This paper seeks to evaluate the potential of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT in accurately identifying verbal emotional cues and conducting coding, with specific emphasis on political communication and discourse in Japan. It aims to assess ChatGPT's capability to distinguish messages containing derogatory expressions during deliberations in the Japanese Parliament and to classify the targets of these expressions. Furthermore, this study compares the analytical techniques and results produced by ChatGPT, with those obtained through human coding, to ascertain the potential advantages and limitations of AI-assisted qualitative data analysis within the context of political discourse. The findings show partial convergence in coding outcomes, especially when derogatory cues are explicit and targets are clearly specified. We interpret this convergence as output-level similarity under defined conditions rather than evidence of human-like interpretive calibration, contextual grounding, or metacognitive monitoring.
How top civil servants perceive their role has been widely studied in developed countries, yet this topic remains largely unexplored in developing countries. This study aims to explore how top civil servants in Bangladesh perceive their roles, through twenty extensive interviews with current and former top civil servants at the secretary and senior secretary level. Using the framework of administrative responsibilities developed by Denhardt and deLeon, the interview revealed a dominant 'traditional bureaucrat' role perception. This perception emphasizes traditional bureaucratic values, including strict adherence to rules, political neutrality, and a clear distinction between the roles of politicians and top civil servants. Only a few top civil servants recognized the importance of policy advocacy in their role to safeguard citizen interests. Just a quarter of respondents supported policy or procedural changes for improved public services. Instead, most prioritized adherence to rules and established procedures to minimize uncertainties and comply with political decisions. However, self-perception and representation appear to stand in contrast to observed departures from standard bureaucratic rules and bureaucratic neutrality.
In recent years Central Asia has slipped from the focus of Belt and Road Initiative's policymakers and commentators. This paper seeks to return attention to Central Asia and ask what geographical proximity to China means for how this initiative is received on the ground in Central Asia, and for broader understandings of the geopolitical imaginations underpinning the BRI. By turning attention to the often-overlooked concept of 'community of common destiny', this paper thereby seeks to contribute to more granular and grounded understandings of a rising China and the impacts that China's 'coming out' is having on its neighbouring states.
Connectivity has become central to Asian geopolitics. This article examines India's simultaneous engagement with the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) within a Eurasian order shaped by competitive connectivity and multipolar rivalry. It argues that the strategic value of India's dual-corridor approach depends as much on governance 'software' as on physical 'hardware.' The article posits three structural challenges: alignment across rival geopolitical blocs, duplication and economic inefficiency, and institutional fragmentation. First, pursuing both corridors links India to partly competing coalitions, generating trust deficits. Second, gaps in standards, customs, and transnational coordination dilute time-cost advantages. Third, overlapping routes may enhance strategic flexibility but can reinforce fragmented regional networks without deeper institutional alignment. Rather than treating India's dual engagement as policy incoherence, the article shows that its effectiveness depends on interoperable rules, corridor-level governance, and credible dispute-resolution mechanisms. Drawing on neo-institutionalist theory - particularly institutional isomorphism - and organizational governance theory, it explains when corridors integrate and when they fragment. The article links India's corridor choices to wider debates on infrastructural power, strategic autonomy, and competitive connectivity in Asia.
This article examines how Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) evolved into a coercive institution that is simultaneously embedded in the state and autonomous within Iran's political order. Using qualitative process tracing across three phases of Iran's state development, revolution and war (1979-1988), postwar reconstruction and reform (1989-2004), and recurring internal and external pressures (2005-2020), this article posits that repeated delegation to the IRGC became consolidated through mutual resource dependence. Building on principal-agent approaches, this article traces the institutional trajectory of the IRGC and explains how mutual resource dependence unfolds through three sequential mechanisms across these phases. Exchange emerges through crisis-driven delegation. Conversion then extends delegated coercive capacities into new domains as political conditions change, and routinization stabilizes repeated delegation over time. The logic of mutual resource dependence thus explains how the IRGC's autonomy and embeddedness within state authority were strengthened simultaneously over time.
The 2018 merger of FATA, a colonial remnant in northwest Pakistan, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was celebrated as a step toward ending the region's legal and political marginalization. This article critically examines whether post-merger legal reforms have substantively altered the state's mode of governance in Pakistan's Pashtun borderlands. Drawing on Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis, theoretically informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality and Agamben's theorization of the state of exception, we examine two post-merger legal developments: the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation 2019 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Bill (2025). Our analysis shows how these legal texts institutionalize a state of exception that racializes Pashtun bodies as potentially criminal and dispossesses them of land through extractive policies. In light of successive waves of Ulasi Pasoon (people's uprisings) (2024-2025), this article argues that the state extends its internal colonial project in Pashtun Land through the operationalization of necro-legal technologies, to create bare life conditions and transform the region into a resource colony.
