China's rising role in South Asia has contributed significantly to the changing geopolitics and geo-economics of the region. Nepal is one of the countries where relations with China have dramatically changed from 2015 till pre-pandemic. This study focuses on analyzing Nepal's foreign policy shifts towards neighboring China and India through a framework of neoclassical realism. It argues that Nepal's foreign policy against neighboring countries has changed since the India-Nepal conflict in 2015, where China has become a key option within Nepal's new foreign policy context. Changes in China's foreign policy and the victory of the Nepal Communist Party are among the key factors in enhancing relations between the two countries. However, it doesn't mean that Nepal took side with China and abandoned India. The article suggests that China's rise has a positive effect on Nepal as an option to balancing intra-regional power and opportunities for infrastructure development within the country.

This article aims to explain changes in the patterns of political participation in Thailand between 2002 and 2014. Relying on four waves of survey data taken from the Asian Barometer (2002Barometer ( , 2006Barometer ( , 2010Barometer ( , and 2014, it proposes an analytical framework composed of several factors that include not only socioeconomic status (SES) but also various psychological, attitudinal, and mobilization factors to test and seek for factors that affect a likelihood of being a passive or active political participant. This article shows that apart from some SES, there are various factors, such as political interest and self-efficacy, party attachment, and group membership that affected the participatory actions of Thai citizens during this period. Moreover, because group membership is only one factor having a significant impact on political participation for all the four waves of survey data, this article found that political participation of Thai citizens is largely a result of their learning and experiences obtained from the interaction within their respective groups.

No abstract

No abstract