Do Japanese Voters Vote Strategically
by Masaru Kohno (UBC)
for the British Columbia Political Studies Association Conference Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia May 5-6, 1995
Introduction
Do Japanese voters vote strategically? Despite the massive volume of
studies accumulated over the last four decades on Japanese elections
and political participation the treatment of this question in the
existing literature is incomplete at best Researchers specializing in
Japanese voting behavior are so heavily influenced by the
sociological/survey-analysis tradition of the Michigan school that
they have ignored the issue of strategic voting entirely 1
The two recent exceptions to this oversight, Reed (1990) and Cox
(1994), address strategic voting in Japan, but they do so in the
context of inquiring into the structural effects of the Japanese
electoral system of multi-member districts and a single non-
transferable vote, which existed between 1947 and 1994 for the
House of Representatives In their analyses, the possibility of
strategic voting is assumed, rather than treated as a matter of
empirical dispute Both Reed and Cox do, however, provide some
evidence to demonstrate that strategic voting takes place in Japan By
extending what is known as "Duverger's Law," they argue and show
that, under the above Japanese electoral system, strategic voting See
for example Flanagan et al (1991), which claims to be the "major
comprehensive study of the attitudes and voting choices of the
Japanese electorate" (p 45) with no reference to the concept of
strategic voting See also a similar omission in Miyake (1989), a
textbook on voting behavior written by a leading Japanese scholar in
the field produced competition among M+1 "serious" candidates in
M-seat districts. 2 In this paper, I take these analyses one step
further and explore the determinants of Japanese strategic voting,
other than the structure of the electoral system. In particular, I seek
to highlight the spatial constraints on strategic voting and their
implications. While strategic voters will desert their most preferred
candidate, if he/she has poor chance of winning a seat, they will not
necessarily vote for any candidate who has a better electoral chance.
Their voting choice is constrained by the policy/ideology positions of
available alternative candidates in that they are likely to vote for a
candidate who is close to their own policy/ideology preference. While
Cox's model assumes this spatial] effect explicitly (1994, p. 610), as
does Reed implicitly (1990, pp. 338-40), neither of these earlier
studies directly reveals such an effect.
My primary concern here is to examine the pattern of strategic
voting by the supporters of the Japan Communist Party (JCP) who are
assumed to be located on the far left of the Japanese policy/ideology
space. 3 I focus on this particular (and relatively small) subset of
Japanese voters for several reasons.
First, according to conventional wisdom, the JCP has a more solid
organization than its rival parties and its supporters are believed to
be among the s strongest party loyalists. In this sense, the case of the
JCP supporters provides a "tough case," and a successful
demonstration of strategic voting by this subset of voters would
constitute strong evidence that such voting takes place in Japan more
generally.
Second, although most of its candidates face poor electoral prospects,
the JCP usually runs candidates in all electoral districts in general
elections, providing a member of observations large enough to
impose various analytical controls. 2 Throughout the period from
1947 to 1993, a majority of Japanese electoral districts for the House
of Representatives, the more important lower house, consisted of 3-5
member districts, although there have been some exceptional single
member, 2-member and 6-member districts. 3 I thus assume that
Japanese party competition takes places in a unidimensional
policy/ideology space. For empirical support for this assumption, see
Kabashima (1986) .
Third, especially for the purpose of demonstrating the spatial effect
of strategic voting, a focus on the JCP supporters makes the analysis
straightforward because, being located at the far end of the
policy/ideology space, their choice of alternative candidates is
limited to one direction.
Finally, a successful demonstration of strategic voting by the JCP
supporters would also have broad implications, highlighting the
inter-party competition on the left, namely between the JCP and the
Japan Socialist Party (JSP), as an important factor in understanding
the evolution of the Japanese party system.
In the following section, I build on the insights from the previous
research and advance a set of hypotheses regarding the
determinants of strategic voting in Japan. In the third section, I
present my model, analyze the data, and evaluate the results. The
final section discuss the broad implication-s of this study and
concludes with suggestions for future research.
Hypotheses In the literature on contemporary Japanese politics, Reed
(1990) and Cox ~1994) are the only two studies that address the
issue of strategic voting in Japan. 4 These two studies, however, are
driven primarily by a concerns with the structural effect of the
peculiar Japanese electoral system and, in their analyses, the
possibility of strategic voting is assumed, rather than treated as a
matter of empirical dispute. An alternative, and no less important,
research design would treat the pattern of Japanese strategic voting
as a behavioral outcome and explore its various determinants.
