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Even though financial markets have become more integrated and international capital now moves more freely across borders, we argue that access to foreign equity investments still remains a political decision, and this policy decision is a function of the country's nationalistic and militaristic sentiments. We use military spending as a proxy for militarism and nationalism, and show that countries with high militaristic sentiments have lower foreign equity investments. We also look at bilateral equity flows and find that a pair of countries simultaneously having greater increases in militarism has lower bilateral equity investments.

It is widely believed that identity with Taiwanese or Chinese is the major cleavage in Taiwan. People who hold Taiwanese identity tend to vote for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and those who identify themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese are likely to vote for the Kuomintang. As the proportion of Taiwanese identifiers increases, the geographical difference seems to persist. Whether national identity is associated with regional line and why they are correlated is a pressing question. This paper uses the 2012 presidential election survey data to explore the extent to which regional divide accounts for national identity. Using generalized linear mixed effect model (GLMM), this research finds minor regional divide in terms of ethnicity concentration and economic structure. However, ethnic background is influential on national identity while retrospective evaluation and democratic value are significant predictors. This mixed result suggests that people in Taiwan have united national identity should geographical difference remain or even decrease, and that we should remain watchful about the influence of democratic value and economic concern.

There exists a conventional stereotype about native Taiwanese elders that were born in and lived through the Japanese rule before 1945. On the one hand, some politicians and political commentators derogatorily call them the “Kominka generation,” reinforcing the image of this group of having strong affection for and even intense loyalty to the previous Japanese regime. On the other hand, although many researchers have pointed out this cohorts’ strong cultural ties to Han ethnicity — some even possessed nostalgic feelings toward China — in the colonial period, the researchers also emphasized the emergence of their strong sense of being Taiwanese when they suffered various political and cultural discrimination from the new Chinese dominant class after 1945. Therefore, both perspectives falsely imagine this cohort to be definitely identifying themselves as Taiwanese, rejecting Chinese identity, opposing the Kuomintang (KMT), and supporting the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This paper aims to challenge these stereotypes. By adopting the techniques of grounded theory, the paper shows rich diversity not only in this cohort’s perceptions toward the political parties but also in their identity patterns. Furthermore three themes are identified in these participants’ explanation for their political orientations: economic development, social stability and security, and the cultural hierarchy that gives the KMT elites higher symbolic values than native political elites.

Based on the literature about the role of rising nationalism in recent world politics, this paper proposes a nationalism-oriented causal model to explain the voting choices of different social groups. With an interest-identity framework, this generic model is applied to Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election to examine whether and to what extent 11 causal mechanisms influence the voting choices of four groups defined by generation, class, and ethnicity. The findings not only reveal generational, class-based, and ethnic differences in Taiwanese voting behavior; they also show that the election was largely one of identity politics centered around the issues of national identity and democratic identification, making the “interest card” played by Beijing less effective in swaying voter choices. This explains why Beijing’s divide-and-conquer economic policy successfully divided Taiwanese voters but failed in the end to prevent the pro-independence candidate from winning the election. The findings also indicate that the economic concerns of voters promoted both their Taiwanese identity and support for Taiwan independence, while identification with Taiwan’s democracy contributed directly to the former and only indirectly to the latter. Overall, the model presents a more fine-grained analysis of nationalist politics and may be applied to the studies of other political behaviors involving nationalism.

In its relations with China from 1972 to 2018, Pakistan has endeavored to extract and mobilize its domestic resources while conducting a foreign policy of balancing under systemic pressures and power disparities. Statist ideology and state-sponsored nationalism have been both useful and influential in this process. While there is abundant literature on ideology, nationalism, and Pakistan’s foreign policy using theoretical foundations, a neoclassical realist approach has yet to be made. This paper seeks guidance from neoclassical realist theory as explored in the works of Taliaferro (2006) and Schweller (2004). We argue that Pakistan’s ties with China have been facilitated domestically by an Islamic statist ideology and anti-Indian state-sponsored nationalism. These both have facilitated internal balancing through the extraction and mobilization of natural resources and emulation while externally they justified Pakistan’s balancing efforts aimed at countering a perceived Indian threat. The nation’s military and civil elites therefore agree on the necessity of closer ties with China.

