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Electoral Cartel for Domination: LDP-Komeito Cooperation in Urban Districts : 도시부 선거구에서의 선거우위확보를 위한 자민당·공명당 협력

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Authors

SOHN, Sukeui

Advisor
박철희
Major
국제대학원 국제학과(국제지역학전공)
Issue Date
2018-08
Publisher
서울대학교 대학원
Description
학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 국제대학원 국제학과(국제지역학전공), 2018. 8. 박철희.
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore why the coalition alliance between Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Kōmeitō has sustained over the past two decades, despite a number of jeopardizing factors—from antagonistic history, policy and ideological incompatibilities, to electoral crises. This study argues that the LDPs sustained dominance after the collapse of the LDP system was engineered by the electoral alliance with the Kōmeitō instituted from 1999, as well as the two parties successful consolidation of a system of electoral dominance particularly in urban regions. The electoral alliance with the Kōmeitō and its tenacious organized votes has functioned to compensate LDP candidates inability to expand cohesive party support in urban regions.

At the same time, despite conventional views on the LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance constituting of preprogrammed exchanges of votes during general elections, the empirical studies suggest that the development of the two-party alliance is inundated with the evidence of unequal distribution of electoral resources. From the system of candidate recommendations to allocation of votes, the LDP and Kōmeitō alike developed such a system that allows individuated incorporation of Kōmeitō votes on the one hand, and the Kōmeitō devised an internal mechanism to avoid over-supporting the LDP counterpart, on the other. Such adjustment mechanism installed at three polity levels—central, prefectural, and district—is embodied within the LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance that have developed unequally across districts and regions. Put simply, the two-party relations is characterized by flexible adaptations to both internal and external environments, rather than by the rigid and one-sided centralization process, which provided resilience against recurring political and electoral crises and have allowed the two alliance partners to overcome their policy and ideological incompatibilities.

In order to illustrate the unique alliance between the LDP and the Kōmeitō that has transformed over the past two decades, this research is structured as follows. Chapter II traces the process during which the LDP and Kōmeitō developed to share the same preference for coalition formation amid the political realignment in the 1990s. It illuminates how the introduction of new electoral rules induced perceptional changes among political parties regarding the future consolidation of two-party system, and how such assumption shaped the rationalities of political actors in the early years of political restructuring. In the meantime, the Kōmeitōs experience under the NFP initiative, as well as Kōmeitō-Sōka Gakkai tension during that period, became the foundation for the institutionalization of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance in later years. From the LDPs perspective, on the other hand, the partys shift from fierce anti-Gakkai campaign to Kōmeitō-courting was triggered by both inter- and intra-party realignments, which ended with the triumph of the hardline conservatives.

Chapter III discusses the institutional setting of the LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance, and how the cooperation was systematized to incorporate diverse logics of resource distribution and realize flexible adaptations at three polity levels—central, prefectural, and district levels. Specifically, historical experiences played the key role in devising the Kōmeitōs mechanism of risk-minimization during the execution of election cooperation, which was designed to favor individual-based evaluation and vote mobilization mechanisms over collective methods.

The following two chapters analyze how the such flexible adaptations mechanism manifest in the executions of electoral cooperation in the forms of temporal as well as regional variations of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance. First, Chapter IV deals with the temporal variations found in the execution of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral cooperation during general elections in the urban districts. The analyses of the past six general elections held between 2000 and 2014 reveal that the sustainability of the unlikely partnership was engineered not only by the high level of coherence among Kōmeitō supporters, but also through the alliances ability to accommodate changing internal and external environments into the operation of electoral cooperation. As the analysis reveals, the challenges against the LDP-Kōmeitō alliance continued to transform over time—from the rise of two-party competition, floating voters, to the emergence of new political parties. Yet the coalition alliance has demonstrated its flexibility in overcoming these challenges through the successful institutionalization of adjustment mechanism. Chapter V discusses the regional variation of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance by looking at the cases of Tokyo and Osaka, particularly in relations to how the rise of local parties affect local LDP-Kōmeitō alliances differently in the two regions. The diverging reactions to the Osaka Restoration Party and its national counterpart Japan Restoration Party in Tokyo and Osaka were embedded not only in the different institutional settings but also in the local power balance among the LDP, Kōmeitō, and ORA/JRP, as well as the accumulated methods of resource allocation that were characterized as mutual dependence in Osaka and disengaged coalesce in Tokyo.

This study concludes with the prospects of the two-party alliance in the future, by discussing the transformation of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral cartel and its possible limitations. First, the primary limitation of the two-party alliance derives from declining party support for the Kōmeitō that appears in the results of recent national and local elections. Second, even though the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition seems to have maintained electoral dominance after 2012, the detailed analyses reveal that its triumphs rested largely on the opposition failure, and there are significant number of non-LDP/Kōmeitō conservative votes in urban regions that could possibly overturn the electoral alliance between LDP and Kōmeitō. LDPs recent attempt to expand the support to rightwing groups may be explained as the partys countermeasure for such electoral vulnerability. Yet such flirtation with rightwing political parties and civic groups is in essence incompatible with the coalition with the Kōmeitō whose supporters prefer centrist-conservative agendas, and it can possibly alter the foundations of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral alliance in the future.

The major implications of this study are as follows. First, while prevalent opposition failure seems to be the chronic reason for LDPs sustained dominance, the electoral alliance with the Kōmeitō was the critical apparatus through which the LDP was able to overcome new urban challenges under the new electoral rules. Second, this study elucidates upon the changing nature of vote cultivation among LDP candidates, whose traditional local networks continue to shrink in number. In other words, the incorporation of Kōmeitōs organized votes into LDP candidates individual personal kōenkai provided resilience against LDPs old problems—namely the lack of strong party support, particularly in the urban districts. Even though the significance of personal vote cultivation itself does not necessarily dismiss the importance of unorganized votes, it still holds implications on the behaviors of political actors in their districts. Lastly, the case of LDP-Kōmeitō coalition founded upon electoral alliance suggests that the successful electoral alliance can lead to sustainable inter-party coalition, even when the participating parties do not share similar policy preferences. While existing studies on coalition government tend to focus only on number-games in the parliament or policy compatibility in explaining the durability (or lack thereof) of coalition government, the case of LDP-Kōmeitō government provides insight to how successful electoral arrangement can produce sustainable coalition government at the national level.
Language
English
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10371/143103
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