Richard Samuels's book Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan raises a number of important issues concerning political leadership and the role individual leaders can play in a nation's history. The book won the 2003 Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the 2004 Jervis-Schroeder Prize for the best book in International History and Politics, awarded by the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association. This is a roundtable involving four critical essays and the author's response. Discussion centers on the book, its methods, its broader applicability, and the ways in which it dovetails with other intellectual concerns, particularly as these apply to contemporary East Asia.

This article systematically reviews the macrolevel social policy changes in urban China during recent years. It also provides empirical evidence on how such policy changes reflect on microlevel family benefit levels from 1988 to 2002 using the national China Household Income Project data. The social policy reform process gradually shifted away from welfare provision through work units to greater emphasis on individual taxes and contributions. The government has also taken a more active role in providing a safety net for the urban poor. Empirical results show that even though the real value of social benefits increased over time, its increasing pace was laggard by that of market earnings, yielding a smaller share in final household income since the reforms. Pensions, public assistance, health, and education benefits increased during the period, while housing, food assistance, and supplementary income decreased.

In nations where the executive has budgetary control, how are spending decisions and allocations affected? Is intraparty conflict relevant? This article sets out to show that institutional rules and leadership roles affect budgetary outcomes. It makes the following argument: if intraparty conflict exists in a one-party dominant or majority-party system, the executive reduces spending to punish the party in the legislature; if no intraparty conflict exists, then the executive increases spending to reward or cultivate loyalty to himself as the party leader. If intraparty conflict exists in a minority government or majority-coalition within a competitive multiparty system, the executive increases spending to reward or cultivate loyalty to himself as the party or coalition leader. Evidence from South Korea and Taiwan between the 1970s and 2000 supports the theory. This study advances scholarship in three ways. First, it shows that institutional rules that provide the executive with agenda control also lead to the strategic use of the budgetary process and outcomes to generate loyalty to the executive as leader. Second, it reveals that this strategy affects spending outcomes in election years; this is an important caveat to electoral spending manipulations. Third, the strategic use of the budget to control intraparty conflict occurred prior to and following democratization; this reveals that institutional changes need to include modifications in rules for policy transformations.

This article deals with the problems of North Korean defectors currently living in South Korea. In the past, most such defectors came from privileged groups in the North Korean population, and their adjustment to the new environment did not pose a significant problem. However, from the mid-1990s, defectors began to come from the far less privileged groups. They experience serious problems related to jobs, education, crime, and social adjustment. Recent years have seen a dramatic but not always openly stated change in the official South Korean attitude toward defectors: from a policy explicitly aimed at encouraging defection, Seoul has moved to the policy of quietly discouraging it. There are fears that encouraging defection will undermine the policy of peaceful engagement with the North. There is also the perception that refugees are outsiders, not quite adjustable to the conditions of South Korean society and thus a social and budgetary burden.

Communication networks play an important role in the process of political socialization. This article, based on Taiwan's 2002 Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral election data, investigates the extent to which political discussion with family and close friends affects changes in vote choices. Using two definitions of changes in vote choice—vote switching and partisan defection—the empirical findings support Alan Zuckerman and his followers' structural theory and partially sustain Paul Beck's social support theory. First, partisan voters in both cities who perceive great heterogeneity in their communication networks are likely to switch their vote in two consecutive elections. Second, partisan voters in Kaohsiung who frequently discuss politics within communication networks are not likely to defect their party identification. The implications of the findings for the development of deliberative democracy are discussed.