I am happy to announce the public release of "The Reed-Smith Japanese House of Representatives Elections Dataset" (JHRED).



This panel dataset, compiled by Steven R. Reed and Daniel M. Smith (with the help of many others along the way!), includes every single candidate who ran in any general election or by-election for the Japanese House of Representatives from 1947 to 2014. The dataset includes a total of 27,545 observations, i.e., candidate-elections, for 10,060 unique individuals, across 25 general elections.



In addition to basic electoral and party variables, the dataset includes information on candidates' background occupations, family ties, and cabinet appointments.



This version of the dataset was used to produce the analyses in: Smith, Daniel M. 2018. /Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan/. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. A version that includes the 2017 general election will come later.



The dataset and codebook can be downloaded at Harvard Dataverse: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/QFEPXD



Enjoy!



Daniel M. Smith
Associate Professor
Department of Government
Harvard University
CGIS Knafel Building 407
1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138