Hirofumi Miwa

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. To address these concerns, we compare symbolic and operational ideology as measured using common cross-national items and country-specific items. We conducted public opinion surveys before and after national elections in seven Asian and Western countries. Our analyses reveal that (i) country-specific measures of ideology are generally more stable over time than common measures, (ii) country-specific symbolic and operational ideology are more strongly associated with each other than their common counterparts, (iii) respondents tend to have a greater understanding of country-specific ideological labels than common ones, (iv) country-specific measures are generally more predictive of vote choice in elections, and (v) ideological extremity, as measured by these two types of indicators, shows different correlations with respondents’ attitudes toward democratic values. These findings suggest that researchers should use country-specific measures of ideology in comparative public opinion research.

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 for 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 of selectable candidates from one to three in multi-member local elections. The results revealed that, under the multiple-vote condition, respondents were more likely to alternate by gender, particularly in their second- and third-ranked choices, supporting the theory that multiple voting fosters more diverse representation. Nevertheless, men often emerged as the first-ranked choice, giving them an overall advantage at the aggregate level.

Previous studies examining the demand side of democratic backsliding have focussed on partisan motivation as the leading cause of voters' acceptance of executive aggrandizement. A recent study by Grossman et al. [2022. “The Majoritarian Threat to Liberal Democracy.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 9 (1): 36–45] argues that a substantial proportion of voters grant popularly elected politicians considerable latitude and that such a majoritarian understanding of democracy is the driving force behind democratic erosion. This paper compares these two perspectives using an online public opinion survey conducted in Japan, one of the least politically polarized democracies worldwide, comprising both an observational component and a preregistered survey experiment. Analysis of the survey data reveals that respondents were more inclined to support executive power grabs when these were framed as aligning with citizens' views in policy formulation. In addition, we estimated that a substantial subset of respondents was classifiable as “election supremacists,” meaning that they supported such power grabs and regarded them as democratic regardless of the partisanship of the chief executive. This paper contributes to the literature by presenting a new case wherein the public's majoritarian understanding of democracy may pose a threat to democratic politics.

In coalition governments, while parties need to compromise with their partners to govern together, they also need to differentiate from the partners to please their supporters. How do coalition parties reconcile compromises with differentiation? We argue that coalition parties, especially junior partners, adjust their strategies to compromise or differentiate themselves from their partners depending on the level of public support for their partners. Parties tend to differentiate from partners when partners receive lower public support, and compromise with partners when they enjoy higher public support. To test this argument, we analyzed parliamentary speeches by legislators from a junior coalition partner in Japan. We applied a dynamic linear model to the results of machine learning text classification of legislators’ speeches. Our results show that as the senior party’s public support rate falls, the speech styles of legislators from the junior partner increasingly diverge from those of the senior partner’s legislators.

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 of selectable candidates from one to three in multimember local elections. The results revealed that, under the multiple-vote condition, respondents were more likely to alternate by gender, particularly in their second- and third-ranked choices, supporting the theory that multiple voting fosters more diverse representation. Nevertheless, men often emerged as the first-ranked choice, giving them an overall advantage at the aggregate level.