We report empirical results related to trust and trustworthiness based on a representative web survey carried out in March 2011 in Japan. Although it initially was intended as a pilot, our survey is unique and unrepeatable because the massive Tohoku earthquake that hit Japan in spring 2011 occurred during the data-collection process and created a natural experiment. Apart from exploring changes originated by the disaster, the novelty of our approach lies in using a multipurpose questionnaire assembled by researchers with diverse interests from different academic areas that allows for exploring political and other social correlates of the economic concepts of trust and trustworthiness as measured by the game-theoretical trust game.

The alignment of parties within a party system shapes the nature of electoral competition, the process of representation, and potentially the legitimacy of the system. This article describes the distribution of parties and the levels of party polarization in the party systems of East Asian democracies. We examine the public's perceptions of party positions on a left-right scale to map the pattern of party competition. The evidence is based on two waves of surveys from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We describe considerable variation in the polarization of Asian party systems, which has direct implications for the clarity of party choice and the behavior of voters. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings.

The authors investigate the empirical claim that a world opinion existed in the Iraq/Kuwait crisis. They find substantial agreement among citizens of a variety of world cities on the interpretation of events, on affect toward the major actors, and on the goals of the international community, but less agreement on the use of military force. There were significant differences in enthusiasm for that agreement across the various countries, but these mostly reflected differences in affect and in support for various goals. It appears that the attitudes of citizens of various world cities responded to the same factors.

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