Ethan Scheiner
Biographic Data
| ID | 1170922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ethan Scheiner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ethan |
| FAMILY NAME | Scheiner |
| SIGNATURE | SCHEINER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 471 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Social Diversity, Electoral Systems, and the Party System
Scholars commonly argue that in democratic societies, the size (or fragmentation) of party systems is a linear function of social heterogeneity, in interaction with political institutions such as the electoral system. This “interactive hypothesis” has generated a large body of research, mostly in support of its fundamental claims. Despite the prominence of this literature, there is also a growing body of research that casts doubt on the interacti…
Social Diversity Affects the Number of Parties Even Under First-Past-the-Post Rules
Nearly all systematic empirical work on the relationship between social diversity and the number of parties asserts the “interactive hypothesis”—Social heterogeneity leads to party fragmentation under permissive electoral rules, but not under single-member district, first-past-the-post (FPTP) rules. In this article, we argue that previous work has been hindered by a reliance on national-level measures of variables and a linear model of the relati…
Japan Decides 2014
Collecting original and high-quality analysis by top scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia, and Europe, this volume analyzes the results of the 2014 election, examining each of the major p
Japan Decides 2014: The Japanese General Election
Running on character? Running on policy? An analysis of Japanese candidates' campaign platforms
Context, Electoral Rules, and Party Systems
To address concerns over the applicability of the electoral system literature to new and developing democracies, we present a framework for understanding the interplay between electoral rules and social, economic, and political context. This framework emphasizes that context typically shapes what we call the “behavioral” linkage between electoral rules and outcomes; moreover, the longer the causal chain connecting electoral rules to outcomes, the…
The 2012 Election Results: The LDP Wins Big by Default
On 16 December 2012, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been swept from power in August 2009 after more than half a century of dominance, roared back with a landslide of its own. Entering the election with only 118 of 480 seats in the House of Representatives (HR), the lower house of the National Diet, the LDP emerged with a stomping majority of 294. Moreover, the LDP and its long-time coalition partner, Komeito, jointly surpassed …
Japan Decides 2012: The Japanese General Election
The 2012 election in Japan ejected the governing DPJ and returned the LDP overwhelmingly to power while brand new parties pulled in millions of voters. This book explains what happened, why it happene
Japan decides 2012: The Japanese general election
Preface List of Abbreviations Contributor Bios Introduction 1. Introduction 2. Japanese Politics Between the 2009 and 2012 Elections 3. Keeping It Together: Party Unity and the 2012 Election Ben Nyblade 4. The Japanese General Election of 2012: The LDP Wins Big by Default PART I: POLITICAL PARTIES 5. The LDP's Path Back to Power: The Liberal Democratic Party Masahisa Endo 6. The Remains of the DPJ: The Democratic Party of Japan Robert Weiner 7. C…
Between Science and Engineering: Reflections on the Apsa Presidential Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance
Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider …
When Do Interest Groups Contact Bureaucrats Rather than Politicians? Evidence on Fire Alarms and Smoke Detectors from Japan
What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats? Despite the importance of this question for policymaking, democracy, and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups’ decisions. That is, central to interest groups’ decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politician…
Electoral Systems and Political Context: How the Effects of Rules Vary Across New and Established Democracies
Electoral Systems and Political Context illustrates how political and social context conditions the effects of electoral rules. The book examines electoral behavior and outcomes in countries that use 'mixed-member' electoral systems – where voters cast one ballot for a party list under proportional representation (PR) and one for a candidate in a single member district (SMD). Based on comparisons of outcomes under the two different rules used in …
The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions
Journal Article The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions Get access The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions, by Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010, 320 pp., $65.00 (hardcover ISBN 978-0-8014-4932-1), $26.95 (paperback ISBN 978-0-8014-7682-2) Ethan SCHEINER Ethan SCHEINER University of California, Dav…
The Electoral System and Japan's Partial Transformation: Party System Consolidation Without Policy Realignment
Japan's electoral system, which emphasizes first-past-the-post, single-member district rules, has led the country's party system to become consolidated around the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). At the same time, Japan's electoral rules also made it likely that the two parties would not differ markedly in their policy positions, as well as hinder the emergence of new partisan alignments that could offer more cl…
Japan Under the DPJ: The Paradox of Political Change Without Policy Change
In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) brought an end to the long reign of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). However, despite high expectations, this politically transformative event has not unleashed significant policy change in Japan. We highlight five electoral factors that have acted as important constraints on policy change under DPJ rule. First, majoritarian electoral rules have led to a convergence in the policy positions of the tw…
The End of LDP Dominance and the Rise of Party-Oriented Politics in Japan
