Dear Professor Rosenbluth,

Thank you very much for your extensive message. I found it to be most helpful and appreciate your kindness. Your comments are fascinating and I much enjoy our discourse. If I may, I was hoping to respond to some of your comments. Please respond if you wish; it would be most appreciated.

>In the short run, you're probably right. The parties have very weak "labels" or
"brand names" so the voters are still in the mode of voting for individual
candidates. That being the case, the candidates can scramble after any group
that will provide hard votes and money with little damage to the party's image.
In the long run, however, this should be inefficient and the first party to
develop a strong programmatic appeal to the floating voters will do well without
lots of money.
It was my understanding that floating voters (FV) constitute nor more than half
a candidate's vote, if at all. In 1971, Prof. Curtis commented that FV
constituted no more than 20% of Sato Bunsei's vote. Watanuki's 1986 work seemed
to suggest that only 20% of voters support a candidate because of koenkai
connections. My discussions with some LDP MPs seem to confirm the idea that FV
are less important in the appeals of MPs than hard vote appeals. However, it was
my impression that attempts to gain the support of FV are channeled through the
institutional mechanism of the koenkai, during the unofficial campaign. Given
the (now) even shorter official campaign, the restrictions on kobetsu homon [as
much as they are (in)effective] as well as media restrictions, attempts to gain
support from FV seem limited, though the efforts are increasing over time. Thus,
FV appeals are secondary to the hard-vote appeal (via koenkai and organizational
endorsement etc.). Do you suspect that FV will become the doinant voter
archetype in the near future because of SMD introduction? I think FV are a
function of a mobile populous, social organization, and media influence rather
than the electoral system directly itself. Would you agree, Professor
Rosenbluth?

This is because any appeal to organized groups has costs in the ssense that the candidate/party has to provide them with favorable policies in return, thereby reducing the party's flexibility in using policies to appeal to the larger mass of voters. According to Cox, THE EFFICIENT SECRET (Cambridge University Press, 1987), this seems to have been the case in post-reform England. The cost of electioneering went down dramatically after multi-member districts were abolished, thereby doing away with intra-party competition and paving the way for the "Efficient Secret" (Walter Bagehot's term) of party labels and programmatic appeals.
Thank you for mentioning this citation. In Japan, while a mixed SMD/PR system was introduced, many other recommendations of the 8th Election sys. Council were not adopted. Perhaps these are more important sources of the cost of political life: specifically, the need to pay for more secretaries than the 2-provided by the state, the need for Diet office space beyond the cramped Diet quarters, the need to build and maintain one's koenkai, etc.
Further, I wonder if the anti-corruption bills concurrently passed in post-reform England had any impact upon the costs of elections and the development of intra-party competiton as well, limiting the analogy. Does the social structure and political culture also alter the applicability to Japan?
For example, while in England, I have not noticed such social customs as gift-giving (omiyage) and the feelings of indebtedness-favors (amae for lack of a better word), and sempai-kohai. However, among the Japanese community at Oxford, such customs are tellingly maintained. How does the Efficient Secret account, if at all, for differences in these social customs, which find an expression in electioneering practices? One such example is ashi-dai and other
"token" monetary gifts. I am very interested in responses to this question because I too am wrestling with this issue in my own research.
Further, how will public-funding of parties alter the balance of power between MPs and factional/party leaders? IN addition, the elimination of multiple fund-raising organs and limitations on fund-raising parties would seem to imply that younger MPs would lose some of their independence vis a vis these leaders.
Would you agree with my statement?

>As to the effects of the second ballot, the PR component should further strengthen the party leadership, and should therefore further propel Japanese electioneering towards partisan issue-based campaigning.
What is to prevent split-ticket voting? What is to prevent an Akita voter from
selecting the candidate to whom he is closest (since, I am assuming the major
parties will have the same policy positions on agriculture in Akita) while
giving his second vote for the UFO party or Enoki's SPP? Is there a danger of
the second vote being used for "throw-away" purposes? Further, would one see a
case similar to the HC where the PR component (albeit national) is used for
protest-purposes, e.g. 1989 HC?
One possible instructive "source" is the PR list in the HC, but 1) it is
national, 2) the factional eadership created by the MMD is still extent under HC
elections held thus far (next month may be different, perhaps), and 3) HC is the
weaker of the two houses, reducing the "value" of the vote. Therefore, I
personally doubt its efficiacy for purposes of extrapolation.

Thank you once again for your response and I look forward to your comments.

Sincerely yours,

Yasunobu Kyogoku

P.S. Incidentally, I do not deserve to be addressed as "professor" or "doctor" as I am simply a mere graduate student. I do not know how the confusion began, but I apologize for any confusion that might have arisen.