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| 1 |
ID:
167462
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| Summary/Abstract |
What age a state designates as appropriate for voting rights raises a range of democratic and empirical issues. The lowering of the voting age in Japan in 2015 was the biggest expansion of the country’s democratic franchise since 1945, yet it happened in an abrupt manner. Lowering the voting age was not a significant issue among the Japanese public until the mid-2000s and the government began supporting the move officially only in 2014. Why then? What happened to precipitate this decision? This study argues that the circumstances governing the period before the policy decision was made are crucial to understanding what followed. In the prevailing theories of policy change, analysis has focused much more on the phase of decision making over policy; public opinion, policy beliefs, and policy transfer have been prominently cited as the major reasons for lowering the voting age in other countries. In contrast, this article claims that the policy opportunity spillover, from constitutional revision to voting age, was a necessary condition for lowering the age. The discussion of constitutional revision incidentally opened a policy window to another issue area, in this case voting age. The findings help us answer the question of what time period we need to examine in order to discern actual policy dynamics.
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| 2 |
ID:
103638
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the first half of 2010, political tensions in Thailand rose steadily until they literally burst into flames as anti-government protesters set a commercial district on fire in response to the government's crackdown to reclaim the area. The country's other internal conflict, communal violence in the Muslim-majority provinces of the South, was all but ignored in the broader political emergency.
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| 3 |
ID:
161563
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| Summary/Abstract |
Why do conservative nationalists in Japan continuously seek to revise the constitution despite the past failures, and what is the likelihood of successful revision and its impact on Japan's norm of pacifism and its use of force? The article offers an analytical framework for the issue based on national pride and national security, and argues that the ‘revisionists’ seek to create a new national identity, one that infuses a greater sense of national pride among the public and enables the exercise of collective self-defense, thereby removing Japan's postwar psychological and institutional limitations on nationalism and military activities. The LDP's 2012 draft is most explicit and ambitious in this regard, with the current revision attempt under Abe having the highest chance of success since the 1950s. Successful revision would significantly expand Japan's security activities, particularly within the framework of the US–Japan Security Alliance, and entail the end of Japan's unique postwar institutionalized pacifism, although the norm of pacifism will linger on as a constitutional principle. For a smoother return to the international military scene, the Japanese government must distance itself from historical revisionism and utilize its enhanced military role to promote regional public goods rather than merely protecting its narrow national interests.
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