When Japanese scholars refer to ‘political literacy’, one of the most important elements has often been ignored: the art (how to) of politics for citizens. If you look at Japanese political studies, you will notice that they have hardly developed a theory of the art of politics for citizens, while Masao Maruyama advocated such a theory in 1960. By contrast, citizen activists have published many books which touch on various aspects of the art of politics. Based on practical knowledge, political studies should develop a theory of the art of politics for citizens. To develop a user-friendly theory, the third-person perspective of observers (political scientists) has to be replaced by the first-person perspective of actors (citizens). To develop a well-based theory, three familiar approaches can be used: case studies, theoretical studies and experimental studies.

  Sovereignty education in Japan is based on a narrow, election-centered, and institution-centered understanding of politics. In contrast, this paper presents political literacy in everyday life, which has not been discussed extensively in the past. It does so by examining more diverse politics found outside the formal political system and exploring the abilities that citizens should acquire, especially regarding labor and consumption. Workers’ and consumer education can be considered integral parts of political education in a broader sense in that they promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills that support economic agency, which is essential for citizens’ self-government. While workers’ education is essential for promoting workplace democracy, and consumer education, which establishes criteria for consumption choices, is essential for ensuring appropriate political consumption — a form of non-electoral participation — these matters have not been thoroughly explored within the field of political science. In light of the findings of this paper, citizens acquire political literacy about labor and consumption when they better understand controversial issues and can act responsibly (or deter certain actions), by learning about the macro-conflicts related to labor and consumption, the micro-conflicts related to labor and consumption themselves, and the macro-micro relationships.

  This study aims to examine the findings for the development of political literacy based on the paradigm shift in policy studies since the 1980s.

  First, this study points to the characteristics of policy problems and their aspect as social constructs, and the need to recognize the role of framing and discourse in the stages of problem sensing and definition and analyze the context of problems through an interpretive approach in the problem-structuring stage.

  It also highlights the need to establish an open forum and conduct pluralistic policy analysis to formulate policy alternatives based on pluralistic knowledge — theoretical knowledge, local knowledge, and ordinary knowledge — and diverse values in society.

  Furthermore, for citizens to participate in policy formation and discussion, policy analysts are required to play a role in aiding their participation through advice and converting information inputs into policy recommendations. This study also highlights the need for learning in the participation process and the importance of building mutual understanding and trust among participants.

  Corresponding to the introduction of a new compulsory subject called ‘The Public’ in high school Civics, this article aims at, from the political studies perspective, analysing the contents of its official textbooks “The Public” is characterised by a more through structure of “acquisition-utilisation-exploration” than the previous “Contemporary Society.” Students learn and utilise social scientific concepts and theories in order to explore a solution to real problems in contemporary society. The result of the analysis shows that some descriptions were the same in all textbooks, some others are different from textbook to textbook, and some are not adequately explained in any textbook. It also became clear that university political science textbooks are not only weak as citizenship education in terms of the utilisation of concepts and theories, but also do not take over some important concepts and theories underlined in the ‘The Public’.

  Media literacy plays a significant role in cultivating political literacy on security issues, which have a little connection to daily life. In other words, the content of necessary security policies and the perception of the burden to be borne by citizens for security depend on the media. Therefore, governments are forced to fight in the “Cognitive Warfare” to gain public support for their security policies. Assuming the third-person effect in this process, citizens’ predictions about the state of public support for the policy become important. In addition, to maintain national unity in a contingency, tolerance for opinions that differ from one’s own is necessary. Therefore, this study aims to elucidate the effects of media use during the 2022 House of Councillors election on public predictions of public support for security policy, as well as on feelings toward third persons whose opinions differ from one’s own in terms of approval or disapproval of the policy and its importance. To improve the accuracy of the estimation by taking into account the formation process of political attitudes, we will conduct a causal mediation analysis using Super Learner based on the Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimator.

  This paper reexamines the Lippmann-Dewey debate from the perspective of media literacy and clarifies that the axis of ideological conflict between the two does not reflect a difference of views on public opinion democracy in the 1920s but indicates a gap in the perception of free speech in the 1930s.

