Political and Economic Changes and Economic Voting in Japan

本研究的目的是为了弄清20世纪90年代日本发生的政治和经济变化如何影响经济投票的性质。数据来自对东京大都市选民的六次随机抽样调查。所有调查均以邮递方式进行，结果如下。第一，政策导向的经济投票下降，而在职导向的投票变得更加突出。换句话说，已经从在坚韧时期投票给自民党转变为在经济变坏时给反对党一个机会。第二，由于国民对国民经济状况的影响越来越敏感，国民经济的看法在评价执政党的表现时发挥了更大的作用，社会倾向性投票变得更加显著。

The purpose of this research is to clarify how political and economic changes that occurred in Japan during 1990s affected the nature of economic voting. The data was taken from six random sample surveys of voters in metropolitan Tokyo. All the surveys were done by mail.The results are as follows. First, policy-oriented economic votinghas declined and instead incumbency-oriented voting has become more salient. In other words, there has been a shift from voting for the LDP when times are tough to giving an opposition party a chance when the economy gets bad. Second, because people became very aware of the influence of national economic conditions on their personal circumstances, perceptions of the national economy came to play a larger role in assessments of the ruling party's performance, and sociotropic voting is becoming more salient.