Institutional Acceptance of Overseas Constituencies in a Non-Adopting Democracy: The Case of Japan

Abstract

Despite the widespread expansion of external voting, overseas constituency systems (OCS) providing dedicated parliamentary representation to citizens abroad remain comparatively rare. Existing research has largely examined their adoption, design, and operation, while less attention has been paid to how such representation is evaluated in democracies that permit external voting but lack these specific districts. This study investigates the institutional acceptance of overseas constituencies in Japan using a qualitatively led, exploratory mixed-methods design. To assess this acceptance through perceived necessity and perceived feasibility, questionnaire data were collected from residents in Japan, Japanese citizens abroad, and a small reference group of National Diet members. Qualitative responses were granted interpretive priority, with quantitative ratings used as supplementary evidence. Descriptively, perceived necessity exceeded feasibility across all groups, with no statistically significant differences detected between domestic and overseas respondents. However, qualitative findings revealed divergent reasoning: overseas responses tended to emphasize political inclusion, voice, and access, whereas domestic responses tended to raise institutional compatibility, territorial responsibility, and representative legitimacy. Overall, support was often conditional on institutional design, fairness, participation, and implementation. The findings characterize these attitudes as conditional institutional acceptance, showing how dedicated representation can be normatively meaningful while remaining institutionally contested.

1. Introduction

The expansion of international mobility has intensified scholarly and political attention on the political status of citizens residing abroad. Many democracies now permit external voting, but far fewer provide dedicated parliamentary representation through overseas constituencies. This distinction is substantive: external voting extends electoral participation to non-resident citizens, whereas an overseas constituency system (OCS) recognizes them as a distinct representational category within the legislature (Collyer 2014; Wellman et al. 2023; Bauböck 2007).

Existing research has primarily examined the extension of voting rights to citizens abroad, the design of external voting systems, and the institutional arrangements through which non-resident citizens participate in national elections (Lafleur 2015; Østergaard-Nielsen et al. 2019). A smaller body of research has examined dedicated overseas representation and the institutional design of overseas constituencies (Collyer 2014; Yamauchi and Sekiyama 2024). Less attention has been given to democracies such as Japan, where external voting is already established but dedicated overseas representation has not been adopted. This study therefore focuses on how such a reform is evaluated prior to adoption, rather than on the causes or consequences of institutional adoption itself.

Japan provides a useful case study because it occupies this intermediate position. Japanese citizens abroad can vote in national elections, yet they are not represented through parliamentary seats reserved specifically for non-resident citizens. Japan therefore allows examination of whether a further extension from participation to dedicated representation is regarded as normatively necessary, institutionally feasible, and legitimate.

This study asks how these proposed systems are evaluated in Japan and, more specifically, whether perceived necessity differs from perceived feasibility. It also investigates whether domestic and overseas respondents who give similar numerical evaluations rely on divergent rationales when judging the proposal. The study contributes to the literature on overseas political representation by examining how institutional acceptance is shaped by judgments of necessity, feasibility, and representative legitimacy in a democracy where external voting is established but dedicated overseas representation has not been adopted.

To address these questions, the study employs a qualitatively led, exploratory mixed-methods design combining open-ended responses with supplementary quantitative ratings from domestic residents, Japanese expatriates, and a small reference group of National Diet members. The qualitative component identifies the reasoning underlying support, hesitation, and skepticism, while the quantitative component provides descriptive evidence on perceived necessity and feasibility.

2. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

2.1. External Voting and Overseas Constituencies

External voting and overseas constituencies represent different levels of political incorporation. External voting enables citizens abroad to participate in national elections while remaining within the state’s existing electoral structure. Overseas constituencies go further by assigning dedicated parliamentary seats or electoral districts to non-resident citizens and thereby institutionalizing them as a separate representational unit (Lafleur 2015).

