Pacific Affairs

08/13/2026

In 2025, Nepal's Gen Z movement brought down the government. Then came a midterm election and a four-year-old political party swept to a near supermajority. What actually happened?
In this new Pacific Affairs article, Suvexa Pradhan Tuladhar looks past the easy explanations (protest energy, a charismatic candidate) to show how Nepal's 2026 political transformation was decades in the making. And she asks the harder question: can the party that just won look different from the ones it replaced, or is it repeating the same pattern?

Read more: https://doi.org/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2685568

07/15/2026

📚 The complete issue of Pacific Affairs is officially here! Volume 99, No. 2 is now available online, featuring new research and perspectives on some of the most pressing political, economic, and social issues shaping Asia and the Pacific today. Explore the issue and read the articles online:

June 2026

06/26/2026

"How can middle powers preserve strategic autonomy when US–China competition increasingly shapes regional economic governance?
In their new article 'Seeking Strategic Autonomy through Regional Trade Agreements: The Path of Institutional Hedging for Middle Powers under the RCEP,' Bangjie Hu and Hailong Ju examine this critical question. Using a difference-in-differences research design, they find that RCEP strengthens member states' strategic autonomy by widening their political distance from both China and the United States in multilateral diplomacy.
The research identifies important boundary conditions, including regime type, institutional quality, income level, territorial disputes with China and industrial structure, and uses Vietnam as a case study to illustrate how inclusive regional economic institutions help states manage asymmetric pressures while avoiding exclusive alignment. A key finding: regional trade agreements can do far more than facilitate commerce.
Read the full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2670868

06/18/2026

The analytic tool 'hedging' has been overused in writing on Malaysia's foreign relations. Explaining Malaysia's behaviour in such universalising, rational terms means ignoring local factors and treating with unwarranted cynicism the repeated claim that their foreign policies are principled.
Anthony Milner advocates 'context analysis': an approach that focuses country-by-country, episode-by-episode on the specific circumstances influencing decisions, highlighting the role of local normative frameworks. Far from opting for monistic master-concepts, this helps advance the investigation of plurality. Read more in the June issue:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2673725

06/11/2026

📖 New Perspective in the latest issue, available online now! In "From the 'Cultural Properties Protection Act' to the 'Framework Act on National Heritage': Legal Paradigm Shifts in South Korea's Heritage Policy," Si Eun Yang and Minjae Zoh examine how South Korea's cultural heritage laws have evolved from colonial-era preservation models into a globally oriented national heritage framework.

Their argument? Heritage policy isn't just about protecting the past, in South Korea's case, it has also become a vehicle for negotiating postcolonial identity, engaging with international norms, and projecting soft power on the world stage.

A timely read at the intersection of law, history, politics, and culture in contemporary Korea. 🔗 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2626222

06/03/2026

New in our June issue: two Perspectives on Japan's political moment defined by Takaichi Sanae's landslide victory in February's lower house election.

In "After the Landslide," Phillip Lipscy places Takaichi in comparative perspective with her mentor Abe Shinzō, arguing she enters office with even greater room to advance constitutional revision and economic security, but faces intensifying constraints that will test her ability to replicate Abe's broader legacy. Read more online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2672229

In "The Takaichi Election and Japan's National Security Future," Kristin Vekasi pushes back on the "hawkish turn" narrative, showing that Takaichi's agenda largely accelerates trends in deterrence, institutional reform, and economic security stretching back to the early 2000s. Her distinctiveness lies not in strategic innovation, but in the political capacity and historic visibility as Japan's first female PM to pursue those goals more openly. Read more online now: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2672689

05/27/2026

Our June issue is out and now available online! First up: Arnab Roy Chowdhury's review essay examines three recent books on forest politics in India, tracing the long struggle of forest-dwelling communities for rights to the land that sustains them and asking what the Forest Rights Act of 2006 has and hasn't delivered.

Read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2644785

05/20/2026

A century ago today, on May 20, 1926, in a modest Honolulu office of the International Secretariat of a still-young Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), the first News Bulletin came off the press. Slim, unassuming, and practical in purpose, it carried updates on IPR meetings, research, and promotional initiatives. It also encapsulated a fragile but ambitious vision: the fostering of international integration and understanding in the wider Pacific region.
In those early pages, one can glimpse the beginnings of an intellectual project that would soon grow in scope and authority. Just two years later, in 1928, the News Bulletin evolved into Pacific Affairs, the journal we know and love and which ultimately survived the IPR to become a leading forum for scholarship on Asia and the Pacific.

05/06/2026

🏆 Announcing the 24th William L. Holland Prize Winner!

We are thrilled to recognize Toshiko Tsujimoto, 立命館大学／Ritsumeikan University, as the winner of the William L. Holland Prize for the best article published in Pacific Affairs, Vol. 98 (2025).
Her article, “Deterring the Right to Justice: Structural Coercion and the Trafficking of Filipino Female Entertainers in South Korea,” which appeared in vol. 98, no. 2, was selected through a rigorous multi-stage review of voting by our Executive Committee and wider Editorial Board. Board members praised Tsujimoto's study for its original insights, rich ethnographic research, and policy relevance, which taken together offer a powerful analysis of structural coercion with real-world impact. Full Article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5509/2025982-art1

We also extend warm congratulations to our runner-up, Mai Truong, Marquette University, for her paper "Perceived Protest Efficacy: How Economic and Diplomatic Ties with China Influence Support for Anti-China Protests Over South China Sea Disputes". Full Article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5509/2025983-art2

Read more about the award: https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/about/holland-prize/

04/29/2026

What does it mean when a North Korean leader admits he got something wrong?

In the upcoming June Issue, Minkwan Kim, Yonsei University, examines how Kim Jong-un has quietly shifted tactics by moving away from the outright denial that defined his predecessors toward selective acknowledgment of policy failures, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters that are increasingly difficult to conceal in today's information environment.

Kim calls this strategy "managed fallibility": by owning limited failures, Kim Jong-un projects the image of a responsive, accountable leader—all while keeping authoritarian control firmly intact. It's a fascinating window into how authoritarian regimes adapt to survive, and what legitimacy looks like when the old playbook stops working.

📖 Read the full article in Pacific Affairs June Issue: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0030851X.2026.2661488
Image Credit: Korean Central News Agency