Ryan M. Scoville and Dr. Ray Christensen, Political Science
Two years ago, I traveled to Okinawa to interview head office staff for two of Japan’s biggest political parties and an editor for the Ryukyu Shinbun—Okinawa’s largest newspaper. While on the island I also collected Okinawan voting records for the past two decades of mayoral and prefectural elections. The purpose of these activities was to obtain new information on the anti- U.S. military base movement in Okinawa. I specifically wanted to know why the movement has been largely ineffective over the past three decades, what political forces have shaped its fate over time, and whether there has been an adverse relationship between the level of base-related crime and popular support for the Liberal Democratic Party—Japan’s main political party. ORCA Grant funding allowed me to complete and apply this field research, and I used the results in my Honors Thesis.
Ray Christensen, Associate Professor of Political Science, advised me while I carried out the project. With his guidance, I wrote my Honors Thesis to test the explanatory power of a particular theory of social movements by comparing the data I obtained during my trip to Okinawa with secondary source information on the 1991 anti-U.S. military base movement in the Philippines. I felt that these two cases would provide insight on general social movement dynamics because the movement in the Philippines succeeded while its cousin in Okinawa has largely failed. The theory that I tested is commonly known as the political process model of social movements, and it states that the formal characteristics of a government—such as openness to opposition parties and accessibility of the executive—are the primary determinants of whether social movements will achieve their aims.
In collecting the voting data, I wanted to statistically test the relationship between base-related crime and election results. I had anticipated that high levels of crime committed by U.S. service personnel would adversely affect the governing party in Japan; this view was based on the assumption that voters would blame the governing party for the social problems that stem from the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Japan. Ultimately, however, I was not able to either validate or invalidate my hypothesis. The electoral data I collected in Okinawa ultimately failed to conclusively establish any notable correlations between baserelated crime and voting results. As a result, I did not include these results in my Honors Thesis. The results of my interviews in Okinawa, however, were included in the final Honors Thesis. Based in part on the interview data I obtained, I found that the political process model of social movements effectively explains why the anti-base movement in Okinawa failed and the anti-base movement in the Philippines succeeded. The Japanese government has been markedly less amenable to successful social mobilization in recent decades than the government in the Philippines was in the years leading up to U.S. base removal in 1991.
ORCA funding not only funded the initial trip to Okinawa, but also the surprisingly high costs of applying and processing the data, and publishing my conclusions in the form of an Honors Thesis. Although rather mundane, I used a lot of the money to pay for photocopies of secondary source materials and the production of the thesis itself. Additionally, the funding made it possible for me to devote all of my time to completing the thesis.