Comparative research shows that OCSs are not confined to a single region or migration context. They have been adopted in countries across Europe, Latin America, and Africa, featuring substantial variation in seat allocation and electoral design (Collyer 2014; Yamauchi and Sekiyama 2024). This variation is analytically important because the institutional and normative questions raised by participation from abroad are not identical to those prompted by separate parliamentary representation.

2.2. Transnational Inclusion and Representative Legitimacy

Debates on diaspora representation are structured by competing principles of democratic inclusion, territoriality, and representative legitimacy. Arguments for inclusion emphasize the continuity of citizenship and political membership across borders (Bauböck 2007; Owen 2011; Lafleur 2013). Conversely, more restrictive views highlight shared exposure to policy consequences, territorial residence, and the responsibilities associated with living under the institutions enacting those decisions (López-Guerra 2005; Honohan 2011; Hutcheson and Arrighi 2015).

These perspectives suggest that the legitimacy of overseas representation depends not only on whether citizens abroad remain members of the political community, but also on whether they are regarded as an appropriate and accountable representational unit.

Social proximity is used here as an interpretive lens for considering how shared experience, connectedness, and exposure to policy consequences may shape judgments of representative legitimacy. Boccagni (2011) shows that, among Ecuadorian migrants in Italy, external voting was often driven less by engagement with homeland politics than by memories of home and patriotic attachment. This suggests that judgments about the political voice of citizens abroad may depend on perceived ties and attachment, not only on formal citizenship.

2.3. Institutional Acceptance

In this study, institutional acceptance refers to the extent to which a proposed institution is regarded as normatively warranted and practically implementable. It is operationalized through two dimensions: perceived necessity and perceived feasibility. Perceived necessity captures whether respondents regard overseas constituencies as politically or normatively important, whereas perceived feasibility evaluates whether they view such a system as realistically implementable and institutionally sustainable.

Perceived necessity should be distinguished from representative legitimacy. The former is a rating of whether Japan needs such a system, whereas the latter is one of the normative considerations that appear in respondents’ reasoning and is examined qualitatively.

Separating the two dimensions makes it possible to identify qualified or conditional support. A respondent may recognize a normative case for representing citizens abroad while remaining concerned about fairness, legal compatibility, seat allocation, territoriality, or political implementation. The distinction also allows the analysis to examine whether similar numerical evaluations conceal different underlying reasoning across respondent groups.

2.4. Analytical Expectations

While this exploratory study does not test preregistered hypotheses, its design is informed by several analytical expectations derived from the literature and the Japanese context. First, because OCSs directly concern the political voice of non-resident citizens, overseas respondents could reasonably be expected to assign greater normative importance to the proposal than domestic respondents. This aligns with research showing that resident and non-resident citizens may evaluate external political rights differently (Himmelroos and Peltoniemi 2021).

Second, perceived feasibility is expected to be more constrained than perceived necessity. Dedicated overseas representation requires judgments about legal compatibility, seat allocation, fairness between resident and non-resident citizens, and the territorial basis of representation; these issues can generate reservations even when the underlying principle of inclusion is viewed positively (López-Guerra 2005; Honohan 2011; Hutcheson and Arrighi 2015). Third, similar aggregate ratings were expected to be potentially compatible with different underlying reasons for support or hesitation.

3. Case Background: Japan

International migration and long-term residence abroad have increased the political relevance of non-resident citizenship, with more than 281 million people living outside their country of origin worldwide (McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou 2021).

Japan introduced external voting through a 1998 amendment to the Public Offices Election Act, with implementation beginning in national elections from 2000. Initially, expatriates could participate only in the proportional representation components of elections for both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. Following the Supreme Court’s 2005 Grand Bench decision, the law was amended in 2006; and from June 2007 overseas voting was extended to single-member and electoral-district elections across both chambers, including relevant by-elections and re-elections (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2025; Supreme Court of Japan 2005).

