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This article examines the effect of development assistance programs on Local Agenda 21 (LA21) programs in three municipalities of Thailand. First, the article examines institutional changes in Thailand geared toward decentralization. Second, the article analyzes the effect based on the frameworks of Noda and Ouchi for the level of participation. The results indicate that participation was a top—down participation of local residents who presumed some benefits from the municipality in exchange for their attendance in meetings. Third, the article evaluates the effect in terms of project efficiency. The results show that municipalities conducted most of the actions declared in their LA21 but the sustainability of these actions is questionable. It is contended that LA21 has its limitations as a planning guide for sustainable cities in developing countries. An assistance program should be designed that helps the government of a developing country to institutionalize meaningful involvement for a participatory environmental policy formation.

Environmental aid has become a major component of development aid. We analyzed the contingent characters of environmental aid of Japan and South Korea using the definition of Williams, which regards aid policy as donor driven and autobiographical of the donor agencies and societies from which they sprang. Both Japan and South Korea consider environmental aid as an important tool of their diplomacy. A combination of a moral obligation and domestic, international, political, and economic interests underpin both countries' environmental aid policy. Seen from the stated policies and practices, both countries use accounts of their past as oncedeveloping countries trying to catch up in their aid narrative. In this manner, the environmental aid of Japan and South Korea is autobiographic, reflecting their interpretation of their own development history and position in global politics.

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Japan remains a developmental state where the state guides and oversees economic development and the strong bureaucracy and businesses in turn complement each other in leading and shaping policies to achieve developmental goals. Japan retains the institutions deemed necessary to enhance the cooperative behaviour of the bureaucracy, businesses and politicians, and norms about what is important in order for an interventionist state to implement policies aimed at achieving economic development and the autonomy of the state.Externally Japan has practiced economic diplomacy with tools like development assistance to achieve its economic security and to promote the developmental state model abroad. The process of making foreign policy contextualised and reinforced the norms, both for Japan's domestic and international audiences. Japan today tries to promote science and technology as a main catalyst for creating industries and supporting its domestic, export-oriented economy. This is based on Japan's own interpretation of its historical path and economic success and is also used to justify its engagement in the Arctic, a region where Japan does not have any sovereign territories. Japan's Arctic policy is as an extension of its economic diplomacy and an attempt to export the Japanese developmental state model.

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Harassment on the Internet, particularly on social media such as Twitter, has reached a level where it can, without exaggeration, be characterised as a real-world societal problem in Japan. However, studies on this phenomenon in the Japanese language environment, especially adopting a victim-centric perspective, are rare. In this paper, we incorporated the concept of online harassment and reviewed existing studies about online harassment from Japan and abroad. We then conducted a detailed case analysis of the “flaming” of a female journalist and those who targeted her on Twitter. Based on our analysis, we observed that there were three layers of users who targeted the journalist: influencers, users who responded to the instigation by influencers, and trolls. Each harassed the journalist, but in a different manner. Given Japan’s particular difficulty of imposing domestic regulations on social media companies that are mostly from abroad, we propose and describe possible measures that individuals and their employers should consider taking.