Taniguchi, Naoko

写真a

Affiliation

Faculty of Law, Department of Political Science (Mita)

Position

Professor
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Papers 【 Display / hide 】

  • Values in Crisis: Societal Value Change under Existential Insecurity

    Akaliyski P., Taniguchi N., Park J., Gehrig S., Tormos R.

    Social Indicators Research 171 ( 1 ) 1 - 21 2024.01

    ISSN  03038300

    　View Summary

    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on societies, with possible consequences for their fundamental values. Inglehart’s revised modernization theory links societal values to the underlying subjective sense of existential security in a given society (scarcity hypothesis), while also claiming that influences on values diminish once individuals reach adulthood (socialization hypothesis). An acute existential crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic offers a rare opportunity to test these assumptions. We analyze data from representative surveys conducted in Japan shortly before and after the onset of the pandemic. Remaining survey sample differences are statistically controlled via propensity score weighting and regression adjustment, while post-stratification weights allow conclusions about the Japanese population. In three sets of analyses, we reveal that the pandemic and the experienced psychological distress are negatively associated with emancipative and secular values, entailing a reversal to traditionalism, intolerance, and religiosity. First, we document a substantial decline in both emancipative and secular values in the first months of the pandemic compared to five months earlier. This decline remained stable a year later. Second, we find that value change was stronger in prefectures more severely affected by the pandemic. Third, individuals who experienced higher psychological distress emphasized the same values more strongly, as evident in two surveys from May 2020 and April 2021. In contrast to the socialization hypothesis, our study provides evidence that, under extraordinary environmental conditions, values can shift even within a negligibly short time period.

  • Only Right Makes Might? Center-Right Policy Competition among Major Japanese Parties after Electoral Reform

    Winkler C.G., Taniguchi N.

    Journal of East Asian Studies 22 ( 3 ) 503 - 523 2022.11

    ISSN  15982408

    　View Summary

    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 suggested that the reforms may have had significant impact on the strategies of political parties. Generally, SMD systems have been widely thought to favor larger parties, while PR systems are more beneficial to small and medium-sized parties. On the content side, larger parties seeking control of the government would try to win the support of large numbers of floating voters by campaigning on universal/programmatic policy appeals, as opposed to particularistic interests. In contrast, smaller parties would cater towards their core supporters' preferences. Previous studies have noted that the old SNTV system in Japan had produced results similar to PR systems (Reed 2003). Japan's electoral reform may have thus changed the strategy of large parties, which would need to win more seats in the SMDs to gain (or hold onto) power, while smaller parties have continued to try and win seats via the PR tier. Therefore, the reform provides valuable research material in so far as we can simultaneously observe different effects by the SMD and the PR systems on parties of different sizes.

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Papers, etc., Registered in KOARA 【 Display / hide 】

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Reviews, Commentaries, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

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Research Projects of Competitive Funds, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

  • An experimental study on political decision-making based on brain neuroscience

    2021.04
    -
    2024.03

    MEXT,JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Principal investigator

  • 世界から見た日本政治：政党公約の国際比較・時系列比較分析

    2015.04
    -
    2020.03

    MEXT,JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Principal investigator

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Courses Taught 【 Display / hide 】

  • TRUSTWORTHY INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS

    2024

  • THE LIBERAL ARTS OF LIFE

    2024

  • STATISTICS AND DATA PROCESSING FOR SYSTEM DESIGN

    2024

  • SOCIAL SURVEY METHODS

    2024

  • SEMINAR (DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE) 2

    2024

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