Under the current system, an eligible citizen abroad must be registered on an overseas electoral register and obtain an overseas voter certificate. Registration is administered through a municipal election management committee, normally linked to the voter’s last place of residence in Japan, or to the registered domicile in specified cases (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2024). Overseas voters then participate in the same national electoral contests as domestic voters; their ballots are counted within the existing electoral-district and proportional-representation systems rather than aggregated into a separate overseas constituency (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2025).

This arrangement is analytically important because external voting recognizes non-resident citizens as electoral participants without recognizing them as a distinct representational unit. The Japanese system therefore incorporates overseas citizens into existing electoral structures while leaving the territorial structure of parliamentary representation intact. This distinction between electoral participation and structural representation has long been relevant to debates on overseas suffrage and representative legitimacy in Japan (Satō 2006). More recent legal scholarship has likewise expanded attention to the political rights of citizens abroad (Suzuki 2023), while the separate question of dedicated parliamentary representation remains unresolved.

Against this institutional background, the present study examines how dedicated overseas representation is evaluated within Japan’s existing external voting framework.

4. Study Design and Methods

This study uses a qualitatively led, exploratory mixed-methods design to examine how overseas constituency systems are evaluated in Japan. Open-ended responses constitute the primary evidence for identifying the reasons respondents give for support, hesitation, and skepticism. Quantitative ratings of necessity and feasibility are used as supplementary descriptive evidence to indicate broad patterns and to assess whether domestic and overseas respondents differ at the aggregate level.

The study is designed as an exploratory case study. Case studies are particularly useful for identifying relevant analytical dimensions and developing propositions for further research (Gerring 2004; George and Bennett 2005). Japan is selected because it permits external voting but has not adopted dedicated overseas representation, making it suitable for examining how such a reform is evaluated before adoption.

4.1. Study Design

The design treats institutional acceptance as a multidimensional construct rather than as a binary measure of support or opposition. The qualitative strand examines how respondents reason about inclusion, fairness, territoriality, legal and institutional design, and representative legitimacy. Simultaneously, the quantitative strand places these judgments within a common evaluative space by recording perceived necessity and perceived feasibility.

Because overseas constituencies remain a relatively low-salience issue in Japan, respondents were provided with basic information about the system before answering the questionnaire. The purpose was to establish a minimum shared understanding of the proposal rather than to induce support. The study therefore analyzes evaluations made after a basic institutional explanation rather than spontaneous public opinion under conditions of low awareness.

Data were collected through group-specific questionnaire versions. Although the item composition differed across groups, the domestic- and overseas-resident questionnaires shared the two core measures of perceived necessity and perceived feasibility, together with opportunities for open-ended responses. Additional items were included for the overseas-resident sample, while a separate questionnaire was used for the small National Diet reference group.

4.2. Data and Respondents

The empirical material consists of questionnaire responses from 50 residents in Japan, 71 Japanese citizens residing abroad, and four members of the National Diet. Data were collected between December 2025 and February 2026. Domestic respondents completed the questionnaire after an in-person presentation introducing the basic features of overseas constituency systems, whereas overseas respondents completed an online questionnaire containing corresponding background information. Respondents were recruited through the author’s academic, professional, and overseas Japanese networks, and participation was voluntary. The principal comparison is between domestic and overseas respondents; Diet members are included only as a descriptive reference (Table 1). Because the sample is non-representative, the findings identify recurring evaluative patterns rather than estimate population-level attitudes. Demographic, socioeconomic, partisan, and regional variables were not systematically collected, precluding subgroup analysis. The survey instruments, supplementary results, selected responses, and coding framework are provided in Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, Appendix D, Appendix E and Appendix F.

Table 1. Respondent groups.

Group	Description	N
Domestic residents	Japanese respondents residing in Japan	50
Overseas residents	Japanese respondents residing outside Japan	71
Members of the National Diet	Reference group only	4

Note. Members of the National Diet were included for descriptive reference only and were not used for formal statistical comparisons.