Under this approach, the Japanese electoral system may still be
found to be an important factor, 4 Compared to Cox's formal model
of "strategic voting equilibria," Reed (1990) downplays the
importance of strategic voting, relative to elite-level "mechanical
effect," in producing the M+1 results. but it may not be the only
source of Japanese voters' decisions to vote strategically. In fact, the
discussion and evidence presented by each Reed and Cox point to the
inappropriateness of making a categorical assumption about the
possibility of strategic voting in Japan. While advocating the "M+ 1
Rule," these studies acknowledge that it took a long time for the
number of competing candidates to reach equilibrium (Reed 1990)
and that the optimization has been imperfect (Cox 1994).
Faced with these observations, both authors develop informal and
post hoc explanations for the apparent gap between their models'
predictions and the real data. Reed claims that the time required for
optimization u as a product of "learning," as opposed to instrumental
rationality, that guides the decision-making of strategic voters. Cox,
on the other hand, relies on the existence of non-instrumental
voters, lack of information and other kinds of "noise" prevalent in
the real world, to account for somewhat ambiguous empirical
findings.
The purpose of the following analysis is to explore more
systematically the set of conditions under which Japanese voters
will vote strategically. Thus, instead of assuming a priori that every
Japanese voter is always strategic, I seek to identify those factors
which will motivate voters to engage in strategic voting. I consider
three factors in particular, and hypothesize as to their effects as
follows.
First, I retain the original insights of the two preceding studies and
examine the structural effect of the Japanese electoral system on the
pattern of strategic voting. Generally, other things being equal. the
more likely their votes will be wasted (by voting for the most
preferred candidate), the more likely voters will vote strategically.
Meanwhile, the likelihood of their votes being wasted varies
according to the different institutional context in which voters cast
their ballots. As mentioned earlier, Japan for a long time (1947-93)
had an electoral system in which voters cast a single non-
transferable vote to elect 2-6 representatives in each district. The
varying size of electoral districts, i.e., the varying number of
assigned seats, would alter the proportion of the vote required to
guarantee a seat, known as the Droop quota, thus affecting the
likelihood that voters would waste their votes.
Hence, specifically: Hypothesis 1:
Voters in larger-sized districts will be less likely to vote strategically
than those in the smaller-sized districts.
Second, aside from the size of electoral districts, voters' decisions to
vote strategically are influenced more generally by their
expectations about the electoral prospects of the most preferred
candidate. If voters are led to believe that he/she has a good
(although, of course, not guaranteed) chance of getting elected.
voters have no reason to vote for an alternative candidate. 5
Thus, as specifically discussed by Cox (1994), information about the
candidate's expected vote share in the upcoming election is likely to
influence voters' decisions. What, then, constitutes such information?
This is a difficult question to answer not on}y because some kinds of
information may be available (asymmetrically) only to some voters,
but also because each voter may have a different way of assessing
the reliability of the given information. Since it would be impossible
to create an exhaustive and balanced list of informational sources, I
focus here on one kind of information about the candidate, which is
among the most widely (and thus symmetrically) available to voters
in Japan: his/her incumbency vs. non-incumbency status.
If the most preferred candidate is an incumbent seeking re-election,
voters will have higher 5 The strategy of the supporters of small
parties, like the JCP, is straightforward, because these parties will not
endorse more than one candidate in an electoral district. However,
the strategy of the supporters of large parties, like the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), will be more complicated. In addition to
deserting candidates who are too weak, strategic voters may also
abandon candidates who are too strong and thus likely to obtain far
more votes than the Droop quota. Such excessive votes would also
constitute "wasted votes" in the sense that these votes, if distributed
correctly, might have otherwise contributed to electing one more
candidate from the same party. Because this second aspect of
strategic voting is irrelevant to the case of the JCP supporters, its
possibility and implications will be ignored. 6 expectations of
his/her electoral success.
Thus: Hypothesis 2: Voters whose most preferred candidate is an
incumbent will be less likely to vote strategically than those whose
most preferred candidate is not the likeliest.
