Instability in Japan’s Electoral Management

From the Perspective of Multilevel Governance

Abstract

This article explains the changes in Japanese electoral management bodies (EMBs) through the analysis of the municipal election administration committee secretariat survey (2013 and 2017) conducted by the Electoral Governance Study Group. Prior to the decentralization reform in 1999, Japan’s electoral management was centralized and led by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. However, since the reform denied centralization, the complexity of multilevel governance of election has surfaced and the management has become unstable. Although national and local EMBs are independent of each other, they are vertically interdependent in their operations. On the other hand, local politicians are more likely to influence local electoral management. Therefore, the 2013 survey revealed that Japanese EMBs and their performance varied. However, the 2017 survey shows that local EMBs have changed in response to the central government. Behind the change is the growing work on substantive voting rights, which allowed the heads of local governments to invest in improving the expertise of the EMBs.