Research

Dissertation: Government formation in Asian-Pacific Democracies

In my dissertation, I examine government formation in Asian-Pacific democracies, with an emphasis on the dynamics of power sharing between multiple parties in the cabinet. When do prime ministers or presidents form coalition cabinets, and how do the parties bargain over the ministerial positions? What are policy consequences of the type of cabinet that forms? Most of the existing literature on government formation focuses on Western Europe, although increasingly scholars also investigate government formation in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. However, government formation in Asian-Pacific democracies has been understudied. One practical impediment to analyses of this region has been a lack of cross-national datasets of governments. Thus, as a core piece of my dissertation, I created such a dataset. The dataset includes 29 countries that have experienced at least one democratic year from 1945-2018.

The three papers that comprise my dissertation investigate the following questions: 1) when do coalition governments form; 2) how are ministerial portfolios distributed in coalition governments; and 3) what implications do different government types have on economic performance, corruption, and public goods provision. An advantage of extending existing theoretical frameworks on coalition building and executive-legislative relations to a new regional context is that the countries in the Asia-Pacific region are characterized by a wide variety of institutions, levels of institutionalization (of legislatures, party systems, and democracy), and levels of economic development. This variation allows me to test some additional implications of existing arguments, while demonstrating that executive-legislative relations matter for political outcomes and should be taken seriously in this region.

Job Market Paper

Partisan Portfolio Allocation: Dividing the Pie Between Coalition Partners in Asia-Pacific Democracies

Other Research

Publications

Jang, Jinhyuk (2021). Power-sharing in Governments, Clarity of Responsibility, and the Control of Corruption. Asian Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 1-21. [Replication Files]

Jang, Jinhyuk, Charles Crabtree, and Sona N. Golder (Forthcoming). Electoral Coalition Signals and Voter Perceptions. Japanese Journal of Political Science. [Replication Files]

Works in progress

“Women’s Representation in Government in Asian-Pacific Democracies” (with Sona Golder )

“Portfolio Allocation in Parliamentary and Semi-Presidential Democracies: Rethinking the Formateur Disadvantage” (with Molly Ariotti and Sona Golder)

“When Do Coalition Governments Form in Asian-Pacific Democracies?”