The objective of the paper is to explore the lived experiences of the Afghan women since the ascension of the Taliban from August 2021 to October 2025. The findings reveal increasing gender-based violence, mental depression, systematic exclusion of Afghan women from education, public spaces and increasing restrictions on their agency and choice. The paper also looks at the lived experiences of Afghan women refugees who have moved to Pakistan, Iran and Europe in the hope of better lives. However, they are facing multiple challenges of economic precarity, displacement, forced deportation and inability to integrate with foreign culture. The data is built on qualitative methodology that includes personal interviews with 15 Afghan participants, of which 12 are Afghan women, held in person and conducted online through WhatsApp calls, messaging and Zoom calls. Questionnaire responses were also received from 20 Afghan participants. The paper puts forth an argument that gender-based violence and discrimination are being imposed through ideological and social control that has undermined the human security, self-worth and agency of Afghan women, which will have regional and global implications.
Despite repeated attempts to democratize, Thailand has yet to consolidate a stable democratic system. In the twenty-first century alone, the military has overthrown elected governments twice, encountering limited public resistance. This raises important questions about the depth of political interest among Thai citizens, even after decades of economic development. Several theoretical frameworks seek to explain political interest: modernization theory argues that economic growth fosters greater political interest, while alternative perspectives emphasize the role of the working class or individual personality traits. This study examines these proposed determinants of political interest in Thailand using cross-sectional data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey. Employing ordered logistic regression, this study tests competing hypotheses drawn from these theories. The results provide partial support for both modernization and personality-based explanations, though no single framework fully accounts for variations in political interest. These findings underscore the complex and multifaceted nature of political interest in Thailand and contribute to broader debates about state - society relations in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian contexts.
This qualitative study examines the role of influencer marketing in political campaigns during Sri Lanka's 2024 presidential election, focusing on the impact of social media on voter perceptions and engagement. As political discourse increasingly shifts to digital platforms, influencers have emerged as central figures in shaping political narratives. The study adopted snowball sampling to collect data through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, involving 10 social media influencers and 50 voters. Thematic analysis revealed five key themes: voter trust, voter engagement, the impact of influencers, ethical dilemmas, and the overall role of influencers. The findings suggest that influencers are viewed as credible and relatable sources of information, especially among younger voters who are more engaged with digital campaigns that effectively leveraged influencers, experienced improved visibility and a stronger connection with their target audience. The investigation also revealed challenges such as spreading misinformation and concerns regarding the authenticity of influencer endorsements. Participants emphasized the need for transparency in influencer partnerships to maintain trust in political messaging. Ultimately, this study provides valuable insights into the intersection of social media and political marketing, offering a foundation for future research on digital engagement in political contexts within Sri Lanka and beyond.
Studies have concluded that Laos is a 'satellite' or 'vassal' state of China due to its increasing dependence on China's financial investments over the past years. Therefore, the expectation is that, during Laos' Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chairmanships in 2016 and 2024, Laos would take a stance similar to Cambodia's in 2012, slightly siding with China on the South China Sea dispute. However, such expectations never came to fruition, as Laos surprisingly leaned more towards the ASEAN Way by remaining neutral in its role. Bridging social psychology's uncertainty-identity theory can offer unique interpretations of Laos' foreign policy, revealing ideational facets uncommon in the existing literature. This explanatory empirical case study examines Laos' ASEAN chairmanships over the past 10 years and bridges the uncertainty-identity theory to identity, self-categorization, and entitativity. The study found that: (1) A sense of uncertainty in identity surfaced due to Laos' concerns over the discourse of China's 'predatory' lending practices in the region; (2) the deliberate self-categorization to abide by the ASEAN Way by associating with the regional grouping's prototypical attributes and displaying neutrality; and (3) ASEAN as a high entitativity regional grouping, motivating Laos to align further with the regional grouping's norms and goals.
