This essay analyzes the way to improve the linkage between a theoretical model and empirical analysis in political science. Based on Goertz (2005), first, I exemplify that classifying concepts into three levels and rigorously conceptualizing the relationship among basic and secondary-level concepts contribute to assessing the validity of her theoretical model. Second, I show that conceptual analysis also facilitates a case selection. According to the Possibility Principle, only cases where the outcome of interest is possible should be treated as negative ones; cases there the outcome is impossible should be considered uninformative and irrelevant. Probing set relations among explanatory and explained factors allow a researcher to distinguish negative cases from irrelevant cases. Third, through critically appraising my own research, I demonstrate that fuzzy-set analysis can heighten concept-measurement consistency. When inventing a theoretical model through natural language, a researcher tends to develop a complex model with categorical set relations. However, empirical data usually have continuous values in reality. Fuzzy-set analysis adapts continuous data to set relations and enables a researcher to analyze necessary/sufficient conditions among them.

Scholars of politics have been familiar with normative-empirical distinction. Yet this article reconsiders this divide through exploring another classification in terms of the “observable” and the “unobservable”. According to this new classification, we can assume two types of politics research. Firstly, there are researches which are based on the positivist epistemology and, therefore, deal with the observable. In these cases, the cooperation between positivist, empirical analyses and the normative political philosophy focusing on moral values such as justice, equality and freedom would be feasible. Secondly, there are researches which are based on the non-positivist epistemologies including both interpretivism and realism, and, therefore, deal with the unobservable in some senses. In these cases, the cooperation between non-positivist empirical analyses and the “politics-political” political theory focusing on topics about the nature and the role of politics and the political would be feasible. Consequently, this article contends that we can rethink the existing distinction between the normative and the empirical in political science; the distance either between normative political philosophy and “politics-political” political theory or between positivist empirical analysis and non-positivist one might be farther than what is ordinarily drawn between normative political theory and empirical analysis.

This paper explores the nature of human moral intuition which motivates us to assist others in hardship. Building upon the idea originally developed by Hannah Arendt, we distinguish “compassion” and “pity” as different mental sources, arguing that each entails a distinct pattern through which the institution is translated into or attitudes and behavior. More concretely, we hypothesize that two variables are particularly relevant in determining these patterns: the degree of familiarity with the environment in which the hardship is taking place, and the number of identifiable people who face the hardship. Survey experiments we conducted in August and December 2012 support this hypothesis, showing that the level of willingness to assist others is affected most significantly by the location of the hardship. The findings also suggest that the sentiment of pity motivates our willingness in the context of foreign countries, while the feeling of compassion dominates our intuition and ironically constrains our willingness in the case of the hardship taking place in our own country. The paper discusses the normative implications drawn from these empirical findings and concludes that the two areas of political science, normative theory and positive analysis, must be more integrated in future research.

In Japan, malapportionment—the high level of disparity in the size of the population, and thus the weight of votes, across electoral districts—has been a national concern for several decades. Through a review of both normative theories of representation and comparative empirical studies related to the legislative malapportionment, this article identifies two problems in the ways this issue has been addressed in Japan. First, the measurement method used in most Japan-focused studies (the “max-min ratio”) is inappropriate, impeding the effectiveness of reform attempts to date. Alternative measurement methods such as the Loosemore-Hanby index should be used. Second, while most studies adopt a narrow focus in arguing for rectifying malapportionment for the sake of political equality, comparative empirical studies indicate that doing so may lead to other undesirable results such as partisan gerrymandering and lower voter turnout. This article provides a novel and comprehensive framework for possible institutional reforms based on theories of representation.

My argument is that both political theory and empirical research can make a positive contribution to the practice of policy advocacy although these two disciplines have different ways to approach it. In this paper, I argue this by taking a case study about controversies over the urban transport planning in the United States. I take an example of political theory as the normative analysis given by Paul M. Weyrich (1942-2008) who is a staunch supporter of the public transportation system including street car in America. One of the points I try to make is that when Weyrich takes action as an advocate for public transportation, he sometimes shows us his argumentation as if it is a narrative discourse which may trigger emotions causing the support for street cars. In addition to this, I argue that his argumentation needs to respond to the evidence that empirical researches can provide if it claims the validity of policy advocacy.

This paper is designed to present a speculation of the future of the study of international relations from the birds-eye-view analysis of IR by pointing out the “theoretical aporia”, which emerges from ignoring the crucial relationship between “theory” and “domain”. Recent literatures on analysis of the present status of IR converge on two pluralisms: one is on theory and the other is on domain. Both of them basically welcome for IR to get more plural in each aspect but both of them are in a sense nothing but a ‘whishing for the moon’, in that they are not aware of the importance of the interaction between theory and domain in the process of making a discipline. This paper shows that interaction in general and how that process was overlooked in the disciplinary history of IR, and insists that all disciplinary aporias in IR comes from it. Based on those explorations, this essay concludes that in order to get out of those aporias, IR, and study of international relations in general has to become the study of global relations, which deals with all the transboundary phenomenon on this globe, based on the purpose of how the human-being to survive.