The loss of power by the Liberal Democratic Party after more than half a century of dominance was the most obvious outcome of Japan’s 2009 election, but together the 2005 and 2009 elections demonstrate significant shifts in both the foundations of party support and the importance of national swings in support for one party or another. Since 2005, urban-rural differences in the foundations of the leading parties have changed dramatically, and Japa…
When do you follow the (national) leader? Party switching by subnational legislators in Japan
Political realignment in Nagano: Hata Tsutomu and the new opposition challenge the LDP
Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition
Strategic voting in established and new democracies: Ticket splitting in mixed-member electoral systems
Fragmentation and Power: Reconceptualizing Policy Making under Japan's 1955 System
In the 1980s, a wave of new–extremely clever and detailed–studies revolutionized the Japanese politics field. The empirical findings of this ‘new paradigm’ literature remain the conventional wisdom on Japanese policy-making patterns under the ‘1955 System’. In this paper, we offer a critical reinterpretation of the new paradigm literature. We do not offer new empirical analysis, but, rather, reconsider this conventional wisdom by putting a new sp…
Does Electoral System Reform Work? Electoral System Lessons from Reforms of the 1990s
In the early 1990s, popular discontent with politics in Italy, New Zealand, and Japan led to the enactment of new electoral systems in all three countries. The results of the reforms have been mixed, as they have dramatically altered politics in some cases but in others have been a great disappointment to many observers. This essay examines the reforms and the conditions under which they successfully addressed the problems of their party systems.…
Governmental Centralization and Party Affiliation: Legislator Strategies in Brazil and Japan
What shapes politicians' strategies in political systems where pork, rather than programmatic platforms, wins elections? We argue that resource control provides much of the answer, as politics in pork-centric systems will in large part be organized around actors who control access to pork. We use new national and subnational data from Brazil and Japan to show how the degree of centralization of resources can affect party affiliation patterns. We …
Clientelism in Japan: The importance and limits of institutional explanations
Japan is (in)famous for its clientelistic politics, for which the country's electoral institutions are frequently blamed. Indeed, this chapter's analysis of clientelism in Japan is more sympathetic than the other chapters in this volume to institutional explanations for voter–politician linkages. In Japan, electoral rules have helped protect the clientelistic system, as societal pressures to reduce the country's particularistic arrangements run t…
Electoral system effects and ruling party dominance in Japan: A counterfactual simulation based on adaptive parties
Mixed electoral systems and electoral system effects: Controlled Comparison and Cross-National Analysis
Strategic Ticket Splitting and the Personal Vote in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems
This article examines ticket splitting in five different mixed-member electoral systems—Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Lithuania, and RussiA—and indicates the shortcomings inherent in any analysis of such ticket splitting that does not take into account the presence of the personal vote. We find that the personal vote plays a central part in shaping ticket splitting in all of our cases except for Germany, a heavily party-oriented system in which we…
Electoral Incentives and Policy Preferences: Mixed Motives Behind Party Defections in Japan
Examining the 1993 split of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan offers an opportunity to gain greater insight into the impact of the various incentives that influence the behaviour of politicians. Surprisingly, previous analyses of the LDP split have been able to demonstrate only weak evidence of any electoral connection driving politicians' decisions. However, by also examining the role of policy preferences (support for reform) and util…
Governmental Centralization and Party Affiliation: Legislator Strategies in Brazil and Japan
What shapes politicians' strategies in political systems where pork, rather than programmatic platforms, wins elections? We argue that resource control provides much of the answer, as politics in pork-centric systems will in large part be organized around actors who control access to pork. We use new national and subnational data from Brazil and Japan to show how the degree of centralization of resources can affect party affiliation patterns. We …
Strategic voting in established and new democracies: Ticket splitting in mixed-member electoral systems
Japan's new electoral system
Pipelines of Pork: Japanese Politics and a Model of Local Opposition Party Failure
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has dominated Japanese politics since 1955, and the party’s even greater dominance of subnational level elections is much of the reason why. This article seeks to explain local electoral outcomes in Japan by focusing on two key features of the Japanese political system: the heavy centralization of governmental finances and an emphasis on clientelistic exchange. Because Japan’s political system focuses so heavily…
Context, Electoral Rules, and Party Systems
To address concerns over the applicability of the electoral system literature to new and developing democracies, we present a framework for understanding the interplay between electoral rules and social, economic, and political context. This framework emphasizes that context typically shapes what we call the “behavioral” linkage between electoral rules and outcomes; moreover, the longer the causal chain connecting electoral rules to outcomes, the…
Does Electoral System Reform Work? Electoral System Lessons from Reforms of the 1990s
In the early 1990s, popular discontent with politics in Italy, New Zealand, and Japan led to the enactment of new electoral systems in all three countries. The results of the reforms have been mixed, as they have dramatically altered politics in some cases but in others have been a great disappointment to many observers. This essay examines the reforms and the conditions under which they successfully addressed the problems of their party systems.…
