Ikuo Kabashima and Yoshito Ishio, "The Instability of Party Identification among Eligible Japanese Voters: A Seven-wave Panel Study, 1993-6," Party Politics, 4 (April 1998), 151-176.

First Paragraph:
The stability of party identification has been a controversial topic among scholars studying electoral behaviour (Box-Steffensmeier and Smith, 1996; Miller and Shanks, 1996). For example, in Controversies in Voting Behavior Niemi and Weisberg (1993) devoted to this topic a chapter entitled 'Is Party Identification Stable?', reviewing studies on US voters. They explained, on the one hand, earlier studies affirming the stability of party identification and, on the other hand, later studies questioning such stability. Niemi and Weisberg (1993: 276) concluded vaguely: 'Party identification is not totally stable, but it is sufficiently so as to preserve its preeminent status in understanding voting'. Thus, the stability and instability of party identification require more clarification from further research. In this paper we hope to contribute to the debate on the stability of party identification by examining eligible Japanese voters using a seven-wave panel study covering 1993 to 1996. Our research findings will demonstrate that the party identifications of Japanese eligible voters are very unstable.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Party identification instability in Canada, the USA, Britain, the Netherlands and Japan (%)
Table 2: JES II panel survey
Figure 1: LDP identifiers
Figure 2: JNP-NFP identifiers
Table 3: Instability of party identification in a seven-wave survey
Table 4: Instability of party identification in survey waves 1, 2 and 3
Table 5: Number of times supporting the LDP
Table 6: Patterns of party identification change (%)
Table 7: Binomial probit model, panel survival
Table 8: Multinomial logit model predicting party identification instability
Appendix: Coding of independent variables

Last Paragraph:
Finally, critical attitudes towards current politics and political apathy weaken party identification. We found that people who are politically dissatisfied and people who are ideologically progressive/reformative are more likely to become temporary partisans. These people may be attempting to induce political changes by changing party identification. Thus, their party identification may be conditional on the performance of political parties. We also found that people who do not consider voting a duty are more likely to become temporary partisans. Because political parties are less relevant to people who do not vote, people with apathetic attitudes toward voting are not likely to develop strong attachment to political parties. Thus, these attitudinal factors also influence party identification.