2. Social class, values, and other factors in Japanese voting behavior

Before discussing in detail the role of authoritarian values in voting behavior, let us first review a brief chronology of the main academic contributions in the field. Early studies of voting behavior in post-war Japan evidenced the presence of clear patterns of class voting, with the independent occupational classes voting for LDP and the working classes predominantly casting their ballot for the JSP or the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Miyake (Reference Miyake1985) defined this political divide as the dichotomy between jimae (self-sufficiency) and hi-jimae (dependency), whereby independent farmers, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed belonging to the former group voted conservative, and the latter category comprising clerks, workers, and employees was generally closer to the left-wing parties.

In spite of the growing industrialization and massive inflows of new workers into urban areas, these patterns of party support based on social class rapidly declined starting in the 1960s, when the JSP began to lose votes from its traditional constituencies (Maruyama, Reference Maruyama2007: 33). The decline of the JSP has been attributed to the increasing competitive pressures from minor parties under Japan's former multi-member electoral system (Kohno, Reference Kohno1997; Mori, Reference Mori2001) and to the LDP's ability under Ikeda to make credible redistributive commitments while avoiding direct confrontation with the Socialists on divisive issues (Watanuki, Reference Watanuki, Flanagan, Kohei, Miyake, Richardson and Watanuki1991: 62–64). The limited explanatory power of social class (see Flanagan and Richardson Reference Flanagan and Richardson1977; Miyake, Reference Miyake1977; Watanuki, Reference Watanuki, Flanagan, Kohei, Miyake, Richardson and Watanuki1991) suggests that Western-style patterns of class voting are relatively less pronounced, if not absent, in Japan.

Alternative theories of voting stress the role of values as better suited for explaining vote choice. Value competition emerged in Japan in the wake of socio-political transformations brought about by democratization. The new 1947 Constitution drafted under the supervision of the US Occupation replaced the former imperial rule with a democratic system based on free elections, the separation of powers and the rule of law, turning Japan into a full-fledged liberal democracy.

The rapid transformation into a multiparty democracy under the US guidance contributed to polarizing the Japanese public around competing systems of values (Flanagan, Reference Flanagan, Flanagan, Kohei, Miyake, Richardson and Watanuki1991). Watanuki (Reference Watanuki, Lipset and Rokkan1967) argued that high-pace economic growth alongside the general improvement of citizens' well-being further reduced the space for competition on economic issues in favor of political divisions based on values, a dimension of conflict the author defined as ‘cultural politics.’ Flanagan (Reference Flanagan, Flanagan, Kohei, Miyake, Richardson and Watanuki1991) examined the different subdimensions of value change and argued that Japan's democratic transition and the shift from an agrarian to industrial society favored the rise of a new value cleavage that he characterized as of authority vs liberty (A–L). In his analysis, Flanagan found substantial correlations between the A–L scale and partisan preferences in the post-war period, with LDP supporters having more pronounced authoritarian tendencies than supporters of the opposition parties.Footnote ³

Partisan conflicts on economic issues seemed to be overshadowed by value competition, as long as the Japanese economic miracle continued to deliver growth and prosperity to the general population. Yet, since the 1980s non-economic values have gradually lost prominence in models of Japanese voting behavior, as suggested by the growing number of studies on economic issues. For example, Reed and Brunk (Reference Reed and Brunk1984) found that while economic factors had little effect on the vote in times of economic expansion, substantial relationships between economic variables and election results have become more evident since the 1975 recession. Wade and Owens (Reference Wade and Owens1992) showed that the patterns of economic voting in Japan in the 1980s resembled those of Western democracies, with significant effects of unemployment levels on the vote. In his comparative assessment of competing models of voting behavior, Nakamura (Reference Nakamura2003) observed that party–voter policy proximity and individual evaluations of subjective economic well-being (pocketbook voting) were better suited to explain vote choice in the 1983 Upper House election. Similar findings have been reported by a number of studies, that emphasized value-free factors such as evaluations of governments' past performance, subjective well-being, and future expectations as powerful predictors of vote in the elections held during the 1980s and 1990s (see Hirano, Reference Hirano1998: 33). Lastly, Ohmura (Reference Ohmura2018) provided further evidence that individual evaluations of the economy have become increasingly important drivers of voting behavior.