This paper analyses the influential aid approach that bases itself on social experiments in which two components are distinguished. The first component is the accumulation of empirical knowledge through social experiments. Taking up randomized controlled trials, this paper measures the limits of social experiments and insists that they should be supplemented by qualitative and social structure inquiries. The second component is the design of aid programs using the idea of libertarian paternalism. Analysing the cases that utilize the idea, this paper argues that the application of libertarian paternalism can make the unendorsed conception of good life as its premise and that it causes problems stemming from depoliticizations of political judgments. Based on these arguments, this paper elucidates the meaning of the composition of the two components, arguing that it would bring serious transformations of maintained rationality in sosummaries cieties and deprive aid-receiving people of their political autonomies. This paper concludes by offering suggestions for desirable aid approach.

This article examines the entanglement between classical studies and the ideology of liberal imperialism in Alfred Zimmern’s political thought. An eminent British liberal internationalist and leading early scholar of International Relations, Zimmern began his academic career as a classicist and published a markedly influential monograph in 1911, The Greek Commonwealth. The present article first analyses Zimmern’s account of fifth-century BC Athenian citizenship, provided in this classical treatise. It then dissects the ways in which this view of Athenian citizenship shaped his scheme for a British Commonwealth. I also illuminate how Zimmern’s depiction of the Athenian city-state influenced the British Empire vision of Lionel Curtis, the key ideologue of the pro-imperial Round Table movement. The article advances two main arguments. First, Zimmern’s idealized notion of fifth-century Athens and, in particular, of its republican citizenship provided a prototype for him and Curtis to theorize a British Commonwealth. Second, Edmund Burke’s justification of the political serviceability of private ethics had a critical impact on Zimmern’s conception of Greek and imperial citizenship.

Social hospitalization of the elderly people has said to be the biggest pathology in the Japanese medical supply system and it was the main policy problem to be solved for a long time. Although it was not completely solved, it is just in sight in the Ministry of Welfare (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare) having promoted differentiation of medical function and promotion of coordination policy since 1980’s. The policy consists of three points; first one is to differentiate medical function between acute care and chronic care, second one is to promote discharge by Bundled payment in revision of medical fee, third one is to provide both facility and in-home care service. This report explores about the factors that the Ministry of Welfare could promote through the view point of “Policy Learning”. This report revealed that the Ministry of Welfare has learned the elements of European and American eldercare service formulated the policy by constraining it to existing institutions under the administrative reform since 1980’s.

The triumph of the CDU/CSU at the Bundestagswahl 2013, depends not only on the estimates of voters in regard to Chancellor Merkel, but also on those of the party’s abilities to carry out various policies. After the Bundestagswahl 2013, there are some transformations in both the security and migration policies. There were also transformations in the “fluid five party system”. While there was a hardening of the structure where the CDU/CSU has a one-sided superiority over the SPD in large parties, there continued to be a fluidity in the relation among the smaller parties and this strengthened the fragmentation. The coalition types became more complicated. The FDP lost its role as the “core” of the party system, and it is in crisis as for its “raison d’être.” The 3rd place is given from the FDP to the Greens, albeit it competes with the Leftist parties. The AfD changed from being “the smallest” to a “small” party.

This paper explores the interests of Japanese local governments, as reflected in the fiscal transfer reform. In particular, we examine the Japanese central government’s implementation of a tax resource transfer in favor of local governments in the fiscal transfer reform known as the “Trinity Reform.” To achieve this, we compare Canada—which has no party route between the federal and provincial levels—with Japan.
  Our findings reveal that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan represented the local governments’ interest in the central policy making process; in contrast, the Canadian federal Liberal Party did not entertain requests from provincial governments in their fiscal transfer reform.

This study investigates the effect of legislator behaviors on electoral outcome using the panel data of 47 prefectural assembly elections in Japan from 1975 to 2007. In particular, we focus on two legislator strategies to influence public policy under the institution of the Japanese local government: party control of the local governor through electoral support and bill introduction on their own. Theoretically, legislator behaviors would affect electoral fortune, whereas electoral forecast would affect legislator strategies. To address such an endogeneity problem, we adopt the Arellano–Bond estimator for dynamic panel data. The results controlling the endogeneity indicate that parties increase their electoral margins when affiliating with the governor and that the number of bills introduced by parties has no effect on their electoral margins. Furthermore, we discuss that the difference of the effectiveness between the two legislator strategies is caused by the institutional feature of the Japanese local government, where the governor dominates the policy-making process.