Public Attitudes toward Equality in Relation to Politics

TANAKA Aiji, MIMURA Norihiro

doi:10.7218/nenpouseijigaku1953.57.1_117

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Other Title

国民意識における平等と政治
国民意識における平等と政治--政治経済対立軸の継続と変化
コクミンイシキニオケルビョウドウトセイジセイジケイザイタイリツジクノケイゾクトヘンカ
政治経済対立軸の継続と変化
Rethinking Equality from a Perspective of Political Economy

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Abstract

This article tries to capture Japanese public attitudes toward equality through public opinion surveys. Orientation toward equality in an advanced society with free-market economy is theoretically assumed to be equivalent to social welfare orientation. Therefore, orientation toward equality is theoretically expected to be correlated with the progressive vs. conservative political orientation, namely the ideological orientation. But, we found very little correlation between Japanese attitudes toward equality/welfare and political ideology over time. This suggests that the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) could never gain a large scale of support mainly because the Socialists could not represent the people's interests for equality. However, our more statistically rigorous approach of confirmatory factor analyses across different populations utilizing SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) technique provided slightly different findings. In 1983, Japanese attitudes toward equality vs. laissez-faire were not correlated with attitudes toward the JSP or with the LDP. In 1993, they were related only with attitudes toward the LDP. In 1996, they became related with both attitudes toward the LDP and the JSP. Because of Japan's bad economy, by the mid 1990s Japanese public came to relate their attitudes toward equality with their political (party) preferences.

Journal

The Annuals of Japanese Political Science Association

The Annuals of Japanese Political Science Association 57 (1), 117-147,315, 2006

JAPANESE POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION

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