Japan's shift toward a Westminster system: A structural analysis of the 2005 lower house election and its aftermath

Asian Survey

Volumn 46, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 632-651

  Estévez Abe, Margarita ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Election; Japan; Party system; Political reform; Prime minister

Indexed keywords

ELECTORAL SYSTEM; PARTY POLITICS; POLITICAL REFORM; POLITICAL SYSTEM;

ASIA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; JAPAN;

EID: 33748491709     PISSN: 00044687     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/as.2006.46.4.632     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. T. J. Pempel and Gerald Curtis also pursue broad structural logics of change ranging from socio-economic shifts to the end of the Cold War. My analysis differs from theirs in its emphasis on changes in the rules of the political game more narrowly. See T. J. Pempel, Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990)
2. and Gerald L. Curtis, The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
3. For an extremely insightful account of the role of political entrepreneurs in his latest book, see Richard J. Samuels, Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).
4. For this debate, see Karen Cox and Leonard Schoppa, "Interaction Effects in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: Theory and Evidence from Germany, Japan, and Italy," Comparative Political Studies 35:9 (November 2002), pp. 1027-53
5. Steven Reed, "Evaluating Political Reform in Japan: A Midterm Report," Japanese Journal of Political Science 3:2 (November 2002), pp. 243-63
6. Margaret McKean and Ethan Scheiner, "Japan's New Electoral System: La Plus Ça Change..." Electoral Studies 19:4 (December 2000), pp. 447-77
7. Ray Christensen, "The Effects of Electoral Reform on Campaign Practices in Japan: Putting New Wine into Old Bottles," Asian Survey 38:10 (1998), pp. 986-1004
8. Steven Reed and Michael Thies, "The Consequences of Electoral Reform in Japan," in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? eds. Matthew Shugart and Martin Wattenberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 380-403
9. and Erik Herron and Misa Nishikawa, "Contamination Effects and the Number of Parties in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems," Electoral Studies 20:1 (March 2001), pp. 63-86.
10. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: John Wiley, 1954)
11. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row 1957)
12. Douglas Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971)
13. Gary Cox, "Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems," American Journal of Political Science 34:4 (November 1990, pp. 903-35
14. and G. Bingham Powell, "Voting Turnout in Thirty Democracies: Partisan, Legal, and Socio-Economic Influences," in Electoral Participation: A Comparative Analysis, ed. Richard Rose (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980).
15. Aurelia George Mulgan, "Japan's 'Un-Westminster' System: Impediments to Reform in a Crisis Economy," Government and Opposition 38:1 (Winter 2003), pp. 73-91
16. and Edward Lincoln, Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001).
17. Gary Cox, The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987). I would like to thank the anonymous reader for pointing out the similarities between my argument and Gary Cox's and for urging me to clarify how my argument differs.
18. Note that John Carey and Matthew Shugart consider Japan and the U.S. as countries where personal votes count more than party votes. In other words, they consider Japan and the U.S. to have the weakest political parties among the advanced democracies. John Carey and Matthew Shugart, "Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas," Electoral Studies 12:4 (December 1993), pp. 417-39.
19. For this reason, Aurelia George Mulgan aptly calls the Japanese political system an "un-Westminster system." Mulgan, "Japan's 'Un-Westminster' System," pp. 73-91.
20. "Jimin, Hantaiha Giin No Shibu Haishi Ni Muke Seitô Jyosei-hô Kaisei E" [LDP reforms party subsidy law in attempt to eliminate rebel representatives branches], Asahi Shimbun [Asahi News], September 20, 2005, .
21. "Shinjin Kenshû Wa Tô De Yarimasu 'Datsu Habatsu' E Shushô Ga Shudô" [The party will do the freshman orientation. The prime minister leads the charge to weaken habatsu], Sankei Shimbun [Sankei News], 2005 Election Special, September 14 2005, .
22. Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen, "Explaining Party Adaptation to Electoral Reform: The Discreet Charm of the LDP," Journal of Japanese Studies 30:1(Winter 2004), pp.1-34.
