Drawing on five months of ethnography among rank-and-file Soka Gakkai members, this article takes issue with the conventional view of Komeito and Gakkai political socialization as one of group identity. It uses interviews and primary sources from Gakkai socialization practice to document how the two organizations appeal to Gakkai members by promoting the Komeito policy agenda, and how Gakkai members use the same arguments in search of non-Gakkai votes for the party. Social ties remain important, but they are vehicles for this policy message, not a justification for supporting Komeito. This makes Komeito leadership far more constrained in its political choices than is currently recognized. The article finishes by showing how this theory explains variation in Komeito electoral support better than a social identity alternative.

The Barisan Nasional (BN) which won a landslide in 2004 was returned to power in 2008 elections with reduced majority and the loss of five state assemblies. Dissatisfied with unfulfilled promises, the electorate protested by voting for a strong opposition. BN additionally was characterized by factionalism. Three opposition parties joined hands and, using alternative media, unexpectedly won 82 seats in the parliament. A strong responsible opposition bodes well for Malaysian democracy.

The delineation of constituency boundaries and variations in vote distribution across districts often favor certain parties at the expense of others. Applying a hitherto under-utilized formula (Brookes, 1959; Johnston et al., 1999), this study investigates whether the mechanism translating votes into seats in Japan's single-member districts results in systematic partisan advantage that may influence election outcomes. Simulations are conducted for the 2003 and 2005 general elections under two scenarios: where the governing coalition and the main opposition party receive equal vote shares, and where their vote shares are reversed from the actual results. Components of electoral bias are then disaggregated into size and distribution effects, and the impact of malapportionment, electorate size, turnout, and the role of third party/independent candidates on overall electoral bias is examined. Results show that while partisan bias exists, disadvantages toward one party in some components are likely to cancel out benefits derived from others, producing a relatively small net effect. Furthermore, electoral bias in Japan is found to award sectoral rather than partisan seat bonuses.

Winston Churchill once asserted ‘democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’. In this conception, democracy is ‘a lesser evil’, something that is not good but is less bad than its alternatives. This study offers a rigorous test of this concept in the context of East Asia. Analysis of the East Asia Barometer surveys conducted in five new democracies in the region reveals that small minorities of these countries actually perceive the current democratic regime as a lesser evil. A large majority of these ‘lesser-evil perceivers’, moreover, refuse to support democracy fully. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the Churchillian lesser-evil notion of democracy has limited utility as an alternative paradigm for the study of democratization among ordinary citizens.

Little is known about health of the growing subpopulation of the working poor in Japan. We aimed to evaluate health status and healthcare utilization in relation to income among Japanese working adults. We conducted a one-month prospective cohort study using a health diary in working adults from a nationally representative random sample in Japan. Based on the government criterion, the working poor group was defined as earning an equivalent annual income of less than 1.48 million Japanese-yen. For health status, we measured symptomatic episodes and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). For healthcare utilization, we measured frequencies of visits to a physician or pharmacy, and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). We constructed multiple linear regression models for these measures adjusted for age, gender, and co-morbidity, using annual equivalent income as a 4-level categorical variable.

Of 3,568 participants originally enrolled in the study panel, 3,477 completed the survey (response rate 97%). For the purpose of the study, of the 3,568 participants, we analyzed 1,406 working adults who were 20–65 years old (mean age, 40.8 yr: 58.4% men). There were 106 (7.5%) working poor: 56 men (6.8% of working men) and 50 women (8.5% of working women). Compared to the highest income group, the working poor reported the greater number of symptomatic episodes and a slightly lower score of physical component of HRQOL (PCS8). The numbers of symptomatic episodes among the working poor and the highest income group during the 1-month study period were 9.79 (SD, 8.77) and 7.01 (SD, 7.34), respectively (p < 0.01). The PCS8 among the working poor was 48.71 (SD, 7.05) and it was 50.34 (SD, 6.55) among the highest income group (p < 0.01). There was no difference of healthcare utilization by the different levels of income.

We concluded that the working poor (7.5% of all working adults) more frequently report symptomatic episodes and show slightly poorer physical health status, compared to the highest income group. Healthcare utilization is not affected by income.

Jean-Marc Coicaud's article begins by stressing the contemporary importance and the current trend of political apology. Recent political apologies offered in Australia and Canada to their indigenous populations form a significant part of this story. He then analyzes a number of intriguing paradoxes at the core of the dynamics of apology. These paradoxes give meaning to apology but also make the very idea of apology extremely challenging. They have to do with the relationships of apology with time, law and the unforgivable. The most intriguing of these paradoxes concerns apology and the unforgivable. Indeed, the greater the wrong, the more valuable the apology. But, then, the more difficult it becomes to issue and to accept an apology. This latter paradox is namely examined in the context of mass crimes, taken from Europe, Africa and Asia. As a whole these paradoxes are all the more intriguing considering what apology in a political context aims to accomplish, for the actor who issues the apology, for the one who receives it, for their relationship, and for the social environment in which this takes place. Jean-Marc Coicaud concludes his article by outlining what the rise of apology means for contemporary political culture.

This paper is one of the few attempts made by social scientists to measure social capital via psychometric approach, and is the only one of such kind to base its evidence on the AsiaBarometer survey data. After first reviewing the history of social capital, including its conceptual emergence and recent literatures, we expose the issue of difficulty in the measurement of social capital despite its topical popularity. We tackle this measurement issue by applying psychometric procedures to the AsiaBarometer survey data of 2004, 2005, and 2006, focusing on questions pertaining to social capital of ordinary individuals residing in the 29 survey societies. This paper is significant in two aspects. First, using simple statistical procedures, it extracts various dimensions of social capital without first knowing what dimensions to extract. In short, it does not try to measure social capital using some kind of pre-defined concepts such as those outlined in the historical review of our predecessors. Rather, it succeeds in manifesting key factors of social capital – altruism, utilitarianism, communitarianism, and concordance with prevailing regime – by mechanically processing collective responses by individual respondents towards survey questions oriented with social capital. Though the paper does not aim to establish its methodology as a widely held consensus on how to measure social capital, it does give credence and recognition to psychometric approaches as effectives means to measure social capital, which, by its very definition, calls for ‘objective’ approaches using collective data to measure ‘subjective’ notions of individual actions within networks. Second, this paper is the first systematic empirical analysis of social capital in all the subregions of Asia, i.e. East, Southeast, South, and Central. It builds on our earlier works, including the 2006 paper on social capital in Central and South Asia, and gives empirical credence to important concepts on Asian political culture.