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Japan: Manipulating Multi-Member Districts — from SNTV to a Mixed System
Abstract
After the Recruit scandal in 1988, there was a six-year political drama about electoral reform in Japan. In 1993, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its power for the first time since its foundation in 1955. The new election rule was decided during that time. But the new mixed system is considered better for the LDP than previous systems with multi-member districts with single non-transferable ballot. However, although the electoral system favours the LDP, coalition governments are the norm after the reform.
... What these examples, plus a few African cases, appear to have in common is the presence of a dominant party able to control (or strongly influence) the eventual outcome of electoral system choice. While Japanese MMM came about in the wake of serious problems for the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the electoral system adopted in the 1990s ended up being very kind to the party, despite the hopes of some politicians and scholars, that the majoritarian MMM system would facilitate the transition to two-party alternation in power (Wada 2004). ...
Many countries adopted mixed-member (MM) electoral systems in the 1990s, but several switched to list proportional representation (PR) recently. Most switchers are post-communist countries that used the semi-proportional mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system, often associated with dominant parties. List PR was adopted under competitive conditions in some cases (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Ukraine), while in places where authoritarian control remains (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), list PR appears to be used as a means of reducing competition and undermining multiparty democracy.
... Suppose a party won N seats in a PR district, then the top N candidates on its party list will get into the next lower house. Since the practice of dual-candidacy between plurality SMDs and PR districts is allowed for individual candidates, those who succeed in SMDs will be automatically deleted from the party list prepared for the parallel PR election (Wada 2004). ...
This article examines the issue of the candidate incumbency effect in Japan's single-member district (SMD) elections after the 1994 electoral reform. I argue that the candidate incumbency advantage deeply entrenched in the pre-reform lower house elections continues to be significant during the post-reform era. Furthermore, I argue that the pattern of candidate incumbency advantage is modified by national ruling party/coalition membership and urban–rural distinction. Finally, I study why the difference in the source of incumbent status has a huge impact on SMD elections and how. By using a new data set from Japan's SMD elections for the period of 1996–2005, I find empirical evidence to corroborate my theoretical arguments.
Chapter 3 outlines the progress of Japanese politics. This chapter initially narrates the progress of politics until the conversion of the electoral system for the House of Representatives in 1994. This chapter pays particular attention to the circumstances surrounding the employment of the mixed system. This research emphasises three desires shared by many Japanese people at the time. Firstly, the first-past-the-post system was desired to deter intra-party competitions which had frequently occurred under the previous electoral system. Secondly, the first-past-the-post system was desired to increase the likelihood of the change of government which had seldom occurred under the previous electoral system. Thirdly, proportional representation was desired to offset the disadvantage with the first-past-the-post system that small parties are likely to be underrepresented. This chapter later narrates the progress since 1994. This research bifurcates the eight general elections under the mixed system into two periods. The earlier three general elections are those when the largest party did not win an absolute majority of seats. The later five general elections are those when the largest party won an absolute majority of seats. Actually, the largest party won even more than 60 per cent of seats at all the later five general elections. The earlier three general elections concurred with the period when parties sought partners out, whereas the later five general elections concurred with the period when the coalitions have basically been fixed.
A recent wave of studies explores the effects ofelectoral institutions on economic interests. This paper instead examines the effects of economic interests on electoral institutions. We argue that electoral rules are a function of the nature and geographical dispersion of economic interests. Where class is the only economic division, the right always prefers majoritarian institutions (consistent with the distributive effects these institutions are known,to have). Where interests are defined by investments in co-specific assets, and where these investments are geographically dispersed, (at least some) right parties will ally with the left to produce proportional representation (PR). They do so to protect their co-specific investments because PR is a representative system that permits opposition influence over regulatory policies. We explore the argument with historical data on economic structure and electoral systems. 1
This is a unique analysis of the present Japanese political system which will interest both political economists and non-specialists alike. For the first time approaches used to analyse American and European political systems are applied to 'mysterious' Japan.
This chapter, on the causes of electoral reform in Japan, reviews the movement from an extreme electoral (hyper-personalistic) system in which candidates of the same party competed against one another in three- to five-seat districts (in a single non-transferable vote system, SNTV) to a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system that eliminated intraparty competition. It is argued that short-term act-contingent motivations played a necessary role in passing political reform, and that by January 1994, when the reform bills finally passed into law, no politician could publicly oppose political reform, even though some felt freer to grumble about it. The main sections of the chapter are: The Pathologies of SNTV: Who Hated What?; A Brief History of Failed Electoral Reform Efforts-1956 to 1991; The Fall and Rise of the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party): Electoral Reform in 1993-4; Analysis: The Causes of Electoral Reform.
In the 1993 general election the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. The coalition government that followed enacted the most far-reaching political reforms Japan has experienced since the American Occupation. The country has now experienced two elections since these reforms so we can begin to analyze trends and dynamics. It is now possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the effects of these reforms. I evaluate the reforms under three headings: (1) reducing the cost of elections and levels of corruption; (2) replacing candidate-centered with party-centered campaigns; and (3) moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the parties of the government and the parties of the opposition. In conclude that, with some notable exceptions, the reforms are working well, about as well as should have been expected.
One year ago I entitled my review of Japanese elections ‘Time for a Change?’. Candidates running against the establishment were defeating candidates who had until recently appeared unbeatable. Most notably, outsider candidates were defeating ainori (supported by all major parties) candidates in gubernatorial elections. A prime example of an outsider candidate defeating the establishment was Prime Minister Koizumi, who defeated the LDP establishment to win the leadership of the LDP. Koizumi's election and subsequent popularity appears to have dampened the trend. Most notably, a well-qualified challenger failed to unseat the incumbent in the Shizuoka gubernatorial election. Once Koizumi's popularity faded, however, the trend in favour of outsiders reappeared. Given an attractive alternative, establishment candidates continue to find themselves in trouble. The clearest recent example comes from the Yokohama mayoral election.
Seijikaikaku Rokunen no Dotei
- Munetaka Tanaka
Nagatacho Kakyubushitachi no Kekki
- Yutopia Seiji