| Project/Area Number |
09420015
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Politics
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| Research Institution | KOBE UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
KUME Ikuo Kobe University Faculty of Law Professor, 法学部, 教授 (30195523)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TATEBAYASHI Masahiko Kansai University Faculty of Law Associate Professor, 法学部, 助教授 (30288790)
SUZUKI Motoshi Kwansei Gakuin University School of Policy Studies Professor, 総合政策学部, 教授 (00278780)
AMIYA Ryousuke Kobe University Faculty of Law Associate Professor, 法学部, 助教授 (40251433)
SHINADA Yutaka Kobe University Faculty of Law Associate Professor, 法学部, 助教授 (10226136)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 1998
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 1998)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥5,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,500,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥3,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000)
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| Keywords | party / Electoral System / Election / rational choice / 選挙公約 / 政党再編成 |
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| Research Abstract |
Recently, Japan has undergone a major change in the electoral law for the House of Representatives. The new law enacted in fall 1994 has installed a "parallel system" combining proportional representation (PR) and plurality rule or a small district (SMD) system. This study examines two types of sophisticated voting - strategic voting and strategic balancing - that can be operative in the parallel system. It is shown that the parallel system contains institutional provisions (double candidacies and the loser-winner ratio) that make SMD votes nonexclusive and transferable to the PR portion, hence reducing the extent of strategic voting and weakening a tendency toward local two-partism. When more than two effective parties compete in a plurality election, parties holding similar policy and political orientations ought to coordinate their candidates in order to prevent the opposing parties from gaining electoral victory. Under the parallel system, however, the parties have disincentives to coordinate. Thus, Downsian centrist policy pressures are not imposed upon the winning party formulating a new government. In order to pressure it toward centrist policy, moderate voters with two votes under the parallel system perform the acts of balancing so that a coalition government is formed to check policy extremism that is otherwise pursued by a pluralist party constituting the core of a new government. The extent of strategic balancing is found to be associated with the degree of opposition coordination failures.
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