Elections In Japan Research Articles

Having a granddaughter and voting for female candidates

Abstract This study examines the influence of grandchildren’s sex on grandparents’ voting behaviour by using independently collected individual-level data. The survey was conducted immediately after the 2016 House of Councillors election in Japan. It was found that individuals who had a granddaughter were more likely to vote for female candidates by a 10 per cent margin compared to those who did not. However, having a daughter did not affect parents’ voting behaviour. Furthermore, having a son or grandson also did not influence grandparents’ voting behaviour. This finding implies that grandparents vote with their granddaughters’ future benefits in mind, because granddaughters may be too young to vote in a male-dominated and ageing society.

Do natural disasters affect local elections? An empirical examination using subnational electoral data

AbstractDo natural disasters affect election results? Some studies have shown that natural disasters negatively impact subsequent elections, while others do not. This study investigated the link between natural disasters and local elections using data from the Japanese prefectural governor elections for the years 1985–2015. A rich data set is available for prefectural governor elections in Japan that includes information on who won, the vote shares of all candidates, and when the election was held, among others. We found empirical evidence that the number of days between an election and most recent disaster before election positively impacted the vote share of the incumbent/successor. In other words, an incumbent/successor is likely to have less support in the election immediately following a disaster by the constituencies, but can get more support as time passes after the disaster. Moreover, political alignment with the central ruling parties positively affects the vote share of an incumbent/successor over time between an election and the most recent disaster. These results suggest a possibility that politicians seek popularity not through the implementation of proper disaster recovery policies but by taking advantage of their connection with central ruling parties, which may harm citizens' welfare in the long run.

Does the competitiveness of election moderate the impact of descriptive social norms on voter turnout? A survey experiment in Japan

AbstractIntroThis article examines whether descriptive norms affect voters’ intention to vote in national elections in Japan and whether the impact of descriptive norms is moderated by the anticipated level of electoral competition. Social psychological research suggests that one's chance of voting is higher if they learn that many others are voting. On the other hand, knowing many others vote could make one think that their vote is not needed for influencing the election outcome, leading them to abstain.MethodTo test these competing expectations, I conducted a survey experiment in Japan in June 2022, presenting a hypothetical condition of the Lower House election and asking the respondents’ intention to vote in the hypothetical contest. I used a 2 × 2 design that varied (1) anticipated voter turnout (high turnout, low turnout) and (2) anticipated level of competition (high competition, low competition).ResultsI find that the descriptive norm of high voter turnout is positively associated with the chance of voting only when the expected level of competition is high.ConclusionThese are not consistent with the prior research demonstrating the strong influence of descriptive norms and the ones finding that the descriptive norm of nonparticipation leads to greater willingness to participate by generating the sense of threat.

The Discourse of Twitter and Characteristics of Online Political Participants during An Election: The Case of Municipal Gubernatorial Elections in Japan

The Discourse of Twitter and Characteristics of Online Political Participants during An Election: The Case of Municipal Gubernatorial Elections in Japan

Risk, institutions, and policy in decisions to join a start-up party: evidence from the 2017 snap election in Japan

AbstractResearch has shown that Japan's parallel electoral system altered the incentives that parties and their members face when competing for lower-house seats, leading to, among other things, more policy-oriented and less personalistic elections. What is less well known is how these altered incentives affect the decisions of incumbents to stay with their current party organizations or exit and join another political party. We address this question by using data from the 2017 snap election in Japan, specifically, the exit decisions of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) incumbents. Typically exit decisions involve considerations of electoral support, policy, or increased office benefits. Our results indicate that policy considerations were a primary factor in DPJ members' exit decisions but also that exiting legislators considered the risks associated with these decisions, which was molded by available party alternatives, each's electoral strength, and a unique feature of Japan's electoral rules, the fact that it reduced the electoral risk for some but not all incumbents who contemplated switching parties.

Loss aversion for the value of voting rights: WTA/WTP ratios for a ballot

What is the subjective value of voting rights? This article presents an empirical demonstration of people’s loss aversion for the value of voting rights. By way of vignette experiments using scenarios of the 2020 U.S. presidential election (Studies 1 and 2, with U.S. citizens) and a fictitious direct premier election in Japan (Study 3, with Japanese citizens), the present research measured the willingness-to-accept compensation (WTA) and the willingness-to-pay price (WTP) for a ballot(s) in political elections. A great disparity between WTA and WTP was found regardless of the electoral setting, the proportion and width of ballot alteration, and the initial status. Specifically, the observed WTA/WTP ratios for a ballot(s) were within the range of 5.00–27.36, which is much larger than the ratios for ordinary market goods (about 1.5–2.5) and which is comparable to the ratios for other non-market goods. In addition, WTA for a mere 10% dilution of voting rights is still higher than WTP for full voting rights; the powerful effect of loss aversion might help explain universal barriers against suffrage extension.

Institutional Antecedents to Shareholder Monitoring: The Liability of Localness in Shareholder Votes

This study explores how institutional forces shape the extent to which shareholders vigilantly monitor their invested firms. Using the context of the shareholder vote on director elections in Japan...

