戦後日本人の政治参加

― ｢投票参加の平等性｣ 論を再考する―

抄録

In the late 1980s, Ikuo Kabashima empirically showed that uneducated voters in rural areas were more likely to participate in elections in postwar Japan unlike other developed democracies. He argued that this participation structure was the key to Japan's postwar super-stable party system and rapid economic growth with equality. This paper reexamines this well-known “political equality” thesis. The analysis of survey data covering the period from 1958 to 2009 shows that the participation structure shown by Kabashima existed only in the 1970s-80s or the golden age of the 1955 system. The study then explores why the structure changed in the 1990s comparing data from the 1980s and 2000s. The analysis suggests that rural political networks became weaker and the political efficacy of urban educated voters increased over the past 20 years, which resulted in rural voters' lower turnout and educated voters' higher turnout in recent elections.