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Dive into the research topics where Misa Nishikawa is active.

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Featured researches published by Misa Nishikawa.


Electoral Studies | 2001

Contamination effects and the number of parties in mixed-superposition electoral systems

Erik S. Herron; Misa Nishikawa

Abstract The mixed-superposition system is a relatively new variant of the German electoral system. It has been adopted by emerging and established democracies without adequate understanding of its potential impact on the party system. Using the Japanese and Russian cases, our analysis demonstrates that mixed-superposition systems generate incentives and outcomes that differ from PR and SMD systems and encourage the development of a multiparty system. We test the degree to which the mechanical effect punishes small parties in mixed-superposition, PR and SMD systems and find that the mechanical effect is less punishing in mixed-superposition systems than in SMD systems. We also test whether or not there is contamination across the components of the mixed-superposition system with regression analyses of district-level voting data. Our results support the notion that mixed systems are not simple combinations of their component parts and that scholars must control for contamination when they study mixed systems.


Comparative Political Studies | 2006

Duration of Party Control in Parliamentary and Presidential Governments A Study of 65 Democracies, 1950 to 1998

Ko Maeda; Misa Nishikawa

Most of the previous work on political stability uses cabinet duration or leadership duration to measure stability. This study, however, focuses on another area of stability, namely the party control of the executive branch. This approach not only allows us to compare political durability in presidential and parliamentary systems directly, but it also, we believe, better reflects policy changes that stem from government party composition. Our analysis of longitudinal data from 65 democracies reveals that presidential and parliamentary governments create different patterns of government survival. Ruling parties in parliamentary systems encounter a declining hazard rate over time, whereas those in presidentialism face an increasing hazard rate in their survival. We explain this difference by focusing on how parliamentary and presidential systems create different incentive structures for political parties.


Party Politics | 2012

Electoral and party system effects on ruling party durability

Misa Nishikawa

Political scientists have not paid sufficient attention to the driving forces of ruling party stability, although other areas of political stability, such as democratic stability, leadership stability and cabinet stability have been studied extensively. This research fills a significant gap. It focuses on electoral rules and political party systems to explain ruling party durability. It demonstrates the following: (1) ruling parties’ hazard rates under the first-past-the-post systems are initially lower than those under proportional representation rules, but this tendency reverses over time, and (2) ruling parties’ hazard rates under two-party systems are initially lower than those under multiparty systems, but this too reverses.


Women & Politics | 2002

Political interest or interest in politics? Gender and party support in postwar Japan

Dennis Patterson; Misa Nishikawa

Like politics in other advanced democracies, Japanese politics is characterized by distinct differences in the behavior of men and women. For example, Japanese women manifest distinct partisan preferences that contrast with those of Japanese males. Most explanations for such gender differences in Japan involve the manner in which politics at the national level contrasts with traditional Japanese female roles, which combine to make Japanese women less interested in and more distant from politics than Japanese males. In this paper, we show that the political behavior of Japanese women has evolved throughout the postwar period in a way that renders traditional views of the gender gap in Japan suspect. Instead, we show that it is the distinctive issue preferences of Japanese females that lead to their specific patterns of party support and rejection. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>


Women & Politics | 2008

Political Interest or Interest in Politics

Dennis Patterson; Misa Nishikawa

Abstract Like politics in other advanced democracies, Japanese politics is characterized by distinct differences in the behavior of men and women. For example, Japanese women manifest distinct partisan preferences that contrast with those of Japanese males. Most explanations for such gender differences in Japan involve the manner in which politics at the national level contrasts with traditional Japanese female roles, which combine to make Japanese women less interested in and more distant from politics than Japanese males. In this paper, we show that the political behavior of Japanese women has evolved throughout the postwar period in a way that renders traditional views of the gender gap in Japan suspect. Instead, we show that it is the distinctive issue preferences of Japanese females that lead to their specific patterns of party support and rejection.


International Political Science Review | 2014

The dynamics of within-regime stability: Party tenure and economic performance

Steven R. Hall; Misa Nishikawa

This article investigates the interactive effects of ruling party stability and veto players on economic performance. We show that ruling party duration has an inverted U-shaped relationship with growth when the number of veto players is low, while it has a regular U-shaped relationship when there are more veto players. We find support for these contentions using time-series cross-section data on the economic growth of a sample of 66 democracies between 1975 and 2007.


Archive | 2005

Eyeing the Future: Contamination and Legislative Behavior

Federico Ferrara; Erik S. Herron; Misa Nishikawa

Victory or defeat in an election is determined by the formal results, announced during the evening or early morning hours after the polls have closed. Confident candidates and their zealous supporters wait impatiently for the ballots to be tallied in polling stations, aggregated nationally by the proper authorities, and reported by the news media. The losers graciously concede to their opponents and the winners make jubilant speeches. While party tacticians immediately begin planning for the next campaign, victorious parties and candidates also turn to a pressing responsibility: governing the country.


Archive | 2005

A Taxonomy of Mixed Electoral Systems

Federico Ferrara; Erik S. Herron; Misa Nishikawa

The “father of taxonomy,” the eighteenth-century biologist Carl Linnaeus, organized the living world by collecting together and labeling similar organisms into increasingly detailed classes. Although he initially believed that the number of species—the most specific category of living creatures—was fixed, he later recognized that hybrids of existing species could produce new, previously unseen ones.1 The emergence and proliferation of mixed electoral systems has generated a similar quandary in the election studies literature. As we noted in chapter 1, some of the analytical literature on mixed electoral systems has emphasized their similarity to existing “species” of election rules. The contamination literature, however, suggests that mixed electoral systems constitute a new species of electoral rules, emerging from the miscegenation of majoritarian and proportional systems. How do we distinguish among different forms—or species—of election rules?2


Archive | 2005

Interactive Ballots: The Microfoundations of Contamination

Federico Ferrara; Erik S. Herron; Misa Nishikawa

The existence of contamination has important implications for the study of mixed electoral systems. Given that the interaction between their mechanical components is likely to generate outcomes that diverge from those observed under pure SMD or PR rules, mixed systems do not constitute a controlled laboratory setting that allows researchers to isolate and compare the independent effects of SMD and PR. Our study of SMD candidate placement’s effects on a party’s PR performance (chapter 3) and our empirical analysis of party nomination strategies in the SMD component of the election (chapter 4) have uncovered evidence supporting the proposition that mixed electoral systems are a different species of electoral institutions. However, our research thus far also suffers from a critical lacuna.


Archive | 2005

Better, Worse, or Just Different? Legislative Fractionalization in Mixed Systems

Federico Ferrara; Erik S. Herron; Misa Nishikawa

Since the adoption of mixed systems in many of the new democracies that emerged from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and in a number of countries with established democratic records, many scholars have theorized about the consequences that mixed systems exert on the configuration of national party systems. The normative judgments made by practitioners and academics alike about the “goodness” or “badness” of mixed electoral institutions have mostly been based on predictions about the kinds of party systems that these election rules should engender. Few, however, have investigated this issue cross-nationally. If mixed systems are to be judged based on their representativeness and their ability to produce cabinet stability, coherent and identifiable governing majorities, and a balance between local and national interests (Shugart and Wattenberg 2001b), no such evaluation can be complete without a thorough assessment of the kinds of legislatures they spawn.

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Ko Maeda

University of North Texas

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