Political Culture in Japan and the World

On Political Culture

Japan and Canada

    Political culture in Canada is difficult to explain as deep seated cleavages between Eastern and Western Canada have led to effectively two distinct political cultures. Generally speaking, however, the political culture of Canada is more or less centrist, sometimes leaning Left and other times Right depending on the ideological climate. Canada's moderate political culture is due to the median voter theorem (see below) which suggests that "elections will be won by the preferences of voters in the middle of the political spectrum," leading opposing parties to become increasingly ideologically similar (Telford, 2021, p. 56).

    While Japan and Canada share some similarities, like their system of governments (e.g., democracies) and opposition to nuclear warfare, from my understanding, their political cultures differ in several ways. First, unlike in Japan, Canada has no dominant party, and minority governments are common. Canada's ruling party consistently shifts between Liberals and Conservatives, whereas Japan's ruling party is almost always the Liberal Democratic Party. Second, Japan is a unitary state, Canada is not – it is a federalist state, as it divides power between provinces and the country as a whole.

    This leads to a third difference, relating to long-term orientation. Because power is split between provinces and the federal government in Canada, it can be extremely difficult to establish a country-wide policy proposal (for infrastructure, for example) that will be accepted and supported by all provinces. This problem is amplified by the median voter theorem which effectively disincentivizes parties from suggesting ambitious changes in the first place. Japan does not seem to suffer from this problem to the extent Canada does. I assume many of these differences are caused by Japan's collectivist culture and Canada's individualistic one, leading each country to adopt a unique interpersonal and sociopolitical value system.

An Additional Remark

    Beyond Japan and Canada, this week's class discussion also reminded me of something I often notice in political discourse more broadly: people tend to express a great deal of confidence in their political opinions, even when those opinions rest on assumptions they have never fully examined. Research suggests that many citizens are “ideologically innocent" – they do not hold particularly coherent or organized political belief systems, yet they are still willing to identify as liberal, conservative, and so on (Kinder & Kalmoe, 2017). Because political questions are intrinsically normative, they depend on deeper judgments about what we ought to value, but these judgments are rarely made explicit. Combined with the fact that becoming politically informed is costly and offers little individual payoff (Olson, 1971), it is unsurprising that many people treat the axioms behind their views as incorrigible truths. For me, this highlights the importance of approaching political questions with humility: recognizing the normative assumptions at play and being cautious not to overstate the certainty of our own perspectives.

References

Kinder, D. R. & Kalmoe, N. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public. University of Chicago Press.

Olson Jr, M. (1971). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, with a new preface and appendix (Vol. 124). harvard university press.

Telford, H. (2021). Engaging Canadian politics. Northrose Educational Resources.