The Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Voter's Turnout in Japan

Abstract

I IntroductionVoter's turnout for the House of Representatives are recently on a downward trend. The turnout rates for the House of Councilors are lower and, as illustrated in Fig. 1, it reached as low as 44.5% in 1995.What people are non-voters? What factors make them non-voters? This essay aims at introducing current works of voter's turnout of Japanese political scientists into non-political scientists who are interested in electoral politics.II Basic Approaches to Turnout and the Contexts in which political Actors Play(1) Campaign mobilization by political parties, candidates, and interest groupsCampaign mobilization in Japan takes three forms: (a) mass electoral campaign, (b) organizational mobilization, (c) personal contacts by candidates and their supporters. As (b) and (c) are empirically more important than (a), this approach is often called“political (or social) network”approach.(2) Political involvement approachPolitical involvement is psychological orientation to politics. The more people are involved in politics, the more likely they are to vote. Such psychological variables as political interest, political efficacy, and sense of civic duty are typical ones. Among them sense of civic duty is often found most effective. As they are usually fostered through voter's socialization process, this can be called“socialization”approach.(3) Attractive choice approachWhen voters find a party (candidate) distinctively more attractive than the rest of the parties (candidates), they are perhaps more likely to vote. Rational choice model of voting is a special case of this approach, in which in terms of issue positions voters can differentiate a party from the rest of parties.(4) Social and political contextsWe cannot ignore the impact of contextual effects on turnout. Some contextual effects are introduced here.(i) The competitiveness of electionsThe competitiveness of election can raise turnout. When an election is competitive, voters pay more attention to the development of the race, and perhaps they are more likely to vote.(ii) Cost of voting“Cost of voting”can be referred on an aggregate level. Here the following three factors are examined:“double election”; the climate of poll day; institutional factors.(5) Political resources and social attributes of individual votersVoting requires the least effort among all forms of political participation. Therefore, the function of political resources is paid least attention in this essay. Individual social attributes are considered as surrogates for political and psychological factors, except for a few with their own function.Age (or political experience) is an example. As people grow older, they become familiar with political process and institutions around them.III Constructing Voter's Turnout ModelsThe reasons why voters decide not to vote are often so diverse that a single approach or a contextual effect cannot explain them. Usually, a turnout model is constructed from most of (or all of) the factors discussed so far.(i) Even such a theory-oriented model as rational choice model ofvoting utilizes political involvement approach which is supposed to be far from rational choice theory.(ii) Empirically-oriented models intentionally synthesize all approaches and contextual effects into their own models. Political involvement factors are very often found the most effective of all. Two models (Kabashima's and Miyake-Nishizawa's), among many, are cited as examples.IV Some critical problems with empirical dataAs most studies are based on national sample surveys, their dependent variables are usually reported votes for elections. It is well-known that reported turnouts by survey data are higher than the official counts. In case aggregate data are used, independent variables are under too many restrictions.