Robert Pekkanen

Electoral Incentives in Mixed-Member Systems: Party, Posts, and Zombie Politicians in Japan

How do electoral incentives affect legislative organization? Through an analysis of Japans mixed-member electoral system, we demonstrate that legislative organization is strongly influenced not only by the individual legislators reelection incentives but also by their interest in their party gaining power and maintaining a strong party label. Electorally vulnerable legislators are given choice legislative positions to enhance their prospects at the polls, whereas (potential) party leaders disproportionately receive posts with greater influence on the partys overall reputation. Members of Parliament elected from proportional representation (PR) lists and in single member districts also receive different types of posts, reflecting their distinct electoral incentives. Even small variations in electoral rules can have important consequences for legislative organization. In contrast to Germanys compensatory mixed-member system, Japans parallel system (combined with a “best loser” or “zombie” provision) generates incentives for the party to allocate posts relating to the distribution of particularistic goods to those elected in PR.

Policy Dissension and Party Discipline: The July 2005 Vote on Postal Privatization in Japan

This article examines party discipline and party cohesion or defection, offering as an illustration the rebellion over postal privatization in 2005 by members of Japans Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It explores the importance of party rules – especially the seniority rule and policy specialization for district rewards – as intervening variables between election rules and party defection in a decentralized and diverse party. It is argued that in such cases, party rules like seniority can help prevent defection. When these rules are changed, as in the postal case of 2005, defection is more probable, but it is found that the relationship between defection and seniority is likely to be curvilinear, and also that the curvilinearity is conditional upon each legislators having different incentives for vote, policy and office.

The Rise and Fall of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party

THE SUMMER 2009 ELECTORAL victory of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds historical significance, not only for political scientists but also for the people of Japan, and possibly for the country’s Asian neighbors and the United States as well. The LDP can boast of being the most successful political party operating in a democracy since the mid-twentieth century. The party held power nearly continuously from its formation in 1955, a scant three years after the end of the U.S. occupation. In the House of Representatives (the lower but substantially more powerful house in Japan’s bicameral system), the LDP compiled an amazing record: the party did not lose a single election in more than a half century, until August 30, 2009, when the Democracy Party of Japan won a stunning upset victory. Generations of Japanese have grown up knowing no governing party other than the LDP. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a brief ten-month period in 1993–94, when a small group split from the LDP to seize power as part of a disparate coalition that did little more than pass an electoral reform bill before falling apart. Much more significant than that episode, this electoral result seems likely to have important implications for the way in which Japan’s democracy works. Nearly 60 percent of LDP incumbents were turned out, and many sitting and former ministers, even a former prime minister, lost their seats. For the DPJ, on the other hand, election night brought only smiles. The party captured an amazing 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet—an all-time record—and only seven DPJ district candidates did not find their way into the Diet. The DPJ more than doubled the LDP’s 119 seats. What makes this election result even more surprising is that in the last House of Representatives election in 2005, the LDP engineered its greatest triumph

Legislative organization in MMP The case of New Zealand

How do electoral systems affect legislative organization? The change in electoral systems from Single Member District plurality (SMD) to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) in New Zealand can illuminate how electoral incentives affect the distribution of cabinet positions. Because in SMD the outcome of individual local districts determines the number of seats a party wins collectively, New Zealand parties deploy cabinet posts in order to shore up the electoral fortunes of individual members. In MMP, the total number of seats a party receives is determined by the votes in the proportional representation (PR) portion for the party, which eliminates the incentives to reward electorally unsafe members with cabinet positions. We show that strong cabinet members, measured through experience as prior terms in the cabinet position, are still likely to be retained.

Japanese Politics Between 2014 and 2017: The Search for an Opposition Party in the Age of Abe

This chapter traces out the major political events between the December 2014 and October 2017 general elections in Japan. The chapter covers the reduction in size of the House of Representatives (from 475 to 465 seats), the lowering of the voting age from 20 to 18, the results of the 2016 House of Councillors election won by Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, the 2016 Tokyo Gubernatorial Election won by Yuriko Koike, the creation of the Party of Hope and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and the decline of the Democratic Party (previously the Democratic Party of Japan).

The Opposition: From Third Party Back to Third Force

Since the Liberal Democratic Party’s return to power after the 2012 election, the weakness of the opposition parties is one of the most important storylines in Japanese politics. The collapse and fragmentation of opposition forces between the 2014 and 2017 elections is integral to understanding the LDP’s victory in 2017. The 2014 opposition leaders, the Democratic Party of Japan and Ishin, were supplanted in 2017 by two parties created just prior to the election: the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the more conservative Party of Hope.

Over-nominating candidates, undermining the party The collective action problem under SNTV in Japan

Any political party has a profound interest in maximizing seats, which in turn requires running the optimum number of candidates. However, to do this presumes solving a collective action problem among self-interested party members or leaders, and is deeply conditioned by the electoral system. The case of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party under the Single Non-Transferable Vote electoral system provides a superb illustration of how party leaders, even in a famously electorally successful party, will be unable to solve these dilemmas because of key facilitating institutions: first, party president selection rules; second, prime ministerial control over allocation of positions; third, a weak party label. Contrary to existing literature, we find ambitious factions consistently nominated too many candidates – deliberately risking the party’s losing seats. We draw attention to the sources of party strength in a novel way, and to how party rules interact with electoral systems to shape both parties and politics.

Reverse Contamination: Burning and Building Bridges in Mixed-Member Systems

Why would a candidate in a mixed-member electoral system willingly forego the chance to be dual listed in the party list tier along with the single-member district tier? Mixed-member systems create a “reverse contamination effect” through which list rankings provide important information to voters and thus influence behavior in the nominal tier. Rankings signal importance of the candidate within the party and also constitute information about the likelihood that the candidate will be elected off the list tier. Mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) and mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems create different incentives for parties and candidates to send voters different signals. Candidates in Japan’s MMM “burned their bridges” successfully and gained more votes. In New Zealand’s MMP system, parties instead built “bridges” between the proportional representation and nominal tiers by sending different signals to voters through list rankings.

Japanese Politics Between the 2012 and 2014 Elections

Japanese electoral politics and leadership in the past decade have been anything but stable. Both the 2009 and 2012 House of Representatives (HR) elections resulted in landslide defeats for the party in power. Between the 2005 and 2009 elections, Japan was led by four separate Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) prime ministers in as many years, including Shinzou Abe in his first short-lived administration (2006–2007). Between the 2009 and 2012 elections, there were three years with three more prime ministers, this time hailing from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

The LDP's path back to power

The 2012 election swept the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back into power after only a little over three years in the political wilderness. The scale of the victory was staggering but due mainly to a rejection of the DPJ government, not the popularity of the LDP (Reed, Scheiner, Smith and Thies, this volume). That the LDP actually won fewer total votes in its “greatest victory” of 2012 than it had in its “worst loss” of 2009 is finely ironic—but entirely consistent with our analysis.