Economic conditions and voting in Japanese house elections

Based on a Downsian perspective of voting behavior, this study assesses the extent to which short-term regional economic conditions influenced the electoral district vote for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the 1983 and 1986 elections to the House of Representatives. Unlike traditional scholarly interpretations, which stress the unique and nonindividualistic determinants of Japanese voting, our regression estimates indicate that economic voting in Japan resembles that identified in studies of other political systems, where unemployment has been shown to be an important predictor of the vote, which income is not. The findings fit with more recent evidence that Japanese political behavior is genuinely susceptible to comparative analysis, and point to the need for a revised understanding of Japanese electoral behavior.