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Electoral Reform and the Costs of Personal Support in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Matthew M. Carlson
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Abstract

How does the choice of electoral rules affect politicians' incentives to campaign on the basis of personalized support? This article examines to what extent the adoption of new electoral and campaign finance rules affects the incentive of politicians in Japan's Liberal Democratic Party to rely on personal support organizations called koenkai. The core of the analysis utilizes newly collected campaign finance data. The empirical analyses confirm a considerable weakening in the number of koenkai across systems as well as a decreased need for politicians to spend money in the proportional representation tier. These results highlight the importance of previous organizational legacies as well as the efforts of political actors to mitigate the effects of rule change on their election and reelection prospects.

Keywords

JapanLDPcampaign financeelectoral reformcampaignspersonal voteincumbencyrational choiceinstitutionalismmixed-member electoral systems
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 233 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

I am grateful to Ikuo Kabashima, Gabriella Montinola, Steven Vogel, Ellis Krauss, Robert Pekkanen, Stephan Haggard, and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on earlier drafts. I also wish to acknowledge research funding from the Asian Studies Program at the University of Vermont and from the Japan Program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.Google Scholar

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20. Alternatively, because parties may rank their candidates at the same PR list positions, some candidates are selected through the use of a “best-loser” provision, which is calculated on the basis of their performance in the SMD tier by taking the number of votes the candidate receives divided by votes won by the first-place finisher.Google Scholar

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30. For example, I concur with Krauss and Pekkanen's claims that there is a path dependence to organizational development and that politicians are likely “to adapt familiar forms to new rational purposes in the new system” (Krauss, and Pekkanen, , “Explaining Party Adaptation to Electoral Reform,” p. 28).Google Scholar

31. See, for example, Hideo, , “How a Diet Member's Koenkai Adapts to Social and Political Changes”; Pempel, , Regime Shift ; and Curtis, , The Logic of Japanese Politics. Google Scholar

32. Seiji shikin zensho [Complete book of political funds] (Tokyo: Nihon Kokusei Chosakai, various years).Google Scholar

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35. The figures for 1996, 2000, and 2003 were gathered from Kanpo [public registrar] (Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Printing Press) and the Koho [prefectural gazette].Google Scholar

36. Reed, and Thies, , “The Consequences of Electoral Reform in Japan,” p. 395.Google Scholar

37. The Japanese campaign finance book did not report complete figures for the year 1993. I opted to estimate the missing data for specific organizations and total income using 1992 figures. For this reason, the 1993 figures reported here are likely to be slightly lower than if actual complete data had been used.Google Scholar

38. The means comparison tests used the t-test command in Stata 9. In 1986, the means of income for incumbents and newcomers are statistically different from each other at any level greater than 7.3 percent. However, the test did not find a statistically significant difference for the number of support groups. In 1990, the means for the number of groups and income are different at any level greater than 0.0 percent. In 1993, the means for the number of groups are different at any level exceeding 0.3 percent and income at 0.7 percent.Google Scholar

39. Included in this figure are the fund agents.Google Scholar

40. A means comparison test showed that the means for the number of groups and income for incumbents and new candidates are statistically different at any level greater than 0.0 percent for 1996, 2000, and 2003.Google Scholar

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42. The fund agent was originally limited to a maximum annual contribution of ¥500,000 from corporations and ¥1.5 million from individuals. In 1999, the law was revised to prohibit contributions from corporations (and labor unions). In contrast, there are no restrictions on donations from corporations, organizations, or individuals to the party branch. These regulations would seem to favor the creation and use of local party branches at the expense of the koenkai and fund agent.Google Scholar

43. This trend, of course, is complicated by contamination effects from the mixture of PR and SMD rules. Many pure PR candidates are incumbents who are unlikely to disband their koenkai as they may anticipate returning to the SMD tier in a future election.Google Scholar

44. The nonsignificant result may be related to the smaller number of pure SMD candidates in the LDP, which may have made it more difficult for statistical significance to be achieved.Google Scholar

45. Krauss, and Pekkanen, , “Explaining Party Adaptation to Electoral Reform,” p. 28.Google Scholar

46. This is possible through the parties' use of a best-loser provision, which is calculated by taking the number of votes the candidate receives divided by votes won by the first-place finisher.Google Scholar

47. Indeed, if politicians have less funds to devote to personalized support, they may have opted to focus on a fewer number of koenkai in their constituency—devoting their attention to koenkai subunits that have enough vote-gathering potential to justify their continued use.Google Scholar

48. It is also possible to argue that the effects of campaign finance laws and electoral rules are interactive and to demonstrate their interactive effects across a variety of electoral systems.Google Scholar

49. Carlson, Matthew, “New Rules, Old Politics: Electoral Laws and Campaign Strategies in Japan” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 2003), p. 84.Google Scholar

50. Curtis, , The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change, p. 166.Google Scholar