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June 17, 1995

[SSJ: 68] RE Electoral System Reforms and Political Behaviour

From: Steven R Reed
Posted Date: 1995/06/17

Professor Curtis's comments are extremely welcome. I agree completely with his point on policy differences between the parties and on the connections between interest groups and the candidates. People expected a British-style responsible two-party system in Japan were engaging in wishful thinking. It existed in Britain for only a few years in the 1950s-1970s and was a rare event unlikely to be repeated.

I do however, think elections will become more party-oriented. If the are two parties, one in and one out, voters will have an easier time voting out the ins and punishing candidates involved in scandals. I speculate that they will have an easier time even than in the US because they can offer a strong challenger the luxury of a safe PR seat in exchange for challenging a vulnerable incumbent.
In any case, voters who wish to vote agains the government will not be able to switch to a conservative independent who then joins the LDP. They will have to choose between two sets of rascals.

Right now everyone is working on their koenkai and rightly so, but in the next election there will be one koenkai per party per district, perhaps with some interesting exceptions. The head of the local koenkai will be the candidate, but just as koenkai institutionalized as the original candidate retired and new candidates arrived, the local koenkai will slowly but surely become the local party organization in fact as well as name.

I find it interesting that Japan and Italy adopted very similar systems, Italy to weaken the parties and Japan to strengthen theirs.

SReed.

Approved by ssjmod at 12:00 AM