Finally, I consider the spatial constraints on strategic voting. While
strategic voters will desert their most preferred candidate, if he/she
has poor chance of winning a seat, they will not necessarily vote for
any candidate who has a better electoral chance. As assumed in any
formal model of strategic voting, voters' choices are constrained by
the policy/ideology positions of available alternative candidates in
that they are only likely to vote for a candidate who is considered
close enough to their own policy/ideology preference.
This, of course, begs the question: how close is close enough, or, how
far, in terms of policy/ideology distance, are voters willing to
compromise in their search for an alternative candidate? If voters
are liberal in trading off their policy/ideology preference, they may
continue their search along the policy/ideology space until they find
such a candidate. If voters, on the other hand are reluctant to
compromise their preference, they may abstain, or may vote for
their most prefered candidate even though they know that their
votes are likely to be wasted. Thus, in the absence of an
immediately obvious second-best candidate, voters face multiple
options. For he case of Japan, the lack of relevant survey data makes
it impossib to inquire systematically into voters' choices among
these options. One can, however, still test the degree to which voters
are liberal/reluctant about trading off their ideology/po}icy
preference. Practically. voters evaluate each candidate's ideological
position based on his/her partisan affiliation.
Thus, to ask the question "how close is close enough?" is to ask
whether voters will be willing to vote on}y for a candidate from the
second most prefered party, or will they also be willing to vote for
candidates from third, fourth ... nth parties. Accordingly, I make
two competing hypotheses regarding the spatial determinant of
strategic voting.
The restricted version is: Hypothesis 3A: Voters' decisions to vote
strategically will be influenced by the availability of a candidate
from their second most preferred party.
The expanded version is: Hypothesis 3B: Voters' decisions to vote
strategically will be influenced by the availability of candidates
from other parties.
In sum, there are at least three important sources of voters' decisions
to vote strategically in Japan. The varying size of electoral districts
may provide an institutionally-structured incentive for the
voters not to waste their votes. The most prefered candidate's
incumbency vs. non-incumbency status may have an informational
effect on the voters' electoral expectations. Voters may also be
concerned with the spatial implications of strategic voting in
choosing an alternative candidate from a pool of available candidates.
Are all of these determinants empirically significant?
Data Analysis
This section develops a set of regression models to test the
hypotheses outlined above. I analyze primarily the voting pattern of
JCP supporters as an important subset of Japanese voters, using the
data from the lower-house election in 1993.
(1) Models and Results
Table 1 summarizes the specifications of the two competing models
(one corresponding to above Hypothesis 3A and the other to 3B) and
their estimation results. Both models include the Communists'
relative vote share (of the total vote cast) in 129 districts as the
dependent variable. 6 Model A, the restricted model. includes three
independent variables: 1) the size of electoral district, which ranges
from 2 to 6; 2) a dummy variable, a value of 1 assigned to the cases
where the JCP candidate was an incumbent candidate seeking for
reelection, and 0 to the other cases;7 and 3) a dummy variable, a
value of 1 assigned to the cases where a candidate from the Japan
Socialist Party (JSP) was not compelling against the JCP candidate,
and 0 for the other cases. Model B, the expanded model, includes four
additional dummy variables to explore whether voters' decisions are
influenced by the availability of candidates running from parties
other than the JSP. namely the Clean Government Party (CGP), the
Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), the Japan New Party (JNP), and the
Social Democratic Federation (SDF) .86
This choice of the variable has a disadvantage of not taking into
account abstention. An alternative approach would be to use the
actual votes received by the JCP as the dependent variable but, even
with this, it would be impossible to identify "who abstain" without
appropriate survey data. The usage of the actual votes would also
cause some bias because of the relatively substantial
malapportionments of seats across electoral districts in Japan. 7
The Japanese mass media usually uses three categories in describing
candidates: 1) "Gen", or incumbents, 2) "Shin" or new faces, and 3)
"Moto," for former-incumbents. The last category refers to those who
had been elected before but lost their seats in the immediately
previous election. For the present analysis, I merged 2) and 3) to
form a dichotomous category, incumbents vs. non-incumbents. 8 The
CGP, which began their political activities in the mid 1950s as a
political arm of a Japanese Buddhism organization (Soka Gakkai),
entered the lower house electoral race in 1967. The DSP was
established by right-wing members of the JSP who had left the party
in 1960. The SDF was created in 1978 by another group of former
JSP members. These three parties constituted the traditional centrist
camp in Japan, located ideologically between the JSP and the LDP.
