By Zhou Muzhi

Election heat is on in Japan. The two main political forces began campaigning for votes as soon as Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved the House of Representatives of the Diet (or parliament) on July 21.

With economic recession, a soaring unemployment rate, astronomical budget deficits, huge government debts and an unpopular prime minister, the situation looks gloomy for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). And the opposition parties, led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), are likely to win the majority in parliament.

Since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been sluggish. The "iron triangle between politicians, bureaucrats, and businesses" that steered Japan through the post-war economic recovery and rapid growth has lost its glamour. The former allies are even blaming each other now. In recent years, the ruling LDP and the opposition DPJ both have blamed bureaucrats for Japan's predicament.

In January 2008, before the financial crisis hit, Minister of Economic Policy Hiroko Ota admitted in the Diet: "Japan is not a first-class economy any longer."

The LDP and the DPJ may be baying for each other's blood but there are more similarities than differences between them. They have been advocating almost identical economic and social policies. To garner votes, they have promised benefits, allowances and tax cuts, despite the government debt being twice as large as the country's GDP.

The two parties are similar even on the diplomatic front because there's no point of contention. The reason for that is simple: the politicians have lost effective leadership and the bureaucrats - once famous for their competence - have degraded themselves. There doesn't seem to be any fundamental difference between the two parties because both are conservative in nature. The root cause of this sorry state of affairs, however, is the reform in the electoral system.

Before 1996, Japanese voters were divided into 129 constituencies. Each constituency elected two to six members to the House of the Representatives. That system allowed members of smaller parties to be elected to the Diet. The theme of Japanese politics used to be confrontation and compromise between the conservative LDP and the reformist Japan Socialist Party (JSP).

The LDP, no doubt, enjoyed a firm grip on power by pushing economic growth and using pork barrels. But the JSP could still woo voters by demanding fairer distribution of wealth and grab a considerable number of seats in the Diet. The two parties had effective checks on each other. But after the electoral system underwent a fundamental reform in 1996, 300 of the 480 members of the House of the Representatives are elected from single-seat constituencies. The rest enter the Diet under proportional representation.

The change tilted the scale toward big parties with huge funds and political clout. Candidates now have to depend on the big parties and please the conservative majority voters in their constituencies. The principle of winner-takes-all has stifled minority votes, precipitating the decline of left-wing parties like the JSP.

A few days ago, I asked former prime minister and JSP head Tomiichi Murayama whether the electoral reform was responsible for the wane in JSP's influence. Murayama, who led the JSP during its political zenith, said that indeed was the case, and he was saddened by the development.

Since the reform, the major parties, irrespective of whether they are in office or the opposition, have been conservative. Though the LDP and DPJ are fighting ferociously, theirs is not a tussle for ideology or principles, but to assume power.

Another ill effect of the single-seat constituency system is the moral degradation of politicians. For instance, in February, Shoichi Nakagawa, then minister of finance, appeared to be drunk at a G7 press conference. He slurred while addressing journalists and became a laughing stock of the global media and audience. It was even more shocking to see voters in his constituency, which his father and he had cultivated for 46 years, welcome him home with encouraging words, instead of denouncing his action.

Unfortunately, many competent Japanese politicians usually lack strong support in their own constituencies. In a single-seat constituency system voters usually judge a candidate by the favors they get from him or her. Hence, many elected representatives are not competent enough to deal with national politics.

Politicians who can inherit fame, koenkai (local support group) and funding channels from their fathers and even forefathers are a greater success in the single-seat constituency system, leading to hereditary politics.

People in Japan are still materially affluent. Though the government has run up a huge debt, insolvency of public budget is still not a real threat because the creditors of 95 percent of the debts are Japanese citizens.

The problem is that Japan has bid farewell to the age of progress. Entangled in old and new problems such as the decline of manufacturing industries, an aging population, a shrinking workforce, lack of social benefits and surging unemployment, the DPJ may not be able to do much better than its rival, even though it is tipped to win the election.

While that may be case, the competition between two homogeneous parties cannot arouse much fever in society, nor can it lead the country into a new age. In other words, the single-seat constituency system has led Japan astray.

The author is a professor in Tokyo Keizai University, Japan.

(China Daily August 12, 2009)