Knowledge-Net for a Better World

July 2019

[JEAS] Volume 19, Issue 2

Stephan Haggard, Editor

"The Second Issue of 2019 Has Been Released!"

The current issue of JEAS shows our commitment to publish scholarship in both international relations and comparative politics, with three contributions coming in the areas of international political economy and institutions. Yong Kyun Kim leads with a controversial look at foreign direct investment in Vietnam. Drawing on provincial level data, he shows that the entry of FDI initially has corruption-reducing effects. However, as more foreign investment flows in, the resources available to provincial leaders also carry temptations. Corruption rises, creating new policy challenges.

Dennis Patterson and Jangsup Choi pose an equally policy-relevant question. Aid donors are continually buffeted by demands that they respond to shifting priorities. But are these commitments implemented? Looking at policy changes announced by South Korea, and employing a sophisticated selection model, they find a mixed picture. Declaratory policies do matter, but some tradeoffs and continuities are also visible. For example, Korea does appear to be more attentive to questions of poverty, allocating more aid to lower income countries. But this has come at a cost: human rights does not appear connected with aid allocation. Korea also continues to provide more assistance in Asia and to countries that trade with the country as well.

Matthew Dale Kim’s contribution is exemplary of the trend toward the use of experiments in international relations. Looking at the US-South Korea relationship, Kim is interested in questions of credibility. He finds that Korean respondents are concerned about compliance in one issue area—such as human rights—because they believe it will affect the country’s broader reputation in other issue areas. Yet he also shows that these concerns are somewhat misguided, and that Korea’s reputation does not necessarily carry over to other issues in the eyes of American respondents. The US by contrast, perhaps because of its size, shows less anxiety in these second order beliefs. Kim’s contribution is important because it gets at some of the deep psychological reasons that states, or at least their publics, wish to be seen as credible.

Our last two contributions get at key questions in the comparative politics of the region, one in an authoritarian setting, the other a democracy. Tony Huiquan Zhang provides a deep dive into the sociology of China’s princelings, the sons and daughters of the top Communist Party leadership. Drawing on biographical information on nearly 300 princelings, Zhang finds that the princelings resemble an affiliative status group. Their advantages stem not just from connections through their parents, but from a broader social milieu. Not only are princelings’ career advantages secured by the party-state’s cadre management system, but education and career choices are intertwined very early with the state’s practical and ideological goals. Moreover, he shows that princelings’ shared life courses strengthen their collective identity. The paper raises important questions about the power exercised by this relatively narrow group.

Finally, Yoongkyung Lee and Jong-sung You look at the question of class voting in Korea. The absence of class voting—and even “reverse” class voting, where poorer voters support conservative parties—remains a puzzle. However, they show that the reverse class voting finding may be a statistical anomaly. They show that the elderly have a high incidence of poverty and older voters are more conservative. Drawing on data covering elections from 2004–2014, they show that once age effects are controlled, the poor do in fact engage in class voting. They acknowledge that regional and generational cleavages continue to be the most important determinants of partisan competition, but class position—whether measured by income levels or self-identified class status--significantly impact vote choice. The paper has relevance for where partisan cleavages may go in the future.