Normative Convergence and Practical Divergence in Democracy Promotion: Japan's and South Korea's Responses to Autocratization in Myanmar

Liberalists has declared that economic trade brings about political cooperation and peace between two countries through enhancing the economic benefits, promoting conversation, and removing misunderstanding. On the basis of this declaration, the policy on North Korea has been pushed ahead by the Korean government which tries to transform the relationship with North Korea from mistrust and hostility to reconciliation and cooperation. It has been twenty three years since the economic trade between South and North Korea began in January, 1989 under President Noh Taewoo which was triggered by the Declaration of July 7 and the North-South Korean Economic Relation Measure of October in 1988. The total turnover between South and North Korea was about 15.9 billion USD during the period from the beginning of January, 1989 to the end of September, 2011, out of which 13.2 billion USD is for commercial trade and 2.6 billion USD is for economic aid. However, the controversy is being aroused in South Korea about the policy on North Korea because North Korea tends to keep hostility towards South Korea through nuclear experiment, blowing up the Cheonan ship, shooting a South Korean tourist in Keumkang Mountain, and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. It seems to the realists that the economic trade between South and North Korea brings about reinforcing the North Korean military power and weakening the security in South Korea, which results in hindering the peace in Korean Peninsular. From the point of this issue, this paper aims to analyse the effect of trade and economic aid on easing conflicts between South and North Korea empirically. The result of this study can be summarized as follows. First of all, the increase of total turnover is significantly effective on creating the cooperative relationship between South and North Korea, which means that the increase of total turnover will decrease the conflict index. Secondly, the increase of commercial trade does not significantly affect the conflict index. Thirdly, the increase of non-commercial trade is significantly effective on the conflict index, which means that the increase of non-commercial trade will bring about creating the cooperative relationship between South and North Korea. Finally, the multi-variable analysis shows that rate of change in non-commercial trade is significantly effective on the conflict index, but rate of change in commercial trade is not. To sum up the results of the empirical analysis, the increase of total turnover and/or non-commercial trade is significantly effective on creating the cooperative relationship between South and North Korea, but not in the case of the increase of commercial trade. In other words, the economic trade between South and North Korea does not necessarily reduce the conflict in Korean Peninsular. In fact, it has been happening in the real world since fifty years ago. Social welfare in North Korea should be enhanced to reduce the conflict in Korean Peninsular through the economic support and trade from South Korea. The amount of social welfare increase in North Korea should be enough to offset the amount of social welfare decrease due to the cessation of the economic support and trade. Therefore, the economic trade between South and North Korea needs to be vitalized more and more so that North Korea be economically dependent upon South Korea. Limits of this paper, which are left to be studied in the future, are as follows. First of all, it needs to be analyzed how much social welfare has been enhanced in North Korea through the economic trade between South and North Korea for the past twenty three years. Secondly, it also needs to be studied what is the level of dependence of North Korea on South Korea, and whether the economic sanction toward the North Korea of the Lee Myung-bak administration is significantly effective or not.

