일본의 정치개혁과 정치행태의 변화에 관한 연구

The purpose of this paper is to make an analysis of the change in the pattern of political behavior following political reform in Japan. Particularly, this study focused on political behaviors of parties, candidates and voters in lower parliamentary elections since electoral reform in the 1990s. In order to explore the pattern of political behavioral changes, voters own criteria for voting decision, shift to party based electoral campaign, and election campaign are to be analyzed. The adoption of a single-member electoral system in lower parliament elections brought about the weakening of small parties and influenced a lot the regional base of the Liberal Democratic Party. However, candidate-based electoral campaign, already structured in multi-member electoral districts, have been still maintained. Yet, one could witness a lot of changes of traditional electoral campaign since the reform. For example the transparency of electoral financing was assured due to the revision of political funding law. Changes to two party system which would make stable regime change possible has not occurred yet. Nor did regime change occur as a result of election. This paper examined changes in the pattern of the political behavior following adoption of new electoral system. The adoption of a single member district with proportional representative system brought about a lot of changes in electoral politics. However despite the goal of political reform was to be achieved through electoral reform, fundamental problem solving intended by political reform and changes following reform measures have not appeared yet.