Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access published online on June 21, 2007
Social Science Japan Journal, doi:10.1093/ssjj/jym035
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The Survival of Prime Ministers and the House of Councillors*
MASUYAMA Mikitaka is a professor of political science at Keio University in Tokyo. He is the author of Gikai Seido to Nihon Seiji (Agenda Power in the Japanese Diet) (Bokutakusha, 2003). His publications also include ‘Japan: The Prime Minister and the Japanese Diet’ (with B. Nyblade), Journal of Legislative Studies 10(2/3): 250–262; ‘Is the Japanese Diet Consensual?’, Journal of Legislative Studies 6(4): 9–28; and ‘Agenda Power in the Japanese House of Representatives’ (with G. Cox and M. McCubbins), Japanese Journal of Political Science 1: 1–21. He can be reached at Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan, or by e-mail at masuyama{at}law.keio.ac.jp
In this article, I try to illustrate how the power balance in the House of Councillors affects the survival of the Japanese prime minister (PM). My analysis relies on the statistical techniques of duration modeling, which can be used to explore the effects of independent variables on the occurrence and timing of an event of interest. By applying a discrete-time duration model on the data set of postwar Japanese PMs, I show that the probability of a PM to resign critically depends on his ability to gain support in and outside the Diet, and that Prime Minister Abe Shinz
is likely to stay in power regardless of the result of the upcoming 2007 national election, as long as his popularity remains at the current level of 30% or higher.
* This article is based on a paper presented at the international symposium, sponsored by the Center for Asia-Pacific Arena Studies, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 15–16 March 2007.