Problem setting. Proper legal regulation and further it’s improving needs a generalized definition of the legal categories that form the basis of this process. One of the objectives of labor law science is formulating the concept of legal responsibility in labor law, defining its features and correspondence of types of the responsibility in employment law with other types of legal responsibility. Art. 265 of the Labor Code of Ukraine provide legal uncertainty of the financial sanctions that necessitates a scientific search on the question of determining the legal nature of the fines as employer's financial responsibility. The purpose of the research is to determine the legal nature of fines imposed by part two of Article 265 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, as well as establishing their correspondence with legal liability in labor law. Analysis of resent researches and publications. Problem and some aspect of legal responsibility in labor law were researched by O.T. Barabash, V.S. Venediktov, K.M. Gusov, V. V. Zhernakov, M.I. Inšin, P. S. Lutsyuk, Y. M. Poletayev, O.I. Protsevskyi, P. R. Stavisskyi, L. A. Syrovatskya, N. M. Khutoryan, G. I. Chansheva, V. I. Shcherbina and many other scientists. New edition of the Art. 265 of the Labor Code of Ukraine needs the definition of new scientific approaches to the problems of expanding the mechanism of legal liability in labor law. There is a need for detailed analysis and determination of the legal effectiveness of both financial sanctions in the labor order and possible reorientation of the measure of labor legal liability. Article’s main body. Part 3 of Art. 265 of the Labor Code of Ukraine stipulates that fines imposed by part two of this article are financial sanctions and do not belong to the administrative and economic sanctions determined by Chapter 27 of the Commercial Code of Ukraine. It is this provision that creates a scientific discussion about the place of the specified sanctions in the mechanism of legal liability and establishing their belonging to a certain type of responsibility. Financial sanctions are unusual for labor law, since they are neither a disciplinary nor material liability, they have their own direction and a special place among coercive measures. It is considered to support an approach to understanding the legal responsibility measures based on the generic definition of measures of state coercion. The argument in favor of this is that the above features of fines as financial sanctions coincide with the understanding of the measure of legal liability for the offense as a form of measures of state coercion, which is enshrined in sanctions of the rules of legal responsibility, which is characterized by quantitative and qualitative characteristics, and implemented in the case of committing the offense on the basis of an act of legal liability and pursues the objectives of punishment, restoration, prevention and upbringing. Conclusion. General features, the legal nature and the functional purpose of fines for violating the labor law in part 2 of Article 265 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, allow them to be considered as specific measures of coercion in labor law. In addition, these fines are a non-typical component of the employer's legal liability in labor law, since they do not relate to any of the types of liability inherent in this branch.

The literature suggests that voters have a self-centered incentive to call for the de-escalation of conflicts that inflict economic costs on them, which explains why economic sanctions and trade wars often lose popular support when the resulting cost for the domestic economy rises. It is thus puzzling why some costly disputes between two advanced democracies are prolonged. Taking a psychological approach, we argue that nonviolent yet costly disputes between international rivals can fail to de-escalate because the perception of loss invokes anger and risk-taking attitudes. We test our argument using a paired conjoint experiment involving Japan and South Korea. We find that, in both countries, the public becomes more defiant and less supportive of de-escalating an ongoing dispute when informed about (1) the high cost of the trade restrictions on domestic firms, (2) international (i.e., World Trade Organization) support for the rival country, and (3) the rival public's hardline stance on the dispute. These findings lend support to our psychological explanation.

Military coups are the product of intense contradictions in civil-military relations. From 1931 to 2023, the Middle East witnessed at least 103 coups, which can be categorized into five periods: beginning, peaking, declining, ebbing, and resurging. Each marked by distinct characteristics. These coups can be classified into three types based on the identity of members: military faction-led coups, military faction-coordinated coups, and military faction-subordinate coups. Military elites led the former, whereas the latter two involved military elites, political elites, external members, and the public. This article finds that a military coup in the Middle East arises from various factors through a case study, including opportunities of success, strategic calculations of actors, and identity anxieties. Opportunities of success denote the possibility of a successful coup; strategic calculation of actors implies the cost–benefit assessments of military elites when launching a coup; and identity anxieties reflect military elites’ concerns about their status. The Syrian case demonstrates that, due to the high risk and cost involved, a military coup occurs when opportunities of success, strategic calculations of actors, and identity anxieties are present simultaneously.

