Leonard Schoppa

schoppa@virginia.edu Phone: 434-924-3211

Leonard Schoppa —(Ph.D., Oxford) Professor of Politics, Field: Comparative Politics, Undergraduate Director.

My research focuses on the politics and foreign relations of Japan and is comprised of several distinct projects. I just completed work on a project examining the transformation of Japan’s system of social protection as it has been buffeted by the pressures of globalization and changing gender role aspirations of women. In Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection, (Cornell University Press, 2006), explain the failure of the Japanese to modify their system in the face of these pressures by building on Albert Hirschman’s exit-voice framework.

I have also written extensively about Japan’s economic negotiations with the United States in a book titled Bargaining With Japan: What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do (Columbia, 1997) and on Japan’s policy immobilism in Education Reform in Japan (Routledge, 1991). Refereed articles growing out of these same earlier projects came out in International Organization (1993, 1999) and the Journal of Japanese Studies (1991). Recently, I have returned to my interest in the electoral and party politics of Japan (in comparison to other advanced industrialized nations) and have begun working on a new edited volume with Tanaka Aiji of Waseda University. Earlier, I wrote about the effects of the “mixed-member” electoral systems pioneered in Germany and adopted in a modified form in Japan and Italy in the mid-1990s. I co-authored this piece with my graduate student, Karen Cox, in Comparative Political Studies (2002). For more details on my research and professional background, see my personal website.

Curriculum Vita: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ljs2k/cv.html

Personal Webpage: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ljs2k/