Party theory of parliamentary debate and the endogenous nature of parliamentary institutions: Theoretical implications from Japan’s diet

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
We add new insights to the party theory of parliamentary debate proposed in Proksch and Slapin’s The Politics of Parliamentary Debate by combining a quantitative replication analysis of floor speeches with a qualitative explanation of the endogenous transformation of two institutions mediating elections and parliamentary speech in the Japanese Diet. Although the House of Representatives in Japan used a single non-transferable vote system with particularly strong personal vote-seeking incentives, our analysis based on a new dataset shows that, contrary to the theory’s predictions, the pattern of speech activities among party leaders and backbenchers is close to that of Germany, which has a party-centered proportional representation system. Such seemingly contradictory results, however, can be consistently understood within the scope of the theory if we consider the patterns of endogenous change in the parliamentary system and party organization. These results highlight the potential for further development of the theory.

Marriage and Disadvantaged People: A Qualitative Inquiry of Inter-ethnic Marriages Among Low-income Families

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
This study employs a phenomenological approach to examine inter-ethnic marriages among low-income families in Srinagar, Kashmir, by looking at the factors that lead to these marriages and the ways in which they are negotiated. By doing so, the study’s goal is to put the spouses’ pre-marital experiences in context. Participants were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling techniques determined by theoretical sampling. The broader results of the study found that some males only seek such marriages when they fail to find a spouse from their own Kashmiri ethnic background because of their socially disadvantaged position like poverty, physical disability or being over-aged. Under these circumstances, the other option they consider is going for inter-ethnic marriages, which in the present context, entails seeking wives from outside mainland Kashmir belonging to other ethnic groups, while the reasons operating from the female spouse participants were widespread poverty and the desire to avoid dowry.

Explaining Anti-Asian Xenophobia to Chinese Audience: Coverage of Hate Incidents During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the PRC Press

China Report, Volume 59, Issue 3, Page 275-288, August 2023.
This article explores the Chinese media coverage of anti-Asian hate incidents in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. It sheds light on how xenophobia against Asians has been presented and discussed in the PRC press. Qualitative thematic analysis is used to identify key themes in the coverage of anti-Asian hate incidents in the two CCP-controlled newspapers: People’s Daily and Global Times. This article demonstrates that hate crimes against Asian Americans, an undoubtedly severe and complex problem for US society and politics, provide CCP-controlled media with a convenient opportunity to criticise the Other and focus on issues important to China’s identity. While blaming the discriminatory attitude in the USA towards Asians, the Chinese newspapers also use racialised stereotyping of Asian Americans as a ‘model minority’ and support the idea of Asians being alien to the USA. Remarkably, the Chinese media rarely devote special attention to victims of Chinese origin. Our observations contradict some earlier findings about discursive and reporting practices used in Chinese newspapers, that is, framing of violence and protests and selection of news sources, and showcase that these practices are pretty flexible and can adapt to better fit the particular context.
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Do electoral candidates reflect or select campaign issues? The influence of electoral manifestos on online communication

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
This article investigates the influence of electoral manifestos on the online communication of electoral candidates. Our study addresses electoral candidates’ conflict between party discipline and individual issue prioritisation. Building on the salience framework, we examine the thematic congruence between manifestos and online communication. Moreover, we test which issues are emphasised during the 2017 German federal election campaign. To this end, we created an original topic dictionary based on party manifestos. Applying the dictionary, we classify 143,969 tweets by 797 candidates. Our analyses demonstrate that manifestos shape the online communication of electoral candidates substantially. The findings show that electoral candidates of left–wing parties focus on core issues over time. Our results not only highlight the authority of party leadership, but also suggest that politicians do not tap the whole potential of online communication.