Abstract
Recently, candidate selection process has been democratized in Japan. Who can be a party's candidate, who can select candidate is expected to influence the relations between party leaders and other members / branches. This article investigates the candidate selection process of the 2010 Upper House election in which the LDP markedly opened their candidate selection process. From the point of party control over the process, I analyze the LDP's and the DPJ's “opened” candidate selection method and examine the characteristics of the candidates selected by such method. These analyses reveal that the LDP local organizations adopted not fully opened methods, while the DPJ's processes were considerably centralized. And the candidates selected by democratized methods prefer “reform” policy and attach more importance to themselves than their party in electoral campaign. These results suggest that democratization of candidate selection process will not increase the power of national party leaders.