23. Late Yamanaka Teisoku, who served as the chair of the LDP Tax Committee, provides the best-known example. Until his death recently, LDP prime ministers simply deferred tax-related party decisions to Yamanaka.
24. Japan's PR does not in itself guarantee a party vote, however, because Japan adopted an open party list in 2001. An open party list PR system allows voters to cast their vote for a specific candidate on the party list. Despite this policy, the fact that there is any vote sharing at all among candidates from the same party strengthens the party to a much greater degree than was ever possible under the old multi-member district and the SNTV system. Steven Reed and Michael Thies highlight the party-enhancing features of Japan's mixed system. Reed and Thies, "The Consequences," p. 401.
25. A recent instance is the back-door decision to select Mori Yoshiro as prime minister, as his predecessor, Prime Minister Obuchi, lay unconscious in his hospital bed in his final days of life.
26. Indeed, empirical evidence indicates a big jump in the number of LDP prime minister's visits to candidate districts during the 1996 lower house election - the first election under the new electoral rules. See Ellis Krauss and Benjamin Nyblade, "'Presidentialization' in Japan? The Prime Minister, Media, and Elections in Japan," British Journal of Political Science 35:2 (April 2005), pp. 357-68 and Figure 3.
27. Shinoda Tomohito, Kantei Gaiko: Seiji Rîdashippu no Yukue [Prime ministerial diplomacy: The future of political leadership] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun-sha 2004), p. 20.
28. This reform under the Obuchi government is referred to as the Ozawa Reform, after Liberal Party leader Ozawa Ichiro who demanded the reform. The Obuchi government was a coalition government formed with the Liberal Party, which explains Ozawa's ability to influence reform. Hikotani Takako cleverly calls the previous reform discussed in this section "the Hashimoto Reform" and the reform under Obuchi "the Ozawa Reform." See Hikotani Takako, "Shibirian Kontororu no Shôrai" [The future of civilian control], Kokka Anzen Hoshô [National Security] 32:1 (June 2004), pp. 21-48.
29. For the chronology and process of these reforms, see Harutaka Takenaka "Introducing Junior Ministers and Reforming the Diet in Japan," Asian Survey 42:6 (November-December 2002), pp. 928-39.
30. As Cox carefully notes, votes within the Parliament may not correctly reflect the level of party cohesion. In instances when the party leader can only present legislative proposals that have already been approved within his party, we might witness significant "party discipline" in the Parliament without the party actually being cohesive. The LDP offers one such example. Because of the LDP's highly elaborate, intra-party, consensus-based decision-making process described earlier in this article, the range of policies that the LDP government could submit to the Diet was very narrow.
31. For a thorough analysis of political entrepreneurs from a comparative perspective, see Samuels, Machiavelli's Children.
32. For a full analysis of this point, see Margarita Estévez-Abe, Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
33. Steve Reed has noted a potential time lag between the 1994 Electoral Reform and politicians' adjustments to the new rule, but he almost exclusively pays attention to the electoral rules as the independent variable. See his remarks in Steven Reed, Japanese Electoral Politics: Creating a New Party System (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 178.
34. His immediate predecessor, Mori Yoshiro, had not been voted in as party president. Rather, five senior LDP members who had first-hand knowledge that Prime Minister Obuchi's death was imminent handpicked Mori as his successor in a behind-the-door negotiation.
35. This interview is recorded in Oshima Shinzo, "Shiroyama Saburô Ga Origami Tsuketa Seijika: Kosei Daijin Koizumi Junichirô" [The politician Saburo Shiroyama has praised: Minister of Health Koizumi Junichiro], Seiron [Correct Opinion] 305 (January 1998), pp. 200-14.
36. In the past election, the vote shares for the LDP and DPJ were 38.2% and 31.0%, respectively. These vote shares, however, produced a big gap when converted into actual numbers of seats: 296 (62%) for the LDP and 113 (24%) for the DPJ. See election results reported by Asahi Shimbun in its online election report, .
37. See Krauss and Nyblade, "'Presidentialization' in Japan?" for a good discussion of presidentialization.