4.3. Key Concepts and Measures

Institutional acceptance is operationalized through two core evaluative dimensions: perceived necessity and perceived feasibility. These two measures were common to the domestic- and overseas-resident questionnaires and therefore provide the basis for the quantitative comparison between the two groups. Both groups also had opportunities to provide open-ended comments explaining their evaluations.

For perceived necessity, participants were asked, “How necessary do you think it is for Japan to introduce an overseas constituency system?” Responses were recorded on an 11-point scale from 0 (“not necessary at all”) to 10 (“extremely necessary”). For perceived feasibility, the prompt asked, “How feasible do you think it is for Japan to introduce an overseas constituency system?” Responses were recorded from 0 (“extremely difficult to realize”) to 10 (“fully feasible”). These are single-item ratings rather than composite scales.

The overseas-resident questionnaire included additional items concerning respondents’ general attitudes toward the introduction of overseas constituencies, the institutional and normative issues they considered important, and the perceived value of discussing overseas constituencies in relation to domestic electoral-district reform. These additional items were not administered in the same form to the domestic-resident sample and are therefore reported separately as supplementary descriptive results in Appendix C. The small National Diet reference group completed a separate questionnaire adapted to its role in the study.

Necessity and feasibility were selected because they distinguish normative endorsement from judgments about implementability. Distinguishing between necessity and feasibility is a common approach in evaluations of proposed reforms, because support in principle does not necessarily translate into confidence that a reform can be implemented.

4.4. Analytical Procedures

The analysis proceeds in two stages. First, open-ended responses were examined through thematic content analysis. The author developed initial codes inductively from recurring response patterns and interpreted them in relation to the theoretical framework. Multiple codes could be assigned to a single response. All open-ended responses were read in full and coded using the framework in Appendix F, and the quotations were selected to illustrate each theme in both respondent groups. The author made all final analytical decisions and verified the English translations against the original Japanese responses. Selected quotations were lightly edited for readability without altering their substantive meaning and are incorporated into the Results section, with additional examples and the coding framework provided in Appendix E and Appendix F. Second, descriptive statistics summarize the necessity and feasibility ratings, and Mann–Whitney U tests compare domestic and overseas respondents. The test was chosen because the two respondent groups are independent, the central measures are bounded 0–10 rating items, and the exploratory design does not require an assumption of normality. The Mann–Whitney test therefore provides an appropriate non-parametric comparison of the two groups. These tests are supplementary and are not used to support population-level inference. Diet-member responses are excluded from formal statistical comparisons because N = 4. Quantitative and qualitative evidence are integrated at the interpretation stage to assess whether aggregate similarity or difference in scores is accompanied by convergent or divergent reasoning. This integration is central to the study because similar numerical evaluations may reflect different understandings of inclusion, fairness, territoriality, and institutional legitimacy.

4.5. Scope, Limitations, and Directions for Further Research

As an exploratory study, this research identifies recurring evaluative patterns within the sample. The non-probability sampling limits population-level generalization, while differences in questionnaire administration may have influenced responses. The absence of systematically collected respondent characteristics also limits subgroup comparisons. These considerations define the scope within which the findings should be interpreted.

Future research can build on these findings through larger, more representative surveys and expanded interviews with political representatives. Comparative studies of adopting and non-adopting democracies could further examine whether similar patterns of conditional institutional acceptance emerge across different institutional contexts.

5. Results

Following the design described in Section 4, the qualitative findings are presented first, followed by the supplementary quantitative results.

5.1. Supportive and Conditional Reasoning

Prioritizing the qualitative data, the findings indicate that support for overseas constituencies was commonly grounded in political inclusion, representational voice, and the potential value of transnational experience. Respondents who viewed the proposal positively often emphasized that citizens residing abroad remain members of the political community and may possess perspectives that are difficult to reproduce within domestic politics.

