Mired in national crises since the early 1990s, Japan has had to respond to a rapid population decline; the Asian and global financial crises; the 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown; the COVID-19 pandemic; China’s economic rise; threats from North Korea; and massive public debt. In Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State, established specialists in a variety of areas use a coherent set of methodologies, aligning their sociological, public policy, and political science and international relations perspectives, to account for discrepancies between official rhetoric and policy practice and actual perceptions of decline and crisis in contemporary Japan. Each chapter focuses on a distinct policy field to gauge the effectiveness and the implications of political responses through an analysis of how crises are narrated and used to justify policy interventions. Transcending boundaries between issue areas and domestic and international politics, these essays paint a dynamic picture of the contested but changing nature of social, economic, and, ultimately political institutions as they constitute the transforming Japanese state.

Survival, the IISS’s bimonthly journal, challenges conventional wisdom and brings fresh, often controversial, perspectives on strategic issues of the moment. In this issue: Alexander K. Bollfrass and Stephen Herzog argue that despite facing major challenges, the global nuclear order remains resilient Maria Shagina assesses Russia’s status as an energy superpower, concluding that it has a bleak future in the long term Erik Jones argues that the war in Ukraine has disrupted the European Central Bank’s ability to operate by consensus Jeffrey E. Kline, James A. Russell and James J. Wirtz contend that the US Navy may struggle to adapt to the pace of technological, social and environmental change Ray Takeyh revisits the Iranian Revolution, finding that Jimmy Carter did not so much ‘lose’ Iran as misunderstand it And five more thought-provoking pieces, as well as our regular Book Reviews and Noteworthy column. Editor: Dr Dana Allin Managing Editor: Jonathan Stevenson Associate Editor: Carolyn West Editorial Assistant: Charlie Zawadzki

This book analyses Japan’s security policy after the Cold War and engages with the question of whether, since the Cold War ended, Japan has again become a global security player. The contributions to the book explore Japan’s security policy by providing a detailed overview of the evolution of Japan’s security policy after the Cold War, including the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the Senkaku/Daioyu Islands dispute. It also reveals the preeminent security concerns of contemporary Japan by delving into regional security issues such as the Layered Security of Okinawa, the increasing nuclear threat from North Korea, and the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-6. The book culminates by discussing security in terms of the essential functions of energy, food, and human security, including an assessment of Japan’s energy policy since World War II and an assessment of the impact food security on Japan’s agriculture and trade. This book will be of interest to student and scholars of East Asian Politics, Security Studies and the International Relations of the Asia Pacific. It is also a valuable resource for diplomats and policymakers on Japan and East Asia.

This open access edited book brings together a closer examination of European and Asian responses to the escalating rivalry between the US and China. As the new Cold War has surfaced as a perceivable reality in the post-COVID era, the topic itself is of great importance to policymakers, academic researchers, and the interested public. Furthermore, this manuscript makes a valuable contribution to an under-studied and increasingly important phenomenon in international relations: the impact of the growing strategic competition between the United States and China on third parties, such as small and middle powers in the two arguably most affected regions of the world: Europe and East Asia. The European side has been under-studied and explicitly comparative work on Europe and East Asia is extremely rare. Given that the manuscript focuses heavily on recent developments—and because many of these developments have been quite dramatic—there are very few publications that cover the same topics.

While a large number of studies exist on political-economic institutional explanations for the prevalence of precarious work, few have delved into the elusive yet critical domain of culture. This is highly pertinent to China and Japan whose shared tradition of Confucianism (broadly defined) continues to inform many aspects of society. In particular, core values such as hierarchy, harmony, and the subordination of individual interests to collective requirements impinge importantly on the iniquitous patterns of precarious work and its surrounding institutions ranging from state policy and legislation to industrial relations and social welfare. The pervasiveness and entrenched nature of culture has been especially evidenced by Japan's distinctly gendered and China's rural-urban citizenship-based labour market stratifications. By bridging culture and institutions, Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan brings a more integrated and nuanced understanding of unequal work, casting fresh light on social change in China, Japan, and beyond. Emphasis is placed not only on macro-level structural scrutiny but also on micro-agency empiricism, i.e. real people's experiences in everyday life. This holistic and comparative approach, as demonstrated by the book, will go a long way towards tackling the negative consequences of precarious work in a wider post-pandemic world.

‘Institutional Change and Economic Development’ discusses not just theoretical issues but a diverse range of real-life institutions – political, bureaucratic, fiscal, financial, corporate, legal, social and industrial – in the context of dozens of countries across time and space, spanning Britain, Switzerland and the USA in the past to Botswana, Brazil, and China today.

A collection of timely essays on the rising wave of anxiety in culture. The twenty-first century is characterized by uncertainty: from catastrophic climate change to the accelerating pace of technological change, societies around the world are gripped by anxiety about the future. In Anxiety Culture, editors John Allegrante, Ulrich Hoinkes, Michael Schapira, and Karen Struve bring together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine the forces that increase anxiety as a phenomenon beyond solely individual experiences of clinical anxiety to pervade global culture. These trenchant essays examine our culture of anxiety across diverse avenues of society. Covering fears related to climate change, populist and extremist movements around the world, gun violence, artificial intelligence, and more, contributors also examine how anxiety is expressed in literature and the media and how a culture of anxiety affects policymaking. Chapters are organized into five sections: disciplinary perspectives on anxiety, climate change and the environment, population health and social well-being, migration, and technology. There's room for hope, however. Contributors provide pragmatic recommendations for coping with anxiety culture in public education, governments, and NGOs. Anxiety Culture is a unique attempt to define this condition and an indispensable resource for those seeking stability in an unstable age, providing a set of conceptual and practical narratives for navigating both existing and emergent planetary challenges. Contributors: Kristina Allgoewer, Bryndis Asgeirsdottir, John Baldacchino, Christine Blaettler, Michel Bourban, Dominic Boyer, Eva J. Daussà, Nicholas Freudenberg, Monica van der Haagen-Wulff, Kelsey Hudson, Karena Kalmbach, Emmanuel Kattan, Markus Lemmens, Eric Lewandowski, Raphaël Liogier, Roman Marek, Christian Martin, Paul Mecheril, Angelika Messner, Caine C. A. Meyers, Julie Mostov, Dirk Nabers, Frauke Nees, Konrad Ott, Sonali Rajan, Julie Reshe, Bàrbara Roviró, Renata Selecl, Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, Frank Stengel, Ingibjorg Eva Thorisdottir, Maren Urner, Iris Wieczorek, Zhao Xudong, Liya Yu

The 1990s have been termed as 'Japan's lost decade' to describe how the phenomenal growth in the Japanese economy ground to a halt and the country was crippled by enormous and ongoing political, economic and social problems. In responding to these unprecedented difficulties, wide-ranging reforms have been adopted including NPO, information disclosure and judicial reform legislation. Controversially, this book argues that such reforms are creating a more robust civil society and demonstrate that Japan is far more dynamic than is generally recognized.

CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.

Providing an overview of the range and scope of International Political Economy scholarship, this important work maps the different regional schools of IPE and notes the distinctive way IPE is practiced and conceptualized around the world.