Yusaku Horiuchi

Reapportionment and Redistribution: Consequences of Electoral Reform in Japan

Does reapportionment in a legislature affect policy outcomes? We examine this question from a comparative perspective by focusing on reapportionment associated with the electoral reform in Japan. First, we show that the reform of 1994 resulted in an unprecedented degree of equalization in legislative representation. Second, using municipal-level data, we present evidence that municipalities in overrepresented districts received significantly more subsidies per capita, as compared to those in underrepresented districts, in both prereform and postreform years. Third, by examining the relationship between the change in the number of seats per capita and the change in the amount of subsidies per capita at the municipal level, we show that the equalization in voting strength resulted in an equalization of total transfers per person.

Spinning the Globe? U.S. Public Diplomacy and Foreign Public Opinion

Global public opinion has emerged as a prominent issue in international relations. But have U.S. public diplomacy efforts during the post-9/11 period successfully improved foreign publics’ appraisals of U.S. foreign policy? We examine this question by estimating the effects of U.S. high-level visits to foreign countries on public opinion in those countries. We base our theoretical arguments on the political communication literature, but extend them to consider transnational dynamics in international relations. Specifically, we argue that U.S. leaders’ credibility in the eyes of foreign publics is critical in shaping attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy. Empirically, we show that the effects of such visits were initially significantly large and positive, but weakened once the war in Iraq began and international media started reporting negative aspects of the “war on terror.” Most interestingly, we find some evidence that high-level visits eventually exhibited a backlash effect.

American Foreign Policy and Global Opinion: Who Supported the War in Afghanistan?

What affects global public opinion about U.S. foreign policy? The authors examine this question using a cross-national survey conducted during and immediately after the 2001 U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. They propose three models of global public opinion— interests, socialization, and influence—and discuss their empirical validity. Socialization variables (e.g., Muslim population and past terrorist incidents) tend to exhibit significant effects. A variable measuring shared security interests, North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership, has significant effects in favor of U.S. policy, but other mutual defense pacts with the U.S. have a backlash effect. Shared economic interests, represented by levels of trade, also have a positive influence. Variables measuring conflicting security interests as well as those measuring U.S. efforts to influence foreign public opinion have insignificant or weak effects.

The Presidency, Regionalism and Distributive Politics in South Korea

Although whether there is political influence on distributive policies is now indisputable, important debates have emerged about how politics distorts distributive policy outcomes. In this article, the authors improve the understanding of distributive politics by focusing on South Korea. They argue that because of Korea-specific institutional and cultural settings, an incumbent president allocates disproportionately larger amounts of pork-barrel benefits not only to his own turf but also to his rivals, while distributing smaller amounts to regions where votes are more evenly divided between the camps. This uneven distribution results from his aspiration to achieve dual objectives: to secure his “graceful retirement” and to achieve uninterrupted operation of government during his term. Using municipality-level data, the authors show that this U -shaped relationship between vote and money is statistically significant for both the Kim Young Sam (1993 to 1997) and Kim Dae Jung administrations (1998 to 2002).

Making Outsiders’ Votes Count: Detecting Electoral Fraud Through a Natural Experiment

Weak electoral registration requirements are commonly thought to encourage electoral participation, but may also promote electoral fraud. As one possibility, candidates and their supporters can more easily mobilize voters who do not reside within the district to register there fraudulently and vote for that districts candidates. We statistically detect this classic type of electoral fraud for the first time, by taking advantage of a natural experimental setting in Japanese municipal elections. We argue that whether or not a municipal election was held in April 2003 can be regarded as an “as-if” randomly assigned treatment. A differences-in-differences analysis of municipality–month panel data shows that the increase in the new population just prior to April 2003 is significantly larger in treatment municipalities (with an election) than in control ones (without an election). The estimated effects are decisive enough to change the electoral results when the election is competitive. We argue that our approach—“election timing as treatment”—can be applied to investigate not only this type of electoral fraud but also electoral connections in other countries.

Removing Boundaries, Losing Connections: Electoral Consequences of Local Government Reform in Japan

This paper examines the role of local politicians in affecting national-level election outcomes by focusing on the drastic municipal mergers in Japan that took place in the early 2000s. Specifically, we argue that the political party that relies most extensively on local politicians’ efforts for electoral mobilization and monitoring will suffer an electoral slump when municipalities are merged and the number of municipal politicians is swiftly reduced. We empirically show that municipalities with a history of mergers exhibit significantly lower voter turnout and obtain a smaller vote share for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in national elections when compared to other municipalities without an experience of mergers. This result indicates that municipal politicians are indispensable human resources for LDP candidates running for the national parliament.

Institutions, Incentives and Electoral Participation in Japan : Cross-Level and Cross-National Perspectives

1. Introduction 2. Turnout Twist: Higher Voter Turnout in Lower-Level Elections 3. A Rational Choice Model of Relative Voter Turnout 4. Three Levels of Quantitative Tests 5. Culture or Institutions? Elections in a Traditional Society 6. Conclusion Appendix A. Cross-National Analysis: Data Sources Appendix B. French Communal Elections Appendix C. Survey Data Analysis: Question Wording and Coding Appendix D. A Single Vote Can be Decisive: Examples from Japan Bibliography

Malapportionment and Income Inequality: A Cross-National Analysis

Samuels and Snyder (BJPS, 2001) presented the index of malapportionment (i.e., the discrepancy between seat shares and population shares by electoral districts) in national legislatures for seventy eight countries. This short research note uses their index and the Gini index, a commonly used measure of income inequality, and shows that democracies with a high level of income inequality tend to have a high level of inequality in representation.

Doing Well by Doing Good: The Impact of Foreign Aid on Foreign Public Opinion

Does foreign aid extended by one country improve that countrys image among populations of recipient countries? Using a multinational survey, we show that a United States aid program targeted to address HIV and AIDS substantially improves perceptions of the U.S. Our identification strategy for causal inference is to use instrumental variables measuring the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS problem in aid recipient countries. Our finding implies that in addition to its potential humanitarian benefits, foreign aid that is targeted, sustained, effective, and visible can serve as an important strategic goal for those countries that give it: fostering positive perceptions among foreign publics. By doing good, a country can do well.

Hard Acts to Follow: Predecessor Effects on Party Leader Survival

In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader’s survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we propose a perceptual theory of leadership survival, focusing on the expectations of party constituents (or indirectly, the voting public) who have the power to remove a leader. Specifically, we argue that they ‘benchmark’ their expectation of a current party leader’s performance by comparing it against their memory of that leader’s immediate predecessor. Empirically, we show that party leaders who succeeded a (very) long-serving party leader and/or a leader who had also been the head of government experience lower longevity than others, making these types of predecessor ‘hard acts to follow’.