The JNP, on the other hand, was formed as a new party (with no
incumbent politicians in the lower house) only a year before the
election. In addition to the JNP, two other new parties were
competing in the 1993 election, Shinsei-to and SakEgake. However,
because those two parties, unlike the JNP, were both established by
former members of the LDP, I have excluded them from the model.
9
TABLE 1 About Here
AS is clear from the table, all the coefficient estimates for the three
independent variables for Model A are statistically significant. The
signs of these coefficients are also each in the expected direction. On
the other hand, some of the coefficient estimates in Model B are
insignificant (and some of the signs are not in the expected
direction). Especially noteworthy is that, by including the additional
four dummy variables, the otherwise significant coefficient for the
district size variable becomes insignificant (and its sign reversed).
While the inconsistency about this particular variable deserves
careful evaluations (see discussion below), it seems appropriate to
conclude, at this point, that the three original variables in Model A
are all important determinants for voters' decision to vote
strategically. (2)
Implications
What do these results imply at a more concrete level? First, on the
one hand, the results confirm the theoretical intuition underlying
Reed's and Cox's previous studies that the Japanese voters' decisions
to vote strategically are structured by the existing electoral system.
While replications of similar analyses for the past elections are
warranted, the finding that the voting decisions of even the JCP
supporters, presumably the strongest Party loyalists, are affected by
varying district size illustrates the In prominence of the
institutional effect on the pattern of strategic voting in Japan. 9
One can further argue, based on these results, that the 1994
electoral reform, especially the introduction of a single-member
plurality system, will have a considerable impact on the JCP's vote
share in future elections. 1O According to Model A, the JCP will lose
approximately .8 percent of its vote share per each unit decrease in
the number of assigned seats; this should provide a rough estimate
of the expected Communist vote in each electoral district under the
new electoral system. l l
Second, on the other hand, the above analysis also reveals the
limitations of the previous studies, by indicating that strategic
voting is not simply a product of institutionally- structured
incentives of the voters not to waste their votes. As is evident from
Table 1, at least two more factors, other than the structure of the
electoral system, are important determinants of Japanese strategic
voting. In fact, according to the relative size of coefficient estimates,
the effects of the JCP candidate being an 9 If the grouping of
different-sized districts was correlated with other social factors, such
as different levels of urbanization or varying occupational
distributions, the correlation found here would be spurious. For
example, if larger districts (5 or more member districts) were
concentrated in Tokyo, Osaka and other metropolitan prefectures
where, for such social reasons, the JCP might attract more votes than
in rural areas, then the reported results would be open to other
interpretations. It would be difficult, however, to claim that the
grouping of different sized districts coincided with the urban/rural
distinction or with industrial demographics. Densely populated
prefectures, such as Tokyo and Osaka, were subdivided into several
districts, some of which were three and four member districts,
whereas some rural prefectures, such as Shimane and Yamanashi,
constituted single five-member districts precisely because of their
small populations. In fact, the average district size for Tokyo (3.91)
and for Osake (4.00) is almost identical to the average district size for
the entire Japan (3.96).10
The new electoral law enacted in 1994 stipulates, in essence, a
hybrid of the Anglo-American plurality and European proportional
representation systems. Out of the total 500 lower house seats, 300
members are to be elected from single member districts and 200
from 11 PR regional districts. 11 A more accurate prediction,
of course, would also have to take into account the effect of re-
districting and various other changes brought about concurrently by
the electoral reform, including the greater restriction on political
fundraisings. For the details of the reform, see Christensen (1994).
ll incumbent and of an JSP candidate being absent as an alternative
choice are both more substantial than the impact of district size.
To elaborate further on the relative salience of the three
determinants, the finding that the incumbency variable has the
largest impact is a particularly noteworthy result. In the
contemporary literature on the personal vote in the United States
and elsewhere, the incumbency advantage is usually associated with
the distributional "pork-barrelling" aspect of the candidate's
constituency services. which forms the basis for his/her name
recognition and reputation (Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina 1987).
