In Japan, the government has been constructing public rental housing and charging rent based on the construction cost. However, with the 1996 revision of the Public Housing Law, the supply of public rental housing is no longer limited to direct government supply but is provided through the housing market. Although this institutional change was limited due to the fragmented subordinate systems that remained in place, it had a universalist nature that attempted to put many people in a common framework. This paper analyzes why such a shift took place during the 1990s. The analysis will utilize government documents, as well as papers and memoirs left by politicians and bureaucrats, to discuss the impact of universalist policy preferences in political parties and the ideas held by bureaucrats on housing policy. Ideas for reform were accumulated since the 1970s mainly by technical officials in the Housing Bureau of the Ministry of Construction, and policy innovations were implemented in cooperation with administrative officials who had worked in the bureau, and were realized without strong opposition from politicians. However, the lack of solid support from the politicians may have led to the marginalization of public housing later on.

  This paper examines the dynamics of political conflict and alignment among Japanese political parties with respect to education policy, as reflected in their party manifestos from 1960 to 2017. Through a detailed content analysis of these manifestos, the study identifies the major themes and shifts in education policy over nearly six decades.

  Employing a typology of policy issues based on their salience and degree of conflict, this study divides party competition into three distinct periods. The 1960s and 1970s were marked by a significant consensus among political parties on improving educational conditions. However, party interest in education policy began to wane in the 1980s and 1990s as the existing educational frameworks faced increasing scrutiny, and cohesion among opposition parties weakened. In the 2000s, an increased focus on children’s policies and a change in government prompted the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), traditionally the ruling party with a consensus-based approach, to shift to a more confrontational policy stance. This temporal analysis of policy focus highlights the shifting priorities and strategies of Japanese political parties in response to changing educational needs, social expectations, and the intensity of party competition.

  While studies on public opinion toward accepting foreign workers have shown that citizens are more positive about accepting skilled workers than low-skilled workers, there are only a few studies on how citizens react to accepting foreign workers in different (skilled/low-skilled) occupations. In this paper, we conducted a vignette survey to examine citizens’ support for a fictitious foreign worker policy proposal. We examined the relationship between support for foreign worker policy proposals and the perceived skill levels of occupations in which the proposals suggest accepting foreign workers. The results show that citizens do not support foreign labor policy proposals that accept foreign labor in skilled jobs. Rather, citizens who perceived higher skill levels in nursing and elderly care work tended to reject foreign labor in these occupations. In addition, the short terms of the visa did not increase support for accepting foreign labor in care work. These results suggest that the citizens’ judgment on “what kind of immigrants they would like to accept” and “what kind of jobs they would like to accept foreign labor for” are based on different criteria. The former may seek skilled workers while the latter may be more negative about accepting foreign labor in skilled jobs.

  The role of government councils has changed depending on the era. The Tax Commission is not an exception. This study examines how the Tax Commission has changed during these six decades by analyzing its minutes. The main findings are as follows.

  First, although the Tax Commission competed with the LDP Tax Commission from the late 1960s to 1970s, it found another way to propose mid- and long-term taxation systems without writing specific figures.

  Second, stakeholders tend to speak at a meeting more frequently when the Tax Commission plays a decisive role.

  Lastly, as time goes by, the lower rank of bureaucrat explains the current tax system at the Tax Commission. These outcomes show that the role of the Tax Commission has changed from the most senior decision-maker to the research committee.

  In 1997, the former Bank of Japan Law of 1942 underwent a comprehensive revision, establishing the Policy Board as the supreme decision-making body domestically and enhancing the institutional independence of the central bank externally. However, it is well remembered that despite these political reforms, spearheaded by the Prime Minister’s office, the actual independence of the Bank of Japan was eroded. Conversely, even under the former Bank of Japan Law, it has been pointed out that there has been a noted disjunction between the Bank of Japan’s substantive independence and its institutional “subordination” that it could ensure due to the constraints of the international environment, as well as the political strategy of the Governor.

