Institut français de recherche sur le Japon à la Maison franco-japonaise (Umifre 19, MEAE-CNRS)

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While Japan has recorded fewer casualties from COVID-19 than many other democracies, the government's handling of the pandemic has been routinely criticized. In this presentation, I explore results from six public opinion surveys that our research team has conducted since March 2020. Themes that will be examined include: 1) differences in the evaluations of central versus local government performance; 2) how views about the relative merits of prioritizing public health versus the economy have evolved over the past year; 3) differences in protective measures, such as social distancing, taken by population subgroups, including differences by gender, educational attainment, SNS usage, and trust in scientific experts.

Kenneth Mori McElwain is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, most recently on differences in constitutional content across countries. He received his BA from Princeton University and PhD in political science from Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan, before moving to his current post in 2015. His work has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes, including American Journal of Political Science, Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Science Japan, Chuō Kōron, and the Journal of Japanese Studies. He was the co-editor of Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms, APARC/Brookings Institutions Press.