IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/sscijp/v24y2021i2p369-396..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Underrepresentation of People with Disabilities in the Japanese Diet
[‘Differently Abled American Politicians and the Impact of Their Abilities on Their Lives, Careers, and Policies’]

Author

Listed:
  • Sae OKURA

Abstract

This paper examines the political underrepresentation of people with disabilities in the Japanese Diet and the conditions that allow their participation in the body. The paper addresses the following three research questions: (a) how are people with disabilities represented in contemporary Japan and the EU member states, and what are the differences between them?; (b) why have people with disabilities been underrepresented in Japan? and (c) how do candidates with disabilities but lacking typical political careers become members of the Diet? This paper further discusses the electoral system, political parties' attitudes toward people with disabilities, social and community participation of people with disabilities, and political culture as factors that affect minority groups' participation in the Japanese Diet. Key findings: (a) a comparison with EU member states shows that the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in parliamentary bodies is a common issue; (b) people with disabilities are less involved in traditional political communities and society in general, which hampers their participation in the parliament and (c) in the immediate postwar period disabled Diet members were mainly wounded people with typical political careers, but from the 1990s onwards disabled people without typical political careers became Diet members. Moreover, the proportional electoral system and political parties' stronger commitment to include candidates with disabilities facilitated the increase in disabled membership.

Suggested Citation

  • Sae OKURA, 2021. "The Political Underrepresentation of People with Disabilities in the Japanese Diet [‘Differently Abled American Politicians and the Impact of Their Abilities on Their Lives, Careers, and Policies’]," Social Science Japan Journal, University of Tokyo and Oxford University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 369-396.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:sscijp:v:24:y:2021:i:2:p:369-396.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ssjj/jyab024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:sscijp:v:24:y:2021:i:2:p:369-396.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ssjj .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.