Steven Reed (political scientist)

Steven Robert Reed (born April 4, 1947) is a political scientist and Professor of Modern Government in the Faculty of Policy Studies at Chuo University in Tokyo. He has held positions at the University of Alabama and Harvard University, and he has served as a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, University of Washington, and Chiba University.

His main area of research is Japanese elections. Reed "calls himself an 'election junkie,'"[1] and he has gathered and published a critical data-set of Japanese elections after World War II. Reviewers of his books note his "well-deserved reputation for insight and clarity in his writing on Japanese elections," combining "quality scholarship and an accessible writing style."[2]

In the field of Comparative Politics, his most cited articles concern Duverger's Law, especially testing and extending this principle in light of data from Japan[3] and Italy.[4] In Making Votes Count (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Gary W. Cox credits Reed as "the first to note the 'M + 1 equilibrium'... in his article extending Duverger's Law to the Japanese case." He also engaged in related debates about the M + 1 equilibrium. Eric C. Browne and Dennis Patterson extended and interpreted this principle in terms of rational choice theory,[5] while their interpretation was contested by Gary W. Cox,[6] and Reed also argued strongly against "the idea of rational calculation as the mechanism that produced the observed behavior."[7]

Based on his experience of teaching about Japan in the United States, Reed has also written a book, Making Common Sense of Japan (Pittsburgh: Pitt Press, 1993), which "demystifies various stereotypes about Japanese culture while revealing the naivete of culture-driven arguments about Japanese political economy."[8] Read even beyond Political Science, one reviewer even noted that the book "rings down the curtain on what-Japan-is-like debates."[9]

Recently, Reed has taken up the understudied topic of Religion and Politics in Japan, writing about secularization in relation to the Asia Barometer survey and also co-authoring a groundbreaking book on Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō, Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan, which Helen Hardacre notes fills a gap since "research has not kept pace with the impact of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō, the political party that Sōka Gakkai founded in 1964, though both have exerted significant influence in Japanese politics for half a century."[10] Together with co-authors George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, and Levi McLaughlin, he here addresses "the party’s understudied history," and the Japan Times credits the book with filling a gap whereby "even though Japanese postwar politics cannot be understood without studying Komeito, there are few books about the party."[11]

Background

Born in 1947 in Indiana, Steven R. Reed received his BA from Wabash College, majoring in political science. He served in the US Army from 1970-1973, where he learned Chinese and Japanese. He completed his PhD in 1979 from the University of Michigan. He taught at the University of Alabama and Harvard University before moving to Japan in 1993 to take up a position at Chuo University. He teaches and writes in Japanese as well as English. His research on Japanese elections has been enhanced by "having lived, taught, and researched in Japan for many decades," where he is "able to collect seemingly all the material there is for analyzing important elections."[12] Many of his books and articles chronicle changes in the wake of the collapse of the old Japanese single-party system in 1993. He has one daughter, Annette Yoshiko Reed, who is a professor of Religious Studies at the New York University.

Published works (books and volumes)

References

  1. ↑ Klein, Axel (2005). "Review, Japanese Electoral Politics". Social Science Japan Journal. 8 (1): 157–160. JSTOR 193914. doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyi007.
  2. ↑ Christensen, Ray (2004). "Review, Japanese Electoral Politics". Journal of Japanese Studies. 30 (2): 569–572. JSTOR 193914. doi:10.1353/jjs.2004.0051.
  3. ↑ Reed, Steven R. (1990). "Structure and Behaviour: Extending Duverger's Law to the Japanese Case". British Journal of Political Science. 20 (3): 335–356. JSTOR 193914. doi:10.1017/S0007123400005871.
  4. ↑ Reed, Steven R. (2010). "Duverger's Law is Working in Italy". Comparative Political Studies. 34: 312–327. doi:10.1177/0010414001034003004.
  5. ↑ Browne, Eric; Patterson, Dennis (1999). "An Empirical Theory of Rational Nominating Behaviour Applied to Japanese District Elections". British Journal of Political Science. 29 (2): 259–289. JSTOR 194202.
  6. ↑ Cox, Gary W. (1999). "A Comment on Browne and Patterson's 'An Empirical Theory of Rational Nominating Behaviour Applied to Japanese District Elections'". British Journal of Political Science. 29 (3): 565–569. JSTOR 194151.
  7. ↑ Reed, Steven R. (2000). "What is Rational and Why Should We Care? A Comment on Browne and Patterson". British Journal of Political Science. 30 (3): 538–540. JSTOR 194008.
  8. ↑ Kohno, Masaru (1994). "Review, Making Common Sense of Japan". Pacific Affairs. 67: 123–124. doi:10.2307/2760138.
  9. ↑ Huffman, James (1995). "Review, Making Common Sense of Japan". Journal of Japanese Studies. 21: 211–214. doi:10.2307/133107.
  10. ↑ Hardacre, Helen (2016). "Review, Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan". Monumenta Nipponica. 71 (1). doi:10.1353/mni.2016.0032.
  11. ↑ Mizuho Aoki (November 20, 2014). "Komeito’s 50 years of losing its religion". The Japan Time. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  12. ↑ Klein, Axel (2005). "Review, Japanese Electoral Politics". Social Science Japan Journal. 8 (1): 157–160. JSTOR 193914. doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyi007.
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