Tag: parties and elections

The twenty-seventh session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on March 3, 2022. Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth University) chaired the seminar and moderated the question and answer session.

Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University) presented a paper co-authored with Noaki Shimizu (University of Kochi), Hidekuni Washida (Toyo University), and Yuki Yanai (Kochi University of Technology) which explores how voters react to how incumbent parliamentary governments manipulate the timing of elections. This is an important question not only for Japanese politics given previous scholarship on strategies the Liberal Democratic Party has used to maintain electoral dominance but is also relevant for the broader world as most democratic countries have some form of parliamentary democracy. Higashijima and colleagues take a novel approach to studying manipulation of election timing by drawing on analysis from a series of conjoint survey experiments which confront respondents with different hypothetical scenarios which depict the conditions under which the national government has called an election. They find that independent voters are least likely to support incumbents calling elections when conditions seem to favor the ruling party, but partisan voters care less about electoral manipulation.

Sona N. Golder (Pennsylvania State University) and Charles McClean (University of Michigan) offered helpful comments on theory and research methods. During the Q and A session, participants raised questions about how voters view electoral manipulation and whether some types of manipulation matter more than others.

This event attracted around sixty participants and produced an engaging Q & A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/

The twenty-sixth session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on February 10, 2022. Amy Catalinac (New York University) chaired the seminar and moderated the question and answer session.

Shusei Eshima (Harvard University), Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College), Shiro Kuriwaki (Stanford University/Yale University), Daniel M. Smith (Columbia University) presented early findings from a project which explores the electoral dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party in recent decades. This is puzzling for two reasons. First, because Japan introduced important electoral reforms in 1993 designed to make national elections more competitive and shift politicians away from clientelist appeals to win votes. Second, recent work by Horiuchi suggests that LDP policy proposals are not that appealing to Japanese voters. Eshima and colleagues explore why Japanese voters would support the LDP over rival parties. Using a series of survey experiments designed to measure how voters evaluate party manifestos during national elections, they find that the LDP enjoys a strong reputation with Japanese voters who support it despite advancing less popular policy ideas.

Eric Guntermann (University of California, Berkeley) and Chris Tausanovitch (University of California, Los Angeles) offered insightful comments related to theory and research methods. During the Q and A session, participants raised questions about how voters evaluate policy ideas relative to party labels and discussed the ways in which researchers can reliably measure these phenomena.

This event attracted around sixty participants and produced an engaging Q & A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/

The twenty-second session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on October 14, 2021. Daniel Smith (Columbia University) chaired the seminar and moderated the question and answer session.

Daniel Koss (Harvard University) presented some of his ongoing research on the political impact of privatizing of the Japanese post office initiated by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2005 and which was seen as a move away from clientelism by Japanese voters at the time. Specifically, Koss explores the enduring alliance between the Liberal Democratic Party and the postmasters, assessing the extent to which the party’s reach comes at the expense of its autonomy. Drawing on a mixed of qualitative and quantitative evidence, he explores linkages between the LDP and Japan Post since 2005. Koss shows that although the relationship between the LDP and Japan Post has changed, both organizations remain tied to one another in a way that continues to impact Japanese electoral politics.

Discussant comments were given by Naofumi Fujimura (Kobe University) and Patricia Maclachlan (University of Texas, Austin). During the Q and A session, participants raised important questions about the the degree to which Japanese electoral politics have moved away from clientelism and the ways in which the LDP has courted rural voters.

This event attracted many participants and produced an engaging Q&A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/

The ninth session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on December 17, 2020. Daniel M. Smith (Harvard) chaired the seminar and moderated the question and answer session.

Jordan Hamzawi (University of California, Davis) presented his paper,  “Policy or Valence? Candidate or Party? Assessing Voter Preferences in Japan.” In his presentation, Hamzawi explored an important and puzzling question: why has the Liberal Democratic Party which dominated Japanese politics from 1945 to 1993 become dominant again? He critically evaluates a number of theories that explain why the LDP dominated national politics before Japan’s electoral reform in the 1990s, which triggered a transition from clientelist to issue-based voting, but cannot fully explain why Japanese have supported the LDP since 2012 as many of its policies are unpopular. Using a survey of voter preferences by the Association For Promoting Fair Elections, Hamzawi explores this question. He finds that voters heavily weigh valence—specifically affective valence—when considering their choice of party and candidate. This implies that the LDP’s resurgence stems from voters’ belief that there is no other party with the capacity to govern Japan.

Discussant comments were offered by Kentaro Fukumoto (Gakushuin University) and Zeynep Somer Topcu (University of Texas at Austin). The discussion raised interesting questions about why political parties are able to win elections, the evolution of party politics in Japan, and effective measurement of voter preferences. The discussants and the audience also offered many constructive suggestions pertaining to research methods and possible future directions of the research.

This event attracted around thirty-five participants and produced an engaging Q&A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/