2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Political and Economic Changes and Economic Voting in Japan

Research Project

Project/Area Number	11620088
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Politics
Research Institution	Meiji Gakuin University
Principal Investigator	HIRANO Hiroshi Meijigakuin University, Faculty of Law, Associate Professor, 法学部, 助教授 (90222249)
Project Period (FY)	1999 – 2000
Keywords	election / voting behavior / retrospective voting / economic voting / political behavior / Japan
Research Abstract	The purpose of this research is to clarify how political and economic changes that occurred in Japan during 1990s affected the nature of economic voting. The data was taken from six random sample surveys of voters in metropolitan Tokyo. All the surveys were done by mail. The results are as follows. First, policy-oriented economic votinghas declined and instead incumbency-oriented voting has become more salient. In other words, there has been a shift from voting for the LDP when times are tough to giving an opposition party a chance when the economy gets bad. Second, because people became very aware of the influence of national economic conditions on their personal circumstances, perceptions of the national economy came to play a larger role in assessments of the ruling party's performance, and sociotropic voting is becoming more salient.

(4 results)