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Supportive Participation with Economic Growth: The Case of Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Ikuo Kabashima
Affiliation:
University of Tsukuba
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Abstract

Whether political participation is positively related to economic equality is still a paradox. This paper explores the relations among political participation, economic equality, and economic development in Japan after World War II. There was little income bias in political participation in Japan during its period of rapid growth, partly because farmers who benefited inadequately from economic development participated more in politics. This rural bias in participation allowed significant redistribution of income from the urban to rural sector through the budgeting system, thus preventing the natural tendency of widening income inequality at the early stage of development. However, high rural participation did not undermine the rate of growth because it was supportive participation. Farmers overwhelmingly supported the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party, support that enhanced government's continuity and in turn nurtured growth.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Huntington, Samuel P. and Nelson, Joan M., No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 1729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Schnitzer, Martin, Income Distribution: A Comparative Study of the United States, Sweden, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan (New York: Praeger, 1974), 232.Google Scholar

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4 Jackman (fn. 3), 68–89.

5 Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman H., Participation in America: Social Equality and Political Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 335.

7 For the nature of the program and sampling design, see Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., and Kim, Jae-On, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), xi–xxi, 349–75.Google Scholar

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9 I learned a great deal from Feldstein, Martin S., “Wealth Neutrality and Local Choice in Public Education,” American Economic Review 65 (March 1975), 7589Google Scholar, for constructing the following model. For purposes of estimation, it is convenient to replace equation (3) by the more explicit system of equations lnSjt = αj + λlnIt + ujt, j = 2, … k, where error terms ujt, are assumed to be mutually independent and each independent of εt, in equation (2). By differentiating each of these equations with respect to income, one may readily verify that each λi, is precisely the elasticity of Sjt with respect to It. Hence these equations together with (2) are equivalent to (1), (2), (3), and are seen to define a recursive system of linear equations within which the parameters β1, β2, … βk and λ2, … λk can be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares. See Dhrymes, Phoebus J., Econometrics: Statistical Foundation and Application (New York: Springer Verlay, 1974), 307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 We included age and gender variables in equation (2), but excluded them from equation (3) because they were assumed to be unrelated to family income. Empirical estimation of the correlation between age and family income was —0.04, and that between gender and family income was —0.05, respectively. Neither was statistically significant at an 0.01 level.

12 See Milbrath, Lester W. and Goel, M. L., Political Participation, 2d ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1977), 98102Google Scholar, for a summary of literature on this subject.

13 Kabashima, Ikuo, “Political Participation and Income Distribution in Growing Economies,” Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1979).Google Scholar

14 Milbrath and Goel (fn. 12), 101.

15 Verba and Nie (fn. 5), 208.

16 Richardson, Bradley M., “Urbanization and Political Participation: The Case of Japan,” American Political Science Review 67 (June 1973), 433–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watanuki, Joji, Politics in Postwar Japanese Society (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1977), 6576.Google Scholar

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19 Adelman and Morris (fn. 3), 165.

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21 The income distribution data and GNP compiled by Jain, Shail, Size Distribution of Income (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1975)Google Scholar, include a relatively large number of countries in both the communist and noncommunist countries. We used income distribution data based on distribution of family income sampled from the national population between 1960 and 1970.

22 ” The Japanese income distribution data used here are from Mizoguchi, Toshiyuki, “Sengo Nihon no Shotoku-bunpu to Shisan-bunpu” [The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Postwar Japan], Keizai-Kenkyu 25 (October 1974), 360.Google Scholar

23 Adelman and Morris (fn. 3); Jackman (fn. 3).

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27 Huntington and Nelson (fn. 1), 23.

28 Ibid., 24.

29 Ibid., 23.

30 Ibid., 25.

31 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, paperback ed., 1965), 135, 337–74.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 344.

33 Watanuki (fn. 16), 82.

34 To please these supportive groups, the LDP government often uses the policy of giving subsidies to them. As a result, the share of governmental subsidies in the national budget is much larger in Japan than in other countries. For example, the subsidies in Japan's budget amount to around 32 percent whereas in England and France, they are 4 to 6 percent, in the United States 8 to 10 percent, and in West Germany 18 to 20 percent. Approximately 14 percent of the total is allocated to the agricultural sector in Japan; of 1,500 items, 474 go to the agricultural sector. See Hirose, Michisada, Hojokin to Seikento [Subsidy and the Party in Power] (Tokyo: The Asahi, 1981), 76, 98.Google Scholar Hirose also discusses the mechanisms by which subsidies are apportioned.

35 The triumvirate model is popular among political scientists in Japan. See Fukui, Haruhiro, “Studies in Policymaking: A Review of the Literature,” in Pempel (fn. 26), 2359.Google Scholar See also Watanuki, Joji, “Kodo Seicho to Keizai Taikokuka no Seiji Katei” [Political Process of Japan's High Economic Growth and her Emergence as an Economic Giant 1955–1977] Nihon Seijigakkai Nenpo [Annuals of the Japanese Political Science Association] (1977), 141–92.Google Scholar

36 Campbell, John Creighton, Contemporary Japanese Budget Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 3.Google Scholar