This undergraduate textbook explains political change and the shaping of political order in modern East Asian states: China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Examining the transformative role of power, authority and culture in the shaping of political order, this book: Describes the emergence of statist and pluralist political order in East Asia. Outlines the dual process of state and nation building, revealing the transformative role of the state. Highlights the causes and consequences of the reversion to centralized political order, describing the structure and institutions of Cold War regimes in East Asian states. Explores the structural and institutional consequences of industrial development on politics and state in East Asian states. Discusses the methods and outcomes of the democratization movements in the 1980s and 1990s and public sector reforms in the 1990s and 2010s. Utilises survey data and newly developed indicators to measure and reveal the shaping of national political culture in each East Asian state. Features structural, institutional and normative analysis of political change in modern East Asia. This will be an essential textbook for students of political science, International relations, East Asian politics, and East Asian History, as well as policy analysts of East Asian states.

East Asia has developed into one of the most promising regions. This volume of essays by leading European, Asian, and American scholars provides a comprehensive look at the key themes relating to politics in East Asia today. The contributors explore the formidable obstacles on the road to democratic consolidation in the region's new democracies, and the prospects for democratic transitions among the region's remaining authoritarian polities. The essays address issues of institutional design, media reform, electoral politics, and religious movements.

Louis D. Hayes provides an innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to East Asian politics. It uses a thematic approach to trace the political-historical development of China, Korea, and Japan and analyze the social, cultural, political, and economic features of each country. The book describes the ways in which a shared Confucian tradition and particular historical experiences of imperialism and war have affected each country's internal dynamics, responses to the outside world, and distinctive political developmental trajectory, especially since World War II. While the book is structured to facilitate comparisons, it avoids the limitations of most comparative politics texts by focusing less on Western conceptions of state and governance and more on East Asian perspectives of the universe and how it operates. Even the considerations of contemporary policy issues in each country are cast in a wider framework that gives the discussion enduring value.

In the twenty-first century, East Asia has been increasingly marked both by tensions at a government level and a chauvinistic mood among the polity. While China’s rise is in one respect the proximate driver of these changes in tone, it draws on a range of unresolved grievances among the respective historical narratives of Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas. These conflicting views of the region’s past are a crucial barrier to its cohesive and stable future. This book brings together East Asian scholars from a range of academic disciplines, including China historians, political historians and political scientists to illuminate the interconnectedness of East Asia and discuss how a shared historical narrative might be constructed. Their contributions are organised into 3 parts focusing respectively on historical narratives of China, historical narratives of East Asia, and reconciling historical narratives. The book will appeal to researcher interested in the historical narratives of international relations in East Asia.