Published papers

The link between actual government performance and citizens’ performance perceptions has been controversial. Given the prevalence of negativity bias, however, the link between bad performance and citizens’ perceptions could appear to be strong. To explore this theoretically unconfirmed link, this study uses a quasi-experiment that contrasts a Japanese town in fiscal crisis, involving tax increases and service cuts, with a control village not in fiscal crisis. Using a difference-in-differences analysis with a careful retrospective pretest, it finds negative effects of the fiscal crisis on citizens’ process perception, while it shows no effects on citizens’ service satisfaction and trust in the mayor, council, and administrators. The study further finds positive associations between citizens’ performance perceptions and civic engagement. It discusses these findings to identify the boundary conditions in which a bad performance–negative perception link is likely to appear.

行政学者が統一されたパラダイムを志向するのではなく、行政の多様性を受容するとき、方法論の多様性も受け入れることになる。行政学における方法論の中心的命題は、学際的な研究主題に伴う手法の多様性を受容しつつ、如何にそれぞれの手法を厳密化させるかにある。本稿の目的は、日本の行政研究における方法論の現状を分析し、方法論の厳密化と多元的共存に向けた提言を行うことである。本稿は和文行政学術誌２誌に過去10年掲載された論文139本と、英文学術誌主要2誌に過去5年掲載された論文503本の方法論の傾向を、議論、概念・測定、分析の分類を用いて内容分析する。分析結果は、和文学術誌において議論を目的とする論文が73%を占めるのに対し、英文学術誌においては分析を目的とする論文が80%を占める対照的な傾向を示した。また、日本において、著者の年代が高いほど議論の割合が高く、査読有の論文である場合議論の割合が低くなることも明らかになった。これらの結果をもとに、本稿は、日本の行政学における議論と分析の相互補完の必要性を論じ、 (1)測定を可能にする概念の明確化、(2)分析手続きの透明化、(3)方法論及び手法に関する研究の促進、の３つを提言する。

This article assesses the politics and partial success of Congress in repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, with particular attention to lobbying by governors. Most Republican governors behaved as members of a vertical partisan coalition supporting the national party rather than defending insurance coverage in their states. But the activities of a significant minority of these governors impeded ACA retrenchment. We also examine the role of executive federalism, highlighting how state responses to Trump administrative initiatives affected ACA durability. The Trump administration drew on waivers, executive orders, funding decisions, administrative rules, the social media, and other executive branch tools to sabotage the health insurance exchanges and undercut Medicaid. As of 2018, the Trump administration actions had contributed to some erosion in exchange coverage, but far less than many had anticipated. The degree to which Medicaid waivers encouraged by the Trump administration will precipitate enrollment declines in that program remains to be seen.

In this article, we introduce and showcase how social media can be used to implement experiments in public administration research. To do so, we pre-registered a placebo-controlled field experiment and implemented it on the social media platform Facebook. The purpose of the experiment was to examine whether government funding to nonprofit organizations has an effect on charitable donations. Theories on the interaction between government funding and charitable donations stipulate that government funding of nonprofit organizations either decreases (crowding-out), or increases (crowding-in) private donations. To test these competing theoretical predictions, we used Facebook’s advertisement facilities and implemented an online field experiment among 296,121 Facebook users nested in 600 clusters. Through the process of cluster-randomization, groups of Facebook users were randomly assigned to different nonprofit donation solicitation ads, experimentally manipulating information cues of nonprofit funding. Contrary to theoretical predictions, we find that government funding does not seem to matter; providing information about government support to nonprofit organizations neither increases nor decreases people’s propensity to donate. We discuss the implications of our empirical application, as well as the merits of using social media to conduct experiments in public administration more generally. Finally, we outline a research agenda of how social media can be used to implement public administration experiments.

Drawing on Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, this study aims to reveal citizens’ response mechanisms to the decline of municipality caused by municipal management failure. Using the case of the Japanese town Ohwani in fiscal crisis, this study examines the effects of fiscal reform, which involve tax increases, service cuts, and political conflicts, on citizens’ exit intention and voice activities. For this purpose, this study makes a quasi-experimental framework that contrasts Ohwani to Inakadate, a control village not under fiscal reform which has similar socio-demographic features. The estimation approach is a difference-in-differences design with a time difference enabled by a careful retrospective measurement. Data were collected from 600 randomly sampled citizens of Ohwani and Inakadate with a response rate of 45%. This study finds that citizens under fiscal reform are more likely to consider exit, while the level of citizens’ voice activities is unaffected by fiscal reform. In addition, social capital factors show a loyalty function that encourages voice activities as the covariates, though those associations with exit intention are weak. This study provides initial evidence for citizens’ response mechanisms to municipal decline and identifies keys to successful recuperation from decline.

Although the percentage of women in Japan’s workforce has increased substantially over the last 30 years, gender inequality in terms of income and position has persisted. A major problem is the lack of consciousness around gender inequality in society. Our study aims to explore the factors, particularly the Japanese style of management and cultural norms, that prevent workers in the public and private sectors from recognizing gender inequality. The Working Life Survey data collected from 1999 to 2011 were used for empirical analysis. The research finds that while there are no significant differences in the perceptions of gender inequality between public workers and their private counterparts, the factors influencing their consciousness of gender inequality do differ. The article also discusses the implications of our findings for efforts to promote gender equality throughout the Japanese workforce.