Hirofumi Miwa
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hirofumi Miwa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hirofumi |
| FAMILY NAME | Miwa |
| SIGNATURE | MIWA H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Gakushuin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2786-8830 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Correcting Misperceptions Across Contexts
How do citizens respond to accurate information regarding social inequality? This study examines public perceptions of gender inequality in Japan and South Korea—two high-income democracies characterized by persistent gender gaps but contrasting political contexts. Using original survey data and preregistered survey experiments (N = 7,000), we test whether corrective information about gender disparities influences support for related government p…
Lingua Franca of Ideology? Common and Country-Specific Measures of Symbolic and Operational Ideology in Asian and Western Countries
Comparative public opinion surveys, including the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), often rely on identical labels and question items to measure respondents’ symbolic and operational ideology across countries. However, it remains unclear whether common symbolic measures of ideology carry the same meaning across contexts, or whether the issue items used to construct common operational measures are equally relevant in national settings…
Voting for gender balancing? The effect of a multiple-vote system on women’s representation
Does permitting voters to select multiple candidates in majoritarian elections increase diversity among those elected? While majoritarian systems typically use single-vote ballots, research suggests that allowing multiple selections may increase the representation of women and racial minorities. However, empirical evidence regarding actual voter behavior remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted a survey experiment that varied the number…
Extracting ideological dimensions from legislative speeches in the Japanese Diet
Understanding the ideological positions of political parties is crucial for empirically testing various theories in political science. In Japan, some studies have assessed each party’s policy outlook through electoral platforms, candidate surveys, or expert surveys, with most studies focusing on the past thirty years. However, limited efforts have comprehensively and longitudinally quantified the conflicts between political parties. Although prev…
ChatGPT versus humans in judging discriminatory scenarios
Detecting and addressing discrimination is one of the most crucial ways for ethnic and sexual minorities and women to fully integrate into the society. However, humans often fail to correctly judge what constitutes discrimination. The recent rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) based on large language models (LLMs) has shown promise in assisting with this task, although its performance is understudied. This study investigates how hum…
Gendered Expectations for College Applications
Compromise or differentiate? The role of partner popularity in coalition parties’ strategic parliamentary speech
Do Politicians’ Genders Influence Voter Persuasion
Preferences for female successors
Why Voters Prefer Politicians With Particular Personal Attributes
Recent studies in democratic countries suggest that voters generally prefer candidates with specific personal attributes, such as being female and young. However, some of these patterns cannot necessarily be explained by voters’ expectations of candidates’ competence. Building on a growing body of literature that addresses populist attitudes as an important factor influencing voters’ political preferences, this study hypothesizes that candidates’…
Analyzing gender gaps in bicameral legislatures
In bicameral legislatures, gender representation varies significantly between chambers. Historically, Japan's upper house has maintained a proportion of women twice that of the lower house. However, electoral systems alone cannot fully explain this disparity. We argue that seemingly gender‐neutral legislative institutions influence both voting behavior and candidates' willingness to run, contributing to significant disparities in gender represent…
Pretending to Support? Duterte's Popularity and Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines
The incumbent-led subversion of democracy represents the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in recent decades. A central puzzle in this mode of backsliding is why these incumbents enjoy popular support despite their actions against democracy. We address this puzzle using the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Although some Philippine analysts have speculated that his popularity was inflated due to social desirability bias (S…
Party theory of parliamentary debate and the endogenous nature of parliamentary institutions
We add new insights to the party theory of parliamentary debate proposed in Proksch and Slapin’s The Politics of Parliamentary Debate by combining a quantitative replication analysis of floor speeches with a qualitative explanation of the endogenous transformation of two institutions mediating elections and parliamentary speech in the Japanese Diet. Although the House of Representatives in Japan used a single non-transferable vote system with par…
Is the justice frame effective in mobilizing support for human rights violations? Evidence from the Philippines
Effective message framing motivates individuals to act for and defend human rights. What effective message framing motivates individuals to defend human rights? Recent experiment-based framing studies show that personal frames are more successful than informational or motivational frames in increasing the advocacy activities of human rights organizations. This study tested the justice frame using the Philippine case of extrajudicial executions. E…
Detecting Voter Understanding of Ideological Labels Using a Conjoint Experiment
Gender differences in campaigning under alternative voting systems
Growing evidence reveals that candidate issue engagement differs between men and women. However, recent research suggests that individual-level differences among candidates should be small under the strategic incentives inherent in single-member district elections that encourage party rather than personal-vote seeking. We examine whether men and women candidates emphasize different issues in their electoral campaigns and if the magnitude of the g…
Voters’ perceptions and evaluations of dynastic politics in Japan
