This book gives insights into the basic values and life styles of peoples of ten societies in East, Southeast, South and Central Asia. Based on data from AsiaBarometer public surveys of 2003, it examines human values and life styles of peoples in Urban Asia. It presents country profile and comparative analysis by well-informed scholars, reports of the entire questionnaires (both standard common English language questionnaire and local language questionnaires), the whole comparable tabulated figures by society, the sampling methods and sizes and fieldwork in ten societies.

This volume, edited by a political scientist and a practicing medical doctor, is organized into two parts: interpersonal and institutional trust. To gauge trust both interpersonal and institutional in 29 Asian societies, the AsiaBarometer survey, the best—and only—available such data source in the world was used. The survey, focusing on the quality of life in Asia, was carried out in the 2000s in 29 Asian societies (in East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia), and in the United States, Australia, and Russia for comparative analysis. Trust is a key intermediate variable linking an individual and a broader society. Yet systematically and scientifically assembled data have tended to be narrowly focused on Western societies. In the 2000s non-Western data on the quality of life have steadily increased. The AsiaBarometer survey, however, is the instrument that best examines the quality of life in a large number of Asian societies with nationwide random sampling and face-to-face interviewing, with the number of samples ranging from 1,000 to 3,000. In gauging interpersonal trust, the question, "Generally, do you think people can be trusted, or do you think that you can't be too careful in dealing with people (i.e., that it pays to be wary of people)?" is asked along with additional questions. In measuring institutional trust, the question is asked: "How much confidence do you place in the following institutions?" (Listed are the central government, the courts, the military, the police, political parties, the parliament, mass media, business companies, medical hospitals, and other institutions.) In examining interpersonal and institutional trust Asia-wide, special attention is paid to historical and geo-cultural backgrounds of the societies being surveyed. Examination of the link between trust of mass media and individual health and between trust in medical care and individual health focuses on Japan.Among the 12 chapters, 9 are reprints of journal articles published in the 2000s, and the introduction and 2 other chapters were written especially for this book to reflect the latest progress in the field. This work provides a rich source to be consulted by a wide range of readers interested in comparative politics, quality of life, and Asia in general.

This book assembles original ethnographic research into urban spaces and lifestyles in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Russia. Taken together, the case studies address cities as gateways to ‘new worlds’, both local and global, discuss ambitions of states at taming urban landscapes, and illustrate current trends of economic, religious and other li

Asian countries are undergoing rapid political, economic and social transformations; meanwhile, there is a growing demand for knowing more about Asia. This Major Reference Set is designed to help general readers as well as specialists to have a good grasp of the latest developments in Asia in the key areas of economic growth, trade, energy, environment, foreign policy and security.With 4 volumes, this set covers all major dimensions of Asia's political economy. Contributors include both scholars and practitioners who provide first-hand description and analysis of fundamental issues in Asia.Peace and political stability are of ultimate importance, with Asia at the forefront of wealth creation in the global economy. Volume 1 unpacks and examines the foreign policy strategies of key states and the role of regional institutions in responding to the security demands of an Asian century.Volume 2 studies the strong economic integration through trade and cross-border investment that has been essential to Asia. The region's future prosperity depends on it being able to remain open and outward-looking. As Asia grows larger and richer, more concerted efforts are required to surmount regional rivalry and to further strengthen the regional architecture of economic cooperation.Volume 3 looks at the emerging economies' thirst for energy that creates huge competition, around which domestic, regional, and international political economy unfolds. Climate change and aspiration for sustainable development further complicate the challenge.Volume 4 offers a comprehensive coverage of subjects on environment and sustainable development in Asia with case studies of selected and representative countries that are at different stages of economic development and facing different environment-related problems and challenges in the twenty-first century.This interdisciplinary set is a fine example of international cooperation, with contributors hailing from different parts of Asia as well as North America and Europe. It is a must-have for anyone keen on understanding Asia's dynamic and changing scene.

This book is about generating types of societies by the degree of individuals’ satisfaction with life domains, aspects, and styles via factor analysis. It adopts an evidence-based approach in typologizing and a bottom-up rather than a top-down perspective. Thus, the book’s position is against Hegel (freedom for one person), Marx (the Asiatic mode of production), Weber (Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism), Wittfogel (Asiatic autocracy), and Rostow (Western-led modernization). These classical and modern authors tend to see Asian societies with somewhat fixated eyes and categorize Asian societies in a top-down manner. When random-sampled respondents are questioned about their satisfaction with daily life in terms of life domains, aspects, and styles, public policy and institutions as well as survival and social relations are inevitably touched upon—the latter two being the key dimensions common to the World Values Survey and other cultural surveys. This book proposes a new mode of typologizing societies, Asian or non-Asian, not immediately familiar to human geographers, cultural anthropologists, or sociologists, but revealing many complex unknowns with the easy-to-learn typologizing method.

The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the discipline, but to shape it. The series will be an indispensable point of reference for anyone working in political science and adjacent disciplines. What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? This Oxford Handbook examines the role of the citizen in contemporary politics, based on essays from the world's leading scholars of political behavior research. The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new responsibilities for the citizenry. These political changes are paralleled by tremendous advances in our empirical knowledge of citizens and their behaviors through the institutionalization of systematic, comparative study of contemporary publics--ranging from the advanced industrial democracies to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to new survey research on the developing world. These essays describe how citizens think about politics, how their values shape their behavior, the patterns of participation, the sources of vote choice, and how public opinion impacts on governing and public policy. This is the most comprehensive review of the cross-national literature of citizen behavior and the relationship between citizens and their governments. It will become the first point of reference for scholars and students interested in these key issues.

Triangular relations which frame China and Japan as two sides of an isosceles triangle usually focus on the United States as the significant third side. This edited book examines another relatively underexplored set of triangular relations—those between China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The region, comprised of eleven small and medium-size states, is often considered inconsequential in the tempestuous world of international politics where political clout, economic prowess, military strength and soft power matter most. Often seen as easily dominated by extra-regional great powers, this volume reconsiders the region’s relationship with China and Japan, their two Asian neighbours to the northeast which also happen to be the world’s second and third largest economies. While China and Japan do compete for turf in Southeast Asia, states in the region do not perceive themselves as strategic pawns of these two great Asian powers but instead as proactively engaging China and Japan in the region. The country-specific case studies of this book collectively support the thesis that the Southeast Asian states actively seek to manoeuvre between China and Japan for their own advantage and at the same time grapple with developments in Northeast Asia through regional integration efforts. Through the establishment of benchmark norms and values, Southeast Asia attempts to socialise China and Japan and other external powers to the ASEAN way. Indeed, Southeast Asia as a region is now the driver of East Asian multilateralism and regionalism, and the East Asian reality is that Southeast Asia is a major political, economic and cultural player in its own right vis-à-vis the great powers.

Illustrates how the political and social fallout from the World War II is still alive and divisive in South and East Asia.

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that informal institutions—networks, clientelism, and connections—have to disappear in modern societies due to liberalization of the economy, rapid urbanization, and industrialization. The case of Kazakhstan shows that informal reciprocal institutions continue to play an important role in people’s everyday lives. Liberalization of the economy and state retrenchment from the social sphere decreased the provision of public goods and social support to the population in the post-independence period. Limited access to state benefits has, in turn, stimulated people’s engagement in informal reciprocal relations. The author investigates informal channels and mechanisms people use to gain access to quality public goods—education, housing, and healthcare. Comparing the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the author shows that people are more likely to rely on family networks and clientelist relations rather than on help from the state to obtain scarce resources. The book provides an important contribution to the literature on informal institutions and explains the relationship between a formal welfare state and informal reciprocity.