  This paper reconsiders the process of Japan’s post-war reconstruction from occupation to peace and economic self-sufficiency, focusing on the role of Hisato Ichimada, who served as Governor of the Bank of Japan before transitioning to Minister of Finance and a member of the House of Representatives. Although Ichimada’s grand attempt, envisioning a return from managed currency regimes to a gold exchange standard, ended in failure, it represents a noteworthy precursor to policies diverging from the trajectory of high-growth policies in an era of democratization and Americanization.

  This paper analyzes the relationship between the characteristics of electoral districts and the social class of elected officials in the first through the fifteenth House of Representatives elections (1890–1924) under restricted suffrage in prewar Japan. It focuses on the significant disparity in the value of one vote, mainly based on the number of eligible voters in each electoral district. It hypothesizes that in electoral districts with a large number of eligible voters, commoners, including wealthy landlords, were more likely to be elected, whereas, in districts with a small number of eligible voters, the warrior class was more likely to be elected. This is named the “number of voter hypothesis.” On the other hand, urban districts tended to have fewer voters, and it is possible that voters in cities preferred the warrior class to commoners. This is named the “rural-urban hypothesis.” The results support the latter hypothesis only in the seventh to thirteenth elections under the multi-member district system.

  This article explores early modern English concepts of the nation during the Wars of Three Kingdoms in the seventeenth century. It relies on newsbooks from both Parliamentarian factions and the Royalists to clarify three points: the various parties’ concepts of the nation, discursive differences between the first civil war (1642 to 1646) and the late 1640s, and the relationship among readers, national concepts, and public opinion. The analysis reveals a continuity between the Independents during the first civil war and the Levellers in the late 40s. Both sides used the term “nation” inclusively, emphasizing overlap between its constituents and the readers, and sought to manipulate public opinion accordingly. This inclusivity is indicative of the modernity of the concepts of a nation in Parliamentarian discourse. In contrast, Royalist discourse tended to view the concept of a nation as exclusively comprising the upper sorts, and without assuming the same duplication, it did not pretend to reflect the national will. As a result, despite an exception, Royalist discourse appears less “modern” overall than the Parliamentarian, highlighting the uneven modernity of contemporary national discourse.

  In Japan’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, it is common for the ruling and opposition parties at the national level to endorse the same candidate (the so-called “ainori candidate”). However, few existing studies have comprehensively examined how voters evaluate such candidates. This paper examines the causal effects of party endorsement information on voters’ evaluations of gubernatorial candidates through a candidate conjoint experiment conducted in Japan. The results indicate that candidates endorsed by both the ruling and opposition parties are evaluated by voters to the same extent as candidates with no party endorsement. Additional analysis, conducted by subsampling voters based on partisanship and ideology, suggests that this is because voters who are more likely to use partisan heuristics perceive candidates who are endorsed by both right-wing and left-wing parties as having centrist ideological positions. These findings shed light on the reasons for the widespread cooperation between the ruling and opposition parties in gubernatorial and mayoral elections from the voters’ perspective.

  Who has influence in legislatures? Previous studies on the legislative process have presented different views, such as those emphasizing the influence of ruling parties, opposition parties, and coalition partners. However, we know little about which of these theories holds true, especially in the context of the recent Japanese Diet. This study tests these theories by combining data on cabinet bills from the 2001–2020 Diet with a quantitative text analysis of parliamentary proceedings using word embeddings. The results show that opposition parties influence the success rate of cabinet bills and duration taken for their passage. Moreover, conflict and monitoring between coalition partners, which has attracted attention in recent comparative parliamentary research, is not evident in the Japanese Diet. These findings provide new insights into legislative politics and coalition governance.

  This study examines the dynamics of petitioners’ party contact throughout the petition process in Japan. In Japan, formalized petitions to the legislatures are submitted only through intermediaries in the form of elected members. This process requires petitioners to consider how to manage their relationship with each party and to choose which parties to approach as their sponsors. After examining the data from the original postal survey of prefectural petitions, this study finds that there are three major types of party contact in Japanese local politics: ruling parties (Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito), liberal parties, and suprapartisan. Various elements, including policy, campaign, scrutiny, and voice, influence the petitioners’ choice of party contact. Petitioners who expect their petitions to implement a change to a policy are likely to approach the ruling parties, whereas those who focus on the agenda-setting are more inclined to approach the liberal parties. Meanwhile, petitioners aiming to influence public opinion will approach legislators in a supra-partisan manner. Regardless of the LDP’s predominance at many prefectural assemblies, recognizing the different functions of petitions may diversify the connections between citizens and parties.

