Gender and Politics in Northeast Asia: Legislative Patterns and Substantive Representation in Korea and Taiwan

The article examines the conditions under which female legislators are more likely to act on behalf of female electorates through two underexplored cases - South Korea and Taiwan. Specifically, it investigates the effect of three conditions - seat share, electoral rules, and legislator characteristics - on legislators' sponsorship of women's issue bills using an original bill submission dataset. The finding shows that, on the one hand, female legislators' increasing seat proportion made legislators stress women's issues more and, on the other hand, new legislators elected at the party tier with civil society experience became substantially more likely to advance women's issues. In light of the evidence, this article argues that women's issues are more actively advanced when the political space allows women's issue-promoting legislators to pursue both electoral and policy interests

Substantive representation of women and policy-vote trade-offs: does supporting women's issue bills decrease a legislator's chance of reelection?

The paper investigates how parliamentary efforts to represent the interests of female electorates influence the legislators' re-election chances. Taiwan is chosen as the case study and, for empirical analysis, I utilise an original bill co-sponsorship dataset that consists of roughly 400,000 cosponsors for all bills submitted between 1992 and 2016. The findings, based on regression analyses, show that making more legislative effort on women's issues - by prioritising them over other issues - results in electoral losses, and this negative effect is more pronounced among female legislators. The paper contributes to the gender politics literature by theorising and testing a hitherto underexplored relationship between two representational processes: how the substantive representation women by female legislators affects their descriptive representation. It also contributes to legislative and electoral studies by demonstrating that legislators' policy-vote trade-offs are policy-sensitive and gendered, thus calling for a more nuanced approach to be taken in future research. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2021.1902645

Mind the Gap! Comparing Gender Politics in Japan and Taiwan

Japan and Taiwan share common cultural characteristics, and their economics have developed in similar ways too. They perform equally well on educational attainment, infant mortality, and unemployment meanwhile. Yet, Japan lags far behind Taiwan when it comes to gender equality - including the significantly less prominent and active role of women in parliament in the former. The difference between the two countries in this regard can be explained by three key political factors. First, women's movements in Taiwan benefitted from the momentum created during the democratisation phase of the early 1990s. They have since become a powerful force, pushing for gender equality measures such as mandatory gender quotas. In contrast, women's movements in Japan tend to be fragmented, decentralised, or focussed only on specific issues. Second, the major center-right Kuomintang party in Taiwan has actively taken advantage of gender equality issues for electoral purposes. By contrast, in Japan the move towards greater gender equality has faced a strong backlash from various conservative forces ranging from the ruling center-right Liberal Democratic Party to right-leaning media, or even to conservative female academics. Third, the Japanese political system makes it harder to promote gender issues there compared to in the Taiwanese case. Japan's parliamentary system marginalises the role of legislators, which in turn limits female parliamentarians' efforts. Also, even if both countries have two electoral "tiers" - one to represent the district, and the other that of the political party - the latter one in Japan features a loophole, and thus has not been used to represent diverse interests within society. As the comparison shows, politics has played a significant role in creating a gap in the two countries' gender balances. Considering that Japan has continued to be highly self-conscious about its international standing, there should be constant external pressure for women's political empowerment, career advancement, and better work-life balance. Corrective measures could include the adoption of a gender quota in politics and business, or more incentives for both men and women to take parental leave

The legislature and agenda politics of social welfare: a comparative analysis of authoritarian and democratic regimes in South Korea

The article mainly seeks to explain the legislature's preferences in social welfare before and after democratization using South Korea as a case study. Based on an original dataset that consists of all executive and of legislative branch-submitted bills between 1948 and 2016 - roughly 60,000- legislative priority on social welfare is compared over time, and tested using logistic regressions. The key focus of analysis is whether and how the level of democracy affected the degree and universality of social welfare priority. The findings show that the promotion of social welfare is positively related to higher levels of democracy in a continuous fashion, which clearly points to the need to avoid applying a simple regime dichotomy - authoritarian or democratic - when seeking to understand social welfare development. Going further, the article examines the legislature's priority in welfare issues within a presidential structure and under majoritarian electoral rule, at different levels of democracy. The result shows that the higher levels of democracy are, the more the legislative branch contributes to the overall salience of social welfare legislative initiatives as compared to the executive branch. Moreover, the legislative branch itself prioritizes a social welfare agenda - alongside democratic deepening - over other issues

