Redemocratizing Electoral Governance under Polarization: Post-war Italy & Japan

• In Event: Democracy under Stress: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Electoral governance is one of the keys to building stable democracies. However, in the second wave of democratization after WWII, Italy and Japan continued to adopt the governmental model," which should have been discredited due to unfair government interference in elections and incapacity against undemocratic parties. Why did Italy and Japan maintain the governmental model despite enacting a brand-new constitution? If any reform, how did they do it in a highly polarized early-postwar political environment?
By combining comparative historical analysis and process-tracing methods, this paper explores the process of electoral governance reform in postwar Italy and Japan. They had three alternatives for electoral governance: (1) Drift/Layering; creating/adding a new independent non-majoritarian institution(NMI) as political insurance under ideological divides. (2) Sequencing: maintaining a traditional administration as a compromise. (3) Conversion: transforming the governmental model into a new consensual governance.
The innovative text analysis of legislative materials reveals that new political parties could not accept the first and second options due to mutual distrust and strong beliefs in democratization. They finally adopted the Conversion to balance rivalries and democratic beliefs. Italy introduced a decentralized system with citizens' participation. Japan adopted the US-style electoral committee with multi-party oversight. In both countries, the new electoral governance was unintentionally multi-party and consensual while favorable to the governing parties in each district.
In conclusion, the paper sheds new theoretical light by arguing that ideological and affective polarization can unexpectedly bring a "bipartisan" solution for institutional reform and cannot always lead to a political stalemate.

Author

• Takeshi Ito, The University of Tokyo