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I am a 3rd-year PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester.
I work in the fields of formal theory and political institutions. My broad interest is institutional design to improve political accountability in democracy. Currently, I am focusing on institutional design for executive accountability, including separation of powers.
Before coming to Rochester, I received an M.A. in the social sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Laws (summa cum laude) from Kyoto University in Japan.
CV: [PDF]
Email: syoshimu@ur.rochester.edu
Working Paper
Informative Non-Information: Ambiguous Policy Results Indicate Pandering [Under Review]
-Presented at MPSA 2024 and will be presented at APSA 2025
Abstract: Executives sometimes pander, i.e., implement a popular policy that will cause a bad result to secure reelection, if the probability that voters learn the right policy before the next election is low. However, executives have some control over the probability when they can provide verifiable information on policy results. In such situations, pandering is impossible because high-ability executives have the incentive to maximize the probability, and low-ability executives must follow it to disguise themselves as the high type, which makes pandering no longer work. Surprisingly, this intuition holds even if the probability choice is unobservable to voters, where the low type’s different choice does not instantly reveal her type, and the possibility of pandering cannot be excluded a priori. The normative implication is that when executives are expected to have evidence about policy results, voters can prevent pandering by interpreting ambiguous policy results as a sign of pandering.
Work in Progress
Checks and Imbalances: When Separation of Powers Facilitates Extremism
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