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The purpose of this paper is to explain a new scandal ingredient in Japanese politics called sontaku. This word refers to cases when officials grant special treatment to a project because they believe they are acting in accordance with the wishes of an associated powerful person.

This paper describes the specific construction of major scandals involving sontaku from 2017 based primarily on newspaper accounts, examines the consequences of these scandals for politicians and bureaucrats, and discusses their implications for combating corruption in Japan.

The scandals after 2017 damaged to some extent the public support for the current Japanese administration and influenced the prime minister's decision to call a snap election. The scandals also highlighted systematic problems in the bureaucracy and motivated the government to reform laws concerning the management of public documents.

This paper will be useful to scholars and policy makers interested in studying the causes and consequences of scandals and political corruption in Japan.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate how the governments in six Asian countries have dealt with selected grand corruption scandals.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of 11 corruption scandals examined in the six articles on India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore included in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy.

The responses of the governments in the six countries depend on the strength of their political will in combating corruption. The responses of the governments in Malaysia, Philippines, India and Japan reflect their weak political will in combating corruption and lack of accountability of the corrupt offenders. By contrast, the strong political will of the governments in Singapore and Macau is reflected in the investigation and punishment of the corrupt offenders without any cover-up of the scandals.

The findings would be of interest to scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners and activists.

The research uncovers an increase in the disapproval of Congress and a drop in public trust in government associated with exposed congressional corruption in the post-Watergate era. The tools Congress holds to punish members caught up in scandal are discussed and the chapter considers five major scandals to rock Congress since the 1970s. Importantly, we uncover evidence that government institutions and actors are somewhat resilient and can bounce back after experiencing negative public sentiment for a period of time. Yet, it seems in the aftermath of exposed corruption, the corresponding drop in public support has policy implications. We determine that movement in public disapproval of Congress and overall trust in government help explain public law output and the ability of Congress to pass its contemporary legislative agenda.

The chapter is divided into two broad sections. The first addresses macro or global sources of ethics discontent. This will discuss concern about political ethics in the broad context of complex processes such as globalization, development, liberalization, and democratization. These are clearly huge subjects and there is no space to do justice to their complexities, but the aim here is to identify some key aspects, which have particularly important implications for increasing concern about political ethics. The second section is concerned with exploring the political aspects of public ethics through a consideration of political scandal, because scandals are often cited as the source of unease about ethical standards in public life and as the catalysts for institutional reform.

In 2015, Malaysia’s investment vehicle, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), came under international scrutiny after it amassed a debt of US$11 billion (10.3 billion) (Wright & Clark, 2015), which it had difficulty repaying. More disturbingly, investigators found that US$700 million (658 million) was transferred into the personal bank account of Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, founder and chairman of 1MDB’s advisory board (Wright & Clark, 2015). Najib was also accused of embezzling state money (Reuters, 2015) and damaging the image of the country (“Najib tried to bribe me”, 2015). This chapter aims to examine the strategies used by the Malaysian prime minister to repair his image in the 1MDB scandal, the effectiveness of these strategies, and how these impacted Malaysia’s public diplomacy efforts in restoring the country’s image and reputation. Findings showed that the prime minister denied wrongdoing, and simultaneously bolstered his position and promised to turn 1MDB around. In contrast to the current explication of Benoit and Pang’s (2008) image repair strategies, Najib’s way of attacking the accusers sheds light into how image repair strategies may be operationalized in the Asian context. A new image repair strategy – diversion – is proposed to be added to the existing framework.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify to what extent the housing bubble in the early-to-mid 2000s in Spain exacerbated land planning corruption among Spain’s largest municipalities.

The authors exploit plausibly exogenous variation in housing prices induced by changes in local mortgage market conditions; namely, the rapid expansion of savings banks (Cajas de Ahorros). Accounting for electoral competition in the 2003–2007 and 2007–2009 electoral cycles among Spanish municipalities larger than 25,000 inhabitants, the authors estimate a positive relationship between housing prices and land planning corruption in municipalities with variation in savings bank establishments using instrumental variables techniques.

A 1% increase in housing prices leads to a 3.9% points increase in the probability of land planning corruption. Moreover, absolute majority governments (not needing other parties’ support) are more susceptible to the incidence of corruption than non-majority ones. Two policy implications to address corruption emerge: enhance electoral competition and increase scrutiny over land planning decisions in sparsely populated.

First empirical evidence of a formal link between the 2000s housing bubble in Spain and land planning corruption.

Constitutional uncertainty clouds the horizon in South Korea. Despite a strongly rebounding economy, uncertainty continues over the timing and format of the elections that will replace President Chun Doo Hwan. Student and labor protest could increase significantly if the ruling Democratic Justice Party (D]P) and the opposition New Korea Democratic Party (NKDP) fail to achieve a compromise on revising the constitution and holding elections. A substantial increase in political turmoil could lead to Chun's refusal to leave office or a military coup. It could also threaten the staging of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, which in turn would reverse the country's current economic trend. If open elections were held, the DJP and the NKDP would have about the same chance of winning. An NKDP regime, however, would be more restrictive toward international business and trade than the current government.