Christian Winkler
Biographic Data
| ID | 4433369 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian Winkler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian |
| FAMILY NAME | Winkler |
| SIGNATURE | WINKLER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Seinan Gakuin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3416-5351 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Tightening or Loosening? The Effects of Uncertainty on the Design of Preferential Trade Agreements
To mitigate uncertainty, it is often assumed that governments negotiate ample flexibility provisions when entering new international treaties. Yet, the case of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) suggests that governments prioritize the more stringent commitments when faced with uncertainty. In this paper, we investigate the effects of uncertainty spikes occurring during negotiations on the design of 251 bilateral PTAs. Our theory proposes that …
Changing Conversations
The Pushshift.io tool ( https://pushshift.io/ ) was used to acquire the content of relevant subreddits for the analysis. Pushshift is a data archiving service that provides an extensive collection of historical Reddit data, including posts, comments, and metadata. The data were downloaded and extracted for the entire period of the respective subreddits (these were created at different times) up to and including May 31, 2023. This period was selec…
Sweetening the liberalization pill
Free trade agreement (FTA) negotiators increasingly face pressure from domestic interest groups, including environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil activists and labor unions. As a result of the growing scrutiny on the content of FTAs, we are now witnessing a proliferation of instruments accompanying FTAs, which we group under the label of flanking measures. In this article, we argue that flanking measures can serve two main non…
Institute library and more
The Ruhr Foundation was established 25 years ago as a public-private partnership by bringing together three libraries and an archive. The foundation's purpose then, as well as now, is to document the history and present of the Ruhr region and to preserve and make its historical library holdings available to the public
Tōchi no dezain
Tōchi no dezain (Constitutional Design of Government) is a substantial volume focusing on the perennially contentious and thus popular topic of the Constitution of Japan (COJ) and the seven-decades-old debate about constitutional change. In many ways, this book is a sequel to and extension of 2016’s Kenpō kaisei no hikaku seijigaku by the same duo of editors, Keio University’s Komamura Keigo and Kyoto University’s Machidori Satoshi. The new book’…
Only Right Makes Might? Center-Right Policy Competition Among Major Japanese Parties After Electoral Reform
The effects of the 1990s reforms to the electoral system of Japan's House of Representatives have been among the most frequently discussed topics in political science research on the country. These reforms saw the replacement of a hitherto single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system by a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a strong Single Member District (SMD) and a weaker Proportional Representation (PR) component. Many studies have sugges…
Transport mode use during the Covid-19 lockdown period in Germany
The proposer or the proposal? An experimental analysis of constitutional beliefs
In many countries, constitutional amendments require the direct approval of voters, but the consequences of fundamental changes to the powers and operations of the state are difficult to anticipate. The referendums literature suggests that citizens weigh their prior beliefs about the merits of proposals against the heuristic provided by the partisanship of the proposer, but the relative salience of these factors across constitutional issue areas …
Kaiken no ronten (Issues of Constitutional Reform)
Kaiken no ronten is an intellectual rebuttal to the attempts by the Abe administration to revise the Constitution of Japan (COJ), particularly Article 9. The authors are members of Save Constitutional Democracy Japan (Rikken Demokurashī no Kai), a group established in 2014 to protest the Abe Cabinet’s decision to enable the government to use the right to collective self-defence. This book belongs to the same genre as Okudaira (et al. 2013), which…
A Historical Analysis of the LDP’s 2018 Constitutional Amendment Proposals
In 2018 Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party announced four new proposals to amend the seven-decades-old and thus-far unamended constitution of Japan. These include adding a third paragraph to Article 9, as well as state-of-emergency provisions, support for students in need, and changes to the electoral system. By analyzing each proposal’s place in the debate on amendments dating back to the 1950s, I show that these very different proposals share one…
Kenpō to yoron
This book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about a (potential) amendment of the Constitution of Japan (COJ). The author points out that previous research had almost exclusively focused on elite discourse and legal interpretations, while ignoring public opinion (pp. 11–12). Needless to say, public opinion does matter, as a successful amendment of the COJ requires two-third majorities in both houses of the parliament as well as a si…
Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality
Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequa…
Right On? The LDP’s Drift to the Right and the Persistence of Particularism
Since Prime Minister Abe’s return to power in 2012, there has been an ongoing discussion about whether and if so to what extent the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had drifted to the ‘right’. This article argues that it is important to distinguish between conservative and neoliberal policy appeals, as those two ideologies often clash with each other, despite being united under the casual ‘right’ banner. Using a newly coded, comprehensive database …
Making We the People
Making We the People feels like a blast from the past. Mainstream political science these days focuses a significant amount of its manpower and resources on analyzing very specific aspects of institutions within or across nations utilizing ever more complex models and sophisticated statistical analysis. Meanwhile, Hahm and Kim’s book does not rely on regressions or rational choice theory; it is a more traditional enterprise in both substance and …