  This paper clarifies the political process through which the termination of foreign policy is determined by developing the findings of existing theories of policy termination and blame avoidance, based on the view that the withdrawal of troops is one form of foreign policy termination. It specifically addresses the question of “Why is it possible for an intervening state to decide to withdraw from an armed peace operation at a certain point, even though the intervening state continues its presence in the region after the initial scheduled withdrawal period?” by proposing the hypothesis that a decision to withdraw becomes possible only when two conditions have been met: (1) the government of the intervening state can demonstrate that it has made efforts to achieve its objectives by introducing a new strategy or increasing the number of troops, and (2) it can prove that achieving its objectives has become difficult due to circumstances beyond its control. The empirical validity of this hypothesis is confirmed through case studies of the withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The results demonstrate that the theory of blame avoidance is applicable when the decision of “termination of a domestically unpopular policy” is unpopular abroad.

  The aim of this article is to assess a new government after the German federal elections in 2021. It is characterized as the first tripartite agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP at the federal level and is referred to as the “traffic light coalition” because of its symbolic colors. Previous studies provide theoretical insights to assess the three-party coalition from different analytical perspectives, such as the micro-individual level and the macro-party-system level. Although the literature on coalition theories shows an integrative framework of the analytical perspectives, less attention has been paid to the temporal dynamics of coalition bargaining to draw theoretical implications from the single case study. This article examines the implications of the traffic light coalition bargaining using the novel case study method, namely Bayesian process tracing. As a result, this article highlights the following findings to update the understanding of coalition dynamics at the government formation stage in Germany. These are that (1) the junior partners (Greens and FDP) attempted to lead the bargaining when the SPD sought policy and office in government; (2) coalition bargaining had to be conducted amidst a gap in the economic policy dimension compared to the socio-cultural policy dimension within the three parties; (3) and the policy seeking was based on an agreement between the parties on foreign policy issues.

  Recently, the concept of Authoritarianism is used frequently to refer various political phenomena and trend. However, there is no consent about the definition of authoritarianism. It is only used as generic term for “the non-democratic”.

  This article defines the authoritarianism as the pollical idea, regime and government that puts emphasis on the stability and maintenance of the order in concerned political society. Today it is not democracy but liberal democracy that opposes the authoritarianism. According to this view, authoritarianization and the recession of democracy are understood the phenomenon brought by the reaction to liberalism.

  Then this article traces the change of authoritarianism in political science and raises questions to the dichotomy of “democracy - authoritarianism” and clarifies the position of authoritarianism utilizing two criterions of democracy and liberalism.

  Then we examine which component (democracy or liberalism) and how did the existing authoritarianism repress on Europe in the inter-war period, post-Second World War, and post-Cold War era.

  Finally, this article proposes clearer redefinition of authoritarianism as political regime, government, and ideology.

  This study aims to critically re-examine and improve the concept of freedom in the ‘green republicanism’, which has received considerable attention in recent years. This notion originated from commonalities in the perspectives of contemporary republicanism and environmentalism or green political theory, such as ‘interdependence’ and ‘vulnerability’ and posits that ‘freedom as non-domination’ as republican freedom is adequate in the era of climate change, because the countermeasures of climate-change policy involve ‘limits’ on human activity that would restrict freedom within the meaning of liberalism. Yet ‘freedom as non-domination’ can allow ‘limits’ without conflicting with such freedom so long as it is based on the welfare of the public and subject to the rule of law. However, an emphasis on ‘limits’ relegates the perspective of ‘interdependence’ to the background. This study elucidates the challenges to such an anthropocentric approach and suggests that what is needed is to reinvent freedom as inseparable from the ‘interdependence’ of the web of life-form. By problematising the tacit pairing of ‘limits’ and ‘freedom as non-domination’, this study notes the abundant diversity of thought on green republicanism that can be harnessed.