The End of LDP Dominance and the Rise of Party-Oriented Politics in Japan
The loss of power by the Liberal Democratic Party after more than half a century of dominance was the most obvious outcome of Japan’s 2009 election, but together the 2005 and 2009 elections demonstrate significant shifts in both the foundations of party support and the importance of national swings in support for one party or another. Since 2005, urban-rural differences in the foundations of the leading parties have changed dramatically, and Japa…
Japan Under the DPJ: The Paradox of Political Change Without Policy Change
In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) brought an end to the long reign of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). However, despite high expectations, this politically transformative event has not unleashed significant policy change in Japan. We highlight five electoral factors that have acted as important constraints on policy change under DPJ rule. First, majoritarian electoral rules have led to a convergence in the policy positions of the tw…
Social Diversity Affects the Number of Parties Even Under First-Past-the-Post Rules
Nearly all systematic empirical work on the relationship between social diversity and the number of parties asserts the “interactive hypothesis”—Social heterogeneity leads to party fragmentation under permissive electoral rules, but not under single-member district, first-past-the-post (FPTP) rules. In this article, we argue that previous work has been hindered by a reliance on national-level measures of variables and a linear model of the relati…
Running on character? Running on policy? An analysis of Japanese candidates' campaign platforms
The Electoral System and Japan's Partial Transformation: Party System Consolidation Without Policy Realignment
Japan's electoral system, which emphasizes first-past-the-post, single-member district rules, has led the country's party system to become consolidated around the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). At the same time, Japan's electoral rules also made it likely that the two parties would not differ markedly in their policy positions, as well as hinder the emergence of new partisan alignments that could offer more cl…
Electoral system effects and ruling party dominance in Japan: A counterfactual simulation based on adaptive parties
Adaptive parties: Party strategic capacity under Japanese SNTV
Between Science and Engineering: Reflections on the Apsa Presidential Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance
Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider …
Urban outfitters: City-based strategies and success in post-war Japanese politics
When Do Interest Groups Contact Bureaucrats Rather than Politicians? Evidence on Fire Alarms and Smoke Detectors from Japan
What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats? Despite the importance of this question for policymaking, democracy, and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups’ decisions. That is, central to interest groups’ decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politician…
When do you follow the (national) leader? Party switching by subnational legislators in Japan
Fragmentation and Power: Reconceptualizing Policy Making under Japan's 1955 System
In the 1980s, a wave of new–extremely clever and detailed–studies revolutionized the Japanese politics field. The empirical findings of this ‘new paradigm’ literature remain the conventional wisdom on Japanese policy-making patterns under the ‘1955 System’. In this paper, we offer a critical reinterpretation of the new paradigm literature. We do not offer new empirical analysis, but, rather, reconsider this conventional wisdom by putting a new sp…
Urban outfitters: City-based strategies and success in post-war Japanese politics
Graduate Students Attend Meeting with Apsa Assistance
The impressive presentations by the students grew out their final projects for the graduate-level quantitative analysis and race and American politics courses they took during the five-week Institute. While at the Annual Meeting, the students were invited to attend panels and receptions and encouraged to meet scholars within the profession
Japan's new electoral system
Stephen Johnson, Opposition Politics in Japan: Strategies Under a One-Party Dominant Regime , London: Routledge, 2000
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Electoral Incentives and Policy Preferences: Mixed Motives Behind Party Defections in Japan
Examining the 1993 split of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan offers an opportunity to gain greater insight into the impact of the various incentives that influence the behaviour of politicians. Surprisingly, previous analyses of the LDP split have been able to demonstrate only weak evidence of any electoral connection driving politicians' decisions. However, by also examining the role of policy preferences (support for reform) and util…
Adaptive parties: Party strategic capacity under Japanese SNTV
Mixed electoral systems and electoral system effects: Controlled Comparison and Cross-National Analysis
Strategic Ticket Splitting and the Personal Vote in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems
This article examines ticket splitting in five different mixed-member electoral systems—Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Lithuania, and RussiA—and indicates the shortcomings inherent in any analysis of such ticket splitting that does not take into account the presence of the personal vote. We find that the personal vote plays a central part in shaping ticket splitting in all of our cases except for Germany, a heavily party-oriented system in which we…
Pipelines of Pork: Japanese Politics and a Model of Local Opposition Party Failure
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has dominated Japanese politics since 1955, and the party’s even greater dominance of subnational level elections is much of the reason why. This article seeks to explain local electoral outcomes in Japan by focusing on two key features of the Japanese political system: the heavy centralization of governmental finances and an emphasis on clientelistic exchange. Because Japan’s political system focuses so heavily…
