Japanese Journal of Electoral Studies

Voters in Multi-level Political Arena

Analysis of Importance of Party

Hiroki OGAWA

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 7-22
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_7

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

This article analyzes how multi-level political arena affect the importance of the party to voters. There are six types of elections in Japan. These elections interact with each other. This article tries to explore multi-level political arena considering the existence of multiple elections. In previous studies, there are few analyses that consider multiple elections. The analysis using the survey data reveals that multi-level political arena affect the importance of the party to voters. More specifically, this article reveals the effects of the upper house election and the gubernatorial election.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1079K)
Electoral Mobilization and Voter Fatigue in a Multi-level Context

Jaehyun SONG, Airo HINO

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 23-34
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_23

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

This study aims to clarify how voters behave in a multilevel context when different kinds of elections are held in a short period of time. Many studies found that the cause of lower voter turnout in the upper house election in the year when a unified local election is held three months in advance is a weakening mobilization in electoral campaigns. In this study, the “voter fatigue” hypothesis, which focuses on the cost of multiple turnouts, is also investigated using a panel survey data. In particular we analyze the effects of having no elections due to derailed electoral cycles in unified local elections and/or no voting opportunities due to a lack of district competitions by controlling for such propensity scores. Our results clarify that a decline of turnout stems from voter fatigue in large cities whereas it derives from a weakening mobilization in electoral campaigns in more rural municipalities.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1283K)
Party Organizations and Bicameralism

How Do Members of House of Councilors Behave within Party Policy Committees?

Hideo ISHIMA, Masahiko TATEBAYASHI

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 35-48
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_35

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

How do members of the House of Councilors (HoC) participate in policy-making processes? What kind of interests do they represent? The Japanese symmetrical bicameralism has characterized her party system and major party organizations across chambers. The differences of electoral systems used in the HoC and the House of Representatives (HoR) also affect legislators’ policy focuses and interest representation. Assuming ex-ante agreements among legislators from both chambers within the policy committees LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), we focus on their PARC (the Policy Affairs Research Council) membership and analyze the distinct patterns of HoC members. The paper finds that HoC members are more likely to participate in Cabinet, Social Affairs and Local Government divisions (bukai) than HoR members. The results suggest that HoC members represent nationwide interest groups’ and prefectural interests.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1689K)
Twisted Party Support in Osaka

Evidence from Survey Experiments

Masahiro ZENKYO

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 49-61
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_49

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

Why did many Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) supporters vote for the Osaka Ishin’s candidates in the 2019 Osaka cross elections? This paper examines whether twisted party support, which is defined as the phenomenon in which voters support different parties in national and local politics, caused the split voting among LDP supporters or not. Inconsistency of electoral systems between national and local assembly elections in Japan provides greater autonomy to the federation of Osaka prefecture LDP branches (“Osaka- Jimin”). As a result, LDP supporters regard “Osaka-Jimin” as an independent organization and evaluate it differently from LDP as a national-level party. The results of the survey experiments in this paper support the twisted party support hypothesis. This implies that the operationalized definition of party support should be reconsidered, and that the inconsistency of electoral systems sophisticates the voter’s competence for party recognition in Osaka.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1325K)
Reconsidering Partisan Stability

A Three-Mode Model

Norihiro MIMURA

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 62-76
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_62

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

In this study, a three-mode model of partisanship is constructed using Japanese public opinion survey. By integrating “dual structure” of partisanship, which consists of party evaluation and partisan group identity, with multidimensional “direction” of partisanship, we examine what kinds of dimensions combine party evaluation with partisan group identity and how those combinations affect the stability of partisanship. The results show that the partisanship in the dimensions that combine party evaluation with partisan group identity is highly stable and determines the change of partisanship in other dimensions. Our findings imply that not only rational evaluations but also expressive partisan group identity matters among Japanese voters.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1376K)
Instability in Japan’s Electoral Management

From the Perspective of Multilevel Governance

Yutaka ONISHI

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 77-90
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_77

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide 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.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1015K)
Quantifying the Discrepancy between Realworld Data and Theoretical Predictions in a Theory of Strategic Voting

Hiroto KATSUMATA

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 91-103
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_91

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Show abstractHide abstract

The single non-transferable vote system leads political parties’ electoral strategy and electorates’ strategic voting to a characteristic equilibrium, where M+1 viable candidates compete for M seats in a district. This “M+1 rule” further implies that each winning candidate gets the same share of the total votes in a district and, in the Duvergerian equilibrium, the rest of the votes concentrates on the runner-up. Existing studies have tested this theory using the effective number of candidates. In this paper, I point out the problems of this convention, propose new measures, and apply them to the post-war election data in Japan. The results demonstrate that the equality of vote shares among winning candidates first increased and then fluctuated, whereas the concentration of votes on runner-ups rose substantially with a temporary decline. The findings suggest that political contexts and strategic reactions of political actors determine how the “M+1” rule works.

View full abstract

Download PDF (1294K)
[title in Japanese]

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 105-111
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: November 16, 2023

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_105

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Download PDF (784K)
Errata

2020 Volume 36 Issue 1 Pages 119-
Published: 2020
Released on J-STAGE: September 12, 2022

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.14854/jaes.36.1_119

JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

Download PDF (754K)

Register with J-STAGE for free!