The next meeting of the Japan History Group (JHG) at the Institute of Social Science (ISS), University of Tokyo, will be held on Thursday, 4 November 2021, at 10:00 AM (JST) on the Zoom Meeting.
If you want to join it, please contact me as soon as possible. Email address is as follow;

naofumin@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp <mailto:naofumin@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>

The URL will be emailed to the applicant at the end of October.

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Date : November 4, 2021, 10:00-11:30 (JST)

Venue: Zoom meeting (the URL will be emailed to the applicant at the end of October)

Presenters: Matthew Carlson (Professor, University of Vermont) and Masaki Nakabayashi (Professor, ISS, University of Tokyo)

Discussant: Kenneth M. McElwain (Professor, ISS, University of Tokyo)

Title: "Parties, Factions, and the Impact of Japan's 1975 Campaign Finance Reform"

Abstract:

The needs of parties and factions to raise large amounts of funds has been cited as a reason for Japan's never-ending cycle of corruption scandals and money-drenched elections. In 1975, reformers overhauled Japan's main campaign finance law, the Political Funds Control Act. While most observers believe that the reform failed to accomplish its objectives, we focus on the effects of the reform on the fundraising efforts of parties and factions. Using campaign finance reports filed by parties and factions during the 1955-1994 period, we use fixed effects models and difference-in-difference estimation to show that the reform relatively favored opposition parties compared to the Liberal Democratic Party. Compared to the Tanaka faction, the reform also favored the Fukuda and Nakasone factions that came to the helm of party and government in the mid-1980s.

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Dr. Naofumi NAKAMURA
Professor of Business History
Institute of Social Science,
The University of Tokyo
naofumin@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp <mailto:naofumin@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>