The Annuals of Japanese Political Science Association
Online ISSN : 1884-3921
Print ISSN : 0549-4192
ISSN-L : 0549-4192
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Volume 62, Issue 2
Displaying 1-12 of 12 articles from this issue
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  • Does Campaign Spending Matter?
    Ryosuke IMAI
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_11-2_32
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_11
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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      On average, each of two major parties’ candidates spends about ten to twenty million Yen for electoral campaign in Japan. Does this campaign spending really change their electoral fortunes? This paper examines the relationship between money and votes after electoral reform in Japan. It is predicted that the effects of campaign spending on vote share are getting smaller because of the ‘nationalization’ of voting behavior. However, the results of statistical analysis show that the size of effects has been almost constant over the four consecutive elections, 2000 to 2009. In this regard, we cannot find any indications of the effects of electoral reform.
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  • Change of government and the Interest Group:
    Meltdown of the Agricultural Organized Votes
    Kazunori KAWAMURA
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_33-2_51
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_33
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      In the 2009 Lower House election, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) fell to the opposition party and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) became the ruling party. In Japan, the LDP and many interest groups built the strong collaborative relationship for a long time. By the change of government, however, many interest groups which had built the good relation with the LDP was forced to the review of political connection. The transition 2009 was the turning point to review of the relations of the political party and the interest group.
      In this paper, I pay attention to the change of the political attitude of the Japanese farmer and analyze their voting behavior in the 2010 Upper house election. And I clarify new cleavages in the agricultural organization of the monolith and expect the new relations of the political party and the interest group in the future.
      After 2009, the farmer's political opinion is changing. The farming families who support the Liberal Democratic Party decreased, and most of farmers hope that the JA Central will keep neutral for politics and continue pressuring the government. In other words farmhouses comparing the opinion of two major political parties increase.
      Until 2009 the House of Representatives election, the farming family voting for the DPJ tended to increase, and the agricultural organized votes tends to be divided. In 2010 House of Councilors election, the tendency was promoted. Some farmers voted for the conservative small party such as the Yours Party (Minna no To) or the Sunrise Party of Japan (Tachiagare Nippon). These results suggest that cracks in the agriculture group are surfacing.
      By change of government, the Japanese interest group politics greets a turning point. However, there are not any studies about the change in the interest group. It is necessary to analyze how the relations of the political party and the interest group are rebuilt.
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  • Rebuilding the Local Organization of the Liberal Democratic Party in the “the Kingdom of Conservatives”: a Case Study of the 2009 Ibaraki Gubernatorial Election
    Masahiro YAMADA
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_52-2_69
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_52
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      This paper is a case study of organizational transformation in a prefectural party unit of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Ibaraki prefecture was one of the bulwarks of LDP dominance and the prefectural organization (“kenren”) had been proud of own strength. But, at the defeat in the 2009 gubernatorial election, many conservative local politician and interest organizations were against the “kenren” and supported the incumbent governor, Masaru Hashimoto, and let him win. The defeat broke the previous regime at the “kenren”, and the Ibaraki-kenren was forced to rebuild its organization and to try transforming itself from being a prefectural member-centered organization to becoming a more inclusive organization.
      The purpose of this article analyzes the process of the gubernatorial defeat and the organizational reformation in the kenren following that defeat, to claim the necessity of further accumulation of analysis about local organizations of political parties, not only from perspective of national level confrontation among parties, but also local conflict among local politicians and interest organizationswith a peculiar dynamism.
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  • Campaigning for Personal Votes and Its Impact on Electoral Outcomes:
    How District Activities Lead to Votes (Or Not).
    Shinsuke HAMAMOTO, Kuniaki NEMOTO
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_70-2_97
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_70
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      While politicians still seem to see district activities as an important strategy for mobilizing personal votes, elections in Japan are increasingly marked by party competition. Why do they engage in such a strategy and does it really increase votes? By answering these questions, this paper aims to address how nationalized party competition affects politicians' behavior and how they adjust their different reelection strategies in changing environments. We hypothesize that personal-vote campaigning indeed increases votes and that its impact is larger where the incentives to cultivate personal votes are greater. With an original time-series dataset on the schedules of more than 150 Diet members, we offer the first systematic empirical test and find evidence confirming the hypotheses.
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  • Pathways to local politics: Electoral competition among national and local politicians
    Yosuke SUNAHARA
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_98-2_121
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_98
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      As for the relationship between Diet members and local assembly members in Japan, previous empirical researches mainly focus on their clientelistic relations among them and upward political career move from local assembly to the Diet. In this article, the author presents a different perspective from these previous researches, and elaborates the tendency that Diet members try to change their career to local politicians, especially governors and mayors of local governments. Two political reforms in the 1990s affected the ambition of Diet members; the electoral reform changed patterns of political competition in electoral districts, and the decentralization reform enhanced the attractiveness of the position of mayors.