Indeed, more recent studies suggest that substantial changes in the Japanese party system such as the 1994 electoral reform, the decline of the LDP, and the rise of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) did not reflect the emergence or reactivation of deep socio-cultural cleavages in Japanese society. Miwa's (Reference Miwa2018) assessment of the value preferences of Japanese voters and party representatives found only slight differences across the main party electorates. Chiavacci (Reference Chiavacci2010) examined the electoral success of the DPJ in 2009 and argued that the party was able to present itself as the new champion of ‘shared growth,’ campaigning on the same issues and for the same votes from rural areas that once secured landslide victories to the LDP. This suggests much greater salience of redistributive issues, with little room for partisan conflicts on ideology and values. The idea of a general tendency toward the de-ideologization of Japanese politics finds further support in Takenaka's (Reference Takenaka2014) analysis of the declining role of the conservative vs progressive ideological dimension and its weakening association with party preferences across generational cohorts.

Likewise, recent accounts of the success of the LDP, which has steadily returned to power since 2012, seem to take a rather economic perspective and to attach less importance to value oppositions: Umeda (Reference Umeda2019) attributes the LDP's hegemony to its adaptability to new environments, whereby among others, the party's commitment to protecting the interests of small farmers and businesses from globalization was a crucial factor for power consolidation. A similar reasoning was proposed by Lind (Reference Lind2018) in her discussion of Japan's seeming immunity to the rise of populism. Lind argued that the preconditions for the success of populism were missing in Japan because the LDP successfully resisted pressures toward liberalization by raising non-economic trade barriers and limiting immigration, while protecting Japan's vulnerable sectors from global competition.

3. Bringing values back

Although economic considerations are certainly indispensable to explain the patterns of voting, we argue that recent studies emphasizing economic and redistributive issues may have overlooked the role of values. Our inquiry reassesses the relationship between value orientations and partisan support in contemporary Japan and reconsiders the place of non-economic values in the literature of Japanese voting behavior. We do not reject the economic arguments reviewed above but argue that the role of values has not been assessed adequately in addition to the mainstream accounts based on economic evaluations and policy proximity. Given the changing environment of party competition on the supply-side and the changing nature of perceived ideology (Jou and Endo, Reference Jou and Endo2016) on the demand-side in recent decades, it seems pertinent to assess the role of values and economy together in a systematic manner.

In the last 40 years, value oppositions have indeed gained prominence in the analysis of political behavior: the unfolding of Inglehart's Silent Revolution since the 1980s has profoundly transformed the pre-existing patterns of political divisions in the developed democracies, raising the salience of a New Politics dimension in addition to, or in replacement of, the conventional left-right continuum (see Kitschelt and Hellemans, Reference Kitschelt and Hellemans1990). Scholars have argued that the rise of left-libertarian values such as tolerance toward minorities, self-reliance, and individual freedom has triggered a counter-revolution from the right side of the political spectrum, whereby radical right parties emphasizing the values of authority and hierarchy have capitalized on concerns over immigration, social order, and security (Ignazi, Reference Ignazi1992; Hino, Reference Hino2003). Likewise, the Cultural Backlash theory characterizes the current surge of authoritarian populism as a response from the older and traditionalist strata of society who feel that their values are being threatened by cultural shifts toward post-materialism (Norris and Inglehart, Reference Norris and Inglehart2019). These radical right parties typically embrace nativist and authoritarian views, in open defiance of liberal democracy (Mudde, Reference Mudde2007), and cater to older and less-educated voters expressing concerns about immigration, identity, security, and adhering to authoritarian values.

In the West, recent political developments such as the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US election, the Brexit referendum, and the emergence of successful right-wing populist leaders, for instance Marine Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy, are indicative of a surge of authoritarian populism and growing attractiveness of far right discourses. In contrast, Japan has not experienced disruptive changes in the patterns of party competition, as the prolonged and seemingly unchallengeable hegemony of the LDP would suggest. However, some scholars have argued that nationalist rhetoric has been on the rise within Japan's conservative elites (e.g., Matthews, Reference Matthews2003; Sasada, Reference Sasada2006, Reference Sasada2010; Mullins, Reference Mullins2012).

Since the premiership of Junichirō Koizumi (2001–2006), recent political trends in Japan suggest the potential for the reemergence of value competition among the Japanese public. Under Koizumi and Abe, Japan experienced a right-wing or neo-conservative turn (see Takahashi, Reference Takahashi2010; Nakano, Reference Nakano2016; Ramirez, Reference Ramirez2018) that revitalized previously quiescent issues such as national identity and pride and Japanese traditional values. Arguably, economic reforms are among the key policy innovations for which Koizumi and Abe have been known internationally: Koizumi's plan to privatize the Japan Post and the Abenomics reforms were central issues in the electoral campaigns of 2005 and 2012, respectively. However, Nagy (Reference Nagy2014) argued that Koizumi and Abe utilized nationalist rhetoric as a strategic leverage to consolidate their leadership position within the LDP and to secure public support for their economic reforms. Besides the increasing attention devoted to national security among the LDP candidates (Catalinac, Reference Catalinac2016), these nationalist appeals have primarily regarded divisive topics such as historical revisionism, patriotic education, and rearmament. In addition, the controversial issue of prime ministers' visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which were resumed under Koizumi after a substantial interruption since 1985 (Deans, Reference Deans2007), carries a highly symbolic meaning with regard to Japan's role in World War II.

