Measuring Voters’ Multidimensional Policy Preferences with Conjoint Analysis: Application to Japan’s 2014 Election

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusaku Horiuchi ◽  
Daniel M. Smith ◽  
Teppei Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Analysis Application ◽  
The Media ◽  
Election Results

Representative democracy entails the aggregation of multiple policy issues by parties into competing bundles of policies, or “manifestos,” which are then evaluated holistically by voters in elections. This aggregation process obscures the multidimensional policy preferences underlying a voter’s single choice of party or candidate. We address this problem through a conjoint experiment based on the actual party manifestos in Japan’s 2014 House of Representatives election. By juxtaposing sets of issue positions as hypothetical manifestos and asking respondents to choose one, our study identifies the effects of specific positions on the overall assessment of manifestos, heterogeneity in preferences among subgroups of respondents, and the popularity ranking of manifestos. Our analysis uncovers important discrepancies between voter preferences and the portrayal of the election results by politicians and the media as providing a policy mandate to the Liberal Democratic Party, underscoring the potential danger of inferring public opinion from election outcomes alone.

How Junichiro Koizumi seized the leadership of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
IKUO KABASHIMA ◽  
GILL STEEL
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Television News ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Selection Procedure ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
House Election ◽  
The Media

In this paper, we examine some of the ways in which Koizumi Junichiro took advantage of changes in television news to win the 2001 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election and become prime minister of Japan. Koizumi adopted a strategy of political populism to increase his exposure in the media and develop a public reputation. Changes in the LDP selection procedure, in combination with long-term social and economic change and political reform, meant that the media mattered more to his campaign than had previously been the case. We use data from the Japan Election Study II (JES II) to show that the effects of Koizumi' media-driven popularity and style of politics reversed the LDP' electoral fortunes in the Upper House Election in 2001.

Gender and Voting Preferences in Japanese Lower House Elections

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
GILL STEEL
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Using Data

This paper analyzes voter choice in selected House of Representatives elections during the past 30 years. I estimate multinomial probit models using data from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai (Society for the Promotion of Clean Elections) surveys and use qualitative data gathered in focus groups. I argue that no gender gap exists in the votes garnered by the main parties because, first, influential people are not simply able to ‘deliver’ votes from their networks — most accounts of voter choice fail to discuss gender, an oversight considering that most networks are gender-based — and, second, ‘women's issues’ have no special relevance to women in their vote choice. Instead, women and men vote for the Liberal Democratic Party because they associate the Party with stability and increased standards of living, including substantial social provisions.

Japanese Party Politics at a Crossroads?

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-447
Author(s):  
Benjamin Nyblade
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Electoral Reforms

In 2009, the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan, which had successfully formed governments either alone or as the largest partner in a coalition government for all but a single year since 1955, suffered a devastating electoral defeat when the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won nearly two-thirds of the seats available in the House of Representatives. The landslide DPJ victory was seen by many commentators and academics as the culmination of a decade-long trend toward two-party politics, driven in large part by party and voter adaptation to the electoral reforms of the 1990s, which introduced single-member districts as the means for electing a majority of members of parliament. The three books reviewed in this essay were written primarily in the two years following the 2009 DPJ victory, and each attempts, in quite distinct ways, to update our accounts of electoral and party politics and policymaking in Japan to account for the changes in Japanese politics in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals POLITICAL CHANGING FOR PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Osamu Ryoichi
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Other ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Commander In Chief

The prime minister of Japan (日本国内閣総理大臣, Nihon-koku naikaku sōridaijin, or shushō (首相)) (informally referred to as the PMOJ) is head of the government of Japan, the chief executive of the National Cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Japan; he is appointed by the emperor of Japan after being designated by the National Diet and must enjoy the confidence of the House of Representatives to remain in office. He is the head of the Cabinet and appoints and dismisses the other ministers of state. The literal translation of the Japanese name for the office is Minister for the Comprehensive Administration of (or the Presidency over) the Cabinet. The current prime minister of Japan is Yoshihide Suga. On 14 September 2020, he was elected to the presidency of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). After being confirmed in the Diet, he received an invitation from Emperor Naruhito to form a government as the new prime minister, and took office on 16 September 2020.  Japan's parliament has elected Yoshihide Suga as the country's new prime minister, following the surprise resignation of Shinzo Abe. After winning the leadership of the governing party earlier this week, Wednesday's vote confirms the former chief cabinet secretary's new position. It happened because the needed of political interest for Japan.

Public Opinion and Its Impacts on the 2000 HR election

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikuo Kabashima
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Short Note ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic

This short note analyzes how the public in Japan evaluates the performance of the cabinet and the two major parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DP), and their impacts on the 2000 House of Representatives election held on 25 June.

