19 Aug 2022
Compromise exists in our daily lives. For example, two people argue to decide which restaurant they go to, French or Japanese, or politicians make a decision when implementing a law. According to Gutmann and Thompson (2012, p. 30), in a democratic country, compromise is essential because a community without compromise automatically favors the status quo. However, there are advantages and disadvantages of compromise. In order to minimize the disadvantages, a democratic system distributes the share of compromise according to the number of votes so that the more support a representative or political party gets, the larger say it has in a decision-making process. In order words, the majority are likely to compromise less; hence, there would be fewer disadvantages as a whole.
Meanwhile, in Japan, since most of the share has been taken by the same political party for years, those who attempt to reflect their opinions in political decisions tend to butter up the party. This can be problematic when the party receives political funds from the community and favors the community to keep it in its hands [“Hiroyuki kyuu touitu kyoukai,” 2022]. Therefore, it is essential to consider minimizing the disadvantages of compromise while keeping democracy in decision-making system.
Having known the significance, this essay will elaborate on the need of compromise (the first part), its disadvantages (the second part), and the subsequent problems that are occurring in the current democratic decision-making system in Japan (the third part). After that, the tentative model of the compromising system will be proposed based on the elaborated contents. Lastly, a possible way the model of compromising can be realized in Japan will be proposed.
First, the need of compromise has been addressed by Gutmann and Thompson (2012, p. 30), saying, “Without compromise on health care and taxation or other major issues, the status quo prevails, even if it preserves a policy that serves everyone’s interests poorly and even if it leads to a major crisis.” One of the examples of the crisis can be imagined amid the COVID-19 pandemic. If there are two groups of people, one is trying to mitigate the virus spreading, and the other is trying to keep economic activities high, it is difficult for them to reach an agreement to reduce the spread of the virus without compromising to some degree.
This is to say that economic group must decide to reduce the number of people coming into restaurants at once, even though their profits decrease. On the other hand, the medical-conscious group has to make up their mind to tolerant some increase in the number of infected people by economic activities. Therefore, in a democratic society, compromising allows multiple stakeholders to realize their reduced will to reach agreements to overcome societal problems. Then, it is one of the advantages of compromising.
Second, having introduced one of the advantages of compromise, it is also essential to consider its disadvantages because that is a key to discussing the Japanese democratic-decision-making system. One of the disadvantages of compromise is that each stakeholder has to lose some of the original wills. To illustrate this, there is an imaginary situation where ten people, all of who have different points of view on one problem, have to reach one measure to tackle the problem. It is naturally most fair to reduce everyone’s ideal idea by ninety percent, then combine them to make a full measure so that everyone’s opinion is reflected equally. However, as one of the ten people, a ninety percent decrease is quite a significant loss from the original plan. Thus, it can be a disadvantage to compromise in a democratic decision-making process.
In a democratic country like Japan, one of the ways to reduce the disadvantages of the democratic decision-making process can be elections. In the real world, there is a slim chance to have a result of an election that shows an equal number of votes for all political parties. By taking this advantage, the democratic decision-making process could rely on the majority, even if the difference between majority and minority is slight. In that way, the majority will have more say in the decision and compromise less, reducing the disadvantages of compromise. Then, the result of the decision-making process is to be admitted by the general public, for the system to reflect people’s opinions has already been decided as such an electoral system.
Having said that, thirdly, it is possible to take the electoral system’s advantage to reflect the opinions of a particular community like a religious group. In Japan, one political party has been taking the most significant number of legislative seats, having the largest say in the decision-making process. Thus, it is possible to reflect one’s opinions on the decision by influencing the party with the most seats. For example, one religious group can butter up one political party by making a promise that they always vote for it; then, the group asks the party to reflect their opinions in the decision-making process. As for the party, it is helpful to have consistent support from certain people, and this situation is a win-win for both.
However, suppose this had occurred in a positive-feedback cycle. In that case, one catalyzes the other’s action, and it accelerates the other again—it is problematic because the election that is supposed to reflect people’s views becomes no longer worthy in the democratic country. Also, the specific party can technically hold the most significant number of the seats endlessly.
Another drawback of the current Japanese electoral system can be caused by limiting the number of representatives chosen by one person. In Japan, one person can only choose one candidate and one party when voting. From this system, the following situation could occur. Suppose four of five representatives more or less look the same to electorates. In that case, the number of votes among the four similar-manifested people could be somehow distributed to them because one electorate can only vote for one representative. Then, an unwilling result is that the one candidate left who is not favorable to the majority gets votes from all the minority; then, the number is larger than each of four similar-manifested people. In this case, the election outcome becomes skewed towards the unfavorable minority of people.
