Japan’s Political Marketplace

J. Mark Ramseyer is Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University Law School. Frances McCall Rosenbluth is Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

• Introduction Electoral Rules and Party Strategy Demographics and Policy Party Factions Party Organization Political Structure and Bureaucratic Incentives Bureaucratic Manipulation Political Structure and Judicial Incentives Judicial Manipulation Conclusion: Political Markets and Electoral Change Notes Reference Index

Ramseyer and Rosenbluth present a view of Japanese politics that coherently links voters, politicians, bureaucrats, and judges into patterns of interaction governed by the logic of the ‘political marketplace.’ They succeed in demonstrating that many of the analytical tools developed to study the politics of advanced Western democracies are not only applicable in the Japanese context, but also are capable of yielding novel interpretations of politics in Japan.