Capturing vote-seeking incentives and the cultivation of a personal and party vote

Electoral rules establish incentives that encourage candidates to strike a particular balance between cultivating their own personal reputations and cultivating shared party reputations. Higher levels of intraparty competition stress the need for an individual reputation and minimize the usefulness of a shared, party reputation. We develop a new indicator of intraparty competition that addresses shortcomings pointed out in previously used indicators. We also identify new, particularly intuitive indicators of ”personal” and ”party” vote seeking. Using within-system and across-system variation in parliamentary elections in Japan, we find that candidate manifestos contain more frequent uses of first-person pronouns and candidate names and fewer references to political parties when intraparty competition is stiffest.

Young Citizens’ Civic Engagement and Civic Attitudes: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Although reaching the voting age and getting enrolled in the voters’ list is an essential first step in the electoral process, existing studies have rarely investigated its effects on citizens’ socio-political experiences and civic attitudes. To fill this gap, we leverage a natural experiment in Japan, where citizens who turn eighteen years old and become eligible to vote in elections are automatically registered. For this inquiry, just after the 2016 House of Councillors election in Japan, we invited thousands of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old Japanese citizens to take an on-line survey. The results of our exact-date-of-birth regression discontinuity analysis suggest that becoming eligible to vote increases young citizens’ interaction with other voters and facilitates their information acquisition efforts before the election. Therefore, obtaining vote eligibility for an upcoming election is accompanied by some degree of increased civic engagement. However, it is not enough to change their civic attitudes, such as trust in government and a sense of efficacy in the democratic process. We argue that the intensity of civic engagement under the automatic registration system is weak due to the lack of citizens’ self-initiated actions for the registration itself.

Multi-level muddling: Candidate strategies to “nationalize” local elections

Comparative literature has identified how political parties at subnational levels strategically refer to the performance of parties or policy issues at national level to varying degrees. Building upon these studies on multi-level electoral dynamics, the article demonstrates how individual legislative candidates, and not just parties, selectively adopt what we call “cross-level electoral appeals”(CLEAs): campaign messages which emphasize issues, performances, and actors in levels of government other than that which the candidate or party is seeking office. Advancing existing conceptualizations of nationalization, we posit that there are mainly three types of such CLEAs, those in which local candidates: 1) praise or criticize a specific national policy or 2) performance of the national government; or 3) emphasize personal linkages to national-level parties or politicians. The article investigates the potential factors which lead to more frequent CLEAs by observing candidate manifestos for local legislative elections in Japan. We use an original dataset from a sample of prefectures differently affected by specific national policies, candidates affiliated to parties differing in organizational centralization and from districts varying in seat magnitude as well as incumbent party popularity. To test hypotheses about national and local level party popularity as well as district-level variables on the frequency of such appeals, the article analyzed the data set using the novel methodology of not just counting, but also measuring the surface area of specific appeals in candidate manifestos. Through regression analysis, we find evidence of national government party popularity leading to more frequency of local candidate CLEAs. We also find that local candidates who are more dependent on the party vote (i.e. those in smaller district magnitudes and in centralized party organizations) are more prone to certain types of CLEAs.

Electoral Party Switching and Party Policy Competition: Analyzing the Nature of Dimensionality with a Scaling Analysis of Experts’ Judgment

Party switching is rare, but Japan is an exceptional case. The Japanese legislature has repeatedly experienced extensive party switching since the early 1990s. These party switches and splits are often considered the result of electoral- and office-seeking incentives. How does frequent party switching that is motivated by vote- and/or office-seeking incentives influence party policy competition in Japan? To answer this question, we conducted an expert survey soon after the 2017 general election in Japan and used Aldrich-McKelvey scaling and Blackbox transpose scaling to analyze the data. A different item function (DIF) analysis divided policies into those in which party positions were and were not clearly distinguished. The multi-dimensional scaling found two dimensions: a left-right ideology and one with the status-quo vs reform orientation. Before the 2017 general elections, a political party politicized foreign and defense issues to form a new party, which affected party switching that resulted in the disbandment of the major opposition. Our two dimensional scaling analyses of foreign and defense issues found the same divide along with party splits. Moreover, an environment issue, which was not politicized, distinguished party positions as clearly as but differently from foreign and defense issues, i.e., they indicated the unity rather than the disbandment of the major opposition. Our scaling analyses thus suggest that although party switching and party splitting were observed at the timing of the elections, the politicized competition of policy issues in spatial dimensions also contributed to them.

Strategic Use of Early Elections in Japan : Comparison of the Koizumi and Abe Cabinets

Strategic Use of Early Elections in Japan : Comparison of the Koizumi and Abe Cabinets

Age of eligibility to run for election in Japan: a barrier to political careers?

