The Japanese commonly observe dynastic politicians getting elected and promoted. Quite a few observers of Japanese politics explain the dynastic politics in Japan as a culture that is strongly related to the traditional Japanese concept of ‘ie’. However, Daniel Smith demonstrates that political institutions, especially electoral systems and candidate selection procedures, influence the dominance of political dynasties in Japan, thereby countering the view that the dominance is merely a reflection of Japan's indigenous traditions and culture. The changes in dynastic politics after the electoral system reform during the 1990s endorses the validity of the argument made in Smith's book.
Readers will not fail to be impressed by the large amount of data utilized by the author. In this book, Smith's primary focus is on Japan, and he collects data on all the candidates who have stood in Japanese national elections, as well as their family linkages, since the start of new political regime after World War II. Further, he collects extensive data on 12 advanced democracies to identify whether a member of parliament in these countries is from a political dynasty. The valuable data collected support the comparative analysis of political dynasties in this book and suggest that the argument he makes could be extended to several other democracies besides Japan.
When building a comparative theory of dynastic politics, Smith distinguishes between the factors that lead to the fielding of a legacy candidate by a political dynasty and the reasons behind political parties and their supporting organizations demanding a legacy candidate. The supply-side factors are incumbents’ long tenures in office and their affiliations to political dynasties. Politicians and their family members would try to form a political dynasty if the position of an incumbent legislator delivers substantial benefits that can be handed down across generations. Though the author does not deal with the size of these benefits, an incumbent politician is expected to have a stronger incentive to build a political dynasty as the benefits become larger.
The important demand-side factor is whether the electoral advantages of the existing legislator are inherited by his or her successor. If a legacy candidate from a political dynasty can retain the advantages and is likely to win the next election, a political party and its supporting organizations demands her nomination. Based on this idea, Smith explores in depth the meaning of an incumbent's advantages at the system, party, and individual levels. First, at the system level, he points out that the demand for a legacy candidate will be higher in a candidate-centered electoral context than in a party-centered electoral context. In a candidate-centered electoral context, voters may place greater emphasis on the personal-vote-earning attributes (PVEA) of candidates than their party manifestos. Political parties seeking to win an election are likely to choose a legacy candidate who has strong PVEA. Next, at the party level, the demands for a legacy candidate will be higher if parties have weaker linkages to organizations in civil society, or if the candidate selection process is exclusive and decentralized. Various organizations would affect the open and transparent procedure for candidate selection that the political parties are likely to use to select non-legacy candidates. Without the influence of external organizations, parties are likely to choose legacy candidates considered to have a high PVEA. For example, if local branch executives, whose connections are limited traditional support groups, have the right to select a candidate, they are likely to select a legacy candidate. Last, at the individual level, Smith points out that the demand for a legacy candidate will be high in an election held immediately after the death of an incumbent politician. Compassion for the incumbent politician who has passed away is expected to increase the possibility of earning votes through personal characteristics, and a family member is likely to be favored as the candidate.
Smith tries to test this comparative theory of dynastic candidate selection by using data from 12 advanced democracies. All the hypotheses cannot be tested owing to the difficulty of operationalizing the detailed selection procedure of each country. However, the supply-side hypothesis – long tenures of an incumbent legislator create a political dynasty, and political dynasties are likely to provide new candidates – is verified through the data collected. According to his data, political parties were likely to choose a legacy candidate in pre-reform Japan, which adopted the single non-transferrable voting (SNTV) system, and Ireland, which adopted the single transferrable voting (STV) system. Both SNTV and STV have the characteristics of candidate-centered electoral systems. In contrast, a legacy candidate is unlikely to be selected in the countries that adopt the closed-list proportional representation electoral system. These tendencies imply the validity of the argument made in this book. In addition, the author uses data from Canada, Ireland, Japan, and the United States to demonstrate that a legacy candidate is likely to be selected right after the death of his predecessor.
Based on the comparative analysis, Smith considers the Japanese case. By focusing on the candidate selection process, he argues that the electoral system reforms affected the demand for a legacy candidate. Before the reform, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was worried about serious intraparty competition and was likely to select a legacy candidate who had substantial PVEA. However, the party grew more accepting of non-legacy candidates after the reform reduced the importance of PVEA. Indeed, this argument related to demand-side changes does not necessarily offer a new perspective for scholars studying Japanese politics; however, an essential contribution of this book is to reveal not only the changes in the demand for a legacy candidate owing to the reform, but also the changes in the supply-side factors in candidate selection. Thus, after the reform, the LDP generally avoided choosing legacy candidates, but they did field legacy candidates from an influential political dynasty and those with exceptionally high PVEA. Smith is able to offer a convincing argument that fielding a legacy candidate after the reform is based on a clear tendency rather than mere inertia.
Whether this argument is valid depends on the value of PVEA of political dynasties and their candidates. Smith tests this by separating the effects of political legacy into the succession of personal supporting bases (jiban) and name recognition (kanban) and suggests that name recognition of a legacy candidate led to a substantial increase in voting and electoral success before the reform. However, after the reform, despite detecting a persistence of political legacy in terms of an increase in votes by a certain amount, the political legacy is no longer a determinant which influences the electoral result. After the reform, the popular support for political parties becomes more important than PVEA of each candidate. The tendency that the post-reform LDP has only fielded legacy candidates from strong political dynasties, as Smith points out, is the result of the electoral system reform that has reduced the advantages associated with a political dynasty.
The most exciting and contentious argument for the reviewer is that LDP politicians from powerful political dynasties are likely to get promoted in the post-reform period. Generally speaking, politicians from powerful dynasties make their political debut at a relatively young age; thus, it is possible that their promotion merely reflects the seniority rules followed by the LDP. Smith presents some evidence against this conventional argument and suggests that the special knowledge and connections that are shared among politicians from powerful dynasties are crucial in their getting promoted within the LDP. The LDP was a coalition of factions before the reform, but how new groups are shaped within the LDP after the reform remains an open question. If the politicians from powerful dynasties, who share secret knowledge and experiences, create an influential group and occupy the dominant position within the LDP, future studies should tackle the issue of the transformation of the party. The political dynasty that initially pursued the local interests of its support bases might have changed their driving forces. The political dynasty in charge of national politics might become focusing on the broader national-level interests than local interests.
Though this book reveals several important factors relating to political dynasties, some questions remain unsolved. One of these is the relationship between the political parties and legacy candidates in a candidate-centered electoral context. From a theoretical point of view, political parties may seek a legacy candidate who has high PVEA; however, it is not clear if the pre-reform LDP was indeed an integrated organization that pursued seat maximization by using an institutionalized candidate-selection process. If each candidate was highly autonomous and the LDP could decide on the post-election additional approval to join the parties, the reason why the independent candidates backed by political dynasties did not join the opposition camp should be considered. It is safe to say that their concern about the political power that influenced resource allocations made them choose the ruling party. The long-standing one-party dominance of the LDP, without a change in the ruling party since the establishment, is a unique feature that is not observed in other advanced democracies. The relationship between the long-standing government and the behavior of political dynasties might be a topic for future research.
The book takes on the challenge of scrutinizing political dynasties – perceived as a cultural phenomenon – from the viewpoint of international comparison and mostly succeeds. Smith tests the fascinating hypothesis persuasively by using extensive data and sophisticated methods and paints a vivid picture of the reality of Japanese politics through the set of implications presented. Further, the explanations that are laced with interesting anecdotes based on the author's profound knowledge of individual politicians and electoral issues will not only inspire scholars who are interested in Japanese politics, but also provide an opportunity to reconsider Japanese politics from the perspectives of political dynasties and incumbent advantages.