Those were the days
Watanabe Tsuneo, Japan's Backroom Politics: Factions in a Multiparty Age, (translated and with commentary by Robert D. Eldridge), Lexington Books, Plymouth, 2013, x + 281 pp.Being the chairman of J
What’s Unique about the Japanese Constitution
Japan has the oldest unamended constitution in the world. We examine the determinants of its longevity and recent proposals seeking its amendment. While traditional revision attempts have focused on ideological provisions such as Article 9 and the imperial system, changes to political institutions, particularly bicameralism and local governance, have become a focal point since 2005. Our comparative analysis demonstrates that the constitution’s en…
Between Pork and People
In this article I examine changes in the election manifestos of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party. While the existing literature agrees that the LDP's policy platform has changed considerably since the introduction of the new election system in the 1990s, their analysis focuses on material policies such as pork barrel and welfare. Postmaterialist policies such as environmental protection have hardly been discussed, even though they have been relev…
Rezensionsexemplare
Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times
Conservatism is about defending the status quo; in both Germany and Japan, the status quo is the postwar democratic regime. However, while the representatives of Germany’s intellectual conservatism have come to accept the democratic status quo of the postwar period, the same can hardly be said about intellectual conservatism in Japan, despite the two countries’ similar modern histories. This article seeks to explain this puzzle by pointing to a l…
The evolution of the conservative mainstream in Japan
The Liberal Democratic Party's conservative mainstream beginning with Yoshida Shigeru evidently was one of the most important political forces in the history of postwar Japan. But does it really deserve the label ‘conservative’, given that it is known above all for its pragmatic economic policy and cooperation with the US? This article traces the development of the mainstream's conservatism and finds that as times changed, so did the mainstream's…
Siebs-Deutsche Aussprache
Sweetening the liberalization pill
Free trade agreement (FTA) negotiators increasingly face pressure from domestic interest groups, including environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil activists and labor unions. As a result of the growing scrutiny on the content of FTAs, we are now witnessing a proliferation of instruments accompanying FTAs, which we group under the label of flanking measures. In this article, we argue that flanking measures can serve two main non…
Only Right Makes Might? Center-Right Policy Competition Among Major Japanese Parties After Electoral Reform
The effects of the 1990s reforms to the electoral system of Japan's House of Representatives have been among the most frequently discussed topics in political science research on the country. These reforms saw the replacement of a hitherto single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system by a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a strong Single Member District (SMD) and a weaker Proportional Representation (PR) component. Many studies have sugges…
The proposer or the proposal? An experimental analysis of constitutional beliefs
In many countries, constitutional amendments require the direct approval of voters, but the consequences of fundamental changes to the powers and operations of the state are difficult to anticipate. The referendums literature suggests that citizens weigh their prior beliefs about the merits of proposals against the heuristic provided by the partisanship of the proposer, but the relative salience of these factors across constitutional issue areas …
Siebs-Deutsche Aussprache
Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times
Conservatism is about defending the status quo; in both Germany and Japan, the status quo is the postwar democratic regime. However, while the representatives of Germany’s intellectual conservatism have come to accept the democratic status quo of the postwar period, the same can hardly be said about intellectual conservatism in Japan, despite the two countries’ similar modern histories. This article seeks to explain this puzzle by pointing to a l…
The evolution of the conservative mainstream in Japan
The Liberal Democratic Party's conservative mainstream beginning with Yoshida Shigeru evidently was one of the most important political forces in the history of postwar Japan. But does it really deserve the label ‘conservative’, given that it is known above all for its pragmatic economic policy and cooperation with the US? This article traces the development of the mainstream's conservatism and finds that as times changed, so did the mainstream's…
Rezensionsexemplare
Between Pork and People
In this article I examine changes in the election manifestos of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party. While the existing literature agrees that the LDP's policy platform has changed considerably since the introduction of the new election system in the 1990s, their analysis focuses on material policies such as pork barrel and welfare. Postmaterialist policies such as environmental protection have hardly been discussed, even though they have been relev…
Those were the days
Watanabe Tsuneo, Japan's Backroom Politics: Factions in a Multiparty Age, (translated and with commentary by Robert D. Eldridge), Lexington Books, Plymouth, 2013, x + 281 pp.Being the chairman of J
What’s Unique about the Japanese Constitution
Japan has the oldest unamended constitution in the world. We examine the determinants of its longevity and recent proposals seeking its amendment. While traditional revision attempts have focused on ideological provisions such as Article 9 and the imperial system, changes to political institutions, particularly bicameralism and local governance, have become a focal point since 2005. Our comparative analysis demonstrates that the constitution’s en…
