Introduction to International Relations

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The Japanese Constitution and Its Economic Policy
Consequences
Conference on the Japanese Constitution Panel on
the Constitutions Influence on Japans Global
Relations The University of Michigan April 15,
2011
Jun Saito, Ph D Assistant Professor Department of
Political Science Yale University
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Outline

• Constitution and Economic Policy
• Japanese Constitution and Econ Policy
• LDP as an Endogenous Party
• Exchange Rate Regime and the LDP
• Political Instability and Bicameralism
• 6. Conclusions

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1. Constitution and Economic Policy

• Variation in constitutional design
• Presidentialism vs. parliamentalism
• Electoral institutions
• Intergovernmental relations
• Outcomes
• Structure of commitment and mechanism of
  leadership selection
• Party vs. individual
• Programatic vs. clientelistic
• Trade policy
• Pork barrel

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2. Japanese Constitution and Economic Policy

• Parliamentalism Bicameralism
• Policy change happens iff the incumbent party
  wins three consecutive elections.
• Otherwise, policy gridlock
• Unitarism
• Large spending by local governments small
  revenue base
• Soft budget constraint
• Local politicians as campaigners

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3. LDP as an Endogenous Party

• Early postwar Parliament
• Instability and low legislative productivity
• Frequent party switching
• Over-nomination of candidates
• One big conservative party
• Long-term dominance predicted
• Institutional safeguard
• LDP as a regime of perverse accountability

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Votes
Seats
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Theory of the LDP

• Perverse accountability
• Voters expectation of the long-term grip of
  power
• Voters competed against each other and held
  themselves accountable to the LDP
• Outcome
• Machine politics, interest group politics
• Delegation to the bureaucracy

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Japanese Ballot
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Municipal Assembly Size as a Concave Function of
Municipal Population
Merging municipalities reduces overall no. of
Municipal assembly members.
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1998 Upper House PR Vote Share
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No. Municipalities
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Votes
Seats
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4. Exchange Rate and the LDP

• Mundell-Fleming Model
• Fixed exchange rate fiscal expansion effective
• Floating exchange rate monetary expansion
  effective (fiscal ineffective unless accompanied
  by monetary expansion)
• Electoral implications
• Fiscal targeted spending
• Monetary not so

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Business Cycles and Elections
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Exchange Rate and Election
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5. Political Instability and Bicameralism

• Lower House
• SNTV (1947-1993)
• SMD PR (1996 - )
• Upper House
• District Nationwide

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Loosemore-Hanby Index weighted by of seats
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Upper House and Political Instability

• Upper House electoral loss and leadership change
• Miki, Hashimoto, Abe
• Coalition politics
• Preference outliers and Futenma Base
• Commitment to non-change

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6. Conclusions

• Bicameralism and political instability
• One-party dominance as functional needs
• Big coalition with fragile leadership structure
• Clientelism vs. stability
• Constitutional reform
• Removal of Sangiin or introduction of fixed-term
  executive (effectively presidential institution)