The workshop “The Pretty Pragmatic Public〜Japanese Public Opinion During the Afghanistan Evacuation” was co-organized and held by Professor Atsushi Tago and the Center for Positive/Empirical Analysis of Political Economy at Waseda University.
Professor Yusaku Horiuchi of Dartmouth College presented the findings of an online survey experiment on Japan’s security policy from multiple perspectives. Prof. Horiuchi conducted a series of the experiments at the end of August 2021 and obtained data on attitudes toward the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) conducting a civilian evacuation operation from Afghanistan, as well as understanding of the chain of command. The statistical estimation uncovered some surprising outcomes regarding the Japanese public understanding of the chain of command, and their sensitivity to possible damage.
Student Comment:
Wataru Fukuda (3rd year undergraduate, School of Political Science and Economics)
Through this special lecture by Prof. Horiuchi, I learned a lot about the significance of conducting experimental research on Japanese national security policy. I asked Prof. Horiuchi whether the results would differ between Okinawa with a high concentration of bases from other regions in Japan for his 2021 experiment. He kindly replied that a detailed analysis would be difficult due to the sample size of 2021 study. However, he added that his previous studies have shown that results specific to Okinawa were obtained. I could recognize the significance of an experiment focusing on a specific region in addition to an experiment targeting Japan as a whole.
