Party Politics

This paper examines the instability of party identification among eligible Japanese voters, using a seven-wave panel survey covering the period from 1993 to 1996. We found that only about a quarter of our sample consistently identified with the same parties, suggesting that party identification of eligible Japanese voters is very unstable. We also examined the individual characteristics influencing the stability of party identification and found that membership in religious organizations and favourable opinions toward major pre-existing political parties (the LDP, the CGP and the JSP/SDP) have a stabilizing effect on party identification. On the other hand, favourable opinions toward new parties and minor, pre-existing parties (the JCP and the DSP) have a destabilizing effect on party identification. Furthermore, political dissatisfaction, reformative ideology, and the absence of a belief in voting as a duty have a destabilizing effect on party identification.

Neither the loss of the LDP's majority position, nor the subsequent emergence of a new coalition politics, should be seen as marking a really fundamental change in the Japanese party system. Conceptions of party system change are both elusive and ill-defined, and it is often the case that relatively small but sudden shifts are treated as being of lasting importance. In the Japanese case, however, there has been little in the external environment that would have led us to expect any major transformation in the party system, and it now looks increasingly likely that the LDP will continue to enjoy a dominant position. What changes have taken place have been largely the result of inter- and intra-party manoeuverings in which the failure to exclude the LDP from power in the longer term has allowed the party to recover much of its integrative capacity. In this sense, the frequently cited comparison with recent developments in the Italian case is not very convincing, and a more suitable West European analogue might well be found in Ireland.

In 1996, both Japan and New Zealand adopted new electoral systems with strong similarities, though also significant differences. In each case the new electoral system entails the election of most MPs by single-member plurality, while the remainder are elected from lists. The aims of the reform were less clear, and more party-driven, in Japan than in New Zealand. In Japan there is no evidence as yet that `money politics', or the importance of the individual candidate, have disappeared. The new systems have had an effect on the internal life of the parties, especially on candidate selection. The change in the New Zealand system, as could have been predicted, has led to a great increase in proportionality, but the new Japanese system is actually less proportional than the previous single non-transferable vote electoral system. The effect on the New Zealand political system will be major, but the extent of the impact of electoral system change in Japan is not yet clear.

This paper takes a number of theories that have been used to analyse government formation in West European parliamentary democracies and applies them to the government formation process in Japan after the 1996 general election. These models underline the continuing importance of the LDP in the government formation process, despite the loss of its overall majority. The application of government formation models to the Japanese case also highlights the weakness of the typical assumption that sees parties as unitary actors. The paper thus concludes with some speculations as to how this assumption might usefully be relaxed to incorporate party factions, splits and fusions and thereby generate more dynamic models of the making and breaking of governments.

This research note report the results of an expert survey of party policy positions and the relative importance of different cabinet portfolios in Japan at the time of the 1996 general election. The survey replicates earlier expert surveys conducted in a wide range of democratic systems by Laver and Hunt (1992), but uses a survey form adapted to the specific Japanese context, translated into Japanese, and administered from a Japanese academic institution. The results provide raw data that can be used as input to a range of different models of party competition and government formation.