Likewise, in the literature on Japanese politics, observers
accustomed to the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP's) long-lasting
regime have emphasized the clientalistic and often corrupt
relationships between politicians and the electorate with phrases
such as "machine politics" (Johnson 1986) and "interests-channelling
politics" (Inoguchi and Iwai 1987).12
In the context of these studies, the formidable advantage of being an
incumbent Communist candidate in Japan is surprising and
somewhat counterintuitive. One would expect that the JCP
candidates' incumbency advantage would be minimal because the
JCP has never participated in forming a government and, being the
party at the extreme left, it has been excluded from the various
legislative bargaining mechanisms that have been institutionalized
since the early 1970s (Krauss 1984, Ito 1990). The above result
nevertheless suggests that, even for a JCP candidate, being an
incumbent is a critical asset for improving his/her electoral
prospects. One implication to draw from this may be that one should
not underestimate the purely informational aspects of the
incumbency advantage, not contingent upon the material,
constituency-oriented services. Finally, perhaps the most important
is the finding about the significant impact of spatial constraints on
strategic voting in Japan.
The above analysis shows that at 12 See also Calder (1988) and
Curtis and Ishikawa (1984). least some Japanese voters, namely the
leftist voters analyzed here, are committed to certain
policy/ideology positions and their voting decisions are not
necessarily purely instrumental. As mentioned earlier, both Reed
(1990) and Cox (1994) discuss the possibility of non-instrumental
voting, but they do so informally and in a post hoc manner only to
account for the shortcomings of their models' predictions. The
empirical results reported above depict a more precise pattern with
which such voting takes place, suggesting that two related aspects of
non-instrumentality seem to be at work. First, voters are evidently
selective in choosing an alternative candidate for whom to vote
strategically. The finding that the absence of a JSP candidate matters
in predicting the vote share of the JCP candidates indicates that
these voters are willing to cross the ideological boundary between
the JSP and the JCP. They are not, however, willing to vote for
candidates located to the right of the JSP. With regard to candidates
from the DSP, the JNP and the SDF, their presence/absence have no
statistically significant effect on the vote share of the JCP candidates.
With regard to the CGP candidate variable, its negative (statistically
significant) coefficient estimate can be interpreted as indicating, on
the surface, that the leftist voters are not merely unwilling to vote
for, but rather hostile to, the CGP candidates.
Second, other things being equal, the absence of a JSP candidate
increases the vote share of the JCP candidates by approximately six
percent. This means that the leftist voters are not reluctant to waste
their votes when there is no immediately obvious second best
candidate, i.e. a JSP candidate. C}early, then, one must conclude that,
for ideological reasons, at least some Japanese voters choose not to
dessert their most prefered candidate, even though he/she has poor
chance of winning a seat. (3)
Evaluations
Some comment is needed on the apparent inconsistency between the
two models regarding the estimates of the district size variable.
From a methodological standpoint, 1 the result that the statistical
significance of this variable disappears m Model B points to the
problem that it is partially correlated with the four dummy variables
included in the expanded model. This leads one to explore further
the underlying causal relations behind the apparent correlations.
Since those dummy variables measure the presence/absence of
candidates from the four centrist parties, one can speculate that
they reflect a particular pattern of partisan strategies in nominating
candidates for general elections.
The next set of tables (Tables 2, 3, and 4) illustrates more precisely
the nature of this pattern. Clearly, (and as expected from the
reported correlations), the candidates of these centrist parties are
concentrated in relatively large-sized districts.13
TABLES 2, 3, and 4 About Here
What do these findings imply? The partisan candidate nomination
pattern reflects an elite-level "mechanical effect" of avoiding
electoral districts where the candidates would have poor electoral
chance. For small parties like the CGP, the DSP, the JNP, and the SDF,
the strategy to concentrate their candidates in larger-sized districts
is reasonable, given the smaller Droop quota in these districts. While
this line of reasoning clarifies the apparent inconsistency between
the two models, it, in turn, raises the question: why does the JCP,
another small party, choose not to follow a similar strategy and
usually nominate its candidates in all electoral districts? One source
of this assymetry between the JCP and other small parties may
simply be the difference in their financial resources. Thus, the
resourceful JCP can afford to run many candidates even while
knowing that many of them have poor electoral chances. Another
explanation may be that the JCP has a different agenda than 13 The
pattern of the SDF candidate distribution is not presented, since there
were only four candidates. 14 the other parties in nominating their
candidates. For example, it is possible that the JCP, whose party
financing relies largely on the circulation of its oScal newspaper, has
distinctive incentives to maintain and cultivate memberships
through vigorous campaigning in each electoral district. In light of
the results reported above, however, one can speculate as to one
other possibility that takes into account the non-instrumentality of
the leftist voters in Japan. That is, the JCP's persistance in
nominating many candidates may reflect a partisan response to the
leftist voters' willingness to waste their votes for the sake of
ideology, while the centrist parties' strategy may be indicative of a
lack of such willingness on the part of non-leftist voters. To confirm
this, of course, would require a thorough comparative research on
the nature of strategic voting across various subsets of Japanese
voters, which is beyond the scope of the present study.