Political family dynasties are a staple part of Japanese politics. According to one study, Japan has the fourth highest number of dynastic politicians among democratic countries, after Thailand, the Philippines, and Iceland. As a result, many scholars have qualitatively studied how these political families are born and managed. In contrast to the wealth of qualitative studies on this subject, however, few quantitative studies on Japanese politica…
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? Identifying causal mechanisms of immigration preferences with a survey experiment
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? To understand the causal mechanism behind this tendency among citizens, we conducted a vignette survey experiment that enables us to clarify the role of multiple mediators. We specifically focused on three key factors that have been proposed in existing research as those that could lead citizens to welcome high-skilled immigrants: expectations of economic contribution, welf…
Ideorogī to Nihon Seiji
Generational Gap in Japanese Politics: A Longitudinal Study of Political Attitudes and Behaviour was originally published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. The authors, Endo and Jou, translated this book themselves, adding three new chapters. Although the English version was written for an academics audience, the Japanese version is relatively easy to read for non-academics as the authors added supplementary explanations of academic jargo…
What Do You Mean by “Democrat” and “Republican”? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
To better understand the nature of American mass party identification, it is crucial to examine how voters understand terms used in measuring partisanship in public opinion surveys, such as “Democrat” and “Republican.” For this purpose, we conducted a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical profiles’ partisanship. We show that, in contrast to previous studies which rely on one theoretical perspective to understand mass partis…
Share the Name, Share the Vote
Do candidates garner more votes simply because their names are better recognized? To answer this question, we use elections to the Japanese House of Councillors as a natural experiment. Members are elected in national and local-level districts. To isolate the effect of name recognition on vote choice, we compare the vote shares of national district candidates in high-name-recognition prefectures—which we define as prefectures in which a national …
Can Reshuffles Improve Government Popularity
Scholars have recently argued that prime ministers reshuffle their cabinets strategically. Although some scholars assume that cabinet reshuffles help prime ministers increase their government’s popularity, this assumption has not been tested formally because of the endogeneity problem. In Japan, polling firms sometimes provide respondents with cues about a reshuffle when asking about cabinet approval following reshuffles, while others do not. I u…
Heterogeneity in voter perceptions of party competition in multidimensional space
On the question of how voters perceive party positions, much of the existing literature has not adequately considered the case of a multidimensional policy space. Since the ideological cues related to each issue differ in a policy space of multiple dimensions, it is possible that each individual favors different dimensional cues. To test this hypothesis, this paper focuses on Japan’s 2012 Lower House election, which took place in a two-dimensiona…
Voters’ Left–Right Perception of Parties in Contemporary Japan
The prevailing theory states that either Japanese voters have stopped ideologically distinguishing parties or that the main political parties in Japan have become more centrist in recent years. These arguments are based on survey questions asking citizens to locate parties on an ideological scale. However, these questions may suffer from noise caused by respondents who misinterpret the question wording or answer the questions inappropriately to m…
Can Reshuffles Improve Government Popularity
Scholars have recently argued that prime ministers reshuffle their cabinets strategically. Although some scholars assume that cabinet reshuffles help prime ministers increase their government’s popularity, this assumption has not been tested formally because of the endogeneity problem. In Japan, polling firms sometimes provide respondents with cues about a reshuffle when asking about cabinet approval following reshuffles, while others do not. I u…
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? Identifying causal mechanisms of immigration preferences with a survey experiment
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? To understand the causal mechanism behind this tendency among citizens, we conducted a vignette survey experiment that enables us to clarify the role of multiple mediators. We specifically focused on three key factors that have been proposed in existing research as those that could lead citizens to welcome high-skilled immigrants: expectations of economic contribution, welf…
Voters’ Left–Right Perception of Parties in Contemporary Japan
The prevailing theory states that either Japanese voters have stopped ideologically distinguishing parties or that the main political parties in Japan have become more centrist in recent years. These arguments are based on survey questions asking citizens to locate parties on an ideological scale. However, these questions may suffer from noise caused by respondents who misinterpret the question wording or answer the questions inappropriately to m…
Heterogeneity in voter perceptions of party competition in multidimensional space
On the question of how voters perceive party positions, much of the existing literature has not adequately considered the case of a multidimensional policy space. Since the ideological cues related to each issue differ in a policy space of multiple dimensions, it is possible that each individual favors different dimensional cues. To test this hypothesis, this paper focuses on Japan’s 2012 Lower House election, which took place in a two-dimensiona…
Pretending to Support? Duterte's Popularity and Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines
The incumbent-led subversion of democracy represents the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in recent decades. A central puzzle in this mode of backsliding is why these incumbents enjoy popular support despite their actions against democracy. We address this puzzle using the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Although some Philippine analysts have speculated that his popularity was inflated due to social desirability bias (S…
