Voters' Perceptions and Evaluations of Dynastic Politics in Japan

Hirofumi Miwa, Yuko Kasuya and Yoshikuni Ono

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: Political family dynasties are a staple part of Japanese politics. According to one study, Japan has the fourth highest number of dynastic politicians among democratic countries, after Thailand, the Philippines, and Iceland. As a result, many scholars have qualitatively studied how these political families are born and managed. In contrast to the abundance of qualitative research, however, very little quantitative research has focused on how Japanese voters view political dynasties. To understand this question, we conducted two nationwide surveys. Our major findings are that while the majority of respondents dislike dynastic candidates, they also value specific attributes of dynastic candidates, such as their political networks, their potential for ministerial appointments, and their ability to bring “pork projects†to their constituencies. These results serve as benchmark information on dynastic politics in Japan. They are also distinct from the findings of existing studies that Japanese voters are neutral about whether a candidate is from a dynastic family in voting decisions.

Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/22e113.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eti:dpaper:22113

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by TANIMOTO, Toko ().