The politics of reform in Japan and Taiwan

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 118-131

  Lin, Jih Wen ^a,b,c  

^a INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE   (Taiwan)

^b NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY   (Taiwan)

^c NATIONAL SUN YAT SEN UNIVERSITY   (Taiwan)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646737693     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2006.02.011     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. For a review of how the developmental-state theory explains East Asian development, see Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed., The Developmental State (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
2. South Korea used SNTV in two-member districts between 1980 and 1987. SNTV has also seen some use in other places, such as Puerto Rico, Vanuatu, Thailand, and most recently in Afghanistan. Yet its effects are most visible in Japan and Taiwan, as only in these countries has SNTV been the exclusive electoral system over an extended period.
3. As a result, Japan and Taiwan both experienced a long period of one-party dominance. For the case of Japan, see J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances M. Rosenbluth, Japan's Political Marketplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)
4. and T. J. Pempel, ed., Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990).
5. For Taiwan, see Yun-han Chu, "SNTV and the Evolving Party System in Taiwan," Chinese Political Science Review 22 (June 1994): 33-51.
6. Raymond Christensen, "Electoral Reform in Japan: How It Was Enacted and Changes It May Bring," Asian Survey 34 (July 1994): 589-605;
7. Rei Shiratori, "The Politics of Electoral Reform in Japan," International Political Science Review 16 (January 1995): 79-94.
8. "Amendment raises hope for a new constitution." Taipei Times, 24 August 2004.
9. Steven R. Reed and Michael F. Thies, "The Causes of Electoral Reform in Japan," in Matthew Soberg Shugart and Martin P. Wattenberg, eds., Mixed-Member Electoral Svstems (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 153.
10. Under SNTV, a party usually maximizes its seat share by strategically allocating its vote equally among its candidates, which makes most members of a dominant party electorally insecure. See Gary W. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 242.
11. SNTV was drafted by the state-builders of the Meiji Restoration. See J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances M. Rosenbluth, The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37.
12. Brian Woodall, "The Politics of Reform in Japan's Lower House Electoral System," in Bernard Grofman, Sung-Chull Lee. Edwin A. Winckler, and Brian Woodall, eds., Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan Under the Single Non-Transferable Vote (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 26-7.
13. Some saw NFP leader Ichiro Ozawa as the chief orchestrator of Japan's political reform. The new electoral system, he hoped, would unshackle Japan from the LDP's dominance and generate a dynamic bipartisan system. See Ichiro Ozawa, Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 62-75.
14. Other reform bills were proposed in 1967 and 1968 by Prime Minister Ezaku Sato, but the content was not directly related to electoral reform. See Brian Woodall, "The Politics of Reform in Japan's Lower House Electoral System," 36.
15. The German system is mixed in that half the seats are filled by FPTP and half from PR lists, but many observers do not realize that it is in essence a system of proportional representation, in that it draws from the party lists to achieve overall proportionality in the allocation of parliamentary seats (after imposing a five percent threshold for party representation). By contrast, the Japanese system achieves proportionality only in the distribution of the share of seats (about 40 percent of them) assigned to the PR rule. Therefore, the German system better represents smaller opposition parties if they clear the threshold.
16. The effective number of legislative parties is 1/SSi2, where Si stands for the seat share of party i. See Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 77-81.
17. With dual candidacy, candidates can run for an FPTP constituency while also appearing on the party PR list, where they can be ranked individually or equally. In the latter case, the candidate whose FPTP vote ratio is closest to the FPTP winner receives the PR seat. This system, a safety net for senior politicians, reinforced the personalistic tendency of Japan's elections under the new rule. On the 1996 elections, see Albert L. Seligmann, "Japan's New Electoral System," Asian Survey 37 (May 1997): 409-28;
18. and Margaret McKean and Ethan Scheiner, "Japan's New Electoral System: La Plus Ça Change," Electoral Studies 19 (December 2000): 447-77.
19. According to a survey conducted by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the proportion of Japanese citizens agreeing that the LDP has changed under Koizumi's leadership increased significantly in recent months. See Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo), 2 November 2005.