ABSTRACTRecently, students’ political movements are emerging in the world. In countries other than Japan, students often play important roles as political actors. On the other hand, in Japan student movements are failed, and it is often argued that the reason lies in young people’s low political awareness. However, this article argues that the political awareness of young people in Japan is not low, and that the problem lies in the difficulty of access to politics for the young. This article investigates student movements around the world focusing on age of eligibility to run for election. In countries and regions where university students reach the age of eligibility to run for election during their school years, student movements to develop into political parties, and core members can become politicians while they are still university students. On the other hand, in Japan, the late age of eligibility to run for election means that students cannot enter politics during their time in university. In addition, given the Japanese traditional employment system, there is a significant risk involved in stopping regular employment to become a politician, which is not permanent employment, as it is dependent on election results. Thus, Japanese university students who are interested in politics are less likely to sustain that interest and become politicians after graduating from university.

Voting Support at Institutions for People with Disabilities: Analysis from the National Election in Japan

Voting Support at Institutions for People with Disabilities: Analysis from the National Election in Japan

Issue Ownership and Electoral Rule: Empirical Evidence from Japan

AbstractThis article examines the effects of electoral systems on issue ownership. This study argues that electoral rules significantly affect issue ownership because they prompt candidates to adopt different types of electoral campaigns. Compared to the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system, the mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system prods candidates to change the pattern of electoral campaigns from candidate-centred to issue-centred competition. In particular, partisan issue effects are more effective in gaining votes under the MMM. To support the argument, I find evidence from content analyses of party manifestos and multinomial logistic regression models of electoral surveys between the pre-reform and post-reform elections in Japan.

Smiles, turnout, candidates, and the winning of district seats.

Research has shown that a candidate's appearance affects the support he or she receives in elections. We extend this research in this article in three ways. First, we examine this relationship further in a non-Western context using 2015 local elections in Japan. Next, we show that this positive relationship is more complicated depending on the characteristics of the election under consideration. Specifically, we distinguished election contests by levels of turnout and found that despite a positive relationship between turnout and the extent to which smiling increases a candidate's support levels, the marginal increase in support declined as turnout increased and, in fact, became negative when some high-turnout threshold was crossed. Finally, we show that the number of candidates competing in an election is negatively related to the impact of a candidate smiling, confirming research conducted by the Dartmouth Group.

The effect of district magnitude on turnout: Quasi-experimental evidence from nonpartisan elections under SNTV

The relationship between district magnitude and turnout remains hotly debated, and previous studies suggest positive, negative, and nonlinear effects depending on other institutional characteristics. This article contributes to the empirical literature by conducting a quasi-experimental test on the effect of district magnitude in a context of a single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system with weak partisan ties: municipal council elections in Japan. Exploiting a credible source of exogenous variation in district magnitude and using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we reveal that a 5-seat increase in an average-magnitude district reduces turnout by 4 percentage points, which accounts for a 6.9% drop in the size of the electorate. We reason that, in the context of SNTV with weak parties, higher district magnitude leads to information overload, which may lower voters’ incentives to turn out.

An Appraisal of Japan’s “Right Turn”

The conservative Liberal Democratic Party won overwhelming victories in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 elections in Japan. We discuss whether this reflected a rightward shift in the electorate, by examining how major parties and leaders are identified with particular ideological poles, and citizen–government distance on a range of issues.

Electoral motives, constituency systems, ideologies, and a free trade agreement: The case of Japan joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations

This study examines the relationship between candidates and voters in the dispute over a free trade agreement. We theoretically show that candidates’ electoral promises about a free trade agreement are related to the economic interests of their districts, the types of constituency systems under which they compete with one another, and their ideologies. We empirically confirm the theoretical expectations, using as a case study the 2012 general election in Japan, where whether to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks was one of the biggest issues. The TPP tends to be opposed by voters working in the agricultural sector and those living in districts with a larger amount of cultivated land, whereas it tends to be supported by college-educated voters and those living in districts with more export manufacturers. Accordingly, candidates tend to oppose (support) the TPP when their districts have a larger stake in agriculture (export manufacturers) and a smaller (larger) number of college-educated voters. Further, proportional representation candidates are more supportive of the TPP; likewise, candidates and voters who prefer a small government and who emphasize the Japan–United States relationship tend to support the TPP.

Does Voter Registration Foster Civic Attitudes? A Natural Experiment in Japan

Although reaching the voting age and getting enrolled in the voters' list is an essential first step in the electoral process, existing studies have rarely investigated its effects on citizens' socio-political experiences and civic attitudes. To fill this gap, we leverage a natural experiment in Japan, where citizens who turn eighteen years old and become eligible to vote in elections are automatically registered. For this inquiry, just after the 2016 House of Councillors election in Japan, we invited thousands of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old Japanese citizens to take an on-line survey. The results of our exact-date-of-birth regression discontinuity analysis suggest that becoming eligible to vote increases young citizens' interaction with other voters and facilitates their information acquisition efforts before the election. Therefore, obtaining vote eligibility for an upcoming election is accompanied by some degree of increased civic engagement. However, it is not enough to change their civic attitudes, such as trust in government and a sense of efficacy in the democratic process. We argue that the intensity of civic engagement under the automatic registration system is weak due to the lack of citizens' self-initiated actions for the registration itself.