Koji Shiromoto

On May 1st, a new Emperor of Japan ascended to the throne, marking an end to the thirty-year-long Heisei era and the beginning of the Reiwa era. This of course provided an occasion for a tidal wave of nostalgia (imagine end-of-year…
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Macron and Salvini are both ideologically-motivated showmen who had something to prove this election and who would genuinely love to see the other humiliated. Because of this, even though neither of them were Spitzenkandidaten, they might…
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It was supposed to be the moment of reckoning. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's six years in office have been, according to his critics, characterized by an over-centralization of power and a steady stream of corruption, a narrative…
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The conclusive victory of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in last October’s general election was supposed to re-establish his control over Japanese politics and allow him to claim a mandate from the people. Despite a summer marked by…
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German politics generally have a reputation for being boring, and few German politicians exemplify this better than Angela Merkel. Through her twelve years as Chancellor, she has moved her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from being a…
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It is worth occasionally pausing for a moment and noting just how astonishing it is that Emmanuel Macron is standing alongside Angela Merkel as one of the two de facto leaders of Europe. Only five months before election day, Macron was a…
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Europe's political world was shocked to learn that Christian Lindner, head of Germany's Free Democratic Party (centre-right), had walked out of coalition negotiations with the Christian Democrats of Angela Merkel and the Greens. “It’s…
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Late last month, 37-year-old Jacinda Ardern was sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand. It is hard to overstate what an astonishing, if not bewildering, development this is. At this time last year, Ardern was not Labour Party leader…
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On September 17, Japanese media outlets buzzed with speculation that Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was preparing to call a snap election for late October. It had been less than three years since the previous poll, but Japanese parliaments…
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The world of Japanese politics, mundane on most days, was turned upside down last July when Yuriko Koike, a former cabinet minister from the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), defected from her party and stood as an…
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The 48 years between 1945 and 1993 saw 52 governments rise and fall, each on average lasting less than a yearWhen famed political scientist Maurice Duverger analyzed the differences between majoritarian and proportional systems, Italy was…
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“Not another one!” exclaimed Brenda from Bristol. Captured in a viral video, this reaction was in response to the snap election that Prime Minister Theresa May has recently called, just two years after the last general election in 2015.…
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The European Union has been able to collectively breathe a little easier following this past Wednesday's Dutch elections, where nationalist populist Geert Wilders significantly underperformed expectations, guaranteeing another term for…
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By all accounts, 2017 was supposed to be an absolutely atrocious year for the liberal left. Coming on the heels of Brexit, the Spanish socialists' capitulation, Matteo Renzi's resignation, and, you know, some other stuff, this was…
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Last November the entire political scene was left absolutely stunned as the electorate made itself heard and revealed itself to be more welcoming of strident right-wing policies than polls had been showing beforehand. François Fillon came…
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Five months ago, following the defeat of a referendum on which he had essentially staked his career, British PM David Cameron tendered his resignation, leading to widespread fears of economic instability and political uncertainty within…
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Those political junkies like me anxious to see if America is marginally closer to a Trumpocalypse might find themselves hastily clicking "Refresh“ on the FiveThirtyEight election model, or the New York Times’. Those of us curious to see…
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By any measure, the European Union is currently in something of a crisis, if not an outright mess – many of its economies (including two of its largest, France and Italy) have remained stagnant, members states are fighting with each other…
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