Japanese Journal of Electoral Studies

The Experimental Approach in Political Science

Naoko TANIGUCHI

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 5-15
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_5

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Though the experimental research in political science has a long history, much experimental studies seem to have been ignored. However, by the rise of experimental / behavioral economics and experimental psychology and the interest in causality, political scientists are refocusing on the value of experimentation. Based on the seminal work of Kinder and Palfrey (1993), Lupia (2002), McDermott (2002), Druckman, Green, Kuklinski, and Lupia (2006, 2011), Morton and Williams (2010), this paper discusses several aspects of the experimental approach in political science: the history and interdisciplinarity of political experimental researches, the types of experimentation in social sciences, the problems of internal validity and external validity, the topics of political experimental researches, and experimental researches conducted by Japanese political scientists.

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An Experimental Investigation of the M+1 Rule

Kengo KUROSAKA, Yoichi HIZEN , Kotomi YOSHINO

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 16-30
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_16

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We examine the robustness of Duverger's Law and its extension the M+1 Rule by conducting a laboratory experiment. In our experiment, participants play the roles of voters and vote for one out of four candidates under the single-nontransferable vote. Our results support the comparative statics of the M+1 rule such that votes are concentrated on a smaller number of candidates in a single-member district than in a double-member district. However, votes were dispersed among a larger number of candidates than the number of seats plus one (M+1) in either type of district. Therefore, the comparative statics of the M+1 rule is concluded to be robust, but other factors excluded from our experiment are considered necessary for the votes to be concentrated on M+1 candidates exactly.

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Looking at how respondents look at survey questions

Eye-tracking examination of response order effects in party support question and value batteries

Airo HINO, Arata YAMAZAKI, Masahisa ENDO

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 31-43
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_31

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In the field of survey method research, it has been left as a ‘black box’ as to how respondents look at survey questions. This paper directly examines the eye movements of respondents through the use of eye-tracking devices. In so doing, we investigate so-called response order effects, primacy effects in particular, where response choices displayed earlier tend to be chosen more often than the later choices if the response items are given visually. We hypothesize that primacy effects would occur when question items are made of valence items which respondents cannot readily distinguish at first sight, while primacy effects would not occur when the questions are composed of position items which respondents can easily distinguish with their prior knowledge. Our analyses of response data with randomly displayed items and of eyetracking data indeed lend support to this general hypothesis that primacy effects are contingent upon the type of questions.

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On representativeness and rationality of Minipublics

deliberation with Deliberative Poll experimentation

Tatsuro SAKANO

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 44-55
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_44

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Since the invention of Citizen Juries and Planning Cell, almost forty years have passed. The social experiments using Minipublics are now entering into the new stage. The past experiments have shown that communicative actions complied with discursive ethics can be created under artificially controlled settings. However, it is not yet successful for collective judgments made at micro deliberation spaces to be socially accepted at macro level. To find a solution to solve micro-macro gap of collective will formation is a challenging task for the next stage. This paper is to explore solutions for this problem with focusing on counter-factuality, a unique character of Minipublics.

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Coalition Formation in a Weighted Voting Experiment

Naoki WATANABE

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 56-67
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_56

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This note gives a primitive idea on coalition formation in a weighted voting experiment. The experimental protocol requires that the roles of subjects be partially fixed throughout each session and that each subject be in favor of only one proposal including his or her own at a time. In two four-player weighted voting games with no veto player, the orders of observed frequencies of minimal winning coalitions (MWCs) were the same as those of predicted ones derived from the following presumptions. (1) Each voter prefers a MWC to another MWC when his or her relative voting weight in the MWC is larger than that in another MWC. (2) The probability of each MWC occurring depends on a score the MWC makes in the Borda count, given such individual preferences of voters over MWCs. Tensions among MWCs in the bargaining process affected the resource allocation among the members within each MWC, which violated Gamson's law in some MWCs. Nevertheless, the above prediction was robust to small violations of Gamson's law.

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Political Mechanism of Deliberation

An Experimental Study

Norihiro MIMURA, Arata YAMAZAKI

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 68-80
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_68

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This study examines political mechanisms under which voters' deliberation causes policy attitudes change, utilizing our nation-wide survey experiment, which modified the design of counter-argument experiment in Jackman and Sniderman (2006). We approached how counter-argument change people's policy attitudes from two analytical perspectives. One is the characteristic of those who present the counterargument, the other is that of the respondents such as partisanship and political knowledge. The results show that deliberation promotes policy attitude changes only among those who are not involved with politics and policies. Among those who get involved with politics or polices, however, not deliberation but the senders’ characteristics and its interactions with people’s partisan SID as well as political knowledge matters. This study implies the significance of political contexts when people deliberate.

