John Ishiyama

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• PhD
• University Distinguished Professor and Department Chair at University of North Texas

What is the relationship between drug violence and political attitudes? In this article, we test the relationship between violence and trust using both individual and municipality data for Mexico from 2006 to 12. Using multilevel analysis, we find no support for the thesis that individual experiences with criminal violence drives trust, nor do we f...

Objective In this article, we empirically examine the relationship between personalism and employing purging or cooptation as regime elite management techniques. Much of the literature suggests that there is a close relationship between personalism and the use of violence to maintain power, and thus suggests a connection between personalism and vio...

Much has been made of Wagner Private Military Company’s (PMC) activities in Africa, and many have warned of Russia’s growing influence on the continent and the implications that this has for the West. But little work has been done to examine how African publics have reacted to these activities, even though one of the purposes of Wagner’s activities...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Do experiences with civil war violence affect an individual's level of social trust? The literature on this topic suggests that being a victim of violence or being involved in violence has a profound effect on an individual's political behavior in the new host country. However, what has not been explored is how experiences with civil war and violen...

What are the longer-term consequences of premigratory experiences on the political attitudes of those who migrate out of extremely authoritarian regimes? In this paper, using data from an original survey of North Korean defectors in South Korea conducted in 2022, we examine whether attitudes on executive power, self-sacrifice for the sake of the na...

In this chapter, I discuss various strategies for mentoring graduate students, particularly in terms of teaching them the research process and how to get published. I focus on the stages of the mentoring process—from first-year students to those taking comprehensive examinations—and developing a dissertation topic. Further, I emphasize how learning...

Despite concerns about the stability of the early days of the Kim Jong Un regime, he has firmly established his control over the existing system. How was he able to achieve this? Important insights are provided by Kim Jong Un’s patter of official appointments, particularly involving the members of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea...

In this essay I outline what I see as the challenges, trends and opportunities facing political science after the pandemic. In particular, the essay focuses on the importance of political science education in addressing the challenges to democracy we now face, and the need to rethink political science education at all levels, k-12, undergraduate an...

There has been much recent scholarly interest in the activities of China in Africa. Scholars have noted that China presents an alternative developmental model, that challenges the “Washington Consensus.” To what extent is this model attractive to African publics, and to whom is it attractive? Using the 2016 wave 6 Afrobarometer data, as well as dat...

In recent years, there has been a considerable amount of work on the transformation of formerly rebel groups into political parties. However, there is little work that examines the organizational types of parties that formerly armed groups become. Are these parties more likely to exhibit certain organizational characteristics when compared to other...

In recent years several scholars have argued that there has been a weakening of the power of national legislatures. This paper addresses two empirical questions: Has global legislative power indeed declined (as has been claimed)? And if so, what factors might explain where legislative power has declined and where it has not? Using data from the Var...

In this article, I examine the connection between ethnic federalism and the development of ethnic rather than national identities. The literature suggests such ethnification can lead to conflict and collapse of federal states—does such ethnification occur and is it attributable to ethnofederalism? Using recent data from the Afrobarometer for Ethiop...

Background Research regarding party behavior has often be understood through one of two models, (1) the Downsian proximity model, which supposes parties will change positions in order to be most competitive, and (2) the issue salience model, which understands parties to emphasize issues on which it is more competitive. Objectives This study produc...

Introduction In this paper, we examine how premigratory experiences shape the willingness of immigrants to engage with the political system of the host country. Methods Using the Immigrant Citizens’ Survey, a study of over 6600 immigrants in six European countries, and building upon previous work we test whether an immigrant who comes from an auth...

In this paper, we examine whether former rebel parties are more likely to engage in electoral violence than other parties. Using an original data set of 236 parties in 18 countries in Sub Saharan Africa (of which 47 were former rebel groups) from 1990-2018, we find that former rebel parties in Africa are more likely to engage in electoral violence...

