Against the background of descriptions that conservative-progressive ideology is no longer relevant to contemporary Japanese politics, this study reports a notable generational difference in ideology. Classifying the sample according to age, I examine (a) voters' self-location on the ideological scale, (b) the consistency between voter attitudes toward different issues, and (c) the correlation between voters' ideological self-location and the ideological position of the party they support or voted for. Analyzing data from the 2013 JIGS Voter survey, 2010 JES IV survey, and 1983 JES survey, I find that younger cohorts are characterized by (1) lower awareness of ideology, with those who are cognizant more inclined to locate themselves on the progressive side; (2) lower consistency between attitudes toward different issues; (3) lower correlation between ideological self-location and the ideological position of their preferred party.

View full abstract

What were the policy preferences of LDP diet-members at the 2012 general election, when they came back to power after having experienced a genuine minority party for the first time of their long history? This paper analyses policy positioning of LDP dietmembers with the survey to the candidates of the 2012 election, conducted by Waseda University and Yomiuri Shinbunsya. It finds that there was significant difference between policy positions of the freshmen and those of the seniors at the issue of security and constitution and that of market liberalization. Senior members were more likely to take extreme positions, hawkish and protectionist, compared to freshmen. The paper also reveals some factors, which affect the policy positioning of LDP diet-members. While those from urban districts or with more vote margin were more likely to be hawkish, biologically older members from local district were more likely to be protectionist controlled for their electoral terms.

View full abstract

Various variables have been considered to explain prime-ministerial power: constitutional and legal power resources, the power of the bureaucracy, electoral system, and power resources of the party leadership. This article alternatively emphasises the significance of the governing party as the key variable to explain prime-ministerial power. This article employs the principal-agent model; it pays particular attention to the governing party as principal of the prime minister. The problem for the governing party as principal derives from the fact that it is composed of multiple actors. It could be referred to as the ‘multiple principal problem’. Its fundamental nature is a collective action problem. Therefore, if the governing party can overcome its collective action problem, it can control the prime minister, while if otherwise, it will have extreme difficulty in doing so. By focusing on the collective action problem, this article explains the changing structure of the Liberal Democratic Party and its impact on the power of the prime minister in Japan.

View full abstract

This study regarded voting behavior as a higher-order decision-making process and examined it in terms of attitudes taken to critical thinking and risk. It first investigated the effect of critical thinking on voting behavior and explored the psychological variables related to it. The study then focused on independent swing voters whose party allegiances changed in two national elections (the 2012 election of the House of Representatives and the 2013 election of the House of Councillors) but who recalled their prior choice. For these purposes, a two-wave online panel survey to voters was conducted. The results suggested that (1) people who think more critically perceived that they voted more correctly and (2) the risk-adverse tendency was lower among independent swing voters.

View full abstract

David Mayhew (1991) argued that divided government does not lead to gridlock; partisan rivals find ways to strike deals. In parliamentary systems, however, the stakes are higher, because government survival is partly a function of legislative effectiveness. If a parliamentary system is strongly bicameral, a government could face an opposition majority in the upper house with the means and motivation to block its legislative agenda and oblige it to resign. In this paper, we examine data from the Japanese Diet between 1989 and 2013, a period of frequent non-government upper house majorities. Have Japan's “Twisted Diets” succumbed to gridlock? We show that while governments adapt smoothly to the mere absence of upper house control, they are severely hampered when the upper house is controlled by the Opposition. They propose fewer laws and suffer more changes to and failures of the legislative proposals they do submit.

View full abstract

Public Offices Election Law precluded candidates for public office and political parties from election campaign available on the Internet during the official election period in Japan. 2013 Amendment of Public Offices Election Law removed such prohibitions, and allows candidates and parties to use e-mail and webpage for the purpose of election campaign. However, 2013 Amendment prohibits voters to utilize e-mail for the purpose of election campaign although they can send messages via message function of social network service such as Facebook and LINE. This article elucidates disputed points in the texts of 2013 Amendment of Public Offices Election Law, and examines several issues to revise the law in the future.

View full abstract

This research analyzes the determinants of legislators' policy preferences in the promotion of decentralization reform. In Japan, several decentralization reforms were implemented intermittently after the mid-1990s. Existing research has examined the how politicians have increasingly approved decentralization after the electoral reforms in 1994. However, this research has not used individual-level data to take account of the types of politician agreeing with decentralization before and after electoral reform. Therefore, in order to better understand politicians' approval of decentralization, I focus on the electoral pledges of all candidates in Japanese general elections from 1985 to 2005. Examining whether politicians mentioned decentralization in their electoral pledges, and if so, how frequently, shows that electoral reform and the two-partysystem have led to candidates' support of decentralization, and that weak support base, coupled with the socio-economic factors of the constituencies, also affected candidates' levels of support.

View full abstract

Although the House of Councillors elections, at a number of critical times, have played important roles in shaping post-war Japanese politics, the existing studies of electoral politics in Japan have focused predominantly on the House of Representatives elections. Rigorous empirical analysis of the House of Councillors elections has been limited (except for the studies using post-election surveys), and, for this reason, we do not yet have full understandings of the dynamics of postwar political competition and resultant policy processes in Japan. We argue that one of the major reasons for the lack of studies on Japan's House of Councillors elections is simply the lack of systematic database of these elections. Accordingly, we have compiled detailed municipality-level election results of most House of Councillors elections held during the post-war period and developed a user-friendly database available online. We hope that this new database will facilitate further studies on Japan's bicameralism and the roles of the House of Councillors elections in political and policy processes in Japan, and will motivate comparative scholars worldwide to use Japan as a case to develop and refine theories of electoral politics. This article introduces our new database and explains how to use it.

View full abstract

The 2013 House of Councillors Election was the first election after the legalization of “Internet campaign” in Japan. Recent Internet campaigns have been conducted using social media and widespread mobile Internet service. This paper investigated how candidates utilized Twitter - widely used social media service that is characterized by its openness, equality, and power to spread information. It especially focuses on who among candidates were more active on Twitter, and what candidates tweeted about. The analysis of the activeness has revealed that young candidates, candidates from some smaller parties, candidates in competitive district or PR lists were more likely to be participating on Twitter. The computerized content analysis of candidates'’ tweets has revealed that majority of tweets were about campaign schedule and report, while the number of tweets discussing policy issues were small. Candidates from some smaller parties have made use of the interactivity of Twitter to communicate with their constituencies.

View full abstract