A Study of Political Geography on the Reformation of Regional Political Structure Caused by the Change of Electoral System

Research Project

Project/Area Number	09680149
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Human geography
Research Institution	KYUSHU UNIVERSITY (1999) Ibaraki University (1997-1998)
Principal Investigator	TAKAGI Akihiko Kyushu University, Faculty of Letters, Professor., 文学部, 教授 (90197054)
Project Period (FY)	1997 – 1999
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1999)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000) Fiscal Year 1999: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000) Fiscal Year 1998: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000) Fiscal Year 1997: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Keywords	Political Geography / Constituencies / Regional Political Structure / Malapportionment / General elections / 選挙地理学 / 第41回衆議院総選挙 / 選挙区の地域特性 / 地域社会
Research Abstract	This research has three purposes: 1. the analysis of the reorganization of regional political structure caused by the change of electoral system; 2. examining how problems in the former system changed in the new system; 3. clarifying the meaning of political regions by tracing back the changes of electoral systems to Meiji era(in Chapter 1 in the Report). The research results are shown as follows. 1. Voting returns of the 41st general election in 1996 was studied geographically in relation to seven types of constituencies(Chapter 4 in the Report). And local political systems and local communities experienced few changes after the electoral system changed(Chapter 5 in the Report). 2. The relations between single member constituencies and the former prulal member constituencies were considered(Chapter 3 in the Report).3. I followed the changes of electoral systems in the House of Representatives in Japan, then analyzed temporal changes of population balances among constituencies. The result was that before the malapportionment was went to a suit for the first time in 1963, population were apportioned strictly among prefectures although population balances among constituencies were malapportioned. The reason was that municipal districts were never divided and constituencies which included island were independent ones. That means municipal districts were considered important rather than population balances.