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What makes political science more “scientific”?

The image of science for political scientists and the reality in neuroscience

Shiro SAKAIYA

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 81-95
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_81

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Political scientists have been increasingly idealizing approaches of natural sciences, which has caused endless methodological controversies in political science. However, in the first place, how realistic is the political scientists' understanding of the way research findings are accumulated in natural sciences? In this paper, I attempt to show how actual studies in some neuroscience areas are conducted, based on my own experience of an fMRI experiment (Sakaiya et al. 2013). This reveals that such methods as mechanism search, small-N studies, and deductive analysis, which political scientists have often considered undesirable as “(natural-)scientific” methods, are actually frequently used and even regarded as valuable. Also, even in neuroscience, which can use controlled experiments, researchers interpret their findings quite cautiously, and acknowledge the necessity of repeatedly conducting similar experiments and using other approaches. These observations provide new methodological implications to make political science research more “scientific.”

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How Does Age Affect Perceptions of Parties' Ideological Locations?

Masahisa ENDO, Willy JOU

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 96-112
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_96

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Both scholarly and journalistic accounts in Japan have long used the terms ‘conservative (hosyu)’ and ‘progressive (kakushin)’ to characterize political parties. However, the question of whether the general public shares a common view of party positions along the conservative-progressive spectrum has not heretofore been empirically investigated. The present study attempts to fill this vacuum by examining how different age cohorts perceive 1) overall party system polarization and 2) the positions of parties consistently identified by scholars as anchoring the two ends of the ideological scale. Analysis of surveys covering nearly three decades reveals a significant positive relationship between age and perceived polarization that has strengthened over time. Furthermore, the conventional view of parties' ideological positions widely held among political scientists is no longer shared by younger voters. These findings, which are mostly attributable to a generational effect, call for a fundamental reevaluation of the role of ideology in Japanese party politics.

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Determinant Factors of Voting Participation in Central and Eastern Europe

An Analysis of Individual-level Data

Ryo NAKAI

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 113-127
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_113

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This research analyzes micro-level determinant factors for individuals’ voting participation in ten postcommunist Central and Eastern European countries. While studies have demonstrated the impact of macrolevel institutional and socioeconomic factors on voter turnout in these countries, investigation into the impact of individual-level factors is ongoing. This paper uses the European Social Survey, while taking into account the contextual background of these post-communist European countries. It finds that three factors have a statistically significant effect on voting participation common to all ten countries. Respondents with a sense of trust in their parliament, a high educational level, and seniority were more likely to engage in voting. The findings suggest that the very low turnouts in post-communist Europe may be a reflection of individuals' lack of trust in their parliaments.

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Districting and Population of constituency in the first Single-member district system of Japan in the Meiji era focusing on the Draft of Electoral Law 1889

Takanori SUEKI

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 128-142
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_128

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The purpose of this study is to examine the population of constituency and how districting was decided in the first Single-member system using the Draft of Electoral Law 1889. Previous works explained that one Representative was assigned per 120 thousand people, and two Representatives per over 180 thousand by Kentaro Kaneko. However, analyzing the difference between the Draft and the Electoral Law 1889, this study shows Kaneko's way of allocation was not actually applied, and makes it clear the followings: 1) The Law adopted the population of constituency of the Draft and basically incorporated changes of administrative division and regionally conditions. 2) Treating few isolated island is the only exception to the districting standard of the Draft. 3) There is no evidence of Gerrymandering. Recently joint research between historical analysis and metrical analysis is very important in Electoral Study. So I expect to appear metrical analysis using the historical records of this study.

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From Neo-Liberal Economic Policy to Welfare Chauvinism

Success and Failure of Policy Shifts in Austrian Freedom Party and Danish Progressive Party

Mitsuo KOGA

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 143-158
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_143

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This article aims to explain the effect of economic policy shifts in European right-wing populist parties. For this purpose, we use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Right-wing populist parties, presenting themselves as reformists, emerged with insisting on market-orientated economic policy in the seventies or eighties. However, in the nineties, they adopted “welfare chauvinism”. First, we measure policy positions of right-wing populists by using principal component analysis in order to describe their policy shifts. Second, in order to estimate the effect of policy shifts, we compare Austrian Freedom Party and Danish Progressive Party, both of which originally insisted on privatization and deregulation. On the one hand, Freedom Party changed their economic policy and increased their seats in parliament. On the other hand, Progressive Party lost their seats due to failure of changing their ultra-liberal position. Their difference implies that welfare chauvinism is important for right-wing populists to obtain their core supporters.

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[title in Japanese]

2014 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 159-172
Published: 2014
Released on J-STAGE: January 05, 2018

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.30.1_159

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