Selected comments in Appendix E illustrate this logic directly. One domestic respondent stated, “People living abroad may bring perspectives that are difficult to obtain from within Japan.” Another wrote, “As globalization progresses, Japan should make use of the knowledge and experience of Japanese citizens living overseas.” These responses frame overseas representation not only as a question of voting rights, but also as a conduit through which knowledge and experience acquired abroad could enter national political deliberation.

Among overseas respondents, the recurring themes similarly placed greater emphasis on inclusion and political voice. Their responses tended to treat dedicated representation as a means of ensuring that the interests and experiences of Japanese citizens abroad could be reflected in national politics. At the same time, support was frequently conditional rather than unconditional: respondents also raised questions about how such a system should be designed, how seats should be allocated, and how fairness between resident and non-resident citizens could be maintained.

Several overseas comments in Appendix E make this pattern explicit. One respondent wrote, “If there were representatives elected from overseas constituencies who could reflect the perspectives of Japanese citizens living abroad, I believe they could contribute to Japanese politics by bringing new perspectives into political debate.” Another linked representation to identity, stating that it was necessary for “strengthening overseas residents’ sense of belonging to Japan, maintaining their identity, and supporting cultural continuity.” A further respondent argued that “the emergence of globally oriented representatives would be beneficial for Japan’s future.” Ultimately, these responses connect dedicated representation to political voice, identity, and the broader contribution of transnational experience.

5.2. Institutional Caution, Fairness, and Representative Legitimacy

The open-ended responses also reveal substantial institutional caution. These reservations were generally directed not at whether citizens abroad belong to the political community, but at the conditions under which a dedicated overseas constituency could be introduced legitimately and sustainably.

A recurring concern was whether institutional reform should proceed incrementally. For example, one respondent observed, “Before introducing overseas constituencies, it may be more realistic to improve overseas voter registration and online voting systems.” Another emphasized representational fairness, stating that “There is a strong need to discuss how many seats should be allocated to Japanese citizens who do not live in Japan.” Additionally, some questioned whether institutional design alone was sufficient, asking whether overseas citizens were “actually interested and willing to participate.” These comments indicate that feasibility was interpreted broadly, encompassing administrative design, voter engagement, and distributive fairness.

Overseas respondents also connected feasibility to voting access and institutional infrastructure. One respondent noted that, for people living in remote areas abroad, access to embassies or consulates can require substantial time and expense and therefore argued for online voting. Another stated that, although legal and taxation-related issues would need to be addressed, establishing overseas constituencies would be “a reasonable institutional extension” because external voting is already permitted. Conversely, some deemed the creation of additional seats unrealistic while domestic seat reductions are being discussed, cautioning that online voting could raise turnout only if security and voter-identification challenges were overcome. These comments reinforce the interpretation of support as conditional on institutional design and implementation.

Territoriality and representative legitimacy formed a second cluster of concerns. One domestic respondent noted that “In Japan, there remains a strong idea that those rooted in the land are the real members of the political community.” The small Diet-member reference group echoed related concerns; as one legislator commented, “A state is composed of territory and population. Overseas residents may be less directly involved in protecting the territory, and this point requires consideration.” These comments are illustrative rather than representative, particularly because only four Diet members participated, but they show how reservations about overseas representation can be linked to territorial responsibility, sovereignty, and the perceived social foundations of political representation.

Altogether, the qualitative evidence suggests that skepticism was structured rather than simply oppositional. Respondents could recognize a normative case for inclusion while simultaneously questioning seat allocation, legal compatibility, participation, territorial responsibility, or the timing of reform. This combination of recognition and reservation is the central empirical basis for describing institutional acceptance as conditional.

5.3. Differences in Reasoning Between Domestic and Overseas Respondents

The clearest contrast between domestic and overseas respondents appeared in the reasoning attached to their evaluations rather than in the numerical ratings themselves. Within this sample, overseas responses tended to emphasize inclusion, voice, and access to representation, whereas domestic responses tended to connect the issue to institutional compatibility, territorial responsibility, and the practical limits of immediate reform (Table 2).

