of the recent intense political conflict in Korea's political circles, it is to reveal from an economic point of view the hidden aspects behind the hostile conflict between the two political forces. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is not a normative study to find a solution to political conflict, but a positive study to reveal the mechanism of reciprocity that exists between the two parties of conflict in real politics. Therefore, the analysis is based on game theory methodology. Findings - It is shown that the ruling party should choose a level of preemptive response that is neither insufficient nor excessive if it aims to avoid radical anti-government struggles by opposition parties. We also find that even if the chances of success of the opposition's radical offensive struggle are low, the use of that strategy is not necessarily reduced. In addition, we have obtained comparative static results that do not deviate much from our intuition. What's interesting is that unlike our intuition that the choice of the method will be indifferent if the marginal effects of radical and normal methods of struggle are the same, the opposition party rather chooses the normal method of struggle more often. Research implications or Originality - In forming the analytical model, it reflected the support of the general public following the opposition's struggle against the ruling party in order to capture real politics well in the conflict between the two opposing parties.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.281-285
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• 2024

Within five years of Kim Jong-un's rise to power, North Korea conducted four nuclear tests and launched the Hwasong-15, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), in 2017, declaring the completion of its nuclear forces. During the period when Kim Jong-un completed nuclear forces to maintain the regime, foreign policy factors of the United States, China, Russia, and South Korea drove North Korea's accelerated nuclear development. The main motivating factors were the hostile policies and external threats as security factors. The completion of nuclear forces is also the result of the interplay of domestic political factors, normative factors, and hereditary factors. North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons and missiles for the survival of its regime. To achieve lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, a new modus vivendi must be sought. It is necessary to set the ultimate goal of North Korea's complete denuclearization and engage in strategic thinking for a realistic and effective phased approach.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2003

The goal of this paper is to explore and compare the situations of North Korean and Chinese labor forces in the Russian Far East (RFE). First of all, the past and present pictures of North Korean and Chinese labor forces were reviewed, and then local Russinans' views about those foreign workers were analyzed in terms of political, economic, socio-psychological and public order aspects. As a result, it turned out that both North Korean and Chinese workers were regarded as useful to the RFE from economic viewpoint, but not as beneficial to local Russians in terms of maintenance of public order. According to the political and socio-psychological views of local Russians, North Korean labor forces were much more preferable to their Chinese counterparts. This paper implies that participation of South Korea in the development of RFE via North Korea workers is significant in that local Russians are very afraid of flooding Chinese workers there.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.2-12
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• 2017

Research on democratic transitions has relatively ignored the question of why some countries experience a regressive form of political pacts, while others do not. This paper develops a simple game-theoretic model to explain the phenomenon of collusive pacts in the process of democratization. Trasformismo is a term that refers to a system of political exchange based on informal clientelistic politics. The existing studies of the politics of trasformismo have emphasized the timing of industrialization and the tradition of strong state as conditions of the politics of trasformismo. However, not every late industrializers and not every strong states experienced some variants of collusive political pacts in their trajectories of democratization. In this paper, I contend that the politics of trasformismo is rather a generalizable pattern of political elites' behavior under particular circumstances. By developing a simple game theoretic model, this paper suggests the conditions under which political actors are likely to collude to a regressive form of political pacts. The model shows that the likelihood of collusion to a regressive form of political pacts is a function of a set of parameters. First, a higher level of incumbency advantage in electoral competition is likely to be associated with a higher probability of collusive political pacts. Second, a higher degree of the monopoly of political representation of political parties without a close link with a variety of societal forces is likely to induce collusive behavior among politicians. Third, the ruling party leader's expectations about the likelihood of a safe extrication are related to collusive political pacts. This paper then engages in a case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea. The 1990 Korean case is interesting in that the ruling party created a new party after having merged with two opposition parties. This case can be considered a result of political maneuver in a context of democratization. The case study suggests the empirical relevance of the game-theoretic model. As the game of trasformismo and the case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea have shown, the collusive political pact was neither determined by a certain stage of economic development nor by a particular cultural systems. Rather, it was a product of the art of trasformismo based on party leaders' rational calculations of the expected likelihood of taking governing power.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.181-215
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• 2017

The study found that the origins of modern Korean welfare regime are closely related to the political and economic order of the U.S. military rule between 1945 and 1948. The creation of developmental state in 1960s and 1970s can not be imagined from the standpoint of the U.S. military rule. The U.S. military government dismantled the labor movement and the farmers' movement, and dealt a devastating blow to leftist political forces. Through this process, the U.S. military government turned the political landscape of the Republic of Korea, which was dominated by left-wing political forces in August 1945, completely transformed into the political landscape dominated by right-wing political forces. Moreover, it would not have been possible without the physical force of the US military government to transplant American capitalism instead of the social (democratic) state that the majority of the Korean people wanted. Through farmland reform, the traditional landowning classes were broken down, the revolutionary farmers turned into conservative peasants, and the distribution of factories owned by the Japanese led to the birth of a new capitalist class that was subordinated to the state. From the viewpoint of the welfare regime, the most significant meaning of the US military government is that it laid the foundations for the developmental state in the 1960s and 1970s in Korea.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.121-152
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• 2020