Voters’ perceptions and evaluations of dynastic politics in Japan
Political family dynasties are a staple part of Japanese politics. According to one study, Japan has the fourth highest number of dynastic politicians among democratic countries, after Thailand, the Philippines, and Iceland. As a result, many scholars have qualitatively studied how these political families are born and managed. In contrast to the wealth of qualitative studies on this subject, however, few quantitative studies on Japanese politica…
Share the Name, Share the Vote
Do candidates garner more votes simply because their names are better recognized? To answer this question, we use elections to the Japanese House of Councillors as a natural experiment. Members are elected in national and local-level districts. To isolate the effect of name recognition on vote choice, we compare the vote shares of national district candidates in high-name-recognition prefectures—which we define as prefectures in which a national …
Why Voters Prefer Politicians With Particular Personal Attributes
Recent studies in democratic countries suggest that voters generally prefer candidates with specific personal attributes, such as being female and young. However, some of these patterns cannot necessarily be explained by voters’ expectations of candidates’ competence. Building on a growing body of literature that addresses populist attitudes as an important factor influencing voters’ political preferences, this study hypothesizes that candidates’…
Detecting Voter Understanding of Ideological Labels Using a Conjoint Experiment
What Do You Mean by “Democrat” and “Republican”? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
To better understand the nature of American mass party identification, it is crucial to examine how voters understand terms used in measuring partisanship in public opinion surveys, such as “Democrat” and “Republican.” For this purpose, we conducted a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical profiles’ partisanship. We show that, in contrast to previous studies which rely on one theoretical perspective to understand mass partis…
Compromise or differentiate? The role of partner popularity in coalition parties’ strategic parliamentary speech
Analyzing gender gaps in bicameral legislatures
In bicameral legislatures, gender representation varies significantly between chambers. Historically, Japan's upper house has maintained a proportion of women twice that of the lower house. However, electoral systems alone cannot fully explain this disparity. We argue that seemingly gender‐neutral legislative institutions influence both voting behavior and candidates' willingness to run, contributing to significant disparities in gender represent…
Voters’ Left–Right Perception of Parties in Contemporary Japan
The prevailing theory states that either Japanese voters have stopped ideologically distinguishing parties or that the main political parties in Japan have become more centrist in recent years. These arguments are based on survey questions asking citizens to locate parties on an ideological scale. However, these questions may suffer from noise caused by respondents who misinterpret the question wording or answer the questions inappropriately to m…
Heterogeneity in voter perceptions of party competition in multidimensional space
On the question of how voters perceive party positions, much of the existing literature has not adequately considered the case of a multidimensional policy space. Since the ideological cues related to each issue differ in a policy space of multiple dimensions, it is possible that each individual favors different dimensional cues. To test this hypothesis, this paper focuses on Japan’s 2012 Lower House election, which took place in a two-dimensiona…
Share the Name, Share the Vote
Do candidates garner more votes simply because their names are better recognized? To answer this question, we use elections to the Japanese House of Councillors as a natural experiment. Members are elected in national and local-level districts. To isolate the effect of name recognition on vote choice, we compare the vote shares of national district candidates in high-name-recognition prefectures—which we define as prefectures in which a national …
Can Reshuffles Improve Government Popularity
Scholars have recently argued that prime ministers reshuffle their cabinets strategically. Although some scholars assume that cabinet reshuffles help prime ministers increase their government’s popularity, this assumption has not been tested formally because of the endogeneity problem. In Japan, polling firms sometimes provide respondents with cues about a reshuffle when asking about cabinet approval following reshuffles, while others do not. I u…
Ideorogī to Nihon Seiji
Generational Gap in Japanese Politics: A Longitudinal Study of Political Attitudes and Behaviour was originally published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. The authors, Endo and Jou, translated this book themselves, adding three new chapters. Although the English version was written for an academics audience, the Japanese version is relatively easy to read for non-academics as the authors added supplementary explanations of academic jargo…
What Do You Mean by “Democrat” and “Republican”? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
To better understand the nature of American mass party identification, it is crucial to examine how voters understand terms used in measuring partisanship in public opinion surveys, such as “Democrat” and “Republican.” For this purpose, we conducted a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical profiles’ partisanship. We show that, in contrast to previous studies which rely on one theoretical perspective to understand mass partis…
Gender differences in campaigning under alternative voting systems
Growing evidence reveals that candidate issue engagement differs between men and women. However, recent research suggests that individual-level differences among candidates should be small under the strategic incentives inherent in single-member district elections that encourage party rather than personal-vote seeking. We examine whether men and women candidates emphasize different issues in their electoral campaigns and if the magnitude of the g…
Voters’ perceptions and evaluations of dynastic politics in Japan
