THE GOVERNMENT OF MODERN JAPAN: INTEREST GROUPS IN JAPANESE POLITICS Role in Election Campaigns |
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Gerald L. Curtis :: But one of the ways in which interest groups seek to have influence in the political system in Japan that’s somewhat different from the United States is that interest groups in Japan get much more directly involved in actually supporting the campaigns of candidates who are identified directly with that particular interest group or group of interest groups. This is especially true for candidates in the upper house, where interest groups will run candidates who either have been members of that group or, what is often common, had been working in the government as career bureaucrats — civil servants in a ministry that was concerned with the issues that involved that interest group. So someone from the Health and Welfare Ministry might run for the upper house with the support of interest groups among doctors, and dentists, and nursing home owners, and the like. Or someone from the Ministry of Construction will run for the upper house with the support of interest groups organized within the construction industry and the building trades. |
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