In this paper we examine whether opposition parties, particularly the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), can promote transition in the electoral authoritarian regime in Russia. We use the example of the National Action Party's (PAN) evolution as an "official opposition" party in Mexico and discuss how its campaign strategy and party...

In this article, we examine the growth of ethnopolitical divisions in Ethiopia. Using recently released Afrobarometer data and comparing current levels of ethnonational identity with previous data released in 2013, we find an erosion in support for a national Ethiopian identity, and rapidly growing ethnonational identities among Oromo and Tigrayan...

Russia has become increasingly assertive in its foreign relations with surrounding states—especially toward those states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Although much attention has been paid to the Russian reassertion in the near abroad, very little work has been done on how the citizens of former Soviet states see their state’s place...

In this paper, I examine whether ethnopolitical identities have grown in Ethiopia since the introduction of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reforms in 2018, using the most recent Ethiopian survey data from the World Values Survey (wave 5, from 2007 and wave 7, from 2020). I find that although there remains a general popular commitment to a national (Et...

Ethiopia is currently undergoing a significant political transition, a transition that began with the ascendency of Abiy Ahmed as a new chairman of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and Prime Minister of the country. In a span of a little over a year, bold political reforms have been introduced. At the same time, these r...

Where do newly formed rebel parties run their candidates for local elections? Most work on rebel parties examines the factors that explain rebel party success on the national level. However, few studies look at where rebel parties run candidates in elections and at the local level. We develop a dataset to analyze the activity of FARC (Fuerzas Alter...

This book chapter analyzes the politics of fiscal federalism implemented by the 'panista' regime throughout its period of government, in order to elucidate if it followed a strategical logic to improve the electoral positioning of the PAN before the Mexican electorate.

Objective Do premigratory experiences shape the perceived need for racial and/or ethnic political representation? Although there is much literature that has examined whether a “pan‐ethnic” Asian‐American identity is emerging, we test the effects of premigration experiences with ethnic violence on the perceived need for descriptive representation am...

In this paper we empirically reexamine the debate over the conflict reducing properties of inclusive political institutions. We examine the purported violence reducing effects of proportional representation (PR) electoral systems, parliamentarism, and federalism, conditioning their effects on ethnic fractionalization and whether a country is confli...

How do autocrats interact with authoritarian elites? This is a question that has gained increasing scholarly attention over the past decade. In this article, using the case of North Korea we develop a set of theoretical expectations for “elite churn” or changes in the composition of the elite (either in terms of promotions, demotions, or new entran...

What explains receptivity of citizens in the post-communist world to Russian influence? popular attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe about Russia's role in the world and seeks to find answers to the question: does ideology or economic factors most influence support for Russia in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe? We use survey data from...

In this paper, I explore the relationship between organized crime and the features of political party systems, particularly countries that underwent economic and political transition. The paper argues that during periods retreat from authoritarian rule, when the state is weakened and when economic hardships occur, there are mutually beneficial conn...

Life after Dictatorship: Authoritarian Successor Parties Worldwide. Edited by James Loxton and Scott Mainwaring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 405p. $105.00 cloth, $36.99 paper. - Volume 17 Issue 4 - John T. Ishiyama

The chapter focuses on the development of political communication and campaigning in Russia. It starts with a brief overview of the basic characteristics of the political and party system. Then, it introduces the main laws and rules the campaigners must comply with. After that, the author describes the evolution of communication tactics and techniq...

In this paper, I examine the factors that are associated with the adoption of a formalized undergraduate research program in political science. What kinds of institutions and departments are more or less likely to adopt a formalized undergraduate research program? One the one hand, one might assume that such a program appears in departments that ar...

Objective Is democracy necessary for good governance? Although it is often assumed that there is a natural connection between democracy and governance, there is remarkably little empirical work that tests this relationship cross‐nationally. Methods In this article, I first focus on distinguishing aspects of good governance and separate them concep...