Political family dynasties are a staple part of Japanese politics. According to one study, Japan has the fourth highest number of dynastic politicians among democratic countries, after Thailand, the Philippines, and Iceland. As a result, many scholars have qualitatively studied how these political families are born and managed. In contrast to the wealth of qualitative studies on this subject, however, few quantitative studies on Japanese politica…
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? Identifying causal mechanisms of immigration preferences with a survey experiment
Why do citizens prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? To understand the causal mechanism behind this tendency among citizens, we conducted a vignette survey experiment that enables us to clarify the role of multiple mediators. We specifically focused on three key factors that have been proposed in existing research as those that could lead citizens to welcome high-skilled immigrants: expectations of economic contribution, welf…
Pretending to Support? Duterte's Popularity and Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines
The incumbent-led subversion of democracy represents the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in recent decades. A central puzzle in this mode of backsliding is why these incumbents enjoy popular support despite their actions against democracy. We address this puzzle using the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Although some Philippine analysts have speculated that his popularity was inflated due to social desirability bias (S…
Party theory of parliamentary debate and the endogenous nature of parliamentary institutions
We add new insights to the party theory of parliamentary debate proposed in Proksch and Slapin’s The Politics of Parliamentary Debate by combining a quantitative replication analysis of floor speeches with a qualitative explanation of the endogenous transformation of two institutions mediating elections and parliamentary speech in the Japanese Diet. Although the House of Representatives in Japan used a single non-transferable vote system with par…
Is the justice frame effective in mobilizing support for human rights violations? Evidence from the Philippines
Effective message framing motivates individuals to act for and defend human rights. What effective message framing motivates individuals to defend human rights? Recent experiment-based framing studies show that personal frames are more successful than informational or motivational frames in increasing the advocacy activities of human rights organizations. This study tested the justice frame using the Philippine case of extrajudicial executions. E…
Detecting Voter Understanding of Ideological Labels Using a Conjoint Experiment
ChatGPT versus humans in judging discriminatory scenarios
Detecting and addressing discrimination is one of the most crucial ways for ethnic and sexual minorities and women to fully integrate into the society. However, humans often fail to correctly judge what constitutes discrimination. The recent rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) based on large language models (LLMs) has shown promise in assisting with this task, although its performance is understudied. This study investigates how hum…
Gendered Expectations for College Applications
Compromise or differentiate? The role of partner popularity in coalition parties’ strategic parliamentary speech
Do Politicians’ Genders Influence Voter Persuasion
Preferences for female successors
Why Voters Prefer Politicians With Particular Personal Attributes
Recent studies in democratic countries suggest that voters generally prefer candidates with specific personal attributes, such as being female and young. However, some of these patterns cannot necessarily be explained by voters’ expectations of candidates’ competence. Building on a growing body of literature that addresses populist attitudes as an important factor influencing voters’ political preferences, this study hypothesizes that candidates’…
Analyzing gender gaps in bicameral legislatures
In bicameral legislatures, gender representation varies significantly between chambers. Historically, Japan's upper house has maintained a proportion of women twice that of the lower house. However, electoral systems alone cannot fully explain this disparity. We argue that seemingly gender‐neutral legislative institutions influence both voting behavior and candidates' willingness to run, contributing to significant disparities in gender represent…
Correcting Misperceptions Across Contexts
How do citizens respond to accurate information regarding social inequality? This study examines public perceptions of gender inequality in Japan and South Korea—two high-income democracies characterized by persistent gender gaps but contrasting political contexts. Using original survey data and preregistered survey experiments (N = 7,000), we test whether corrective information about gender disparities influences support for related government p…
Lingua Franca of Ideology? Common and Country-Specific Measures of Symbolic and Operational Ideology in Asian and Western Countries
Comparative public opinion surveys, including the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), often rely on identical labels and question items to measure respondents’ symbolic and operational ideology across countries. However, it remains unclear whether common symbolic measures of ideology carry the same meaning across contexts, or whether the issue items used to construct common operational measures are equally relevant in national settings…
Voting for gender balancing? The effect of a multiple-vote system on women’s representation
Does permitting voters to select multiple candidates in majoritarian elections increase diversity among those elected? While majoritarian systems typically use single-vote ballots, research suggests that allowing multiple selections may increase the representation of women and racial minorities. However, empirical evidence regarding actual voter behavior remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted a survey experiment that varied the number…
Extracting ideological dimensions from legislative speeches in the Japanese Diet
Understanding the ideological positions of political parties is crucial for empirically testing various theories in political science. In Japan, some studies have assessed each party’s policy outlook through electoral platforms, candidate surveys, or expert surveys, with most studies focusing on the past thirty years. However, limited efforts have comprehensively and longitudinally quantified the conflicts between political parties. Although prev…
Political science (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (7 works)