Frances McCall Rosenbluth

The Domestic Politics of Banking Regulation

This paper seeks to ground financial regulatory choices in domestic politics. Based on evidence from 22 industrialized countries, we argue that electoral rules— specifically, the extent to which they are centrifugal or centripetal— have a significant effect on whether the banks or their consumers pay for the security of the banking system. Despite the homogenizing effects of global financial integration, moreover, the political dynamics generated by these electoral rules continue to shape the nature and extent of prudential regulations that countries adopt in the place of banking cartels. This paper was prepared for presentation at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, held in San Francisco in September, 2001. We would like to thank B. Jerry Cohen, Louis Pauley, and other participants at our panel for helpful comments. We also thank Kathy Bawn, Stephan Bub, Tim Clark, Scott Desposato, Geoff Garrett, Akinari Horii, Takeo Hoshi, Banri Kaeda, Susanne Luetz, Rieko McCarthy, Yoshimasa Nishimura, Thomas Oatley, Frank Packer, Marc Saidenberg, Michael Thies, Sei Nakai, and a number of other bankers and officials for helpful suggestions and comments. We are grateful to Yoshiko Inoue, Jana Kunicova, Yuka Sumiya, Vineeta Yadav, and Mark Zimny for exceptional research assistance. Frances Rosenbluth thanks the Council on Foreign Relations for a fellowship to spend a year at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1999-2000). There were many people in the Bank whose help, of one kind or another, was indispensable.

Mobilization, Social Networks, and Turnout: Evidence from Japan

The strategic elites model of turnout argues that elites mobilize more when the probability of their effort deciding the electoral outcome is greater. Although the literature assumes that this probability depends solely on how close the election is, logically it depends jointly on how many votes are needed to affect the outcome (closeness) and on how many additional votes elite efforts are likely to garner (vote yield). Because the vote yield of mobilizational effort varies with the social capital of the district that elites face, the level of elite mobilizational effort (hence turnout) should depend interactively on closeness and social capital. The authors test their predictions using data from Japanese lower house elections for the years 1967-90. Japan is an interesting test case both because its (former) electoral system differs from that for which the model was first developed and because the literature clearly stresses the role of elite mobilization through social networks but does not examine the particular hypotheses advanced here.

Reducing nomination errors: Factional competition and party strategy in Japan

Abstract In the first election that the newly-formed LDP contested (1958), the party overnominated in 21 per cent of all districts—sending out too many candidates to chase too few votes. In 1990, the corresponding figure was 2 percent. This article explores the proximal and distal causes of the LDPs improvement.

Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality

A growing literature in politics and economics employs measures of the height and health condition of human beings to gauge the level of well-being and income across societies and over time. We use both archeological data of skeletal remains and actual records of heights (collected by armies, anthropologists) to measure the degree of variance in the distribution of heights, and therefore, the degree of inequality since prehistoric times. We find that the type of economy and the type of political institutions strongly covary with our measures of inequality.

Are You My Mentor? A Field Experiment on Gender, Ethnicity, and Political Self-Starters

Do public officials respond unequally to requests for career advice? Through a correspondence experiment with 8,189 officials, we examine whether (hypothetical) male and female students who express interest in political careers receive differential responses from public officials. We report three striking findings. First, emails sent by female students were more likely to receive a response than those sent by male students, especially when the official was male. Second, the responses that women received were as likely to be long, thoughtful, and contain an offer of help as those to men. Third, there were no partisan differences in responsiveness to male or female senders. Examining senders with Hispanic last names bolsters the results: Hispanic senders, especially men, were less likely to receive a quality response than non-Hispanic senders. Thus, politicians may condition responsiveness and helpfulness on the ethnicity of constituents, but women who are self-starters in search of advice receive equal treatment.

The Politics of Gender Equality

Abstract A consensus has emerged that gender-friendly policies can promote higher fertility in rich democracies (Esping-Andersen 1999). This paper supplies a political explanation for why these fertility-enabling policies diverge across countries. Using Sweden and Germany as our primary case studies, we argue that the strength of the left partys hold on government, rather than economic or social factors, underpins the expansion of the public sector that draws women into the labor force and allows them to balance family and career.

The Ties that Double Bind: Social Roles and Women's Underrepresentation in Politics

This paper theorizes three forms of bias that might limit women’s representation: outright hostility, double standards, and a double bind whereby desired traits present bigger burdens for women than men. We examine these forms of bias using conjoint experiments derived from several original surveys – a population survey of American voters and two rounds of surveys of American public officials. We find no evidence of outright discrimination, or double standards. All else equal, most groups of respondents prefer female candidates, and evaluate men and women with identical profiles similarly. But on closer inspection, all is not equal. Across the board, elites and voters prefer candidates with traditional household profiles such as being married and having children, resulting in a double bind for many women. So long as social expectations about women’s familial commitments cut against the demands of a full time political career, women are likely to remain underrepresented in politics.

Gender and Development: The Japanese Experience in Comparative Perspective

What can we learn from Japan’s history about how economic development affects the well-being of women? Does economic development and growth automatically translate into the betterment of women’s lives, or is there a gendered asymmetry in the distributional consequences of growth? Does Japan’s growth experience provide some guidance to developing countries seeking policy models for a more gender-egalitarian development path? Research analysts at the quasi-governmental Institute for Development and Economics in Tokyo, Japan have produced an edited book – with chapters mostly by women – seeking to address this broad topic of whether and how development affects men and women differently and what to do about it. This is an encouraging theme because it promises to move beyond the overly general question of whether or not economic development is good for women to ask under which conditions and through which mechanisms development might occur, leaving open the possibility that these processes can vary in their effects. To the extent that the book only partially delivers on its promise, it is a call for more studies of this kind to help isolate the causal mechanisms and interaction effects that the authors suggestively raise here. The book divides its task into three parts: the first part is a historical review of Japan’s development process and the experience of women along the way. The second compares Japan’s development process to those of some developing countries today. The third part of the book, which is also BOOK REVIEWS