Measuring the mass-elite preference congruence: findings from a meta-analysis and introduction to the symposium

The extensive scholarship devoted to the congruence of mass-elite policy preferences lacks consensus about the meaning, comparison, and measurement across political settings. This makes comparisons difficult and raises obstacles to advancing the debates. This symposium aims to identify the diversity of methodological choices and to reflect systematically on several key choices of particular importance in understanding the congruence. The contributions to the symposium compare and contrast how several types of measurement fare in diverse political contexts in Eastern Europe, Latin America, North Africa, and East Asia, and what we can learn from those methodological choices

A band-selective CMOS low-noise amplifier with current reuse gm boosting technique for 3-5 GHz UWB receivers

The authors have proposed a 3-5 GHz ultra-wideband (UWB) low power and low noise amplifier (LNA) with the TSMC 0.18 μm RF CMOS process, which uses a novel dual input matching network for wideband matching. We have used a current-reuse gm-boosted common-gate topology and shunt-shunt feedback common-source output buffer to improve gain and noise figure with low power dissipation. The proposed dual input matching gm-boosted common-gate LNA has been efficient bandwidth to cover UWB band. It has required less inductors or amplification stages to increase bandwidth as compared with the conventional UWB common-gate LNAs. The broadband input stage has been able to be switched to three frequency bands with capacitive switches. The capacitive switch has replaced a large inductor to resonate at lower frequency band. The band-selective LNA has shown linearity improvement by attenuating the undesired interference of a wideband gain circuit and using less inductors. Simulated performance has shown the gains of 15.9, 17.6, and 16.9 dB, and the noise figures of 3.38, 3.28, and 3.27 dB at the 3.432, 3.960, and 4.488 GHz frequency bands, respectively. The proposed UWB LNA has consumed 5 mW from a 1.8-V power supply

A band-selective CMOS low-noise amplifier with current reuse gm boosting technique for 3-5 GHz UWB receivers

529-537The authors have proposed a 3-5 GHz ultra-wideband (UWB) low power and low noise amplifier (LNA) with the TSMC 0.18 μm RF CMOS process, which uses a novel dual input matching network for wideband matching. We have used a current-reuse gm-boosted common-gate topology and shunt-shunt feedback common-source output buffer to improve gain and noise figure with low power dissipation. The proposed dual input matching gm-boosted common-gate LNA has been efficient bandwidth to cover UWB band. It has required less inductors or amplification stages to increase bandwidth as compared with the conventional UWB common-gate LNAs. The broadband input stage has been able to be switched to three frequency bands with capacitive switches. The capacitive switch has replaced a large inductor to resonate at lower frequency band. The band-selective LNA has shown linearity improvement by attenuating the undesired interference of a wideband gain circuit and using less inductors. Simulated performance has shown the gains of 15.9, 17.6, and 16.9 dB, and the noise figures of 3.38, 3.28, and 3.27 dB at the 3.432, 3.960, and 4.488 GHz frequency bands, respectively. The proposed UWB LNA has consumed 5 mW from a 1.8-V power supply

Male Pseudohermaphroditism Presented with Sudden Cardiac Arrest

Torsades de Pointes is a life-threatening arrhythmia associated with a number of causes, but is very rare among endocrinologic disorders. We report a case of male pseudohermaphroditism with hyperaldosteronism due to a 17α-hydroxylase deficiency presented with sudden cardiac arrest

South Koreas Soft Power in the Era of the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of the Expert Survey in Europe

Since the recent outbreak of the Covid-19, South Korea hasdemonstrated successful pandemic management that can beexemplary to other countries. This paper analyzes how SouthKoreas responses to the Covid-19 pandemic has changed theperceptions of the country in Europe. Through a survey conducted with Korea experts in 16 European countries, this paper documents the positive recognition of South Koreas pandemic management by the European public. Part of the positive appraisal can be attributed to South Koreas extensive testing, high technology, and the culture of wearing a face mask, while the opinions were more mixedregarding its comprehensive tracking and tracing strategy due to privacy concerns. Furthermore, the findings of the survey show that Europeans overall perception of South Korea has improved together with its Covid-19 management. This evidence suggests that thecountrys success in pandemic management can be an instrumentof public diplomacy to enhance its soft power, for which thegovernment of South Korea currently invests considerable efforts.We are grateful to the KDI School of Public Policy and Management for providing financial support. We also thank the Korea experts who participated in the survey