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June 13, 1995

[SSJ: 45] RE: P-A Theory and Elections

From: Nobuhiro Hiwatari
Posted Date: 1995/06/13

Professor Thies, I was very interested with your comments, and I have two questions.

(1) You said, "all polls of Japanese voters indicate that they
ffirst decide which party to support, and then, if necessary (i.e., if LDP) decide which specific candidate to vote for. The first decision requires some notion of how the LDP is different from other parties, and intraparty competition of an ideological sort would hurt the LDP's ability to draw that distiction."

Could you please give some cites on this?

(2) You suggested a "move away from personalistic campaigning and
ttoward party-based appeals." However, if there is little the actual and/percieved policy difference between major parties (or party labels) would that not encourage individual candidates to strenghen personalistic campaigning at the district level?
I think this is the point Dr. Kyogoku was getting at.

Naturally, the formal explanation (at least during the political reform debate in Japan) is that parties will try to differ with each other. However, are we not seeing Dietmembers/candidates willing to switch party affiliations to protect their koenkai instead of parties clarifying their policies?

I would greatly appreciate your comments.

Nobuhiro Hiwatari
Cambridge UK.

Approved by ssjmod at 12:00 AM