Leonard Schoppa Special to The Daily Yomiuri (July 27, 2001)

This is the fifth and final installment in a five-part series focusing on Sunday's House of Councillors election. It offers an in-depth analysis of what the upcoming upper house race will mean to the public in relation to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's structural reform goals. This installment also outlines the election pledges of seven major political parties: the Liberal Democratic Party, Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan), New Komeito, the Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, Hoshuto (New Conservative Party) and Jiyuto (Liberal Party).

Democracy works best when voters are presented with a choice between coherent political parties with clear and contrasting policy views. Under these conditions, each voter can compare the positions taken by competing parties to their own preferences, vote for the one proposing the most attractive policies, and be confident that this party--if it is elected--will implement the promised program.

Unfortunately, voters heading to the polls for Sunday's House of Councillors election will be dealing with conditions that are far from this ideal model of democracy.

The first problem is the lack of clarity in the policy views of all of the parties. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi initially promised to redirect special tax revenues currently reserved for use in funding road projects toward other uses, a policy shift that is necessary if Japan is to significantly cut back on its pork barrel spending. In the lead up to the upper house election, however, members of the Liberal Democratic Party's old guard succeeded in changing the wording of the LDP's platform so that the party is now committed only to "studying" this option.

Is this a change the party will make, or isn't it?

This lack of clarity extends to most other issues voters care about. The LDP has not said if it will adopt a stimulus budget in the face of continuing weakness; it has not detailed the "safety net" policies Koizumi has mentioned; and it has not laid out a clear position on whether it wants to revise Article 9 of the Constitution to allow the nation to exercise its right of collective self-defense.

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All parties for 'reform'

The other parties have hardly done better. The leading opposition party, Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan), has trumpeted its plan to cushion the effects of structural reform by adding 2 trillion yen in government revenues to the unemployment insurance fund. But it has not explained if this sum will be used merely to maintain current limited benefits in the face of a rise in unemployment or if it is committed to expanding benefits to a degree that will make the loss of a job less of a devastating economic event for workers. Minshuto has been similarly vague about how it will keep the economy afloat in the short term given the deflationary effects of the structural reform policies it advocates.

A related problem is the absence of contrast between the various parties' official positions. All parties are for "reform." Koizumi insists he is a radical reformer, as do members of other parties. Minshuto members in particular claim their party is more reformist than the LDP. If all parties are for reform, how are voters supposed to choose between them?

The biggest problem, however, is that the party most likely to win the election, the LDP, is far from coherent. Koizumi, who is also LDP president, has promised "structural reforms without sacred cows," but many members of his own party have been privately reassuring their special-interest constituencies that they will not let Koizumi reform the structures that matter most to them. The party's old guard remains committed to keeping construction firms and firms on the verge of bankruptcy afloat by maintaining the flow of public funds and delaying the "final cleanup" of bad loans.

For this reason, those who vote for the LDP on Sunday cannot be sure which way the party will swing once the election is over. Many voters appear to hope that the LDP will split after the election and that Koizumi will emerge at the head of a new bloc drawing together true reformists from several different parties. Choosing how to vote by looking at party platforms makes little sense if you expect politicians to become free agents immediately after the election.

This suggests that voters need to pay careful attention to the personal political views of the candidates representing each party--if they can figure out what these are. Under the rules for this upper house election, voters are asked to cast two ballots: one for a candidate in their prefectural constituency (a total of 73 seats are awarded this way in 47 prefectures), and the other for a party or candidate in the proportional representation segment of the competition (a total of 48 seats are allocated this way).

Determining the personal views of the former should be somewhat easier for voters since there will be only four to six major candidates in each prefecture. These candidates will have posters throughout the prefectures, will be giving speeches, and should have Web sites that detail their background and explain their views.

Electoral formula a dilemma

Voters face a much more daunting task, however, in figuring out how to cast their proportional representation ballots. Under the system used until this year for this segment of the election, voters were presented with closed lists of candidates who had been ranked ahead of time by each party. Voters were asked merely to choose one of the parties. Each party was awarded a share of the proportional representation seats based on the share of votes they received. Candidates then were taken from party lists in the order established before the election by party officials, and seated in the Diet.

Following reforms introduced for this election, voters can now choose how to cast their proportional representation vote. They can cast it for a party as before--in which case their main reference should be party platforms. Alternatively, they can now choose to vote for an individual candidate on one of the party lists. Either way, their votes will be used to allocate proportional representation seats, but with candidates being seated on the basis of how many votes they receive rather than on how they were ranked by party officials.

This innovation, in principle, should allow voters more say over who represents them. It also seems to provide voters worried about which way the LDP will swing with a tool for influencing the outcome of postelection maneuvering. But, in fact, it will be very difficult for voters to effectively manipulate this tool.

It will be difficult, first, because voters will have trouble figuring out what members of the LDP and other lists stand for. There are a total of 204 candidates on party lists competing for proportional representation seats. The LDP alone has chosen 27 candidates for its list. Most voters will see only a few posters put up by these candidates and few will take the time to sort through the information that may reach them via television or newspapers. Is it any wonder that many parties have chosen television personalities and other recognizable figures in the hope of attracting floating voters?

Betrayal of voters?

Nevertheless, motivated voters do have an opportunity to examine biographies of proportional representation candidates by using the Internet and newspaper pullout sections. Those who want to support Koizumi, for example, might study the backgrounds of members on the LDP list and choose Takeshi Kondo with the expectation that, with his long career working for a major trading company and dealing with international business issues, he would probably swing in Koizumi's direction in the event of a realignment. Others who prefer the "old LDP" might study the same list and choose to support Kenji Koso, a former Posts and Telecommunications Ministry official unlikely to support Koizumi's plan to privatize postal services.

Obtaining this information, however, will still leave voters with a second problem, making it difficult for them to manipulate this aspect of the electoral rules.

Votes cast for both of these very different candidates will go toward the LDP's proportional representation vote share and thus help elect other LDP members. If 2 million people vote for Kondo in the hope that he will pull the party in a reformist direction, this will be more than enough to guarantee Kondo one of the LDP's seats, but these surplus votes will also help the party elect members further down the list--including such candidates as Koso. If Koso turns out to be ranked 15th on the LDP list based on the number of votes he received as an individual, and Kondo's votes help the LDP earn a 15th seat, reformist voters will end up seating an antireformist candidate.

All of these dilemmas will make the task of voting a difficult one. The real frustrations, however, may come after the election if the Koizumi enthusiasts, who are expected to boost the LDP's vote tally, see the party revert to its old style once the polls close.

(Schoppa, an associate professor in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, is author of "Bargaining with Japan" and "Education Reform in Japan.")
 
 
 
 

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