Redistribution under proportional representation

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between proportional representation voting system and the size of government via its effects on political equilibrium. The multiparty spatial competition on tax-transfer policy and the post-electoral coalition formation are examined. The implemented policy does not necessarily reflect the median voters preference, ranging from laissez-faire to a redistributive economy according to income distribution. It can even reflect the preference of the lower income class in spite of equal income distribution, leading to the large-scale redistribution. Our results can explain the heterogeneous sizes of government observed among European proportional representation democracies.The author is grateful for helpful comments to Masahiro Ashiya, Nobuaki Hori, Moriki Hosoe, Toshihiro Ihori, Tatsuro Kuroda, Yasuhiro Sato, and seminar participants at the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, and Nagoya University.     

Parties with Policy Preferences and Uncertainty over Voter Behavior

The equilibrium redistributive policy proposals of two parties with policy preferences are studied. Each party’s ideal policy coincides with that of citizens having a particular income level, and the party’s utility function reflects its attitude to the trade-off between the choice of preferred policy and the likelihood of victory. When parties face uncertainty about citizens’ abstention from voting, divergent equilibrium proposals are derived which are more moderate than their contrasting ideal policies. Political equilibria under different prior beliefs on abstention are then compared. It is shown that a lower likelihood of abstention in a particular income group induces both parties to make proposals catering to that group, in equilibrium.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Aging in rural Japan--limitations in the current social care policy

Owing to equal and increased opportunities for education and employment, today's trend in Japanese marriages is characterized by late and less frequent marriage. This paper discusses unavoidable diversity in rural families to point out the anticipated consequences of aging in rural areas and to discuss limitations in current public social care policies. Specifically, the averaged proportion of never-married and single persons at ages 45 to 49 and 50 to 54 in legally recognized depopulated cities, towns, and villages in Japan is calculated to illustrate the expected diversity in families in rural depopulated areas. It also illustrates the need for future studies to develop better social care policies for increasing numbers of single caregivers and single elders.     

Aging in Rural Japan—Limitations in the Current Social Care Policy

Owing to equal and increased opportunities for education and employment, today's trend in Japanese marriages is characterized by late and less frequent marriage. This paper discusses unavoidable diversity in rural families to point out the anticipated consequences of aging in rural areas and to discuss limitations in current public social care policies. Specifically, the averaged proportion of never-married and single persons at ages 45 to 49 and 50 to 54 in legally recognized depopulated cities, towns, and villages in Japan is calculated to illustrate the expected diversity in families in rural depopulated areas. It also illustrates the need for future studies to develop better social care policies for increasing numbers of single caregivers and single elders.     

Limitations for measuring religion in a different cultural context - the case of Japan

The article points out the limitations in surveys measuring religiosity and spirituality using the measures developed in Christian or Western contexts. Japanese people think of religion (shūkyō) as revealed religion such as Christianity that has specific doctrinal belief and faith. Through their history of religious regulation, Japanese people came to consider themselves "non-religious" as a way of survival, not to be punished by political authorities and not to be stigmatized in their community. Thus they tend to answer that they consider themselves "non-religious" in surveys, while performing ritual performances for their ancestors in Buddhist temples and Buddhist altars not only to thank ancestors but also to ease the psychological fear people have toward muenbotoke, restless ancestors who have no legitimate offspring to take care of them. To extend the study of spirituality or religiousness in the Japanese context, qualitative studies are necessary not to misinterpret religiousness and spirituality in Japanese context.     

Conditional love; representations of migrant work in Canadian newsprint media

In Canada, the mainstream newsprint media contains dominant discourses of multicultural neo-liberalism. This paper explores how migrant domestic workers and migrant farm workers, as well as their citizen-employers, are represented within these discourses. Examined are the ways in which certain emotions are expressed and how these expressions shape certain conditions for migrant workers. A common tendency is that citizens, including citizen-employers of migrant workers, accept, and even claim to love migrant domestic workers and farm workers, so long as they exercise so-called good and obedient behaviour. In cases where migrant workers display any type of resistance, or rejection of the ideal multicultural, loving subject, the loving sentiment is absent. The love is therefore conditional. Lacking in the newsprint media are accounts of the historical and current realities of migrant work as an unfree form of labour. As a result, news coverage neglects a genuine call for solidarity with migrant workers. This paper seeks to deconstruct dominant representations of the subject and the other as a way to challenge them, and make way for anti-oppressive methods of representation.     

Non-native plants are a seasonal pollen source for native honeybees in suburban ecosystems

In urban and suburban ecosystems, biodiversity can depend on various non-native plant species, including crop plants, garden plants and weeds. Non-native plants may help to maintain biodiversity by providing a source of forage for pollinators in these ecosystems. However, the contribution of plants in urban and agricultural areas to ecosystem services has often been underestimated in biodiversity assessments. In this study, we investigated the pollen sources of native honeybees (Apis cerana) in an arboretum containing native trees and urban and agricultural plants in a suburban landscape. We surveyed the flowering tree species planted inside the arboretum, which were potential pollen sources. The number of potential pollen-source species of native trees peaked in June and July and decreased after August. We collected A. cerana pollen balls every month and identified plant species of pollen in the collected pollen balls using DNA barcoding. In total, we identified 29 plant species from A. cerana pollen balls. The probability of A. cerana using pollen from urban and agricultural plants was higher in July and August than in June. A. cerana collected pollen forages from native tree species (53%), but also gathered pollen from crop plants (13%), garden trees (19%) and native and non-native weeds (14%); the predominant pollen sources in September and October were the garden tree Ulmus parvifolia and the non-native weed Solidago altissima. We found that native honeybees used plants from a variety of habitats including non-native plants to compensate for apparent seasonal shortages of native tree sources in suburban ecosystems. Our results highlight the importance of assessments of both positive and negative roles of non-native plants in urbanized ecosystems to improve biodiversity conservation.