Foreword 1. Not all good things go together: conflicting objectives in democracy promotion 2. Democracy promotion, empowerment, and self-determination: conflicting objectives in US and German policies towards Bolivia 3. Financing poverty alleviation vs. promoting democracy? Multi-Donor Budget Support in Zambia 4. Coerced transitions in Timor-Leste and Kosovo: managing competing objectives of institution-building and local empowerment 5. Power-sharing and democracy promotion in post-civil war peace-building 6. Two at one blow? The EU and its quest for security and democracy by political conditionality in the Western Balkans 7. Inconsistent interventionism in Palestine: objectives, narratives, and domestic policy-making 8. Peace-building and democracy promotion in Afghanistan: the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme and reconciliation with the Taliban 9. The two sides of functional cooperation with authoritarian regimes: a multi-level perspective on the conflict of objectives between political stability and democratic change

Although Western donors allocate billions of dollars each year to democracy assistance, the role of such assistance in democratization processes remains contested. This paper is the first to capture the influence of European Union-led democracy assistance projects across 126 recipient countries. Using panel data, the analysis carried out employs democracy assistance data extracted from the OECD Crediting Reporting System for all the available years at the time of writing, i.e. 2002–2018, and data from the Varieties of Democracy Institute to capture democracy levels. The study finds that EU’s democracy assistance positively impacts democracy levels of recipient countries. The EU is one of the largest and most credible promoters of democracy worldwide, and I argue that its democracy assistance can be successful because it is coupled with political conditionality and monitoring mechanisms in the beneficiary countries.

This issue of Asian Politics & Policy offers a broad range of topics and diversity in geographic scope. Two of our articles look at democratization as a complex process. In his article titled “Political Transition in Myanmar: Prospects and Problems,” Damien Kingsbury asks the questions: Is Myanmar indeed democratizing, or is it undergoing a process of more limited political reform? What might be the impediments to this process? Critical to the answers are the role of the Tatmadaw (the military), and whether a dominant party system will emerge from current processes. Kingsbury locates his exposition in the analytical debates surrounding political transition theory, and finds that while the interests of dominant institutions will provide some restraints on democratization in Myanmar, the move away from authoritarianism will likely persist. Mark Turner and Jit Tshering, authors of “Is Democracy Being Consolidated in Bhutan?,” in turn look at the first five years of democratic transition in this small Himalayan kingdom. It is much like Myanmar in the sense of political transition being a top-down or elite-driven process. Our authors describe changes that have taken place on five fronts which are usually identified as key indicators of democracy: elections, the rule of law, accountability of government institutions, civil society, and freedom of expression. Bhutan's historical, cultural, and unique geographic setting have necessitated a gradualist process marked by concern over the need to maintain stability, but the outcomes, particularly for rule of law, are nevertheless encouraging. (Related research on Asian top-down democratic transitions may be viewed at APP 1.1 (2009) Working Under Monarchy: Political Leadership and Democracy in Nepal and APP 6.1 (2014) Understanding Hybrid Democracy in Cambodia: The Nexus Between Liberal Democracy, the State, Civil Society, and a “Politics of Presence”) As a more advanced democracy, South Korea has had much more experience with elections than the countries earlier mentioned. Yet the search for more representative models of leadership and governance continues. Timothy S. Rich, in “Split-Ticket Voting in South Korea's 2012 National Assembly Election,” looks at how voters in South Korea try to maximize their influence over electoral outcomes. He refers to literature that suggests that cultural factors in East Asian electoral politics, apart from ideological differences, result in conceptions of democracy divergent from those of the West. As for his findings, read on, as they may not be what one might expect. (APP has covered similar ground on mixed electoral systems in APP 6.1 (2014) Understanding the Rules of the Game: Evidence From Taiwan's Mixed Legislative System) Still on South Korea, but moving away from politics and into policy, John S. Duffield contributes to this issue his article titled “South Korea's National Energy Plan Six Years On.” South Korea is a major energy consumer and one of the world's major energy importers. It adopted an ambitious plan in 2008 to reduce dependence on energy imports while reducing greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously. Increased reliance on nuclear power and use of renewable energy sources were part of the plan, but Duffield tells us there are serious challenges in implementation. (Other articles on Asian energy issues are available, including APP 2.1 (2010) China's Oil Strategy: “Going Out” to Iran) Meanwhile, looking toward the oceans, Lowell Bautista gives us a very topical article titled “Dispute Settlement in the Law of the Sea Convention and Territorial and Maritime Disputes in Southeast Asia: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges.” He argues that there are limits to what this “constitution of the oceans” can achieve by way of dispute settlement, as the parties to the disputes themselves, having little experience in international litigation and reluctant to risk other pragmatic interests, do not appear eager to utilize the Convention. The exception is the arbitration filed by the Philippines against China, challenging the validity of China's “nine-dashed line” claim in the South China Sea. (On Southeast Asian dispute settlement, also see APP 3.4 (2011) Conflict Management Experiences in Southeast Asia: Lessons and Implications for the South China Sea Disputes) Still on Southeast Asia, Russia and ASEAN have both emerged as middle powers in this region, with potential roles that could impact on their respective as well as shared regional security environments. But as Elena S. Martynova explains, relations between the two leave much to be desired. Russia, despite growing interests in the Asia Pacific, remains distracted by events in the near abroad, which from Moscow's vantage point is its European front rather than quite literally the Russian Far East. In her contribution titled “Strengthening of Cooperation Between Russia and ASEAN: Rhetoric or Reality?,” she explores the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of Russia-ASEAN relations. Russia's goal is to become more actively engaged with ASEAN as this group of countries moves more decidedly toward integration; thus far, however, Martynova rues that there is more rhetoric than reality. (For more on Russia's Asia Pacific concerns, read APP 4.2 (2012) Russia and America in the Asia-Pacific: A New Entente?) Moving on to other features of APP, our Media section is getting a facelift with this issue. With Senior Editor Maysam Behravesh at the helm and assisted by a team of contributing editors, the section is now much more sharply focused on the role of media in politics and of politics in media. We have excellent contributions in this issue covering West Asia or the Middle East. A special eye-opener, and my own favorite if I may say so, is Somdeep Sen's “Journalism as Resistance: Contextualizing Media Culture in the Gaza Strip.” We hope you enjoy reading this as well as the other Media reviews and Book reviews offered in this issue. Warmest greetings to all our readers.