Indeed, the ideological proximity of Abe's LDP with the widespread phenomenon of online right-wing activism (netto uyoku) (Schäfer et al., Reference Schäfer, Evert and Heinrich2017) and the outstanding number of LDP representatives, including Abe himself, who are among a group of members of parliament who support the ultra-conservative lobbying group Nippon Kaigi (the ‘Japan Conference’) are revealing of a changing political climate. Higuchi and Matsutani (Reference Higuchi and Matsutani2013) examined the radical right phenomenon from the demand-side and found that nationalist and authoritarian tendencies are common among supporters of both Abe and the ultra-conservative Ishihara Shintarō, with the latter also attracting voters with xenophobic attitudes, similarly to the European radical right. A few books (see Tsukada, Reference Tsukada2017; Tanabe, Reference Tanabe2019; Oguma and Higuchi, Reference Oguma and Higuchi2020) have been recently published with titles including the oft-used expression ‘drift to the right’ (ukeika), examining to what extent and why this rightward drift is taking place in Japan. Among these, Tanabe (Reference Tanabe2019) and Matsutani (Reference Matsutani, Oguma and Higuchi2020) relied on various survey data to demonstrate that nationalism and xenophobia against China and Korea are generally on the rise in Japan, while Kuwana (Reference Kuwana and Tanabe2019) showed that patriotism is conducive to voting for the LDP in recent elections.

Based on a review of these studies, it appears pertinent to reconsider the relevance of authoritarian values in models of voting behavior in Japan. Indeed, the revival of nationalist and authoritarian rhetoric among right-wing elites suggests that the Japanese public is far from unresponsive to far-right appeals and that the effect of competing value preferences among voters may eventually unfold in the polls, thus conditioning voting behavior. Using survey data, our study examines the role of authoritarian values, which is a key ideological attribute of the far right (Mudde, Reference Mudde2007), in shaping the electoral preferences of Japanese respondents. Accordingly, we hypothesize that the variation in authoritarian values among the Japanese public has affected the probability of voting for the main parties since the beginning of the Koizumi era.

4. Data and methods

To assess the relevance of authoritarian values in explaining party preferences, we rely on data from the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS).Footnote ⁴ The ABS questionnaires in Japan have been administered in a face-to-face format consistently throughout the series to random electorates; therefore, we believe they constitute the most ideal data for our inquiry.Footnote ⁵ We combine five samples from the five ABS waves administered in Japan from 2003 to 2019, which we analyze using pooled multinomial logistic regressions with fixed effects where the vote for the LDP serves as the reference category. By pooling the five waves, we take advantage of the cross-temporal design of the ABS series, which allows us to run a comprehensive model encompassing the last two decades. In addition, we compare the explanatory power of authoritarian values and the other covariates in each wave separately. Our dependent variable is respondents' vote choice in five national elections including abstention. For the analysis, we selected the parties that contested all national elections since 2003 (Wave 1) and included the remaining parties in the category ‘Others.’ The four parties whose name and format did not change during the 2003–2019 period are the LDP, Komeitō or Clean Government Party (CGP), Social Democratic Party (SDP), and JCP. For the DPJ, which incurred several defections and eventually dissolved in 2016, we constructed an umbrella category ‘DPJ/center-left’ comprising the DPJ itself (2003–2016) and its successor parties in 2019 (Wave 5), namely, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and the Democratic Party for the People (DPP).Footnote ⁶

Our main independent variable is a measure of authoritarian values, which we derive from the ABS original battery ‘Authoritarian/democratic values.’ For the sake of consistency in our measurement, we selected only the items that were administered across all five waves. Next, we conducted separate reliability analyses for each wave using Cronbach's alpha to assess the degree of inter-consistency of the scales. For all sub-samples, the alpha coefficient is maximized when the first item is removed (‘People with little or no education should have as much say in politics as highly-educated people’), indicating no substantial contribution of this item to the scales. With the removal of Item 1, we obtained a satisfactory fit of the measurements, with the alpha coefficients exceeding 0.7 for all waves. Finally, to compute our scale, we combined the items into a single construct by taking the mean score of the responses. Table 1 shows the statements used to construct the authoritarian values scale and the individual alpha coefficients for each wave.