Table 2. Summary of major qualitative themes by respondent group.

Theme	Overseas Residents	Domestic Residents
Inclusion and political voice	Emphasis on direct inclusion of overseas citizens and representation of their interests.	Recognized the value of overseas perspectives but tended to qualify inclusion with institutional concerns.
Institutional design	Emphasis on access, practical implementation, fairness, and how overseas representation could operate.	Emphasis on compatibility with existing legal and electoral arrangements.
Caution and legitimacy	Conditional support often linked to feasibility and fairness.	Explicit caution concerning timing, territorial responsibility, sovereignty, and immediate adoption.

Note. The table summarizes recurring qualitative patterns in the sample. Individual responses could contain multiple themes, and the categories are not mutually exclusive.

5.4. Supplementary Quantitative Patterns

The quantitative results are used as supplementary descriptive evidence. Descriptively, the mean rating for perceived necessity exceeded the mean rating for perceived feasibility in all three respondent groups (Table 3). Among domestic residents, the mean necessity score was 7.72 and the mean feasibility score was 5.56. Among overseas residents, the corresponding means were 6.94 and 5.39. The four Diet members, included only as a descriptive reference group, recorded means of 5.75 and 4.75. These differences are presented as descriptive gaps; no inferential claim is made here that the within-group necessity–feasibility differences are statistically significant.

Table 3. Mean scores and necessity-feasibility gap by respondent group.

Respondent Group	N	Necessity Mean	Feasibility Mean	Gap
Domestic residents	50	7.72	5.56	2.16
Overseas residents	71	6.94	5.39	1.55
Members of the National Diet	4	5.75	4.75	1.00

Note. The gap is calculated as the necessity mean minus the feasibility mean. Diet members are included only as a descriptive reference group and are not used in formal group comparisons.

The Mann–Whitney U test showed no statistically significant difference between domestic and overseas respondents for perceived necessity (U = 2076.0, p = 0.108) or perceived feasibility (U = 1832.0, p = 0.764) (Table 4). These results did not support the initial expectation that overseas respondents would report higher perceived necessity. The absence of statistical significance does not establish equivalence between the groups.

Table 4. Mann–Whitney U comparison of domestic and overseas respondents.

Variable	Domestic N	Overseas N	Mann–Whitney U	p-Value	Interpretation
Necessity	50	71	2076.0	0.108	Not significant
Feasibility	50	71	1832.0	0.764	Not significant

Note. The tests compare domestic and overseas respondents only. The quantitative analysis is exploratory and supplementary to the qualitative findings.

5.5. Integrated Finding: Conditional Institutional Acceptance

Taken together, the qualitative and quantitative findings indicate a pattern of conditional institutional acceptance. Within this exploratory sample, similar aggregate evaluations among domestic and overseas respondents were accompanied by different reasoning concerning political inclusion, institutional design, fairness, and representative legitimacy.

6. Discussion

The discussion synthesizes the study’s core implications across three domains: the distinction between normative acceptance and perceived implementability, the continuing importance of territoriality and social proximity in judgments of representative legitimacy, and the comparative significance of examining a democracy that permits external voting but has not adopted dedicated overseas representation.

6.1. Conditional Acceptance and the Necessity-Feasibility Distinction

The central finding is that attitudes toward overseas constituencies in this exploratory sample are better characterized as conditional acceptance than as simple support or opposition. Respondents could recognize a normative case for representing citizens abroad while simultaneously expressing reservations about legal compatibility, fairness, participation, seat allocation, and implementation. The descriptive pattern of higher necessity than feasibility ratings complements the qualitative findings by highlighting the distinction between normative acceptance and perceived implementability.

