To Leonard Schoppa:
Hi Len. Agree with you on much of your message, including the lack of major cleavages; but there are still institutional electoral differences between UK and Japan. Japan's parliamentary structure has always resembled UK's (except the law does give a bit more power to the Diet than has ever been the case in Britain's non-written constitutional structure) but the electoral system still doesn't. Despite the common SSDs for many of Japan's seats, the ability of politicians to still be elected to PR even if they lose in SSD and that this is done by allowing multiple listings at the same rank with the winners being determined by proportion of vote to the winner in the SSD (the "best loser" provisions) make a big difference. They reinforce attracting "personal votes," help maintain the koenkai structure of vote mobilization, and still give individual DMs more power vis-a-vis the part than in the UK. Also, the fact that local level elections are still SNTV means DMs are still under pressure from local pols to deliver pork which also helps maintain a "personal vote" independent of party vote. Finally, at least in the LDP, the power of prefectural federations in determining nominations (except under Koizumi in
2005 and that produced a great reaction within the party), also lowers the central party control and centralization of the parties.

If one adds in the lack of major cleavages you mentioned PLUS the fact that the parties are not organized around such cleavages as still exist (like over defense) as in the UK but are ideologically diverse......

Best regards,
Ellis

Ellis S. Krauss, Professor,
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA