Date of Award
Fall 2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
McCall Rosenbluth, Frances
Abstract
This essay presents three essays on representative democracy and its consequences. The first essay, "The Asymmetric Negative Turnout Effects of Party Fragmentation: One-Party Dominance in Japan Through Opposition Weakness'" addresses the puzzle of why an unpopular party wins in the context of contemporary Japan. The essay provides a theory of the mechanism between opposition fragmentation and opposition weakness through decreased turnout for opposition supporters. I argue that under Japan's parliamentary system and Mixed-Member Majoritarian rules, party fragmentation decreases turnout for those who perceive elections as methods of choosing which party shall rule. The potential voter who derives utility from the act of voting to choose the party in power will expect lower benefits to voting if the opposition has fragmented to the point that it becomes difficult for the voter to believe that any one opposition party could unseat the incumbent. The hypothesis is heterogenous effects of opposition coordination on turnout, which I test in a survey experiment (n = 4,945) fielded in the pre-electoral period of the House of Representative's October 2021 election. The results follow expectations of opposition coordination (relative to fragmentation), decreasing respondent estimations of their turning out to vote in the then-upcoming election for individuals with strong preferences for executive representation and those who support the main opposition party. The second essay, "Figurines and Doyennes: The Selection of Female Ministers in Autocracies and Democracies,'" co-authored with Jacob Nyrup and Stuart Bramwell, examines the dimension of gender-equal representation in cabinets around the world. Though governments historically have been a men's club, women are increasingly gaining access. We argue that democratic institutions are important drivers of women's inclusion in government. This stems from the rationales of autocratic versus democratic leaders when selecting ministers. Autocrats fear a coup by inner-circle elites, who are mostly men, incentivizing them to assign ministerial positions as co-optation. In contrast, democratic leaders are accountable to the citizenry through elections, and have to satisfy increasing demands for gender equality. Furthermore, we argue that it is historical experience of democracy that matters, rather than the level, as it takes time to create an even playing field, change attitudes, and generate trust in democracy. To support this, we contribute with the first study using the largest dataset on women's access to cabinets, namely WhoGov. Overall, we show that democracy is a process that enables women to gradually enter the highest echelons of power. The third essay, "Amakudata: A Dataset of Bureaucratic Revolving Door Hires,'" co-authored with Trevor Incerti, Sayumi Miyano, and Diana Stanescu introduces data measuring the consequences of government waste and politicization of the bureaucracy in Japan. Political economists have long speculated about the effects of connections between bureaucracies and the private sector. However, data tracing flows of civil servants from the bureaucracy to the private sector remains rare. This article presents a new dataset, Amakudata, which contains individual-level data of virtually all Japanese bureaucrats retiring into positions outside of the bureaucracy from 2009 to 2019. We first present how the dataset was created and validated. Next, we describe what the data illuminates about the revolving door in Japan and beyond. We conclude by discussing how the data can be used to investigate empirical and causal questions in diverse subjects such as corruption and regulatory capture; procurement, pork, and government waste; bureaucratic representation; and international political economy.
Recommended Citation
Yamagishi, Hikaru, "Three Essays on Representative Democracy" (2022). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 859.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/859
