Product Description: This volume offers a comparative analysis of Japanese and Russian politics in the 2010s, examining both domestic dimensions and foreign policy.

This book addresses the question of how Japan will wield the political power that attends economic strength, and examines how Japan conceptualizes and conducts itself in the realm of international relations. The book addresses such issues as how Japan is perceived by the rest of the world, the nature of the US-Japan relationship, the future of trade, technology and security and Japan's regional role.

The evolution of Japan's foreign policy at the time of great transformation-cum-transition after World War II is analysed and considered from two angles: a Japan adrift, with an opportunistic, short-term pragmatism, and a Japan determinedly and tenaciously steadfast to its national interests. Inoguchi provides fascinating and balanced accounts of Japan's foreign policy at a time when its premises are seemingly undermined and its domestic and international underpinnings eroding. First published in 1993, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

Product Description: This book studies and compares quality of life in 29 countries/societies in Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Korea(South), Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam...read more

For the past three decades, Confucian Asia has been known as a region of wonders. More successfully than any other region in the world, it has expanded its national economies, and integrated those into the global economy. To the rest of the world, this region offers the lesson that poor countries, even with limited natural resources, can achieve rapid economic development and social modernization. To this day, policymakers and scholars have focused on the question of why Confucian Asia has prospered, while other regions have not. Consequently, little is known about how such economic expansion and globalization have affected the quality of citizens’ lives in the region. This volume, with quality of life in Confucian Asia as its main theme, is the first of its kind seeking to unravel the dynamics and sources of citizen well-being, and to analyze the problems of building nations of well-being in this region.

This book examines what citizens think about governance and democracy and the actual practices of governments in Asia, one of the most dynamic and divergent regions of the world. Using public opinion surveys and other evidence, the authors investigate such topics as government perception, human rights, democracy, and political development for a total of seven countries located in East, Southeast, and South Asia-China, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Governance and Democracy in Asia contains detailed country studies, extensive cross-country comparisons, and a wealth of new data. It will appeal to scholars and students of Asian politics, public opinion, political development, and democratization.

This book is a study of the attitudes to political and social life among the citizens of eighteen countries in Western Europe, East and Southeast Asia. Drawing on data from the largest cross-national survey on political culture for the last half a century, this book assesses how political culture differs across the two regions and whether this can be drawn back to a profound difference in basic societal values, or ‘Asian values’. Examining geographical, religious and socio-economic factors, the authors discuss whether there genuinely is a common political value in the two regions or a profound difference as these countries move towards modernity. This original and comprehensive study of the values, norms and beliefs held by citizens of the East and West will appeal to students and scholars of political culture and comparative politics, as well as Asian and European politics.

When the Japanese economy was on the rise, as it was in the 1980s, it was often suggested that the Japanese way of doing things was culturally unique and inherently superior. The apparent success of the Japanese approach to issues such as capitalist development, organizational management, decision-making, and education was frequently heralded both inside and outside of Japan. Having endured the collapse of the bubble economy, and the long economic and demographic stagnation of the 1990s, the Japanese are now more sanguine about the prospects for their country in the new millennium. The author, one of the leading political scientists in Japan, offers a somber analysis and assessment of Japanese politics during two critical recent periods, 1983-1993 and 1994-2004. Japanese Politics examines the incremental and yet steady change which has occurred in Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy. Japan is now replacing its old policies and adopting a more pro-active outlook.

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Product Description: What kind of comparative advantage does the United Nations hold in the field of security compared to other actors such as states and regional organizations? What kind of asset does the United Nations have in terms of normative as well as operational capacities that states and regional arrangements lack? What asset does the United Nations possess to effectively deal with security issues? These are some of the questions addressed in this book...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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