In her book “Models of Democracy”, Arend Lijphart mentions the differences between the electoral systems of majoritarian and consensual democracies. Electoral systems in majoritarian democracies tend to be primarily a first-past-the-post district system, while consensus democracies generally tend to use the proportional representation method. Most electoral systems fall into the two categories of PR and majority voting. However, there are some electoral systems that fall in between. These are called semi-proportional formulas and Japan, with its SNTV system, is an example of this approach. From 1947 to 1993, Japan had a unique electoral system called single non-transferable vote or simply SNTV. In this system, voters could vote individually and the candidates with the most votes won. Voters do not have as many votes as there are seats in the district, and districts must have at least two seats. However, in 1996 a new policy was introduced known as PR or proportional representation. Its main goal was to change the one-party dominance seen in Japan over the years, to help represent both majorities and minorities, and to translate votes into seats proportionally. Proportional representation was a system in which citizens were no longer required to choose a candidate, but a particular party, in elections. Both PR and SNTV require multi-member constituencies and it is recognized that constituency sizes have a certain degree of disproportionality. It exerts a strong influence on the PR and SNTV systems, but in opposite directions. While in the SNTV system increasing constituency sizes implies greater disproportionality and greater advantages for major parties, middle of paper......the candidate with the most votes wins and it doesn't matter whether the candidate's party is popular or not. Factionalism was yet another aspect of Japanese political parties and even today, when political policy has changed, it still exists. Each individual candidate generally maintains a core group of supporters called a faction or koenkai. Koenkai members are loyal to individual politicians, not necessarily parties or political ideals. The size and activity of a candidate's koenkai determine how many supporters will actually turn out to vote. Thus, voters are mobilized by organizations such as local agricultural cooperatives, small business associations or neighborhood associations. Therefore, clientelism, personalism and rural capture were the products of the electoral system of the single non-transferable vote in a multi-member constituency..