Discussion
This study has presented empirical evidence which reveals the
pattern of strategic voting in Japan. Rather than assuming
categorically that every voter is always strategic, my purpose has
been to identify the set of factors that affect voters' decisions about
whether or not to vote strategically. The data analysis conducted on
the leftist voters suggests that these voters do vote strategically
because of the institutionally-structured incentive not to waste their
votes and that they do so based on their expectation of the
candidates' electoral prospects. The analysis, however, also points to
the significance of spatial constraints on Japanese strategic voting.
The voters are not always purely instrumental: they are selective in
choosing an alternative candidate and they are willing to waste their
votes for ideological reasons.
Because the analysis is based on the aggregate data of votes received
by the JCP 15 candidates, the generalizability of the above findings
remain somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, given that JCP
supporters are said to be the strongest party loyalists, the finding of
strategic voting by this subset of voters constitutes strong evidence
that such voting takes place more generally in Japan. On the other
hand, it is possible that the apparent effect of spatial constraints
may be typical only of the leftist voters, while those voters who
normally vote for the centrist or conservative parties may not be as
concerned with the policy/ideology positions of alternative
candidates in deciding to vote strategically. As suggested earlier,
further cross- sectional studies based on large-scale survey are
warranted to determine the varying degree to which spatial
constraints are significant across different subsets of Japanese voters.
Although the generalizability may thus be limited, I emphasize the
significance of the finding that the JCP supporters' decisions to vote
strategically are constrained by spatial considerations. As indicated
earlier, such constraints have not been fully addressed in the
previous studies on Japanese strategic voting. But, more importantly,
this finding has broader implications for understanding the
evolution of the Japanese party system since the end of World War
II. The widespread consensus among the students of postwar
Japanese politics is that it was the failure of the leading opposition
party, the JSP, to become a viable alternative to the LDP that
promoted the fragmentation of the opposition camp and thus
prolonged the Lap's single-party rule. l4 Conventionally, the JSP's
failure has been explained either as a product of the JSP's internal
problems, especially its organizational dependence on the
ideologically rigid labor union Sohyo (see Flanagan 1984, p. 162;
Curtis 1988, pp. 117- 18), or in terms of its nervousness about the
"reactionary" element in the LDP (Otake 1986, 1991).
The above finding suggests an 14 The LDP failed to maintain its
legislative majority and retreated to the opposition camp after the
1993 general election, although, less than a year later, the LDP
managed to come back to power by forming a coalition with the JSP
and Sakigake. 16 alternative spatial explanation for the JSP's
failure: it was the JSP's competition vis-a-vis the JCP over the pool of
leftist voters that prevented, for a long time, the JSP from adopting
more moderate social-democratic policy positions. I realize that the
evidence presented in the previous section does not directly point to
a precise ideological position at which the Socialists had to be located
to remain sufficiently attractive to the JCP supporters. It is possible
that, as long as the JSP was to the left of other compelling parties,
the Socialist candidates might still have monopolized the privilege of
being the only alternative choice for leftist strategic voters,
Two pieces of further circumstantial evidence, however, indicate
that the range of policy/ideology space in which Socialists had to be
located, was extremely narrow, adding support to the spatial
interpretation for the JSP's failure. First, the JSP's bent toward left
originally began after the general election in 1949 when the
Socialists suffered a major defeat and Communists gained a
significant increase in both popular votes and parliamentary seats
from the previous election. 15 This election was held after the
collapse of two consecutive center-left coalition governments, in
which the so-called "Right Wing" Socialists took a major part. In this
sense, the 1949 election w as critical in demonstrating the leftist
voters' intolerance for the Right-Wing's position and, indeed, the JSP
subsequently came to be dominated by the Left-Wing.16 The left
dominance continued until at least the mid 1980s when the JSP only
reluctantly abandoned its Marxist official platform, but, even then,
with regard to defense and security policy, the JSP clang to its
idealistic position of unarmed 15 In the previous election in
1947, the Socialists received 26 percent of the total vote cast and
obtained 143 seats in the lower house, whereas the Communists only
received 3.7 percent and obtained 4 seats. In 1949, the Socialists
received 13.5 percent of the popular vote and obtained 48 seats.
whereas the Communists received 9.8 Percent of vote and 35 seats.
