Center Director: Yoshiaki Kobayashi (Professor, Faculty of Law)
Main Campus: Mita
Center Overview
The purpose of this center is to build a social science data archive, an urgent task for empirical analysis in the social sciences, and to make it widely available to contribute to researchers both in Japan and abroad.
Specifically, while supplementing the vast amount of data accumulated by the principal and co-investigators—including national census data by municipality mesh, election results by municipality, election pledges, laws and judicial precedents, minutes of the National Diet and all prefectural assemblies, and long-term opinion surveys—we will build a comprehensive data management system. This system will enable multilingual searches in seven languages (Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Indonesian, and Malay) to make it accessible to international students and researchers from abroad. Through this research, we aim for it to be widely used not only by political scientists in Japan and overseas but also by researchers in law, economics, sociology, and other fields as the largest database on Japanese politics, thereby serving to develop the infrastructure for Japanese studies. Furthermore, by integrating diverse data into a single data archive, we aim to acquire new knowledge through data fusion. As for the current demand for building a social science-related data archive, although empirical analysis of social phenomena has become widespread, further development requires the construction of a data archive where the necessary data for empirical analysis is accessible to everyone. The reasons for this are as follows:
(1) When submitting to top-tier international journals, data disclosure that allows for replication of the paper's findings is often a requirement.
(2) Data is often lost at the end of research periods or upon retirement, leading to inefficient use of research funds.
(3) Valuable data, such as municipal administrative documents from before municipal mergers and judicial precedents after a certain period, is being lost.
(4) Amid the rapid internationalization of academia and data archiving, the difficulty of accessing Japan-related data has become a contributing factor to the decline of Japanese studies overseas. In the natural sciences, projects such as the sharing of related data by academic societies and the backup of bio-genetic resources by the National Institute for Basic Biology have been successful. In the humanities, the project by the National Institute of Japanese Literature to build an international collaborative research network for historical Japanese texts is also progressing. In contrast, the social sciences, lacking Inter-University Research Institute Corporations, have so far only partially collected opinion survey data, and a comprehensive data archive including aggregate data has not been built. To solve these problems, the research objective of this center is to collect data on national censuses, election results, minutes of the National Diet and local assemblies, opinion surveys, and laws/judicial precedents, focusing on Japan but also including other countries; manage this data with an XML database or similar system; and build a data archive with a multilingual search function (Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Russian) to make it accessible to everyone.
(5) In collaboration with the Subcommittee on Political Process, Committee on Political Science, Science Council of Japan, Cabinet Office, and the MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) project "Construction and Expansion of a Political Data Archive," we held a symposium on the construction and expansion of a social science-related data archive (held on February 23, 2018) and presented our research findings both domestically and internationally.
Keywords and Main Research Themes
Data archive, democracy, multilingual search
FY2018 Business Plan
■ Regarding activities continuing from the previous fiscal year: background, rationale, and goals for continuation
Install the election results by municipality and candidate for the 48th House of Representatives general election of 2017.
Install the JES VI Wave 1 survey data conducted in conjunction with the 48th House of Representatives general election in FY2017.
Conduct the JES VI Wave 2 survey targeting voters nationwide in FY2018.
Continuing from FY2017, in collaboration with the Subcommittee on Political Process, Committee on Political Science, Science Council of Japan, Cabinet Office, and the MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) project "Construction and Expansion of a Political Data Archive," we will hold a symposium on the construction and expansion of a social science-related data archive (scheduled for February 2019) and present our research findings both domestically and internationally.
■ New activity goals and content for FY2018, and background for implementation
To consider survey methods that can replace face-to-face surveys, which lack responsiveness, we will compare three survey methods—face-to-face, mail, and internet—to clarify whether internet surveys or mail surveys have a smaller bias compared to face-to-face surveys, and whether that bias is statistically significant. If internet surveys have a smaller and not statistically significant bias compared to face-to-face surveys than mail surveys do, the superiority of internet surveys as an alternative to face-to-face surveys will be evident. On that basis, we will experiment to see to what extent the bias between internet and face-to-face surveys can be minimized by correcting for attribute bias in the collected samples. Specifically, this center will conduct an internet survey with questions similar to the face-to-face survey conducted in FY2018. Based on a comparison of the two,
If the difference from the face-to-face survey is due to sample bias, we will control the collected sample using a triple quota based on social attributes (gender, age, urban scale of residential area) to bring the distribution of social attributes in the collected sample as close as possible to that of the face-to-face survey. Also,
If the difference from the face-to-face survey is due to self-selection bias, we will use multi-stage sampling. Then, for each segment combining urban scale, gender, and age, we will estimate the bias in political consciousness (voter turnout, party support, political satisfaction, etc.) between the face-to-face and internet surveys, and between the face-to-face and mail surveys, using the data collected from the aforementioned internet and face-to-face surveys. As a result, if the bias between the two is within a statistically acceptable range, internet surveys will be established as an alternative survey method to face-to-face surveys. Finding the optimal sampling method for this purpose is an important objective of this research. Note that,
In case 1, the advantages of internet surveys will remain intact, and even in case 2, advantages such as implementation costs (excluding sampling costs) and duration will persist.