      In this article, the author investigates the cases that Diet members / former Diet members, who stood as a candidate in the five elections before and after the electoral reform, challenge governor / mayor / local assembly elections. The results show that more Liberal Democratic Party members challenge to local elections after the electoral reform, and the more leading opposition members, who were affiliated with Japan Socialist Party or New Frontier Party or Democratic Party, challenge to local elections than LDP members. Besides, this article reveals that by measuring the effective numbers of candidate the patterns of political competitions in governor / mayor elections are different before and after the electoral reform.
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  • How political institutions shape party systems in Japanese prefectural legislatures?
    Kengo SOGA
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_122-2_146
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_122
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      This chapter analyzes the determinants of party systems in Japanese prefectural legislatures. We can classify four types of prefectural legislatures. The first is one-party dominant type. The effective-number of parties in such prefectures has been constantly under two. The second type resembles the party system of national diet before 1994. Their ENP has been stable between two and three. Some prefectural legislatures have been highly fragmented so that their ENP goes up more than three. In the fourth type, we see that party systems are highly disunited after late 1990s. We explain these differences among prefectures and time-series changes by electoral institutions, relations between legislators and governors, and relations between national and local party members. Statistical analyses on time-series cross sectional data of postwar 47 prefectures reveal that large magnitude of electoral districts, independent governors, non-concurrent elections of legislators and governors, and fragmented national level party systems in the prefecture cause the fragmentation of party systems in the prefectural legislatures.
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  • Party Cohesion and Candidate-selection Procedures in Contemporary Britain: Changing Relationships between the Party Leadership and Constituency Organisations
    Kensuke TAKAYASU
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_147-2_177
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_147
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      Party cohesion is a distinctive feature of British politics. This article explores the extent to which the party leadership can achieve cohesion within the Conservative party and the Labour party. Three ways can be recognized to achieve party cohesion: agreement of MPs' preferences, socialization of MPs, and party discipline. Party leadership can intervene in these processes in parliament and constituency organisations. In parliament the leadership exploits appointments and promotions of MPs for party discipline, while the whip's office mobilizes various resources to socialize and discipline MPs. Nonetheless, the party leadership does not possess the critical power resources to control its own MPs. Constituency organisations are crucially important, for they are primarily responsible for candidate selection, and re-selection and de-selection of MPs. The leadership of both the Conservative party and the Labour party hardly intervened in these processes officially, although the Labour party leadership was more inclined to do so. However, severe factional disputes arose within the Conservative party from the late 1980s and within the Labour party from the 1970s. The leadership of both parties gradually strengthened their intervention in the candidate-selection processes and their constituency organisations after facing such internal disputes, although it has not prevented MPs from rebelling against the leadership.
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  • Abolishing the party branch in South Korea
    Noriyo ISOZAKI, Yutaka ONISHI
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_178-2_205
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_178
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      Under what conditions do the congress members revise the election-related law that might influence their own positions? This paper examined such a general question through the comparison between the fundamental change of party organization such as the abolition of local branch in South Korea in 2004 and its failure in 2000. This paper discovered the following points. First, the electoral system to which parliament member is punished easily by the voters must exist. Second, incumbent members' agreement to law revision depends on what frame interpreting the social phenomenon is offered to the voters. In our case, what made the incumbent members who persisted in their partisan policy package accept non-partisan policy package was the successful presentation by the election administration committee as an independent actor to the voters of the frame which locates the abolition of local branch in non-partisan policy package. However now, such a model is tested only in the cases where many of voters are low in the party identity, and have distrust in the party like South Korea. This model can be applied also in other cases, but the elaboration of the applicable condition is future tasks.
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  • The Conflict over the Bill Making: MOFA and Making Process of United Nations Peace Cooperation Bill
    Takayuki SHOJI
    2011 Volume 62 Issue 2 Pages 2_206-2_227
    Published: 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: February 24, 2016
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.62.2_206
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      The Gulf Crisis in 1990, set Japan making United Nations Peace Cooperation Bill to realize theSelf-Defense Force (SDF) dispatch. This report will clarify the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) initiatives regarding this bill and its limitation.
      Concerning the SDF dispatch, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu who insisted on adjustment of the SDF status, deepened conflicts with the Defense Agency and the Liberal Democratic Party executive machine which insisted on cooperation as the existing SDF status. To address this situation, MOFA coordinated approaches by giving concurrent post to the SDF and control by the Prime Minister.
      However, the bill of MOFA was accompanied by a reverse effect, prompting decline of political centripetal force of Kaifu as they failed persuading the opposition party under the twisted diet. This resulted in withdrawal of the bill and stagnation of the “International Cooperation Initiative” that was originally the aim of Kaifu and MOFA.
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