This study investigates whether corruption among public officials undermines fundamental rights, analysing data from 142 countries using the Rule of Law Index, a widely recognised and respected tool for assessing the rule of law worldwide. The results show that corruption among judges and bureaucrats consistently erodes fundamental rights, including labour rights and freedom of association. In advanced democracies, police and military corruption significantly reduces freedom of association, while lawmakers’ corruption undermines labour rights. However, in the broader context, corruption among lawmakers, police, and military officers does not significantly affect these rights. This study emphasises the significant role of bureaucracy in protecting rights and the devastating consequences of bureaucratic corruption. The trend of executive power abuse further complicates this issue. To combat corruption and safeguard fundamental rights, this article recommends robust mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency, emphasising the importance of democratic oversight.

Since the initiation of its Belt and Road Initiative, China’s economic statecraft has drawn considerable attention in academic circles. Yet less attention has been given to why the Chinese leadership first chose to pursue its national interests through economic means in the post-Mao period. This underexplored part of China’s economic statecraft can serve as a useful starting point to understand China’s foreign economic policies on their own terms. Employing a neoclassical realist framework and surveying statements made by Chinese leaders throughout the reform era, this study argues that the country’s leaders have gradually modified the strategic importance of the country’s economic statecraft in response to changes in their perceptions of the world order. Meanwhile, China’s form of economic statecraft has largely been determined by reform of its state-owned enterprises in the domestic realm.

Recent studies suggest that young individuals living in consolidated democracies are growing increasingly disillusioned with liberal democratic institutions and becoming more receptive to alternative forms of governance. This study investigates the democratic orientations of young individuals by examining support for different forms of leadership in South Korea. It argues that some young Koreans are following the global trend and are increasingly showing less faith in democracy. Specifically, they are showing more support for strongman leaders due to the way in which these leaders appeal to these voters. An original survey with an embedded experiment suggests that, while the general Korean public tends to support democratic leaders, young Koreans increasingly express a greater preference for strongman leaders due to their growing public anxieties and societal grievances along with the leaders’ painted image to resolve problems. These findings empirically challenge the long-held belief that young people inherently and undoubtedly prefer democracy and suggest that more needs to be done to overcome their diminishing faith in democratic leadership. The study thus prompts a reconsideration of how generational value changes may influence democracies in the future.

Unlike many other industrial societies, the partisan fights on the vaccination against COVID-19 in Taiwan centred on its brand choice rather than acceptance. Did the incumbent DPP supporters adhere to their party line of Medigen to vaccinate against COVID-19 during the pandemic? We argue that individual COVID-19 vaccine brand choices as gradually updated judgements during the pandemic were not solely determined by the party line, but jointly shaped by the strength of party affiliation and the level of government trust to facilitate decision-making in the highly uncertain information environment at the early stage of the pandemic. More specifically, when choosing COVID-19 vaccine brand, the incumbent DPP supporters, particularly weak ones, were more likely to adhere to their party line of Medigen as they trusted government more; however, this was only for the highly uncertain first shot, due to the absence of reliable information for making informed judgements about COVID vaccine brand choice at the early stage of the pandemic, not for the informationally rich booster shot. We report empirical findings consistent with our argument from statistical analyses of original data from a survey of 1642 Taiwanese adult respondents conducted in the fall of 2022.