Chapter 1. Understanding the Domestic and International Sources of Democratization: An Introduction Part I. Foreign Policy Tools and Democracy Promotion Chapter 2. Funding Freedom? The United States and Democracy Aid, 1988-2001 Chapter 3. Economic Sanctions and International Democracy Promotion Chapter 4. Soft Power and the Question of Democratization Part II. Non-State Actors and Democracy Promotion Chapter 5. The International Monetary Fund and the Prospects for Democracy in the Developing World Chapter 6. The European Union Membership and Democracy Promotion: The Case of Turkey Chapter 7. Transnational NGO Activism Outside of Democracies: The Behavior and effect of Human Rights INGOs on Political Repression Chapter 8. The United Nations and Democracy Promotion: Assessing the Effectiveness of the UN's Democracy Fund and Electoral Assistance Division Chapter 9. Concluding Remarks: How Best to Promote Democracy Using Foreign Policy Tools

In the global ‘North-West’, liberal democracy is regarded as the universally valid model of political rule that is to be promoted globally via foreign and development policies. Democracy promotion, however, is frequently challenged by justice-related claims. Whereas external democracy promoters claim to help enforce universal individual rights, those resisting democracy promotion point to the collective entitlement to a self-determined political evolution. ‘North-Western’ governments see liberal democracy as the only embodiment of a just political order, but in those countries that are the targets of democracy promotion different understandings of appropriate norms and institutions may exist. Contestation of democracy promotion has, therefore, a crucial normative dimension that can be conceptualized as a series of conflicts over justice. If we conceive of external democracy promotion as a process of interaction instead of unidirectional export or socialization, such justice conflicts constitute a major normative challenge to democracy promoters. The paper argues for an alternative perspective on ‘democracy promotion as interaction’ and presents a typology of justice conflicts that will, in future research, enable us to empirically analyse the normative challenges brought about by the interactive nature of democracy promotion.

