• Informatization Policy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.81-95
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• 2019

This study explores how the advanced data analysis capabilities of intelligent information technology are being utilized in politics. In particular, we focus on the fact that voter behavioral targeting in election campaigns comes into conflict with the democratic process in various ways. For this purpose, this study examines political micro-targeting and political bots. It is aimed at showing that these technology-based campaign techniques work as a factor preventing free expression of opinions and discussions, which are the core of democracy itself. Then we identify the attributes of the algorithm that affects them. As a result, this study suggests that the following issues might arise regarding intelligent information technology-based politics and democracy. First, inequality in political participation becomes more severe. Second, the public debate between voters gets more difficult. Third, superficial politics is prevalent. Fourth, single-issue politics and the exclusion of political representation is likely to increase. Fifth, political privacy might also be invaded. Based on our discussions, this study concludes that it is our role to find ways by which intelligent information technology and democracy can coexist.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-56
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• 2009

It is generally acknowledged that Philippines politics has achieved a basic soil for democracy at the macro-level by the two incidents of 'People Power' (1986 & 2001). However, in spite of such an achievement, Philippine politics at the micro-level, does not enjoy the same reputation. Institutionalized 'Bossism' or 'patron/clientelism' political culture has been attributed to make such a gap. This paper aims to bridge the gap by a longitudinal observation on local politics of a particular province in the Philippines. Surigao del Norte is the province picked up for the study. The reason why this particular province attracts special concerns is that there appears to come a very dynamic local politics, led by an indigenous Christian organization, the PBMA (Philippines Benevolent Missionary Association), which was founded in the mid 1960s. With the coming of the organization in the province, the political power of the traditional families has been narrowed. On the other hand, new families, not only the leader family of the PBMA but also the family allied with the PBMA, has expanded political influence. Following steps are adopted to understand the meaning of such a change. First, institutional frame of Philippine politics and elections will be reviewed. Second, demographic changes will be investigated on Surigao del Norte province to find out how popular the PBMA organization is among the people. Third, local election outcomes will be examined to describe the changing nature of political landscape of the province. This will reveal how the relationship between the old and new families has been developed in the province. Lastly, based on the facts discovered by a longitudinal observation, an attempt to evaluate theories on Philippines politics will be made Conclusions are as follows. To understand the dynamics of Philippine politics, 'expectations from the below,' or, 'passions of the people,' suggested by Ileto, needs more attention. Furthermore, 'mutual accommodation' between domination and resistance, coined by Abinales, also demands more appreciation. The case of local politics in the Surigao del Norte, with the coming of the PBMA, is sure to show a concrete example of changing politics in the 'changeless land.'

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.263-279
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• 2008

Arif Dirlik in Postmodernity's Histories sees the issue of re-ethnicization in the case of John Huang, China's alleged attempt at lobbying the Clinton administration. In this view, Americans with Chinese surnames were suspected by the US Justice Department to be possible spies working for Beijing. Reethnicization here seems to serve the mainstream society in reducing an ethnic minority to a group of aliens operating for their countries of origin. However, re-ethnicization is not necessarily a one-way oppressive operation; it is often made use of by the ethnic minorities in their efforts to adapt to their country of arrival. Haroon and Karim, the protagonists of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, are cases in point. They are portrayed as winning social recognition and securing a place of their own within the hostile host society through a strategic use of re-ethnicization, that is, masquerading as 'genuine Orientals.' This study brings to light possible fallacies or misguided expectations concerning the political position of first- and second-generation immigrants. One of the fallacies is found in the racist metropolis, which regards the ethnic minorities as a sort of resident aliens, no matter what immigrant generation the latter belongs to. Another fallacy is found in the kind of postcolonial criticism that automatically regards an anti-racist critique advanced by people like Kureishi as something motivated by a confrontational tactic, that is, an attempt at subverting the colonial power relations. The conclusion of this study is that Kureishi's agenda, as presented in The Buddha of Suburbia, is neither the preservation of an ethnic identity nor the subversion of colonial power relations but survival in the metropolis. On this account Kureish's agenda can be called a micro-politics.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.469-481
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• 2018

When literatures and cultures encounter their counterparts in terms of the big data or statistics of a new reconfiguration in the cognitive map, the tangential points of the borderland will be reduced to what Mitchell calls "a mere abstraction on a map," which nevertheless will provide a vast interstitial zone of "intersections, competition, and exclusions." This zone will be the dynamic vortex for the aesthetics, politics, and ethics of cultural translation. The translated discourse will engage in carrying across the disturbing region of untranslatability and demonstrate how the literary texts of world literature reveal enriching but threatening human experience. This dynamic border of vortex will construct the translational space of world literature, transcending the fragmentary untranslatable nature of the hybrid convergence of the ethnic, racial, cultural and national intermixtures and constructing what Pascal Casanova terms "The World Republic of Letters." In this paper, I will demonstrate how the very concept of scale is related to literary space as well as how distance creates a poetics of literary landscapes which looks ahead of world literature. Also, I will attempt to find the possibility to relate the "micro-scale" with the "macro-scale," and to construct the scale politics of representation. "Glocalization" is a convenient theoretical tool for the double movement of the up-scale and down-scale.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.297-313
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• 2003

