Politics or the economy?Weak economic performance and political support in East and Southeast Asia

What are the effects of weak economic performance in East and Southeast Asia?In particular,does weak performance lead to citizens'dissatisfaction and,correspondingly,increase preference for stronger govermments who may achieve economic targets more quickly?Recent elections in less democratic nations and emergent democracies of East and Southeast Asia suggest growing support for political parties carries over from previous authorities.And,governments are harking back to policies of the past that emphasise economic performance over political development in order to motivate political support.However,few studies system-atically assess how weak economic performance affects citizens'political support.This paper addresses this neglect.Using public opinion surveys from the Asian Barometer,we track how eco-nomic performance affects political support over time in countries with a multiparty system.The results offer two useful insights.First,economic performance is robustly and positively related to government approval.Thus,strong economic performan'e corre sponds with strong support for government while weak performance yields weak support.Importantly,this finding is consistent with the large amount of literature on economic voting.Second,economic performance is not consistently related to democratic support;instead,political influence plays an intervening role in how economic performance affects democratic support.This underlines the significance of institution-building for political stability and political development in the region.Equally important,the results tie to the literature on political institutionalisation and democratic support.In conjunction,the results embrace East and Southeast Asia into the broader disciplinary research of motivation theory-building and empirical studies.

The Game Changer China Pakistan Economic Corridor （CPEC）： A SWOT Analysis

China Pakistan Economic Corridor （CPEC） is dreamed to be the game changer not only for China and Pakistan but other 50 regional, Middle East, Central Asian Republics, and European countries too. It is one of its kind a huge project with billion US$ investment by China. Since its inception, the internal controversies and disputes in Pakistan on the sharing of benefits as well as interests and concerns of the regional and international players are posing threats to it. The review article aims to investigate and analyze the strengths and weakness and opportunities and threats （SWOT） for CPEC. To analyze the qualitative data, a computer based software program ATLAS.ti was used by employing multiple methods like discourse, hermeneutics, and heuristic by Moustakas. The schematic model of the theoretical framework elaborates the association and impact between and on the dependent, independent, and mediating variables of the study. It was found that if the security, political support, internal and external threats, coordination and cooperation and involvement of stakeholders are properly addressed, the CPEC will bear the fruits.

China＇s Land System and Its Extraordinary Infrastructure Development

Over the past two decades, China's infrastructure development has been extraordinary in the sense that it far exceeds GDP growth rate and unconventional in the sense that it cannot be explained with existing theories on infrastructure development.This paper found that the transformation of China's land system is an important clue:China's extraordinary infrastructure development is a result that can be explained with the transformation of its land system. Theoretically, this paper proves that with other conditions held constant, the difference of land systems has a significant effect on the optimal infrastructure supply of regions. Empirically, it can be found through the test of cross-country panel data that the transformation of China's land system around the 1990 s indeed exerted an overall impact on China's extraordinary infrastructure development. This paper implies that China's "land-supported infrastructure development" model has been pivotal to its extraordinary infrastructure development. Under the Belt and Road Initiative,China's experience of land-supported infrastructure development is of broad significance for developing countries to boost their infrastructure development.