In this article, we formulate a theoretical framework that examines the “internal” organizational characteristics of ethnic minority political parties, the characteristics of the ethnic minority group they purport to represent, and the external environment that these parties face, to explain the political success of these parties. As an empirical p...

In this paper, we examine whether former rebel parties are more likely to engage in electoral violence when compared to other parties. In many ways because of combat experience and a trained cadre of former fighters, it may be the case that former rebel parties are more likely to rely on violent acts in order to pursue electoral objectives, particu...

In this paper, we examine the factors that explain the political success of former rebel parties in electoral competition after the end of civil wars. We develop a theoretical framework derived from the existing literature on the “new” political parties. This literature emphasizes three dimensions that have been cited as affecting party success – (...

How does the circle of inner elites evolve over time in dictatorships? We draw on theories of authoritarian power-sharing to shed light on the evolution of politics in North Korea. Given challenges in collecting individual-level data in this context, we employ web-scraping techniques that capture inspection visits by the dictator as reported by sta...

Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Legislative Decline - Volume 52 Issue 2 - John Ishiyama

Does a rebel party’s identity change impact its political success after civil wars end? Most work on political parties examines why parties change identities but does not examine the effects of such changes. In this article I examine whether identity change (indicated by party name changes and the official renunciation of violence) affects the poli...

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reac...

How international in scope is publishing in political science? Previous studies have shown that the top journals primarily publish work by scholars from the United States and, to a lesser extent, other global-north countries. However, these studies used published content and could not evaluate the impact of the review process on the relative absenc...

Is the peer-review process at academic journals gendered? The answer to this question has important implications for the advancement of women in the political science profession. However, few studies have had access to data that can evaluate whether the peer-review process is gendered. We investigate this for papers submitted to the American Politi...

We examine whether the existence of civil society in Georgia has promoted social and institutional trust in the population. As much of the literature suggests, Georgia is different from its neighbors in that civil society development is more advanced. Does participation in civil society lead to more social and institutional trust? Using survey data...

Do far-left political parties influence the level of Euroskepticism among mainstream political parties within that same party system? This study seeks to address this question by building on previous work that has examined the effect of both far-left and far-right Euroskeptic parties on mainstream party positions regarding the EU. We theorize that...

How international in scope is publishing in political science? Previous studies have shown that the top journals primarily publish work by scholars from the US and, to a lesser extent, other global north countries. However, such studies used published content and could not evaluate the impact of the review process on the relative absence of interna...

Objective This study examines whether a state's abundance of natural resource wealth, such as oil or gas, leads to lower levels of social and institutional trust than in countries that are not as “cursed” with resources. Methods To test this we use survey data from both the Afrobarometer survey (2008–2009) and comparable data on Latin America from...

Recent studies of comparative presidentialism have emphasized the importance of informal relationships between presidents and other political actors in explaining how presidents build governing coalitions. What has generally been under-investigated in the literature is how the characteristics of “presidents as agents” impact how they interact with...

Is the peer-review process at academic journals gendered? The answer to this question has important implications for the advancement of women in the political science profession. However, few studies have had access to data that can help evaluate whether the peer-review process is gendered. We investigate this for papers submitted to the American P...

Report of the Editors of the American Political Science Review, 2015–2016 - Volume 50 Issue 2 - John Ishiyama

The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Committee met in November 2014 to address one important element of the incentive systems - journals’ procedures and policies for publication. The outcome of the effort is the TOP Guidelines. There are eight standards in the TOP guidelines; each move scientific communication toward greater openness. Thes...

In this special issue of Democratization, seven articles are presented that address the question of the transformation of armed rebel groups into political parties and what implications this transformation has on the development of post-conflict peace and democratization. The articles cover a wide variety of geographic cases, and use both quantitat...

What impact does violence have on ethnic identity? Do acts of violence tend to create greater segmentation and " hardening" of identities among ethnic groups? In this article, we empirically assess the claim that violence inevitably leads to the hardening of ethnic identity (which we operationalize as expressions of ethnic particularism over a nati...