FY2018 Business Report
■ Implementation details for the fiscal year's business plan, and research results and degree of achievement
In FY2018, the plan was to:
Install the election results by municipality and candidate for the 48th House of Representatives general election of 2017.
Conduct the JES VI Wave 2 survey targeting voters nationwide in FY2018.
In collaboration with the Subcommittee on Political Process, Committee on Political Science, Science Council of Japan, Cabinet Office, and the MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) project "Construction and Expansion of a Political Data Archive," hold a symposium on the construction and expansion of a social science-related data archive and present the research findings both domestically and internationally.
Install the JES VI Wave 1 survey data conducted in conjunction with the 48th House of Representatives general election in FY2017. Of these, items 1 to 3 were achieved in FY2018 as planned.
Regarding item 4, due to requests from users of the Social Science Data Archive to make it accessible to researchers who are unfamiliar with the data archive's operation, we decided to release the data separately on the web, outside of this data archive.
In addition, using the expenses for item 4, we conducted an opinion survey of resident voters in Okinawa Prefecture during the Okinawa gubernatorial election held in September 2018, which was not in the original plan. Based on the achievement of these business plans, and as an alternative to conventional external indicators of democracy,
Regarding the mandate function of public opinion in a democracy, when examining whether "voters decide their voting behavior based on the pledges presented by politicians (issue voting)," it was found that in Japan, the influence of the supporting party and cabinet approval rating is greater than that of election pledges. In the United States, an increase in defense spending and opposition to abortion increase votes for the Republican Party, while an increase in livelihood support and acceptance of abortion increase votes for the Democratic Party. In South Korea, regional factors have a large impact, and when controlling for the supporting party, election pledges have little effect on voting behavior, apart from the North Korea issue. Overall, it cannot be said that "citizens select policy elites based on the pledges presented by competing policy elites (issue voting)." Next,
Regarding the representative function of democracy, when we examined whether elected politicians conduct their Diet activities (voting in plenary sessions, speaking in plenary sessions and committees) based on their election pledges, we found that in Japan, looking at the consistency distribution between the 2009 House of Representatives election pledges and Diet votes (2009–2012) on items with for/against positions (the horizontal axis is the degree of consistency, the vertical axis is the number of Diet members), many members show little consistency. In the United States as well, ruling party members have a lower degree of consistency than opposition party members. However, only in the Federal House of Representatives is the consistency of members running in the next election higher than that of other members. In South Korea, the more times a member has been elected, the lower their consistency. Ruling party members have a higher degree of consistency than opposition party members. Overall, it cannot be said that "elected policy elites debate in the Diet and form policy based on their pledges (consistency between election pledges and Diet activities)." Furthermore,
Regarding the retrospective evaluation function of democracy, we clarified whether "voters select their voting choice by evaluating the policies implemented by the government (retrospective voting)" by examining whether the degree of consistency between election pledges and statements or votes on bills in the Diet affects their election/defeat or vote share in the next election. The results revealed that in Japan, no correlation was found either in "the consistency between 2005 House of Representatives election pledges and Diet statements/votes (2005–2009) and the vote share in the 2009 House of Representatives election" or in "the consistency between 2005 House of Representatives election pledges and Diet statements/votes (2005–2009) and the outcome (win/loss) in the 2009 House of Representatives election." Similarly, no correlation was found in "the consistency between 2009 House of Representatives election pledges and Diet statements/votes (2010–2012) and the vote share in the 2012 House of Representatives election" or in "the consistency between 2009 House of Representatives election pledges and Diet statements/votes (2010–2012) and the outcome (win/loss) in the 2012 House of Representatives election." What influences the outcome and vote share in the next election is the candidate's strength, such as their vote share in the previous election and the number of times they have been elected, as well as their party affiliation. In the United States as well, examining the relationship between "the consistency of 2004 election pledges with statements/votes in Congress (2005–2006) and the vote share/outcome in the next election (2006 House election, 2006/08/10 Senate elections)" reveals a surprisingly weak correlation. On the other hand, the vote share in the previous election and party affiliation influence the next election. In South Korea, examining the relationship between "the consistency of 2008 election pledges with statements/votes in the National Assembly (2008–2010) and the vote share/outcome in the 2012 National Assembly election" also shows no correlation. Overall, the consistency between election pledges at the time of election and subsequent statements/votes in the Diet does not affect the results of the next election, allowing Japanese Diet members to freely make statements and vote on bills that contradict their election pledges without worrying about the next election. In conclusion, it has become clear that it cannot be said that "citizens select the next policy elites based on their evaluation of the policies formed by the policy elites they previously selected (retrospective voting)."
■ Number of published papers (count and major journal names), number of conference presentations (domestic/international), and achievements in social contributions such as events (date, location)
1. Number of published papers: 21. Major publications:
Kobayashi, Yoshiaki. "Development of a Social Science Data Archive." "Trends in the Sciences," pp. 56–72, 2018/07.