16 The two Wings engaged in separate political activities
during the period from 1951 to 1955, as a result of their fierce
quarrel over the issues of postwar settlement and Japan's security
arrangement with the United States, although both officially called
themselves Nihon Shakai-to (Japan Socialist Party). 17 neutrality.
The second piece of evidence in support of the above spatial
interpretation is the fact the JSP finally abandoned the ultimate
symbol of its postwar progressiveness, the unarmed neutrality
policy, soon after the completion of electoral reform in 1994. As
mentioned earlier, this reform introduced, albeit only partially, an
Anglo-American type of plurality electoral system with single
member districts.
The timing of the JSP's decision leads one to suspect that it was born
out of a new expectation that, under the new electoral law, the
leftist voters would dessert most of the JCP candidates in single-
member districts. However, if the leftist voters in Japan are not
entirely instrumental, as suggested in this paper, they may continue
to vote for the JCP under the new electoral arrangement, even
knowing that they would waste their votes. What determines the
fate of the competition between the JSP and the JCP, then, is the
balance of two inherently-offsetting forces that influence the voters'
decisions: the institutionally-structured incentive not to waste their
votes facilitating strategic voting, and the strength of their
policy/ideological preference standing it its way.
TARI F I Effects of n Distriet Size Incumbency IndeDendent Variables
Crsnstsnt Absence of JSP Candidate Absence of CC,P Cnndidate
Absence of DSP Candidate Absence of JNP Candidate Absence of
Model A 2.52 (1.54) .84* [.384 8.85** [1.08] 6.34*# { 1.62} Model B
11.05** (2.89) -.47 (.40) 7.23** (.99) 5.79** (1.47) -4.16** (.81) -1.25
{.77) 99 (.70) R6 SDF Candidate f 1.761 Adjusted R2 F-rstin
Fsignificant at .05 level **significant at .01 level Source: Asahi
Shimbun, July 20, 1993 .44 ns .57 43.55 1R
TABLE 2 DISTRIBUTION OF 54 CANDIDATES FROM THE CLEAN
GOVERNEENT PARTY ACROSS DIFFERENT-SIZED DISTRICTS IN TrF
R ELEt-,TION Candidate District Size 5 6 _ 3 4 Yes 0
(0'1/o) 6 (15.4(1/o) 13 (38.2%) 33 (71.7%) 2 (100%) No 8
(100%) 33 (84.6%) 21 (61.8%) 13 (28.3%) 0 (0%) Total 8 39
34 46 2 x2 = 36.8 (significant at .01 level) Source:
AsahiShimbun,July5, 1993 lq
TART,F: .R DISTRIBUTION OF 28 CANDIDATES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC
SOCLALIST PARTY ACROSS DIFFERENT-SIZED DISTRICTS IN THF, 1993
ELErwTIoN Candidale District Size 5 6 2 3 _ Yes 0 (O0/0) 4
(10.3%) 8 (23.5%) 16 (34.8%) 0 (0%) No 8 (100%) 35
(89.7%) 26 (76.5%) 30 (65.2%) 2 (100%) Tnl s1 8 39 34
46 2 x2 = 10.5 (significant at .05 level) Source: Asahi
Shirnbun, July 5, 1993 2n Candidate
TABLE 4 DISTRIBUTION OF 55 CANDIDATES FROM THE JAPAN NEW
PARTY ACROSS DIFFERENT-SIZED DISTRICTS IN THF l ELECTION
District Size 4 ~6 2 3 Yes 1 (12.50/,,) 10
(25.6%) 19 (55.9%) 23 (50%) 21 2 (100%) No 7 (87.5n-/o) 29
(74.6%) 15 (44.1%) 23 (50%) 0 (0%) T(ltsl 8 39 35 46
2 x2 = 13.7 (significant at .01 level) Source: Asahi Shimbun,
July 5, 1993
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