How do alliances trade arms? Political alliance networks and global arms transfers.

The arms trade has come to the center stage of the international political economy. Yet only a few quantitative studies have been conducted on the political economy of the arms trade. This paper focuses on the security rents shared by trading partners in determining their arms trade relationship.

Withstanding the plague: Institutional resilience of the East Asian welfare state.

As the origin place of the COVID-19 outbreak, East Asian welfare states have largely survived the immediate health threats out of the pandemic shock but have yet to deal with its dire social consequences. This paper offers an institutionalist account-in terms of the institutional resilience of the welfare state-to grasp the policy dynamics in East Asia. We select four cases under scrutiny: China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, to analyse the major trend of social policy responses in this region.