My analysis of the Japanese general election of 2017
In the Japanese general election of 2017, called less than 3 years after the previous election, change was relatively limited. Nevertheless, free and fair elections must be analysed.
The governing coalition of the centre-right Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (neither liberal nor particularly democratic in practice) and the Komeito Party, the political arm of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist movement, did lose seats but only a total of 11 this election. It has a total of 313, which still represents over a 2/3 majority in the Japanese House of Representatives that elected 465 members this year. The LDP could actually govern by itself due to having 284 seats out of 465, but it will be continuing its coalition with Komeito nonetheless. Shinzo Abe, famous for "Abenomics" is still rather popular in Japan, and despite the formation of the Constitutional Democratic Party to replace the Democratic Party of Japan the opposition is still very fragmented.
In fact, the DPJ was not planning to contest the election by itself but rather largely on behalf of a new party called Kibo no To (Party of Hope) formed by Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike, formerly of the LDP (she resigned from the LDP having defeated the official LDP nominee Hiroya Masuda in the 2016 Tokyo gubernatorial election). Yuriko rejected many of the DPJ candidates for Party of Hope candidacy and a large proportion of DPJ members were not supportive of Yuriko's economically conservative positions despite her being more socially liberal than Shinzo. This resulted in the formation of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, effectively a reconstruction of the DPJ, and this delayed its ability to mount an effective opposition against the LDP in this snap election.
As a result, the Constitutional Democratic Party, in alliance with the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Japan, won just 55 seats, with the JCP winning just 12, 9 down from 21, and the Social Democratic Party of Japan winning only 2 seats. Meanwhile, the Party of Hope won 50 seats but due to its political values and the fact it is not the official opposition, it will at best be a friendly critic of the LDP-Komeito coalition. The JCP had a considerable surge in 2014 on the issue of peace, since Shinzo had announced plans to revise Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (which famously renounces war permanently), which is becoming a more contentious issue with the North Korean missile threat still looming. Meanwhile, a new mainly Osaka-based semi-libertarian party, Nippon Ishin No Kai, allied to the Party of Hope, won just 11 seats, due to its relatively limited appeal outside its core areas. No other party won any seats in the Japanese House of Representatives this time.
The fact that Japan's mixed member proportional system is via parallel voting (i.e. the single member constituencies and multi-member list-PR constituencies are elected separately meaning FPTP representation is not taken into account to decide PR seat entitlement) gives a significantly unfair advantage to the LDP (even the main opposition is disadvantaged, as are of course smaller parties) when most MMP systems ensure that seat totals are actually weighted proportionally to votes, like the MMP system used in Germany. 5/8 of Japan's seats are SMCs, with only 3/8 of the seats actually being elected by list-PR vote, and due to largely unresolved malapportionment of seats, particularly rural seats, the LDP easily wins a majority of SMCs most of the time; it won 3/4 of the SMCs this year. Japan's MMP system needs a serious overhaul for it to be genuinely fair and proportional; the malapportionment needs to be well and truly fixed and subject to stringent regular checks to stop it re-occurring, there needs to be a better balance of SMCs to proportional seats, and the parallel voting element needs to be scrapped. The LDP has not won more than 50% of the actual votes cast even in the constituency block since 1963 and its vote share in the PR block is consistently well below 40%, yet it very frequently wins clear majorities in the Japanese House of Representatives. Even in pre-2011 Ireland where Fianna Fail was the dominant party, such levels of disproportionality did not occur even when the "Tullymander" backfired to Fianna Fail's advantage.
The governing coalition of the centre-right Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (neither liberal nor particularly democratic in practice) and the Komeito Party, the political arm of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist movement, did lose seats but only a total of 11 this election. It has a total of 313, which still represents over a 2/3 majority in the Japanese House of Representatives that elected 465 members this year. The LDP could actually govern by itself due to having 284 seats out of 465, but it will be continuing its coalition with Komeito nonetheless. Shinzo Abe, famous for "Abenomics" is still rather popular in Japan, and despite the formation of the Constitutional Democratic Party to replace the Democratic Party of Japan the opposition is still very fragmented.
In fact, the DPJ was not planning to contest the election by itself but rather largely on behalf of a new party called Kibo no To (Party of Hope) formed by Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike, formerly of the LDP (she resigned from the LDP having defeated the official LDP nominee Hiroya Masuda in the 2016 Tokyo gubernatorial election). Yuriko rejected many of the DPJ candidates for Party of Hope candidacy and a large proportion of DPJ members were not supportive of Yuriko's economically conservative positions despite her being more socially liberal than Shinzo. This resulted in the formation of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, effectively a reconstruction of the DPJ, and this delayed its ability to mount an effective opposition against the LDP in this snap election.
As a result, the Constitutional Democratic Party, in alliance with the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party of Japan, won just 55 seats, with the JCP winning just 12, 9 down from 21, and the Social Democratic Party of Japan winning only 2 seats. Meanwhile, the Party of Hope won 50 seats but due to its political values and the fact it is not the official opposition, it will at best be a friendly critic of the LDP-Komeito coalition. The JCP had a considerable surge in 2014 on the issue of peace, since Shinzo had announced plans to revise Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (which famously renounces war permanently), which is becoming a more contentious issue with the North Korean missile threat still looming. Meanwhile, a new mainly Osaka-based semi-libertarian party, Nippon Ishin No Kai, allied to the Party of Hope, won just 11 seats, due to its relatively limited appeal outside its core areas. No other party won any seats in the Japanese House of Representatives this time.
The fact that Japan's mixed member proportional system is via parallel voting (i.e. the single member constituencies and multi-member list-PR constituencies are elected separately meaning FPTP representation is not taken into account to decide PR seat entitlement) gives a significantly unfair advantage to the LDP (even the main opposition is disadvantaged, as are of course smaller parties) when most MMP systems ensure that seat totals are actually weighted proportionally to votes, like the MMP system used in Germany. 5/8 of Japan's seats are SMCs, with only 3/8 of the seats actually being elected by list-PR vote, and due to largely unresolved malapportionment of seats, particularly rural seats, the LDP easily wins a majority of SMCs most of the time; it won 3/4 of the SMCs this year. Japan's MMP system needs a serious overhaul for it to be genuinely fair and proportional; the malapportionment needs to be well and truly fixed and subject to stringent regular checks to stop it re-occurring, there needs to be a better balance of SMCs to proportional seats, and the parallel voting element needs to be scrapped. The LDP has not won more than 50% of the actual votes cast even in the constituency block since 1963 and its vote share in the PR block is consistently well below 40%, yet it very frequently wins clear majorities in the Japanese House of Representatives. Even in pre-2011 Ireland where Fianna Fail was the dominant party, such levels of disproportionality did not occur even when the "Tullymander" backfired to Fianna Fail's advantage.
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