How a Swiss innovation is changing democracy in Japan 

People walk by a board showing some of the candidates running for Tokyo's gubernatorial election, June 20, 2024, in Tokyo. KEYSTONE/AP/Hiro Komae

For decades, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has dominated Japan’s political landscape. Digital voting tools have the potential to change this. 

Every spring, as cherry blossoms explode across Tokyo, the campus of the prestigious Waseda University bursts into life. During the first week of term, senior students transform the sprawling campus grounds into a bustling fairground, pitching everything from stand-up comedy, aikido and jazz jams to philosophical tea clubs, queer groups and communist study circles to more than 10,000 incoming students.  

At the start of term, the campus of Waseda University in Tokyo is buzzing with students. SWI swissinfo.ch/Bruno Kaufmann

“I have been involved in a political club since my very first day here,” says 22-year-old Kentaro Kikuchi, a fourth-year political science student. We are sitting in professor Airo Hino’s office on the 12th floor of the university’s main building while Kikuchi and his fellow student, 23-year-old Yuta Suzuki, join us via video call. “We are gearing up for the next parliamentary elections and are discussing what really matters in digital voting aids,” Hino says.  

At the end of July, half of Japan’s Sangiin, the 248-member upper house of the national parliament, is up for re-election. For decades, Hino and his students have teamed up to support interested stakeholders in developing the “smartvote” platform, known locally as Vote Match. Ahead of every election, the team analyses party platforms and candidate statements to craft a set of key questions voters are eager to have answers to. Such digital voting aids are usually hosted by media outlets like the daily newspaper Yomiuri.  

Digital voting aids 

Digital voting tools inform voters about key issues in election campaigns. They promote transparency, encourage participation and potentially increase both turnout and the democratic legitimacy of elections. Smartvote is an online platform that connects voters with candidates and political parties that align with their political views. Voters create their political profile by answering 30 to 75 standardised questions on current political issues. Their profiles are then compared with exiting profiles of political candidates or parties. After completing the questionnaire, voters receive a list of candidates or parties ranked in order of how closely they match the voters’ position. 

Over the past 25 years, more than 250 elections in Switzerland have been accompanied by smartvote. According to the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR),External link about one-fifth of all eligible voters and nearly nine out of ten candidates use this platform. Outside of Switzerland, online voting platforms are also becoming an integral part of the digital infrastructure of democracies, such as in the European UExternal linknion, the United SExternal linktates, KosovoExternal link and Japan.   .

Prior to every election, Hino and his team identify key information sources on which to base their questionnaire. “We look at party platforms and electoral promises made by both parties and individual candidates, and analyse newspaper articles and social media posts,” Hino explains.  

Professor Airo Hino in his office at Waseda University. SWI swissinfo.ch/Bruno Kaufmann

Suzuki is happy to see that mainly young voters are using the tool. Like Kikuchi, he completed an internship with a politician during his university years. “I realised how important it is for a democracy that people are well informed and make conscious decisions,” Suzuki says. “Vote Match-style apps on a smartphone enable people who don’t follow political discussions on a daily basis to still form a political opinion,” he adds. 

>>>Read our article on the “smartvote” app for the last parliamentary elections in Switzerland in 2023:

Like in many other established democracies, voter turnout in Japan varies significantly between younger and older citizens. In the last national elections for Japan’s lower house, nearly two-thirds of voters over 70 went to the polls, while turnout among the under-30s barely topped one-third.  

But change may be underway, especially among first-time voters. A study by Japan’s Ministry of Internal AffairsExternal link found that, after the voting age was lowered from 20 to 18 and online voting tools became more widely available, over half of 18-year-olds participated in the last national elections.  

Only 2% of Japanese municipalities are headed by women   

A fresh breeze of change can also be felt at the local level. In Suginami, a city of 583,000 people, voters recently elected a female mayor for the first time, and women now hold half of the 48 seats on the city council. “During my election campaign, I particularly reached out to young people via social media,” says its mayor, Satoko Kishimoto. 

Satoko Kishimoto, Mayor of Suginami SWI swissinfo.ch/Bruno Kaufmann

“Japanese politics is dominated by older men,” she adds. Kishimoto is one of just 35 female mayors of Japan’s more than 1,700 municipalities. At 50, she is well below the average age of top local politicians, which stands at 67. For next year’s elections in Suginami, Kishimoto wants to launch a local online voting platform. “This will help us to focus on political content,” she says. “That’s more important than focussing on personalities and parties.” 

Powerful executives, limited public participation

After Japan’s’ defeat in the Second World War and its surrender on September 2, 1945, the country adopted a new democratic constitution in 1947 under US guidance. The constitution commits the country to peace and to renouncing war. For this reason, the Japanese military is officially known as a “self-defence force”.  

Since the mid-1950s, Japan’s political power has largely rested with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Dominating both national and local politics, where mayors hold strong executive power, the LDP is often seen as a broad alliance stretching from the political centre to the far right. It has been in power almost uninterrupted, except during major corruption scandals in the 1990s and briefly in 2009, when a left liberal party briefly broke its grip on power. After losing its majority in last year’s elections, the LDP now governs in a minority coalition with the religious Komeito party. If the LDP also loses its majority in the upper house in elections on July 27, its decades-long dominance will come to an end.  

Despite this potential shift in power and a more dynamic political landscape, Japan’s roughly 100 million eligible voters enjoy limited participatory rights. Local popular votes are technically possible, but their implementation and interpretation rest with the executive. At the national level, amendments to the constitution require a mandatory referendum, yet not a single one has been held since 1947. 

With support from experts like Hino’s team at Waseda University and others across the country, local, regional and national media outlets now offer a variety of online voting tools ahead of every election. “This allows us to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the various applications,” says Swiss national Uwe Serdült, head of the Digital Governance System Lab in Osaka, roughly 500 kilometres south of Tokyo.  

Uwe Serdült (right), head of the Digital Governance System Lab at Ritsumeikan University in Osaka, talking to his Egyptian colleague Shady Salama. SWI swissinfo.ch/Bruno Kaufmann

Serdült’s labExternal link, launched just a year ago, is a collaboration between Japan’s Ritsumeikan University and the Centre for Democracy Studies at the University of Zurich. “We research how online voting tools can be made more efficient, transparent and less susceptible to political bias,” says Serdült. “The current methods for identifying relevant political positions of candidates and political parties are laborious and opaque, which undermines public trust in such tools.” At the Digital Governance Lab, methods are currently being developed to make selecting the questions for online voting tools more understandable and transparent. 

Experts like Hino and Serdült believe that Japan’s stable multi-party democracy and frequent elections make it an ideal environment for the use, analysis and development of digital tools for civic participation. These include not only smartvote-style platforms but also petitions and citizens’ initiatives. Suginami’s mayor, Kishimoto, is particularly interested in the latter. “Like in Switzerland, I want the people in my town to engage more with political decisions and take greater responsibility for their outcomes,” she says.  

Edited by Mark Livingston. Adapted from German by Billi Bierling/gw