A Step Toward One-Party Predominance: Japan’s General Election of 20 October 1996

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-64
Author(s):  
Takashi Inoguchi
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Frontier

THE GENERAL ELECTION IN JAPAN OF OCTOBER 1996 brought back the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a position of predominance, if not preponderance, in the House of Representatives. Out of 500 seats, the LDP acquired 239, while the second largest New Frontier Party (FNP) won 156, the newly-formed Democratic Party 52, the Communist Party 26, the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) 15, and the Sakigake New Party two seats. Prior to the general election, the LDP, the SDPJ and the Sakigake had cooperated in a coalition government with 211, 30 and 9 seats, respectively. After the election, the LDP formed a minority government without making a formal coalition arrangement with the much enfeebled SDPJ and Sakigake. Why was the LDP able to make this sort of comeback? Why have ‘reformist parties’, starting with the New Japan Party, the Renewal Party, the New Frontier Party and most recently the Democratic Party, experienced such a brief period of increased power before their fall (or stagnation)? These are the questions that this article addresses in describing and explaining Japanese politics today.

Infrastructure as the Magnet of Power: Explaining Why Japanese Legislators Left and Returned to the LDP

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Saito
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Party Switching ◽  
The Government

By examining party-switching decisions among members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), this article shows how distributive policy programs exclusively available to the governing party attract incumbents to the party in power. In a stable electoral environment where the government party is likely to stay in power, legislators elected from infrastructure-poor constituencies are effectively tied to the party. However, when the party's electoral prospects are uncertain, legislators behave more sincerely and switch parties to match their policy preferences. It is also found that defectors elected from infrastructure-poor constituencies tended to return to the LDP once the party installed a stable surplus coalition.

scholarly journals The Japanese conservative camp's bridging method for China–Japan relations under the separation of politics and the economic policy: investigation of the case of the Kenzo Matsumura Group, 1959–1972

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Zhai Xin
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
China And Japan

Abstract From the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco to the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Japan has always adopted a political and economic separation policy that maintains diplomacy with Taiwan and economic and cultural relations with China. Within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to break the existing deadlock, Kenzo Matsumura of the Japanese House of Representatives and others formed a foreign policy group in 1959. This group spoke highly of China's importance to Japan's development on the grounds of national interests rather than ideology and national sentiments, played a bridging role in the political communication between China and Japan, and created a precedent for the nontraditional improvement of international relations in Japan.

Hot political autumn in Japan

2021 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Aleksey Streltsov
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Ruling Party

The autumn of 2021 turned out to be hot for Japan’s political sphere. Elections to the House of Representatives were to be held and the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party was to be elected. The situation was complicated by a bad situation with the pandemic, accompanied by a drop in the ratings of the ruling party, as well as the low popularity of the head of the Cabinet, Y. Suga, which has reached critically low levels. To rectify the situation, the LDP had to take extraordinary measures — elect a new leader of Japan, change the party leadership, form a new cabinet of ministers and hold early elections to the lower house on October 31 with new political ideas and new faces in the party leadership. In this paper the author tried to characterize the main milestones of this tense political season in Japan, to assess the steps taken by the ruling party and to summarize the elections, which marked the beginning of a new stage of Japan's political development. The author comes to the conclusion that the reason for the relatively successful performance of the ruling party in the elections was the increased media attention to the election of the LDP president, which allowed it to intercept the agenda from the opposition and win over a significant percentage of swing votes. The election manifests put forward by the new LDP leader’s found support among many voters, which was also helpful for the LDP success. In addition, the traditional tactics of the opposition based on the criticism of the misses of the ruling party were practically ineffective in the elections, while a positive program was not presented at all.

scholarly journals Pitting prime minister cues with party cues in a multiparty system: a survey experiment in Japan

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Tomoya Yokoyama ◽  
Tetsuro Kobayashi
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
The Public ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
System A ◽  
Multiparty Systems

AbstractMotivated by a previous finding that single-party cues have no effect in Japan and by the increasing ‘presidentialization’ of Japanese politics, the present study examined whether the use of prime minister cues in place of single-party cues helps Japanese voters form policy preferences. In addition, to probe the effect of party cues that are unique to multiparty systems, the effect of multiple-party cues, which indicate that a policy is supported by multiple rather than single ideologically distinct parties, was investigated. The results of a survey experiment showed that while prime minister cues are not utilized by the supporters of incumbent parties, the supporters of opposition parties demonstrated significantly reduced approval of a policy when there was an indication that the prime minister supported it. The effect of prime minister cues on opposition supporters was stronger than that of Liberal Democratic Party cues, suggesting that leader cues are effective in Japan. Furthermore, a cue indicating that ideologically distinct parties support a policy enhances approval for that policy among the public, which suggests that multiple-party rather than single-party cues are informative in multiparty systems. Theoretical implications are discussed.

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