| Research Abstract |
The aim of this study is to analyze political ideology and its change, using nationwide and cross-national survey data. The main results are as follows.
1. The number of Japanese voters who cannot locate themselves on the ideological scale is not increasing from the 1980s to 2000s. Although all parties tend to shift to the center, Japanese voters can locate parties on the same scale. Ideological conflict remains at the level of the Japanese representatives. There is also a somewhat long distance between the ideological self-locations of those who support the JCP or SDPJ and the LDP.
2. There is an underlying ideological dimension that cuts across the issues-space in Japanese mass publics. Elite attitudes toward the issues have higher consistency than mass attitudes and are bound together by the ideological dimension.
3. Correlation between ideology and political support or the party voted for gradually tends to decrease. Ideology is influential determinant of discriminating between the LDP and not the largest opposition but the JCP or SDPJ.
4. Most influential determinant is not party support but evaluation of the LDP leader in the 2005 House of Representatives election. Both ideology and privatization of postal services issue are not influential.
5. Most voters in many European countries, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Philippines can locate themselves on the ideological scale. The voters' average of ideological self-location in European countries, Canada, New Zealand exists on the left side of the total. That of Asian countries, US, Russia, Philippines, and Mexico is on the right. The distribution of voters' ideology in Netherland, Sweden, France, Italy, and New Zealand is multimodal; Northern European countries, US, Spain, and Korea, bimodal; Japan, Britain, Canada, Australia, Portugal, Russia, Belgium, Taiwan, Philippines, unimodal.
6. In cross-national perspective, Japanese voters understand ideology well, but have little ideological conflict.
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