Table 1. Authoritarian/democratic values (items administered consistently from Waves 1 to 5)

Source: Authors' elaboration from Asian Barometer Survey.

Beginning with Adorno's (Reference Adorno1950) seminal theory of the authoritarian personality, a number of studies have proposed different conceptualizations and measurements of individual authoritarian dispositions, among which Altemeyer's (Reference Altemeyer1981) tripartite definition of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), explained as the covariation of authoritarian submission, aggression, and conventionalism, has been widely accepted as a common framework. A noteworthy attempt to gage authoritarian personality traits among the Japanese public was made by Takano et al. (Reference Takano, Taka and Nomura2020), who developed a Japanese version of Altemeyer's RWA using survey items adjusted to the Japanese context and found positive and significant correlations of their RWA measure and its two subdimensions (authoritarianism and conventionalism) with the LDP/CGP vote.

While acknowledging that measurements based on Altemeyer's RWA are not available for the time span of our inquiry, we believe that the factors included in the ABS batteries, namely, individual preferences for delegative forms of democracy, deference toward the established authority, and illiberal conceptions of the political community, address the core conceptual properties of authoritarianism as conceived in other studies. Indeed, looking at the items utilized by Flanagan in his A–L scale (see Table 2), we find some theoretical affinity between the A–L statements and our measurement.

Table 2. Authoritarian–libertarian value items

Source: Flanagan (Reference Flanagan, Flanagan, Kohei, Miyake, Richardson and Watanuki1991: 116).

In particular, the first three items in Table 2 reflect similar dispositions of deference to authority as those captured by Items 2 and 7 from the ABS battery (see Table 1), and Flanagan's fourth item ‘Cut discussions short when divided to avoid bad feelings’ is consistent with the idea that a diversity of opinions endangers the harmony of the community (Items 2 and 8 in Table 1).

In addition to authoritarian values, we assess the effect of two other non-economic dimensions commonly associated with far-right discourses: national pride and anti-immigration. The emphasis on the uniqueness of Japanese identity and values as reviewed above suggests that Koizumi and Abe's reliance on nationalist appeals may reflect similar dispositions among LDP voters. The ABS project includes a survey item measuring the extent to which respondents feel pride in being Japanese. Though unavailable in the 2003 questionnaire (Wave 1), we include this predictor in a separate pooled model for Waves 2–5. Furthermore, to account for the effect of individual attitudes toward immigration, we estimate an additional model where we include a survey question in which participants are asked to express their views on immigration issues. Available for Waves 4 and 5 only, we expect that higher values indicating respondents' disagreement with increasing the inflow of immigrants would negatively correlate with voting for left-wing parties.

Next, we selected a set of additional predictors to control for individual socio-demographic characteristics, namely, respondents' age, gender, education, family income, rural or urban residence, and employment condition as an employee or self-employed. Furthermore, we relied on a survey item asking respondents to rate Japan's overall economic situation to assess the effect of individual evaluations of the economy on vote choice. To account for relevant factors commonly associated with political disengagement and reluctance to go to the polls, we controlled for individual interest in politics, which Mifune (Reference Mifune2005) found to be a significant predictor of turnout in the 1990s. Finally, we measured respondents' degree of trust in institutions, which we also expect to negatively correlate with abstention, by constructing a scale of institutional trust using the items in the ABS battery ‘Trust in institutions’ (see the Technical appendix).

6. Robustness checks

In addition to the likelihood ratio tests presented above, we conducted a wide range of empirical evaluations as additional robustness checks. First, we estimated the same models as in Tables 3–5 using instead multinomial probit, an estimation technique that Horiuchi (Reference Horiuchi2001) found to be better suited than multinomial logit for modeling vote choice. Next, we included dummy variables of partisan identification for each party category to account for the effect of the psychological link between respondents' party identification and their vote choice. Prominent in the socio-psychological model of the Michigan school, party identification constitutes a stable psychological shortcut for voters expressing clear partisan preferences, which Lachat (Reference Lachat2015) found to reduce the effect of party–voter issue distance on vote choice. Further robustness checks were conducted by estimating models with unweighted data and specifying the CDP as the DPJ's unique successor party in Wave 5. These alternative model specifications, applied either individually or in combination, did not yield substantially different results with regard to the effect of authoritarian values on vote choice. For further details, see the Technical appendix.