The last but not least downside of the Japanese election is that the system of electing representatives is inefficient in reflecting people’s opinions due to “wasted votes (shi-hyou in Japanese).” There are two types of elections in Japan, one is called a single-seat constituency, and the other is called proportional representation, according to JapanInfo (2015). In the first type of voting, representatives are chosen directly by electorates’ votes. When there is a candidate who lost by even a few votes, all the votes for the candidate will not be counted since there are only two options: elected or not. Thus, it is a fact that voters’ opinions are not reflected enough in the result of the election.
To cope with the disadvantages mentioned thus far, fourthly, a possible model of elections can be built. The first problem is that the election becomes no longer worthy due to the adherence of a political party to a specific community of people, such as a religious group. It is instead a problem of watchdogging the political parties rather than the election system. In fact, the Constitution of Japan stipulates in article 20 that “Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority (National Diet Library, n.d.).” However, since this statement has been interpreted in various ways, it is difficult to eliminate the connections between politics and religions. Thus, political parties must watchdog each other to ensure that there is no “abnormal political privilege” that must not be accepted in a democracy.
In terms of electing an unfavored minority as a representative, the problem is limiting the number of candidates each electorate can vote for. To change the system, “preferential voting” might be a solution. In Australia, an electorate writes “1” next to the first preference candidate’s name on a ballot paper, and “2” for the second preference, and so on until all the candidates are numbered according to the electorate’s preference. Next, “[i]f a candidate gains an absolute majority of first preference votes, they win the seat. If no candidate receives an absolute majority, the candidate with the least number of votes is excluded and their votes are redistributed according to second preferences. The process of redistributing votes according to preferences continues until one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote and is then elected (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022).” In this way, the opinions of the majority can be reflected reasonably in the result of the election.
The preferential voting system can also solve the concern about the wasted votes in a single-seat-constituency election. It is because all the votes will be distributed to candidates until a candidate meets 50% of the vote, and it can last until all the seats are filled up. Nevertheless, in Japan, it might be another concern that making preferences of all candidates is time-consuming and too much work for some electorates. Thus, it is convenient to have a way to access information about each candidate they vote for quickly and sufficiently.
Lastly, one of the possible ways to realize the model, for example, preferential voting, can be done by utilizing IoT (Internet of Things). When introducing the preferential voting system in Japan, there would be a large amount of work to organize the votes because of distributing votes to get the majority of them, and so the access to the candidates’ information to make a list of preferences would be. Then, using IoT, it is possible to quickly digitalize the process of counting votes and providing electorates with information about candidates via prevalent media such as smartphones. Of course, there are doubts about the neutralism of media and generation gaps in different media usages, which are to be further discussed.
In conclusion, despite the indispensable advantage of compromise in democracy, it has critical pitfalls, especially in the Japanese electoral system. Therefore, a new electoral model can be introduced to solve the issues with digitalized media. Furthermore, possible concerns about the roles of media in politics are the future research subject.
This is a work from an English class at university
References:
Commonwealth of Australia. (2022). Federal election. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/having-your-say/elections-and-voting/federal-elections/
Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. (2012). The spirit of compromise: Why governing demands it and campaigning undermines it. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hiroyuki kyuu touitu kyoukai no kenkin mondai, karuto syuukyou wo mouhihan! Sontaku nashi no tettei tsuikyuu ni hyouka itten mo [Hiroyuki problematic donation of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, strong criticism on the “cult”! The possible change in the reputation of his no-compromising attitude]. (2022). Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/ae936c9e636796c31362a3762d441ed6afbba23c?page=1
JapanInfo. (2015). Changes to Voting Age? 20 or 18?. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://www.ny.us.emb-japan.go.jp/en/c/2015/04-Apr/japaninfo-2015-04/06.html#:~:text=Every%20voter%20in%20Japan%20casts,is%20for%20a%20political%20party.
National Diet Library. (n.d.). Text of constitution and other important documents. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c01.html
The comprehensive Education Center of Shizuoka Prefecture. (n.d.). Shousen kyoku no shikumi [The system of proportional representation method]. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://gakusyu.shizuoka-c.ed.jp/society/chu/citizen/seiji/02_3_nihon_senkyo_seido.htm