This distinction is relevant to scholarship on the political inclusion of citizens abroad because support for participation does not necessarily imply support for every institutional form of representation. Existing research has shown that attitudes toward external political rights can be more differentiated than a simple support-opposition binary suggests (Himmelroos and Peltoniemi 2021), while comparative work on external voting also demonstrates that states place different institutional limits on the political incorporation of non-resident citizens (Lafleur 2015; Hutcheson and Arrighi 2015). The present findings extend this logic to dedicated overseas representation: acceptance may depend on whether a proposed institution is regarded not only as normatively desirable but also as institutionally legitimate and workable.

The responses also suggest what would need to be overcome before such a system could be implemented. These obstacles were administrative (voter registration, access to consulates, and the lack of online voting), distributive (seat allocation and fairness toward domestic districts amid discussions of seat reduction), and normative (a territorial view of political membership). Among overseas respondents, the most frequently cited concerns were fairness toward domestic districts (66.2%) and the political interest of citizens abroad (47.9%) (Appendix C). These obstacles help explain why respondents could see value in the proposal yet doubt its feasibility in Japan, even though other democracies have adopted such systems. Whether information about foreign cases would change these evaluations is a question for future research.

6.2. Territoriality, Social Proximity, and Representative Legitimacy

The qualitative findings also show that reservations about overseas constituencies are not limited to administrative feasibility. Respondents repeatedly connected representation to territorial responsibility, exposure to public policy, taxation, political participation, and the social realities of domestic life. These concerns reflect a broader normative tension in diaspora representation between continuing citizenship as a basis for political inclusion and territorial exposure as a basis for legitimate political voice (Bauböck 2007; López-Guerra 2005; Honohan 2011).

This distinction helps explain why external voting and dedicated overseas representation may be evaluated differently. External voting can be justified as the continuation of an individual citizen’s electoral rights, whereas an overseas constituency creates a separate representative unit and therefore raises additional questions about who is represented, how seats should be allocated, and what forms of accountability connect representatives to a geographically dispersed electorate. Similar concerns have been identified in normative and comparative research on extraterritorial political rights and representation (Mégret and Girard 2015; Arrighi and Bauböck 2017; Hutcheson and Arrighi 2015).

Social proximity is useful here as an interpretive lens rather than as a fully specified causal variable. The open-ended responses suggest that judgments of legitimacy are partly shaped by perceptions of shared experience, connectedness, and exposure to collective responsibilities. Where such connections are perceived as weak, support for distinct representation may become more conditional even when the citizenship status and voting rights of overseas citizens are accepted. This interpretation is consistent with research showing that political claims from abroad are mediated by perceptions of belonging, distance, and responsibility (Boccagni 2011).

6.3. Comparative Positioning of the Japanese Case

Comparative research shows that overseas constituency systems vary substantially in their institutional design (Yamauchi and Sekiyama 2024). France, for example, elects 11 deputies from single-member overseas constituencies using a two-round system. Italy, by contrast, elects 8 deputies and 4 senators from four geographical overseas constituencies by proportional representation, mainly through postal voting. Japan, however, counts overseas ballots within its existing electoral districts and proportional-representation blocs and does not create separate seats for citizens abroad (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2025).

This contrast shifts analytical attention from the adoption and operation of overseas representation to how dedicated representation is evaluated before adoption.

7. Conclusions

This study examined institutional acceptance of overseas constituencies in Japan, where external voting is established but dedicated overseas representation has not been adopted. The findings identify conditional institutional acceptance, in which recognition of the value of political inclusion coexists with concerns about feasibility, fairness, territoriality, and representative legitimacy. Although domestic and overseas respondents showed broadly similar quantitative evaluations, their qualitative responses revealed differences in the reasoning underlying these judgments.

By examining necessity and feasibility together, this exploratory study contributes to understanding how dedicated overseas representation is evaluated before institutional adoption. The findings also provide a basis for future comparative research on institutional acceptance in adopting and non-adopting democracies.