ABSTRACT
Reformers have repeatedly argued for: reducing the costs of elections, which would presumably also reduce corruption; replacing candidate-centred with party-centred campaigns; and, moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the party of government and the party of opposition. Much of the energy needed to break the LDP's long hold on power and to enact political reform was provided by public disgust with political corruption. Public funding has made two potentially important changes in the flow of political money: a substitution of public for private funding, and a funnelling of a higher proportion of funds through the political parties. Once the loophole was discovered and candidates began establishing multiple party branches, however, much of the incentive to form a single unified organisation in order to contest elections was countered by incentives to form many diverse organisations in order to raise money.