The article is a critical examination of the political developments in Armenia since the 'Velvet Revolution' of April-May 2018, when, on the wave of massive protests against the ruling regime, new young forces came to power raising amongst broad segments of population enormous enthusiasm and hopes about radical reforms that would lead to profound transformations in the political and socio-economic spheres. It contains a thorough analysis of underlying political processes in the country in an attempt to answer a number of topical questions, so important to get a deeper understanding of the situation in Armenia and in the South Caucasus region. Based on the analysis of the new authorities' performance against the acknowledged benchmarks and standards of democracy consolidation, such as: separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, good governance, transitional justice the author comes to the conclusion that they failed to achieve any breakthrough in the above-mentioned fields. On the contrary, as demonstrated by concrete examples, what occurred in Armenia was not a revolution but a mere regime change under the leadership of Prime Minister Pashinyan, who gradually has concentrated in his hands executive, legislative, and quasi-totality of the judicial branch of power.

• Journal of the military operations research society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 1991

If one were to say that war is political in its nature, then war could be one of the several ways of achieving political goals. Thus, the aspect of wars will, in certainty, be altered by the changes in political environment. Wars in the past broke out mainly due to ideological differences that ran to extremes and were of high intensity. However, wars today show such restraints as controlling them beforehand or during the war in anticipation of the post-war situation. The trend of ideas to actualize such wars in the effective operation of airpower is on the rise. Airpower normally possesses speed and operative flexibility as well as capability of destruction, so it is possible to destroy the politically declared targets clearly. Previous airpower was merely employed as means of helping to vertically detouring the spatial obstacle that the ground forces encountered. Over the years, due to the speedy improvement of aviation technology and of ideas concerning wars in space, more advanced application has been developed. but they also were nothing more than an auxiliary role to facilotate the ground forces, that needed a longer effective range of firepower and did not become forces with the right of self-determination, that is, the fact of decisive war that makes its outcome. However, under transitional strategic environment like that of the present, Airpower possesses not only the capability to operate as a decisive means of war but also as theories to support it. The advancement in air technology has enabled supremacy over targets in depth, and the development of electronic technology has empowered the improvement of degree of destruction but also triumphant war by means of an overwhelming supremacy in a relatively short period. Thus, the method of systematic destruction that accomplishes the stated goals while rejecting the damage of accumulative destruction has been realized. The progress of such a concept has also proved that the counter-force strategy that has been developed in nuclear strategy is useful in conventional warfare as well. Therefore, it can be said that the under today's strategic environment airpower is an outstanding means of military strategy that can deeply affect to achieve the national objectives.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.176-197
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• 2016

Despite being a key concept of International Relations theory, there is no consensus about what the national interest is. It is almost impossible for political leaders of democratic states to make a crucial decision in foreign policies when considering only the national interest without public support. Rather, we are unable to imagine the national interest without public opinion. In general, international crises galvanize people who held different opinions and unify social cleavages, such as secular-religious identities, into a nation that acts in its national interest. The author proposes a method to operationalize the key concept and describes a relationship between the national interest and religious identities in a democratic state. The selected case is the state of Israel. It is believed that Israel is a good example to think about the association between foreign affairs and political attitudes since it is characterized as a socio-religious divided society and has often waged war against Arab military forces.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.105-130
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• 2022

This paper argues that the war in Syria is partly the result of a global Islamist wave that contributed to fuelling conflict across large regions of Asia and Africa. Of course, the war that has consumed Syria since 2011 most certainly has multiple interrelated causes and driving forces, and any attempt to isolate one or even two or three runs the risk of advancing an overly simplistic interpretation of history. This essay, therefore, does not aim to offer an appraisal of the multiple variables that contributed to the war in Syria. Instead, it zeroes in on how political Islam came to impact Syria and its people. In doing so, it demonstrates how competing varieties of political Islam represented leading causes of conflict. Indeed, different Islamist movements contributed to the outbreak of the war in 2011, fuelled the conflict for years on end, and to this day represent major obstacles to the achievement of sustainable peace. Four broad Islamist currents are especially relevant to the case of Syria: the Muslim Brotherhood; the Shia revivalist movement at the nexus of the alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria; Salafi jihadism and its volatile and fractious underworld of competing armed groups, from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State; and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's market-friendly Islamism, which induced Turkey to intervene in Syria's civil war.