  Previous studies on the Lippmann-Dewey debate have emphasized the ideological divide between Lippmann, an elitist, and Dewey, a democrat, but recently, there have been questions about how the debate is perceived based on such an antagonistic structure. First, this paper takes the latter position of debate skepticism and focuses on Lippmann’s theories of public enlightenment and fact-checking to show the ideological closeness of the two in the 1920s. Second, by tracing the transformation of their arguments since the 1930s, this paper shows that an ideological conflict existed between the two sides, which should be called a “Debate” on the nature of free speech and corporate media during this period. This paper also argues that the ideological differences between Lippmann and Dewey regarding the government and the market, the individual and the collective, became more pronounced after the 1930s and that these ideological conflicts are also evident in their discussions of the media and democracy.

  In recent years, the debate on “liberal democracy versus authoritarianism” has gained attention; thus, this paper aims to, first, critically examine the oppositional discourse that understands international politics in terms of liberal democracy versus authoritarianism, and clarify the changes common to both political regemes.

  The second aim is to explore the revival of democracy, which has been suppressed by changes identified as common to both political regemes. Specifically, by examining arguments that point to a “crisis of liberal democracy” and “refinement of authoritarianism”, we clarify the pitfalls of the “liberal democracy versus authoritarianism” discourse.

  Further, focusing on the conflict between the United States and China, this study compares the changes occurring in the United States (liberal democratic regeme) with in China (authoritarian regeme) and point out commonalities between the two.

  Finally, this study focuses on the problem of the suppression of “the political” engendered by the changes occurring in both political regemes. Taking cues from the political theories of Sheldon Wolin, who consistently called attention to the transformation of liberal democracy in the United States, this study explores the revival of democracy as “the political” that will ensure the recreation of the political order.

  This paper focuses on three forms of electoral manipulation: manipulation of the vote count, vote buying, and intimidation. It examines how governments’ confidence in winning elections affects the occurrence of each form of manipulation. Arguments on this question vary among researchers, with no agreed-upon theory. Therefore, this paper theoretically examines the effect of confidence on each form of electoral manipulation, derives testable hypotheses, and conducts an empirical analysis using cross-national data on presidential and legislative elections in 157 democratic and non-democratic countries from 1945 to 2015. The analysis reveals that while manipulation of vote count and intimidation are more likely to occur when confidence is high, there is no statistically significant effect of confidence on vote buying. Furthermore, I find that the effect of confidence on each form of electoral manipulation is conditioned by the political regime. Specifically, confidence of more democratic regimes affects manipulation of the vote count and vote buying more than confidence of less democratic regimes, but in particular, it affects vote buying only in democratic countries. This paper presents new insights into the relationship between governments’ confidence in elections and electoral manipulation.

  This study seeks to elucidate why the Korean government’s stance regarding the number of technoparks they planned to establish as an innovation system changed repeatedly in the 1990s. We focus on the fact that competition among Korean political parties in the economic field was centered on valence issues and propose the following hypothesis: To maximally appeal to voters on the basis of economic policy competence, the Korean government reduced the number of technoparks from the perspective of efficiency when the industrial upgrading issue became salient and increased the number from the perspective of employment promotion when the job creation issue attracted public attention. Drawing on careful process-tracing, we show that when technoparks were initially conceived as a means for industrial upgrading, the Korean government sought to provide intensive support for a small number of new technopark projects. However, when the unemployment issue became salient because of the Asian financial crisis, technoparks were re-conceived as a means of job creation, and the number of new technoparks increased. Later, when public opinion again became interested in securing advanced technological capabilities, technoparks again came to be viewed by the government as a means of industrial upgrading, and the number of new technoparks declined.

  Regarding a relation between smallness and democracy, although the sociocultural factors had been paid attention in the existing studies, this article, focusing on Pacific island countries, has examined how their political institutions — such as the executive system, the legislature’s system, the election system and the political party system — mutually influence one another, and, highlighting the two values, efficiency and diversity, has verified how democracy of microstates in this region works in the political process consisting of these systems.

  As a result of this analysis, it has been clarified that some important factors including; 1. A high level of stable democracy, 2. Bridging between efficiency and diversity, 3. The absence or underdevelopment of political parties, 4. A parliamentary system, 5. Single-member or multi-member districts (or a mixture of both), 6. Small-scale legislature, 7. Traditional human relationships, play a vital role in the political process, and based on that, ‘Micro-Cooperative Democracy’ has been presented as a new type of democracy.