Widely considered a foundation of good governance, citizen participation (CP) transforms local government into something more inclusive, giving individuals at the grassroots an opportunity to influence decisions that concern their lives. Depending on varying forms of governance-from top-down to democratic-CP can take several forms: informing, consulting, involvement and empowerment. Still, whether CP functions in practice or remains on paper depends much on the attitudes of public managers. Drawing upon Bureaucratic Role Theory, this paper pays close attention to public managers' attitudes toward CP and the factors that shape their opinions, investigating their propensity to act as 'Gatekeepers' or 'Enablers' of citizen engagement. Using a qualitative methodology involving 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Upazila and Union-level managers, we employ Thematic Analysis to process the data and build a conceptual model. The findings reveal that managers' attitudes are strongly conditioned by a set of Interlocking Constraints, including perceived public incompetence, fear of political conflict and a deeply ingrained, paternalistic bureaucratic culture. The paper contributes theoretically by systematically mapping these empirical constraints directly onto the 'Gatekeeper' role, thereby extending Bureaucratic Role Theory within a developing country context.
The aim of this study was to examine public perceptions of peacekeeping operations (PKOs) conducted by China and Kazakhstan against the backdrop of geopolitical transformations. To investigate the topic effectively, the application of terminological, hermeneutic, comparative, and historical methods was essential. The study elucidates the nature of peacekeeping activities, particularly within the framework of the United Nations (UN), analyses the evolution of the UN's peacekeeping efforts, and examines the guiding principles and foundational legal instruments underpinning these operations. Furthermore, the essence and characteristics of geopolitical transformations are explored, with a focus on the experiences of China and Kazakhstan as states undergoing large-scale changes, alongside an assessment of public perceptions of peacekeeping in each country. A key finding of this research, based on the analysis of secondary sources, is that public perception of a state's peacekeeping policy plays a decisive role in its efficacy and reflects broader societal attitudes toward state policy. The practical significance of the study lies in its potential utility for governmental bodies and analytical centres in refining approaches to peacekeeping policy formulation.
Paradiplomacy-the international engagements of subnational governments such as cities and regions-has become an increasingly prominent field of research and practice in the context of globalization, decentralization, and multilevel governance. While literature has explored paradiplomacy across various countries, South Korea remains underexplored. This paper presents the first empirical, data-driven mapping of paradiplomatic activity across all 94 South Korean subnational entities, including metropolitan cities, provinces, and lower-level cities. It analyzes nearly 1,200 international partnerships formed by the end of 2023 and identifies key patterns in geographical orientation, structural determinants, and vertical dynamics. The findings reveal that, while all subnational units are involved in paradiplomacy, its intensity strongly correlates with population size, Gross Regional Domestic Product, and export levels. Results show limited coordination between provinces and cities, despite occasional structural alignment. By applying a combination of cosine similarity, Jaccard index, and Spearman's rank correlation, the paper also introduces new methodological tools to assess paradiplomatic strategy coherence across governance levels. The findings also carry policy implications. Strengthening coordination at the national level, enhancing vertical support from provinces to cities, encouraging smaller municipalities to emulate proactive peers, and engaging diaspora communities could all improve the effectiveness of South Korea's paradiplomacy.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the current trends of the information and political agenda in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study provides a comparative analysis of events in Kazakhstan in the Kazakh state-funded media, as well as in the English and American media. The network of coincidences and tone analysis of selected 200 newspaper articles, 400 items from 3 social media platforms, and 150 video materials of Kazakh media published in 2022-2024 were used. Using qualitative content analysis, the study managed to identify the themes in the Kazakh media that emerge as the principal problems in the country: the land issue, the language issue, the interethnic issue, and the socio-economic issue. The study determined the tone of voice of articles in Kazakh media and foreign media. Therewith, the speech of the President of Kazakhstan and events in the country were covered in Kazakh print media critically, while on social media channels, the nature of the tone was neutral. As a result of the analysis, a significant amount of fake news was observed. These results show how propaganda campaigns can play a vital role in both limiting and promoting concrete news in Kazakh society.
This article analyses the ideational impact of Japan's intensified security and defense cooperation in Southeast Asia, using Indonesia as a typical case study. While many studies have examined Japan's motivations for expanding its security cooperation in the region, this research focuses on the outcomes of Japan's engagement. Using qualitative methods, it examines the extent to which capacity-building programmes and joint exercises have strengthened shared values with Indonesia and improved Indonesia's trust in Japan's security role. This study has two findings. First, Japan's expanded security and defense engagement with Indonesia has created more opportunities for both countries to deepen their mutual understanding of the rule of law, particularly regarding the concept and implementation of international law. Second, intensified capacity-building programmes and joint exercises between Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the Indonesian National Armed Forces have helped solidify the conditions that support trust-building, such as increased familiarity and more positive attitudes towards future cooperation. Findings imply that Japan's expanded cooperation has enhanced the pre-conditions for value convergence and trust-building. However, further research with stronger empirical evidence is needed to determine the actual ideational outcomes of this cooperation. This study, therefore, highlights the potential for ideational drivers in security and defense policy beyond material considerations.