The new regionalism distinguishes itself from the old one that it has emerged from, amid new circumstances and is catalyzed by new impetus. Its appearance shows that the free-market economy is being challenged and that the market mechanism of resource allocation has again been taken over by political game. The United States and some major Western powers are attempting to secure their hegemony by minimizing spillover of critical technology and industry within controllable regions which would accelerate technological growth by creating effective market space. The battle over technology and industry is becoming the mainstream paradigm of major-country competition, which is being intensified by nation states’ concern over industrial security, techno-nationalism, and major-power politics — three main drivers of the new regionalism. While supporting globalization unswervingly, China has inevitably been affected by this widespread protectionism and is also embarking on the path of regional development. New regionalism could also provide another perspective to investigate the post-pandemic role of the Belt and Road Initiative and “dual circulation” strategy of China in order to consider the prospects of globalization.

The Grand Strategy of the United States, including its strategy toward China, has always been the product of the interaction of geopolitics and domestic politics. After the Cold War, with the end of the bipolar structure of the international system and the increasing polarization of domestic politics in the United States, the impact of geopolitics on the formulation of the foreign policy of the United States has been weakened to some degree, while the spillover effect of domestic politics has weighed more heavily than before. This change could be explained in the way that while two opposing trends of Partisan Realignment began to emerge in the post-financial crisis era in the United States, the elites from both Democratic and Republican Parties had often focused on the preferences of their core political coalition as basis in foreign policy making, in order to further their own respective political interests. In regard to the American strategy toward China, with the deepening of the structural contradictions between China and the United States as well as changes in their respective external strategic choices, geopolitics became the primary logic in the formulation of American strategy toward China since 2009, thus the “strategic competition” has become the dominant mode of bilateral relations. In the view of Washington, China and the United States have formed a competitive relationship in the areas relating to the core interests of the United States, such as economy, security, values and the dominance of the existing international order. However, the questions of reality, such as how to compete with China and how to decide the priorities of their own core interests, are defined by demands of core political coalitions represented by the elites from both Democratic and Republican Parties in the context of a new round of Partisan Realignment. From Obama to Trump, different domestic political logics made the focus of American strategy toward China shifted from “institution–values” competition based on globalism to “economy–security” competition based on nationalism. Therefore, the changes in American domestic politics will present an important channel through which the orientation of American strategy toward China would be clearly observed in the future.

In 1965 the first sexual moral panic was created in Indonesia: the slander that communist women would have castrated and killed army generals. In reality the generals had been abducted and killed by army personnel. This moral panic served to help legitimise the rise to power of General Suharto and incited militias to murder possibly one million people. Since late 2015 another sexual moral panic has been raging. It is again directed from above by political and religious elites. This time the LGBT community is targeted. Though same-sex relations between consenting adults has never been criminalised, and Indonesia has been known as relatively tolerant of homosexuality, raids on gay saunas and bars are held, and lesbian couples evicted from their boarding houses. Activists are targeted, foreign funding is blocked, and anti-LGBT legislation is being prepared. The old communist phobic campaign persists and is even combined with the present homophobic campaign. Right after the re-election of President Joko Widodo conservative forces in the Parliament produced a revised draft of the Criminal Code in which both homosexuality and the spreading of Marxist literature would be criminalised. The passing of this bill was only prevented by student demonstrations, at the cost of the loss of several young lives. In this chapter, I will compare both campaigns, discuss the political and religious motivations behind them and sketch the current human rights climate in Indonesia.

Democratization studies now highlight potentially derailing problems such as warlike nationalism and violent ethnic conflict. In Myanmar, where ethnic tension runs deep, the risks are especially great. Political reformers should work with the grain of the military junta's planned 2010 general elections and pay close attention to nation building.