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Assistant Professor

• Affiliation(s)

  • Center for Japanese Studies
  • Department of Political Science

• Fields of Study

  • Comparative Politics
  • Political Economy
  • Institutional Design

• About

  Professor McElwain studies the comparative politics of institutional design, particularly in Japan and other advanced industrialized democracies. His current book manuscript examines how partisan incentives influence the initial selection and subsequent manipulation of electoral systems, and how these choices can help unpopular governments to stay in power. Other research topics include the organizational principles of political parties and the procedural complexity of constitutional amendments. His work is motivated by a general interest in asymmetrical party systems: legislatures where one large party coexists with multiple small parties. These cases represent idiosyncrasies in “normal” forms of party competition and have distinctive patterns of government composition, policy, and longevity.

  Professor McElwain joined the political science faculty at Michigan in Fall 2008, following post-doctoral appointments at Stanford and Harvard. He was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. 

• Education

  • PhD, Political Science, Stanford University, 2005
  • AB, Princeton University, 1999

• Awards

  • The Manipulation of Electoral Systems (book m.s.)

• Grants

  • Japan Foundation Fellowship (2012)
  • Japan Foundation Conference Grant (2012)
  • Center for Japanese Studies Research Grant, University of Michigan (2009)

• Presentations

  • Party Positioning: Moving to the Middle or the Periphery (MPSA Annual Meeting, 2012)
  • The Instrumental Decentralization of Party Leader Selection (APSA Annual Meeting, 2009)
  • Reforming Japan’s Upper House: Lessons in Unintended Consequences (Japan’s Post-Bubble Political Economy Conference, UCLA, 2009)

• Courses Taught

  • Comparative Politics Field Seminar (graduate)
  • The Manipulation of Electoral Systems (graduate and undergraduate)
  • Japanese Politics and Political Economy (graduate and undergraduate)

• Selected Publications:

• Books

  • (2009) Political Change in Japan

• Articles

  • (2011) Party Democratization and the Salience of Party Leaders, Journal of Social Science

• Book Chapters

  • Parties and Elections in Japan, Handbook of Japanese Studies