In the last decades the promotion of democracy and governance became a major component of western governments’ and multilateral organisations‘ foreign policies. Gradually external democracy promotion became a vast field of research in political science and transformation studies. While much scientific research focuses on instruments and strategies of multilateral donor institutions, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is to date subject to few researches. The thesis offers new empirical insights into actors‘ implementation and strategies of development and political aid to Morocco, with a strong focus on the actors‘ orientation, identity and will and contributes to a more systematic research on non-western actors‘ role in external aid. The focus lies on the different conceptualisation and implementation of EU and AfDB democracy and governance assistance regarding the donors‘ operational and strategic orientations. Morocco was chosen as an appropriate country cases study, because the country is the largest recipient of EU bilateral aid within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the most important regional client of the AfDB. The thesis demonstrates that donors adopt technocratic approaches and understandings of democracy and governance. Consequently, objectives of democracy and governance promotion are conflicting or competing and political aid, including democracy and governance promotion, becomes more technocratic and depoliticised. Thus, the actors‘ orientation and modes of interaction limit the implementation of external political aid to a technical-operational level.

Section I: A Comparative Perspective on Democracy Promotion: Germany and the US 1. Determinants and Conflicting Objectives of Democracy Promotion Jonas Wolff and Hans-Joachim Spanger 2. Freedom Fighter Versus Civilian Power: An ideal-type comparison of the US and Germany Annika E. Poppe, Bentje Woitschach and Jonas Wolff 3. Norms Versus Interests: Determinants across the cases Daniel Schewe and Jonas Wolff Section II: Case studies on German and US democracy promotion 4. Democracy Promotion in Bolivia: The democratic revolution of Evo Morales Jonas Wolff 5. Democracy Promotion in Ecuador: The citizens' revolution of Rafael Correa Jonas Wolff 6. Democracy Promotion in Turkey: The rise of political Islam Cemal Karakas 7. Democracy Promotion in Pakistan: The rise and fall of General Musharraf Niels Graf and Iris Wurm 8. Democracy Promotion in Belarus: Europe's last dictatorship Azer Babayev 9. Democracy Promotion in Russia: The ambivalent challenge of Putinism Hans-Joachim Spanger Section III: Results and Conclusions 10. Democracy Promotion as International Politics: Comparative analysis, theoretical conclusions and practical implications Jonas Wolff

The EU is one of the key actors of the democracy promotion industry and the region of South Mediterranean is an important area for the democracy promotion endeavours of the EU. Yet in this region the EU’s ambitious rhetoric about democracy promotion has never translated into concrete action. Particularly two important events, the military coup in Algeria in 1992 and the parliamentary elections in Palestine in 2006, clearly demonstrate that the EU overlooks the violations of democratic principles in her vicinity in order not to risk the stability under the aegis of authoritarian status-quo. Sacrificing the norm of democracy in favour of stability has not just important ramifications for the countries of the South Mediterranean but also for the debates related with the idea of ‘normative power Europe’

Is it even logically possible for democracy promotion policies to succeed in the sense that they increase democracy in other countries? Empirical research on the conditions for success in democracy promotion must assume an affirmative answer to this question. To study something empirically, it must be logically possible in the first place. Some critical and normative theorists, on the other hand, answer the same question negatively. They suggest that promotion of democracy from the outside is a contradiction in terms, in particular cases or more generally. This article offers a framework for clarifying this disagreement and for facilitating dialogue across empirical research and normative and critical theory. I draw on this framework also to suggest a conception of democracy that maximizes the political relevance of both normative and empirical analyses of democracy promotion (DP), while freeing that same research from the intellectual blockages of potential contradictions. Such intellectual advantages follow, I argue, by defining democracy as an ideal while making its institutional implications explicit; as an exercise of either constituent or constituted power, depending on the political phase being studied; and as located in the internal relationships of world politics.

