THE GOVERNMENT OF MODERN JAPAN: THE JAPANESE DIET (PARLIAMENT) Political Strategy for Election to One of the Two Houses |
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Gerald L. Curtis :: The lower house, being the most, more important of the two houses of the Japanese parliament, is the place where the most ambitious politicians want to be elected. Especially almost all members of the cabinet and, by law, the prime minister, have to be chosen from among members of the lower house. The upper house is an important body even though it is not as powerful as the lower house. Some politicians who are unable to run in the lower house election, because there is already an incumbent from the party that he is a member of elected in that lower house district that he would run from, sometimes run for election in the upper house, expecting that they would then at some point be able to shift to the lower house. And in fact there are many politicians who begin their career in the Japanese parliament as members of the upper house, who later run as members of the lower house. There are also many politicians in the upper house who run in effect as the representatives of major interest groups in Japan, because, unlike the United States where we have a system of lobbyists, where interest groups lobby the members of the Congress, in Japan there is no lobbying system. In effect, interest groups will give their support to politicians to run in the upper house election, particularly in the upper house election, expecting that that elected politician would then in effect be the lobbyist within the parliament for the interest group. |
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