Clientelism in Japan: The importance and limits of institutional explanations
Japan is (in)famous for its clientelistic politics, for which the country's electoral institutions are frequently blamed. Indeed, this chapter's analysis of clientelism in Japan is more sympathetic than the other chapters in this volume to institutional explanations for voter–politician linkages. In Japan, electoral rules have helped protect the clientelistic system, as societal pressures to reduce the country's particularistic arrangements run t…
Electoral system effects and ruling party dominance in Japan: A counterfactual simulation based on adaptive parties
Fragmentation and Power: Reconceptualizing Policy Making under Japan's 1955 System
In the 1980s, a wave of new–extremely clever and detailed–studies revolutionized the Japanese politics field. The empirical findings of this ‘new paradigm’ literature remain the conventional wisdom on Japanese policy-making patterns under the ‘1955 System’. In this paper, we offer a critical reinterpretation of the new paradigm literature. We do not offer new empirical analysis, but, rather, reconsider this conventional wisdom by putting a new sp…
Does Electoral System Reform Work? Electoral System Lessons from Reforms of the 1990s
In the early 1990s, popular discontent with politics in Italy, New Zealand, and Japan led to the enactment of new electoral systems in all three countries. The results of the reforms have been mixed, as they have dramatically altered politics in some cases but in others have been a great disappointment to many observers. This essay examines the reforms and the conditions under which they successfully addressed the problems of their party systems.…
Governmental Centralization and Party Affiliation: Legislator Strategies in Brazil and Japan
What shapes politicians' strategies in political systems where pork, rather than programmatic platforms, wins elections? We argue that resource control provides much of the answer, as politics in pork-centric systems will in large part be organized around actors who control access to pork. We use new national and subnational data from Brazil and Japan to show how the degree of centralization of resources can affect party affiliation patterns. We …
Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition
Strategic voting in established and new democracies: Ticket splitting in mixed-member electoral systems
Political realignment in Nagano: Hata Tsutomu and the new opposition challenge the LDP
When do you follow the (national) leader? Party switching by subnational legislators in Japan
Electoral Systems and Political Context: How the Effects of Rules Vary Across New and Established Democracies
Electoral Systems and Political Context illustrates how political and social context conditions the effects of electoral rules. The book examines electoral behavior and outcomes in countries that use 'mixed-member' electoral systems – where voters cast one ballot for a party list under proportional representation (PR) and one for a candidate in a single member district (SMD). Based on comparisons of outcomes under the two different rules used in …
The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions
Journal Article The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions Get access The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions, by Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010, 320 pp., $65.00 (hardcover ISBN 978-0-8014-4932-1), $26.95 (paperback ISBN 978-0-8014-7682-2) Ethan SCHEINER Ethan SCHEINER University of California, Dav…
The Electoral System and Japan's Partial Transformation: Party System Consolidation Without Policy Realignment
Japan's electoral system, which emphasizes first-past-the-post, single-member district rules, has led the country's party system to become consolidated around the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). At the same time, Japan's electoral rules also made it likely that the two parties would not differ markedly in their policy positions, as well as hinder the emergence of new partisan alignments that could offer more cl…
Japan Under the DPJ: The Paradox of Political Change Without Policy Change
In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) brought an end to the long reign of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). However, despite high expectations, this politically transformative event has not unleashed significant policy change in Japan. We highlight five electoral factors that have acted as important constraints on policy change under DPJ rule. First, majoritarian electoral rules have led to a convergence in the policy positions of the tw…
The End of LDP Dominance and the Rise of Party-Oriented Politics in Japan
The loss of power by the Liberal Democratic Party after more than half a century of dominance was the most obvious outcome of Japan’s 2009 election, but together the 2005 and 2009 elections demonstrate significant shifts in both the foundations of party support and the importance of national swings in support for one party or another. Since 2005, urban-rural differences in the foundations of the leading parties have changed dramatically, and Japa…
The 2012 Election Results: The LDP Wins Big by Default
On 16 December 2012, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been swept from power in August 2009 after more than half a century of dominance, roared back with a landslide of its own. Entering the election with only 118 of 480 seats in the House of Representatives (HR), the lower house of the National Diet, the LDP emerged with a stomping majority of 294. Moreover, the LDP and its long-time coalition partner, Komeito, jointly surpassed …
Japan Decides 2012: The Japanese General Election
The 2012 election in Japan ejected the governing DPJ and returned the LDP overwhelmingly to power while brand new parties pulled in millions of voters. This book explains what happened, why it happene
Political science (31 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (27 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (25 works) · Economics (21 works) · Political economy (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Democracy (17 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Public Administration (12 works)