In The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups, and Diplomats, Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that the 2017 military coup that ousted long-time Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, and the generality of coups, cannot be accurately and rigorously understood without examining the crucial role of gender and women’s politics in military seizures of power. Tendi’s book shows that gender and women’s politics pervade military coup causes, dynamics, justifications, and international responses to coups. Contrary to influential representations of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and other recent coups as markedly different from past coups, Tendi draws on long gendered histories of military coups in Africa to argue that in reality there are significant continuities in coup characteristics across time. Additionally, Tendi’s highly original study of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup identifies the motives, dynamics, and trigger of the coup. Despite the existence of an international anti-coup norm and democracy promotion in Africa by Western states, Zimbabwean coup-makers’ direct intervention in politics was largely not publicly condemned or penalized by Western and African diplomats. Tendi uses original interviews with diplomats and politicians involved in external responses to the coup, to address this important puzzle.

21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: Standing up for the Polity * (Heine, Jorge and Weiffen, Brigitte. 21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas: standing up for the Polity. Routledge, 2014)Since the creation and successful development of the European regional integration, a debate has existed on how regional institutions can contribute to the promotion and defense of democracy. Thus, a link between regionalism and democracy has been established. The extent to which regionalism and democracy are related and how regional institutions promote and defend democracy have been issues also discussed in the Americas. In particular, Latin America is a part of the world where regionalism has a long history (even if successes are limited), but also where democracy has had problems in consolidating as a stable form of political organization. Certainly, significant progress has been witnessed in the last three decades; however challenges still persists in the form of instability. Recent crises in countries such as Honduras, Panama, Venezuela and Bolivia indicate the persistent challenges to democracy in Latin America. Jorge Heine and Britta Weiffen (2014)discuss in this book the role played by a regional organization (the Organization of Americas States, OAS) in the promotion and defense of democracy.The OAS was chosen as a case study because it is within this institution where more progress has been achieved in the creation of regional framework to promote democracy, particularly, since the signing in 2001 of the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IADC). However, the OAS has been an institution under attack by the left-wing governments that took power in Latin America since the late 1990's and early 2000's. By the same token, mechanisms to defend democracy existed in the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) before the IADC and the emergence of the new regional processes such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has created new fora to discuss democracy. Notwithstanding this, the OAS and IADC have developed mechanisms, procedures, and have material and human resources allowing them to play the role of strong advocate in the defense of democracy.The presence of the United States in the OAS , the hegemonic power in the continent and the world, and a respectable Western democracy, has pros and cons and, consequently, it is a contested issue. Certainly, the U.S. tradition on democracy and political stability has always been perceived as a model for the Latin American elites. However, the commitment of the U.S. governments to democracy has been questioned because of its tolerance vis-a-vis the atrocities of military regimes, and in some cases, the support of dictatorships in the region. Similarly, the traditional control of the OAS by the U.S. has been so overwhelming that nationalist and left-wing sectors have described this institution as the U.S. Ministry of Colonies.However, after the end of the Cold War, the OAS was perceived as an institution in transformation that could serve not only the strategic and military interests of the United States but also has the potential to become a tool to promote a real hemispheric community of interests. One of the pillars of such a community was the adoption of free market economy, as promoted by the Washington Consensus and the Free Trade of the Americas project. The other pillar was the commitment to establishing democracy as the unique acceptable form of political regime in the continent. The approval of the IADC in 2001 was the manifestation of that commitment.Since then, much has changed and both regionalism and democracy have experienced substantive changes in Latin America in the recent years. These transformations have posed challenges to the still young IADC and OAS actions in the defense and promotion of democracy in Latin America. Heine and Weiffen (2014) made an important effort in understanding and explaining this complex process by describing the diverse periods of the OAS involvement in the democratic issues and by analyzing the role of the IADC in the recent regional crisis. …