Problems caused by the U.S. military bases have attracted little attention until recently due to the national security of S.Korea and the peace of North-Eastern Asia, emphasized from the perspective of macro-geopolitics. However, since the political regime has been democratized and political discourses have been liberalized from the 1990s, those problems become a nation-widely serious social issue, though they have been brought about on the local areas. Thus, it can be suggested that micro-geopolitics is highly relevant and significant in approaching the local problems caused by the U.S. military bases, and ultimately resolving the macro-geopolitical problem of longstanding unfair relations in the SOFA and the withdrawal of U.S. troops. This paper aims to consider local problems caused by the U.S. military bases and resolving strategies from the perspective of micro-geopolitics. First of all, it discusses some significance of the micro-geopolitical perspective, as it has been recently emphasized in political geography in considering local problems and politics of life on the basis of place, then looks on empirically criminal and environmental problems caused by the U.S. military bases, analyses the questionnaire date on the perception of local dwellers around the military camps in Nam-gu Daegu, and finally suggests strategies to resolve those problems, which level up from the micro to the macro-scale of geopolitics.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.37-66
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• 2017

Massive civic protests and consequent presidential impeachment requires a serious revisiting to democratic theories of Korean democracy. This paper explores the strengths and limitations of macro and micro approaches. Changes in democratic realities was manifested on three fronts. First, the rise of new political subject, that is, participants to massive protest. Second, changing nexus between representative institutions and civic protests. Third, parliamentarization of presidential democracy. Specifically macro approach has changed its negative assessment of democracy into positive evaluation. Macro theory has to revisit it's notion of 'minjung' to cope with the rise of new subject. Also macro approach has to struggle with the declining role of civic organizations and political activists. Micro approach has to deal with new mode of networking among citizens and to unravel the evolving relation between democratic institutions and civic protests. In sum, theories need to expand the analytic scope, to revitalize analytic tools and to rebalance value judgment and analytical efforts.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.309-316
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• 2020

This research aims to revisit the hypothesis that bribery hurts firm performance in the context of a perceptibly corrupt country. Specifically, we use micro-data from Vietnamese small and medium firm surveys in 2013 and 2015 to examine whether bribery impedes firm revenue growth and labor productivity growth. An issue arising in this type of research is the potential endogeneity between firm bribing behaviors and firm performance. To go around the issue, we follow the literature to instrument bribery variable with the average probability of bribery in other provinces. We further employ the Analysis of Variance technique (ANOVA) to unveil if the effect of bribery is dependent on bribing purposes. The regression results show that firm performance is significantly influenced by firm size, firm age and firm bribing behavior. Larger firms are more likely to grow faster while firm performance tends to be negatively related to firm age. Particularly, we find that bribery significantly impedes firm revenue growth and labor productivity growth. The analysis of variance shows that the effect of bribery on firm performance may vary across bribing purposes. Our findings, therefore, support the sand-the-wheels hypothesis that bribery hurts firm performance even in a highly corrupt business environment.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.259-268
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• 2020

This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the causal relationship between bribery and firm innovation. To this end, we use a micro-dataset of small and medium firms in Vietnam surveyed in 2015. Given the binary nature of the dependent variable, a simple probit regression model is employed. However, as bribery variable is potentially endogenous, a simple probit regression may give biased estimates. We deal with the potential endogeneity by making use of the bivariate probit model. A property of the bivariate probit model is that it can produce efficient estimates of a typical probit model with endogenous binary explanatory variable. A Hausman-like likelihood ratio test is implemented following the estimation to test the existence of endogeneity. We find that bribery significantly undermines firm innovation. Also, firms run by household appear less innovative. The probability of innovation diminishes significantly if firm owners or managers have previous experience in firm products. As expected, larger firms seem to be more innovative. Exporters tend to be more innovative compared to non-exporters. Our findings provide support to the hypothesis that bribery is detrimental to firm innovation and, thus, innovation may be a mediating channel, through which, bribery impedes firm long-term performance.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.248-261
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• 2003

Through a qualitative analysis of the Ikuno Korean Festival in Osaka, this article examines and critiques how identities are constructed, and how this process is shaped by the mediation of intra and inter-community concerns. Particular attention is paid to the potential of reorganized culture through a thinking of similarity rather than difference. The dynamic interrelations suggest that festival provides a particular and informal public sphere wherein certain social logics and identities are contested. These discursive arenas are therefore marked by certain exclusions and inclusions. This study shows the complex process of identification at the micro-level through which identification is constituted and continuously negotiated.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.45
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• pp.7-48
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• 2009

The recent crises of Marxism do not mean Marx’s crisis. Marx said that he was not a Marxist. The purposes of this essay explore (1) the modern identity of the political economy; (2) the possibilities of mutual understanding between neoclassical economics and Marxist economics; (3) problems of the political economy in media and communication industry. I have begged for analytical Marxists, because of their good fruits. They accepted the methods of modern social science and they constituted a tremendous advance in the application of the scientific methods to the study of society. In insisting on micro-foundations(methodological individualism), analytical Marxism distinguished itself from structuralism and functionalism. I appreciate that analytical Marxism has reduced a theory to practice. But the works didn’t listen to everyone(from Marxists to un-Marxists), and explain everything. Making theory with production/consumption, macro/micro, and structure/behavior is a road to the political economy in the long run. It also applies to media and communication industry. The realm of media/communication is broad, which in philosophy, humanities, politics, economics, sociology, and engineering. And media policy is more complicated by politicians who look at the same situation from different angles. By the aid of interdisciplinary research, the political economy of media/communication shall explain at full length.