Electoral Strategies Shifted from Pork to Policy

Issue Ownership and Electoral Rule: Empirical Evidence from Japan

“…Sven-Oliver Proksch and his colleagues also scrutinize the different positions of Japanese political parties on domestic and social policy, economic policy and foreign policy by utilizing quantitative content analysis on electoral pledges ( kōyaku ) from 1960 to 1998 (Proksch et al 2011: 9). More recently, Amy Catalinac (2016: 111–14) analyses candidate election manifestos and explains that electoral reform brought about a shift of the LDP’s electoral campaign strategies, from pork to ‘broad policy issues’, particularly focusing on the growing concern of all voters for national security issues. The related studies lack the empirical evidence on why and how electoral issues affect voting decisions and how the types of electoral campaign changed between two electoral systems.…”

“…However, under the new rule (MMM), a political party has begun to nominate one candidate for a single-member district and to make the party list for the PR. Therefore, the electoral reform could weaken the intraparty and candidate-based competition, while enhancing party leadership, interparty competition and party vote (Catalinac 2016: 54–6; Cowhey and McCubbins 1995: 258; Estevez-Abe et al 2008: 252–75; Reed and Thies 2001: 383–97; Rosenbluth and Thies 2010: 96–7). As a result, ‘campaigns are considerably more issue-oriented than they were under the SNTV’ (Rosenbluth and Thies 2010: 101).…”

“…For example, the gaps in the issue ownership index were 26.69 in the 2000 election, 36.28 in the 2003 election, 26.48 in the 2005 election, 27.64 in the 2009 election, 16.72 in the 2012 election and 25.18 in the 2014 election. Catalinac (2016: 112–14) indicates that the proportion of the national security issue, which is one of the broad policy issues, increased even before the electoral reform. According to her, because the defectors formed new opposition parties, the level of the LDP’s intraparty competition in the 1993 election was lower than in previous elections and the LDP’s candidates were relatively free from pork in their districts and emphasized national security as a broad policy issue.…”

“…Each political party’s issues reflect its issue-handling reputations for the supporters’ problems and agendas over elections (Petrocik 1996). This study classifies issue-handling reputations of the LDP and other centre-left parties based on the literature on the issues of national security (Catalinac 2016; Estevez-Abe et al 2008), economy and social welfare (Reed et al 2012; Rosenbluth and Thies 2010) and other policy domains (Ishikawa 2006; Proksch et al 2011: 9). As a result, the LDP emphasized issues of the military, market-oriented economy, governmental efficiency, law and order, traditional morality and agriculture.…”

The logic of delegation and institutional contexts: Ministerial selection under mixed-member systems in Japan

“…Some types of institutions complicate the logic of delegation and weaken party leaders’ control over the cabinet. Recent research shows that the logic of delegation is affected by such institutions; for example, electoral systems (Carey, 2009; Catalinac, 2016a, 2016b; Nemoto and Shugart, 2013; Shugart, 2005a; Shugart et al, 2005) and constitutional structures (Amorim Neto and Strøm, 2006; Samuels and Shugart, 2010; Schleiter and Morgan-Jones, 2009, 2010; Shugart, 2005b). This study relaxes these two assumptions by focusing on two institutional structures that tend to create different concerns between principals and agents.…”