Kobayashi, Yoshiaki, & Kamahara, Yuta, "Changing Legislature, Changing Politics: Quotas, Electoral Systems, and Political Representation." Gill Steel, ed. Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan. University of Michigan Press.
Kenneth McElwain, 2018. "Constitutional Revision in the 2017 Election", In Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, Ethan Scheiner, and Daniel Smith, eds. Japan Decides 2017: The Japanese General Election. Palgrave Macmillan
Kamahara, Yuta. Etc., 2018. "Studying Malapportionment Using α-Divergence" Mathematical Social Sciences, 93: 77-89.
Takeshi Iida, "Media Coverage and the Association between Japanese Perceptions of South Korea and North Korea." Japanese Political Science Review 4: pp.1-25, 2018
Taniguchi, Naoko. Experimental Methods of Political Science, In Hirokazu Takizawa ed., Diversity of Experimental Methods in Economics, Springer, 2019/03/31
2. Number of conference presentations: 35.
Kobayashi, Yoshiaki, Malfunctioning Representative Democracy, Amoy University, China, 2018/11/26
Kobayashi, Yoshiaki, Changing Legislature, Changing Politics Quotas, Electoral Systems, and Political Representation, 2018 Asian Electoral Studies Conference, 2018/10/27
Kobayashi, Yoshiaki, Quality of Democracy, International Symposium of Electoral Studies 2018/10/26
Takeshi Iida, " The Alliance Dilemma in the Public Mind: A Survey Experiment in Japan." World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Austin, Texas, 2018/07/24
Kenneth McElwain, National Security and Human Rights: Japan's Constitutional Revision Debate, 2018/05/04, Leiden University・Netherlands
Convergence versus Divergence of Mass-Elite Political Cleavages: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Innovations, 2018/06/07, German Institute of Global and Area Studies・Germany
Kenneth McElwain, "What Do Japanese Elites vs. Voters Want from Their Constitution?", 2018 International Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2018/07/22, Brisbane・Australia Kenneth McElwain, "Generational Differences in Economic Perceptions: Postwar Japan in Historical Context", 2018 European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, 2018/08/2, Hamburg・Germany
Kenneth McElwain, "Constitutional Origins in Asia: Chronology, Proximity, or History?" 2018 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2018/09/01, Boston, USA Takeshi Iida. 2019."Reference to Great Presidents and Support for Populist Claims in the U.S." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Brisbane, Australia, 2019/01/18.
Naoko Taniguchi etc., The Times They are Changing in Japan: Electoral Policies between Change and Stability, the 25th International Political Science Association World Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 2018/07/22
Kamahara, Yuta. "Who Redistricts Determines How It Redistricts: Estimating the Causal Effect of Independent and Effective Delimitation Authority on Malapportionment." Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2018/04/05
Kamahara, Yuta. "A Spatial Analysis of the Environmental Effect of Warfare." Prepared for the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA,
3. Events and other social contributions: 7.
Iida, Takeshi. "U.S. Midterm Election Results and Public Opinion Polls." Japan National Press Club, 2018/11/14.
Kono, Takeshi. "Politics and Energy." Lecture at the Consumer University Course, sponsored by the Consumer Science Center, 2019/01/23.
Taniguchi, Naoko. "Symposium on the Revitalization of Local Assemblies 2018." Panel discussion sponsored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Sheraton Miyako Hotel Tokyo, 2018/11/19.
■ Particular achievements through the center's activities
Previously, our census data included Japan (at the basic municipality and mesh unit levels), South Korea (at the basic municipality level), and Russia (at the basic municipality level). We have now collected and installed census data for China (at the municipality, province, and city levels) and Taiwan (at the basic municipality level). Additionally, for South Korea, we added the most recent 2010 and 2015 census data (both at the basic municipality level). This has made it possible to conduct quantitative analysis in China and Taiwan studies, which were previously dominated by qualitative analysis such as historical research. Specifically, we conducted quantitative analysis on the above data regarding pressing issues in present-day China, such as regional economic disparities and the aging society with a declining birthrate, and formulated proposals for practical solutions to current problems. This has led to the development of research through a fusion of humanities and sciences, adding quantitative analysis to the traditionally history-focused China studies.
Furthermore, this has enabled us to welcome many international students from China as applicants to the Keio University Graduate School of Law, including executives of state-owned enterprises.
The number of prospective students from Taiwan has also increased. In addition, we have been invited to give lectures at universities such as Xiamen University in China and Seoul National University in South Korea, contributing to Keio University's international PR in various ways. In addition, by using the various data installed this fiscal year and in previous years, many graduate students have obtained doctoral and master's degrees and have found employment as faculty members and researchers at universities in Japan and overseas, thus contributing to the training of young researchers.
Project Members
Principal Investigator
Yoshiaki Kobayashi
ProfessorFaculty of LawTakeshi Kono
ProfessorFaculty of Law