This article explains why Poland's 2022-2023 reception of millions of Ukrainian refugees did not trigger a renewed far-right mobilization. I argue that refugee inflows strengthen the far right only when three mechanisms align: liberal incumbency, refugee securitization, and timely solidarity fatigue. In Poland in 2023, all three misaligned. The right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government could not shift blame to liberals; Russia, not refugees, dominated the threat narrative; and public fatigue emerged too weakly and too late to mobilize electorally. Using Polish opinion data, party discourse, and media coverage, the study reconstructs how securitization was redirected outward and the far-right mobilization did not occur even with the mass influx of refugees. The findings extend existing theories by showing that far-right mobilization depends not merely on cultural or economic grievance but on incumbency, threat direction, and timing.
This special issue examines how successive geopolitical crises, from Syria and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Gaza, have produced overlapping waves of forced displacement that now define Eurasia's migration landscape. The articles in this issue advance a reconceptualization of refugee mobility by dissolving the migrant-refugee binary, foregrounding refugee agency, and acknowledging the overlapped phenomenon from international, regional, and domestic levels of analysis. Across cases, displacement emerges from cascading geopolitical vacuums, while institutional architectures mediate divergent protection outcomes. Refugees act as strategic navigators, pursuing mobility, legality, and livelihood within highly constrained environments. The contributions demonstrate that refugee governance in Eurasia is not determined by law or norm alone but by the contingent intersection of power politics, regional regime complexity, and state-level political incentives. By tracing these dynamics across Poland, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Jordan, the issue repositions Eurasia as a critical site for rethinking global refugee paradigms.
This article examines the mobility of Ukrainian Koryoin refugees-members of the Russian-Korean diaspora-who entered South Korea following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. An estimated 1,500 Ukrainian Koryoin fled to South Korea, and among them, 876 received airfare and settlement assistance from Koryoin Village, a nonprofit organization in Gwangju. Using entry records of 873 individuals supported by the organization, this study analyzes demographic and migration patterns, including age, gender, nationality, country of departure, and arrival dates. Beyond initial settlement, the study investigates their continued mobility and the factors shaping it. Findings show that nearly 40 percent engaged in secondary mobility, relocating to metropolitan areas within South Korea, moving to third countries such as the United States or Russia, or even returning to conflict zones in Ukraine. Limited employment opportunities, barriers to naturalization, linguistic constraints, and social exclusion emerged as key drivers of re-migration. The study further highlights the 'multi-layered simultaneity' of Koryoin refugees, who are simultaneously refugees, ethnic returnees, and migrant laborers. It also traces the 'long-term diachronicity' of Koryoin mobility, from the late nineteenth century to the present, underscoring refugees' agency as they navigate ongoing displacement and the broader implications for South Korea's refugee reception policies.
This study analyzes Uzbekistan's approach to Afghan refugee protection as a non-signatory state to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Despite lacking formal refugee legislation, Uzbekistan hosts approximately 8,500 Afghan refugees through alternative mechanisms operating outside conventional legal frameworks. The key finding identifies Uzbekistan as a 'pragmatic administrator', a type of non-signatory state that maintains complete formal distance from international refugee regimes while providing functional accommodation through purely domestic administrative measures. This differs fundamentally from states engaging with UNHCR mandate procedures or bilateral MOUs. Uzbekistan provides de facto protection through flexible visa policies, administrative tolerance of informal economic activities, and selective service access. Three dimensions illuminate this model: transit-oriented positioning as geopolitical tool balancing humanitarian cooperation with sovereignty preservation; administrative ambiguity creating opportunity structures that refugees strategically exploit; and legal invisibility enabling adaptive agency that formal recognition might foreclose. However, protection depends on government discretion rather than binding obligations, creating fundamental precarity. This research challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between formal legal compliance and protection effectiveness, contributing to understanding how non-signatory states operationalize refugee management outside established international frameworks.
