ABSTRACT
The fourth chapter examines a predominantly LDP-dominated form of campaigning and politician-citizen interaction called koenkai. In the first part of the chapter, one Oita prefectural assembly member and his koenkai are examined. The prefecture-level koenkai is then compared to national diet member koenkai findings from Gerald Curtis’s 1960s Oita study and the Krauss/Pekkanen study in the late 2000s to determine whether parallels can be drawn between the national and prefecture levels.
In the second part of the chapter, political participation theory is directly applied to analyze one prefectural assembly member’s koenkai, a group of citizens who appear to be politically participating. Building off of discussions in previous chapters regarding institutional and policy process limitations to participation, this section investigates why some individuals still expend large resources to participate in the form of campaigning for a candidate. The participants in this study are young, core koenkai (candidate support group) members of a high-ranking prefectural assembly member. Participant observation is employed to study the participants, their duties, and their interactions with one another and the candidate. The results of member interviews about political participation indicators, such as political attitudes and values, social capital, efficacy, and engagement, are presented to highlight members’ attitudes about government and why they choose to politically participate.