  In this paper, we focus on four major Japanese Post-War political researchers (Masao Maruyama, Jiro Kamishima, Shōzō Fujita and Sēichi Imai) and their discourse on political leadership and mass mobilization. Through this study, we could reveal their academic interests on potential of political leader and mass and could demonstrate that the workshop in 1959 annual meeting of Japanese Political Science Association (Jiro Kamishima, Shōzō Fujita and Sēichi Imai) was the embodiment of their academic as well as political interests. We explain the background of their common view by two factors. One is that they are afraid of bureaucratization in a broad sense such as “the iron law of oligarchy” by Robert Michels and “bureaucratization of society as a whole” by Max Weber, and the other is that they criticize political strategy of Japanese Communist Party in 1950s.

  In political theory, analysis using models, including thought experiments, has been a tool for theorists to separate imagination from reality. However, the difficulty of reconciling political imagination and feasibility has been controversial in recent political theory discussions involving political realism, ideal/non-ideal theory, and the criticism of epistemic democracy theory. The field of model analysis may offer solutions to these conflicts between ideal and realistic models in political theory. Therefore, this paper aims to resolve the difficulties associated with the compatibility of political imagination and feasibility by determining a compatible framework from philosophy of science models. Thus, the paper presents a theoretical framework that makes compatibility possible by introducing the concept of “multiple model idealization,” which recognizes the coexistence of models with different goals. The results are important because they provide an understanding that positions political imagination and feasibility as complementary, rather than antagonistic, to the study of political theory.

  This study examines the public perception of policy measures as “reform” using a comparative approach with traditional left–right ideologies. Since the 1990s, the perception of reform has been a significant political axis for both political elites and public opinion. However, there is still disagreement regarding which policy initiatives are regarded as reform by the public and their distinction from the traditional left–right ideological labels. Consequently, this study examines the significance of policy orientations commonly observed in nine policy disputes as reform using randomized conjoint experiments. Thus, the findings show that liberal policies on social issues are mostly perceived as reform, whereas national security and economic policies are not specially related to the reform significance. Furthermore, this study shows that people under the age of 50 and those who lack an understanding of traditional ideological frameworks are not effectively using “reform” labels in comparison to the labels linked with left–right ideologies.

  Belgium consistently supported the NATO alliance and France during the Algerian War in 1954–1962. This study sheds light on conflicts and frictions related to two issues that underlie the friendly Franco–Belgian governmental relations. The first is the French Foreign Legion, which recruited Belgian youth, typically aged less than 21 years. A few of their parents launched a movement to liberate and return them home. Thus, the Belgian Foreign Ministry was forced to start a delicate negotiation with its French counterpart to satisfy the public opinion. The second is the transnational expansion of Algerian nationalism into Belgium. In the face of the French request to suppress Algerian nationalists, the Belgian government found difficulty in steering between a Francophile diplomacy and traditional tolerance for foreigners in the territory. Simultaneously, some Belgian citizens, who were critical of their Francophile government, and sympathetic to the independence of Algeria, called for a cease-fire in Algeria. These transnational movements, internal and external to Belgium, encouraged the internationalization of Algerian nationalism and led Belgian diplomacy toward a difficult path.

  This paper discusses the desirable “informal representation”, based on the premise of “the existence of oppression” and “the controversy on oppression”. First, it considers features of “informal representation” in the light of recent theories of representation. After pointing out the problem of the lack of normative criteria for evaluation, the paper shows the need to focus on the role played by representatives. This paper then considers the arguments of Nadia Urbinati and Suzanne Dovi, who focus on representatives, and Laura Montanaro, who considers “informal representation”. However, these arguments do not fully take into account all three key elements: “the existence of oppression”, “the controversy on oppression” and “informal representation”. This paper therefore argues that informal representation in oppressive situations requires “liberatory epistemic virtues” to tackle oppression, as it is difficult to determine whether it is authorized by the represented or not, and “who should be represented” is contentious. However, since it is difficult to demand such virtues from individual representatives, it argues for realizing epistemic virtues at system level through “alternative representatives” and “liberatory institutional environments”.