Steven R. Reed

Structure and Behaviour: Extending Duverger's Law to the Japanese Case

Japan uses simple plurality elections with multi-member districts to elect its lower house. This system tends to produce competition among n + 1 candidates per district. This ‘law of simple plurality elections’ is a structural generalization akin to Duvergers Law. Evidence from Japan also indicates that the causal mechanism behind this ‘law’ is not strategic voting, although strategic voting occurs, but elite coalition building. It is further argued that the connection between structure and behaviour is learning and not rationality. Equilibria are reached slowly through trial and error processes. Once reached, the equilibrium is unstable because parties and candidates try to change it. Even without rational actors and stable equilibria, however, this structural generalization accurately describes the dynamics of electoral competition at the district level in Japan.

Duverger's Law is Working in Italy

In 1993, Italy adopted an electoral system based largely on single-member districts (SMD) based, at least in part, on the hope that SMDs would lead to a two-party system and alternation in government. That idea is known in political science as Duvergers law. The overwhelming consensus among specialists in Italian politics would appear to be that Duvergers law is not working very well in Italy. I will argue, to the contrary, that Duvergers law is working exactly as should have been expected. Although one may see little evidence of movement toward a two-party system at the national level, between the 1994 and 1996 elections, more than 80% of electoral districts moved closer to bipolar competition between two candidates. A dynamic analysis of electoral districts confirms the powerful operation of Duvergers law in Italy.

Strategic Voting in the 1996 Japanese General Election

Japans new electoral system may or may not be good for Japanese democracy, but it is almost ideally designed for the study of strategic voting. No other existing electoral system provides political scientists with data on such neatly separated but simultaneous single-member districts (SMD) and proportional representation (PR) votes. Using candidate-level aggregate data, I find strong evidence for strategic voting: Candidates with a good chance of winning receive more SMD than PR votes, and those with little chance of winning receive more PR votes. Strategic voting explains not only the basic pattern but also several exceptions to the rule. In addition, I find that a realistic but relatively inaccurate ex ante prediction of a candidates probability of victory produces a superior explanatory model than does a perfect ex post prediction calculated from the final electoral results. These results support the hypothesis that voters base their strategic voting calculations on simple cues available to them before the election.

Democracy and the personal vote: A cautionary tale from Japan

Abstract The debate on the merits of various electoral systems focuses primarily, and properly, on the relationship between a partys percentage of the vote and its percentage of the seats. The choice between proportional systems and systems that purposefully reduce the number of parties mirror two basically different theories of democracy: the consensus and the majoritarian. However, a second dimension needs also to be considered—the degree to which the electoral system produces incentives to create candidate, as opposed to party, support. Japan presents us with an electoral system that is ‘medium’ on the consensus versus majoritarian dimension, but produces extremely strong incentives for candidates to rely on their personal vote. Both dimensions have serious implications for the quality of democracy.

Evaluating Political Reform in Japan: A Midterm Report

In the 1993 general election the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. The coalition government that followed enacted the most far-reaching political reforms Japan has experienced since the American Occupation. The country has now experienced two elections since these reforms so we can begin to analyze trends and dynamics. It is now possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the effects of these reforms. I evaluate the reforms under three headings: (1) reducing the cost of elections and levels of corruption; (2) replacing candidate-centered with party-centered campaigns; and (3) moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the parties of the government and the parties of the opposition. In conclude that, with some notable exceptions, the reforms are working well, about as well as should have been expected.

Scandals During the Abe Administrations

This chapter provides a detailed overview of the scandals that plagued the Abe administration between the 2014 and 2017 elections. After briefly profiling the cabinet members who embarrassed the government, the authors describe two scandals of a new type: sontaku scandals. These sontaku scandals involve special treatment given to projects associated with Prime Minister Shinzō Abe or his wife, but do not charge either with having done anything improper. Instead, bureaucrats seem to have acted in anticipation that it would please the prime minister.

Seats and votes: Testing Taagepera in Japan

Abstract How is a partys percentage of the vote in an election related to the percentage of the seats it is allocated in the resulting legislature? Taagepera and Shugart (1989) have pioneered a physics-style deductive approach to this problem. I test Taageperas theoretical equation, which predicts seats from votes, using Japanese data. The Japanese case allows me to test the equation precisely, using precise values for all of the variables in the equation, most importantly for the relevant values of district magnitude. As it turns out, the theory passes these tests admirably. Finally, I discuss the implications of the physics-style approach for political science.

Analyzing Secularization and Religiosity in Asia

Using the 2005 and 2006 AsiaBarometer surveys I analyze religiosity and secularization in Asia. I find that, in South Asia, identification with a particular religion is the norm and most people pray every day but, in East Asia, religious identification and religious practice are both much less common. Even in secular East Asia, however, the demand for religious services is high and belief in a spiritual world is common. I conclude that secularization does not necessarily produce uniformly secular societies. Turning to the causes and consequences of religiosity, I find surprisingly few significant relationships, results that echo similar analyses in Western Europe. I then discuss the implications of these non-findings.

Voter Reactions to ‘Strange Bedfellows’: The Japanese Voter Faces a Kaleidoscope of Changing Coalitions

On 30 June 1994 the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ, formerly the Japan Socialist Party) joined its historic enemy, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to form a coalition government in a Japanese equivalent of Italys ‘historic compromise’. Competition between the conservative LDP and the progressive socialists had defined the Japanese party system since 1955. In this paper we analyze voter reactions to this and other confusing events surrounding the end of the LDPs 38-year dominance. We find, first, that the Japanese electorate was able to make sense of these events. The political space reflected in public opinion mapped the political space reflected in the mass media remarkably well. Secondly, our findings support the idea that attitudes toward political parties are endogenous to the political process: strategic moves by political actors alter the political space within which they maneuver. Coalitions of strange bedfellows force voters to revise their perceptions of political space and reevaluate their attitudes toward the actors involved. Strange bedfellows seemed less strange, friendlier after they had been seen in bed together.

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).