Right On? The LDP’s Drift to the Right and the Persistence of Particularism
Since Prime Minister Abe’s return to power in 2012, there has been an ongoing discussion about whether and if so to what extent the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had drifted to the ‘right’. This article argues that it is important to distinguish between conservative and neoliberal policy appeals, as those two ideologies often clash with each other, despite being united under the casual ‘right’ banner. Using a newly coded, comprehensive database …
Making We the People
Making We the People feels like a blast from the past. Mainstream political science these days focuses a significant amount of its manpower and resources on analyzing very specific aspects of institutions within or across nations utilizing ever more complex models and sophisticated statistical analysis. Meanwhile, Hahm and Kim’s book does not rely on regressions or rational choice theory; it is a more traditional enterprise in both substance and …
Kenpō to yoron
This book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about a (potential) amendment of the Constitution of Japan (COJ). The author points out that previous research had almost exclusively focused on elite discourse and legal interpretations, while ignoring public opinion (pp. 11–12). Needless to say, public opinion does matter, as a successful amendment of the COJ requires two-third majorities in both houses of the parliament as well as a si…
Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality
Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequa…
Kaiken no ronten (Issues of Constitutional Reform)
Kaiken no ronten is an intellectual rebuttal to the attempts by the Abe administration to revise the Constitution of Japan (COJ), particularly Article 9. The authors are members of Save Constitutional Democracy Japan (Rikken Demokurashī no Kai), a group established in 2014 to protest the Abe Cabinet’s decision to enable the government to use the right to collective self-defence. This book belongs to the same genre as Okudaira (et al. 2013), which…
A Historical Analysis of the LDP’s 2018 Constitutional Amendment Proposals
In 2018 Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party announced four new proposals to amend the seven-decades-old and thus-far unamended constitution of Japan. These include adding a third paragraph to Article 9, as well as state-of-emergency provisions, support for students in need, and changes to the electoral system. By analyzing each proposal’s place in the debate on amendments dating back to the 1950s, I show that these very different proposals share one…
Transport mode use during the Covid-19 lockdown period in Germany
The proposer or the proposal? An experimental analysis of constitutional beliefs
In many countries, constitutional amendments require the direct approval of voters, but the consequences of fundamental changes to the powers and operations of the state are difficult to anticipate. The referendums literature suggests that citizens weigh their prior beliefs about the merits of proposals against the heuristic provided by the partisanship of the proposer, but the relative salience of these factors across constitutional issue areas …
Only Right Makes Might? Center-Right Policy Competition Among Major Japanese Parties After Electoral Reform
The effects of the 1990s reforms to the electoral system of Japan's House of Representatives have been among the most frequently discussed topics in political science research on the country. These reforms saw the replacement of a hitherto single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system by a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a strong Single Member District (SMD) and a weaker Proportional Representation (PR) component. Many studies have sugges…
Institute library and more
The Ruhr Foundation was established 25 years ago as a public-private partnership by bringing together three libraries and an archive. The foundation's purpose then, as well as now, is to document the history and present of the Ruhr region and to preserve and make its historical library holdings available to the public
Tōchi no dezain
Tōchi no dezain (Constitutional Design of Government) is a substantial volume focusing on the perennially contentious and thus popular topic of the Constitution of Japan (COJ) and the seven-decades-old debate about constitutional change. In many ways, this book is a sequel to and extension of 2016’s Kenpō kaisei no hikaku seijigaku by the same duo of editors, Keio University’s Komamura Keigo and Kyoto University’s Machidori Satoshi. The new book’…
Sweetening the liberalization pill
Free trade agreement (FTA) negotiators increasingly face pressure from domestic interest groups, including environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil activists and labor unions. As a result of the growing scrutiny on the content of FTAs, we are now witnessing a proliferation of instruments accompanying FTAs, which we group under the label of flanking measures. In this article, we argue that flanking measures can serve two main non…
Changing Conversations
The Pushshift.io tool ( https://pushshift.io/ ) was used to acquire the content of relevant subreddits for the analysis. Pushshift is a data archiving service that provides an extensive collection of historical Reddit data, including posts, comments, and metadata. The data were downloaded and extracted for the entire period of the respective subreddits (these were created at different times) up to and including May 31, 2023. This period was selec…
Tightening or Loosening? The Effects of Uncertainty on the Design of Preferential Trade Agreements
To mitigate uncertainty, it is often assumed that governments negotiate ample flexibility provisions when entering new international treaties. Yet, the case of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) suggests that governments prioritize the more stringent commitments when faced with uncertainty. In this paper, we investigate the effects of uncertainty spikes occurring during negotiations on the design of 251 bilateral PTAs. Our theory proposes that …
Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Democracy (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Constitution (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Ideology (6 works)