Yasuo Takao
Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Keywords: voting age, agenda setting, policy change, constitutional revision, Japan
DOI: 10.5509/2019923419
What age a state designates as appropriate for voting rights raises a range of democratic and empirical issues. The lowering of the voting age in Japan in 2015 was the biggest expansion of the country’s democratic franchise since 1945, yet it happened in an abrupt manner. Lowering the voting age was not a significant issue among the Japanese public until the mid-2000s and the government began supporting the move officially only in 2014. Why then? What happened to precipitate this decision? This study argues that the circumstances governing the period before the policy decision was made are crucial to understanding what followed. In the prevailing theories of policy change, analysis has focused much more on the phase of decision making over policy; public opinion, policy beliefs, and policy transfer have been prominently cited as the major reasons for lowering the voting age in other countries. In contrast, this article claims that the policy opportunity spillover, from constitutional revision to voting age, was a necessary condition for lowering the age. The discussion of constitutional revision incidentally opened a policy window to another issue area, in this case voting age. The findings help us answer the question of what time period we need to examine in order to discern actual policy dynamics.
投票年齡從20嵗降低到18嵗的日本政治議程設定:憲法修訂被優先化于民主合法性
關鍵詞: 投票年齡,政治議程設定,政策變遷,修憲,日本。
適宜的投票年齡牽涉到一系列民主及經驗性的問題。2015年日本投票年齡降低是1945年以來民主選舉所經歷的最大一次拓展。盡管如此,它被認爲是一個突兀的行動。對日本公衆來説,直到21世紀第一個十年的中期,降低投票年齡都不是一個重大的問題,政府也直到2014年才開始正式支持這個要求。那麽究竟是爲什麽呢? 本研究認爲,對此困惑的最重要的解釋指向政策的前決策階段。在流行的解釋政治變化的理論中, 分析更多地集中于政策的決策階段,突出引用那些民意、政策信仰以及政策轉移作爲其他國家投票年齡降低的主要原因。 本文認爲,與這些政策變遷中的決策因素相對比的話,憲法修改中的政策機會溢出是降低投票年齡的一個必要條件。 修憲討論意外地開啓了另外一個政策領域——投票年齡——的政策窗口。 本論文的發現有助於解答為辨識真正的政策動力,我們需要考察何種時間段的問題。
Translated from English by Li Guo
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