The Liberal Democratic Party: Its adaptability and predominance in Japanese politics for 60 years

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-22
Author(s):  
Michio Umeda
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Allocation System ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic

This article discusses the origin and continuity of the predominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japanese politics since the party’s formation in 1955. The LDP experienced two crises in its history, the first owing to the transformation of Japanese society by rapid economic development during the 1960–1970s, and the second due to the electoral reform in 1994 and the challenge from the Democratic Party of Japan thereafter. I argue that the LDP’s continuous success is attributable to its adaptability to new environments: the party overcame the first crisis by shifting the policy focus, reorganizing its support base and the party organization to achieve intraparty consensus. It coped with the second crisis by forming a coalition with the Clean Government Party and reforming the party’s presidential election and the ministerial post-allocation system. The article concludes with a summary and a brief discussion regarding the future of the LDP.

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party: Changes in Party Organization under Shinzō Abe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuniaki Nemoto
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Meta Review ◽  
Theoretical Predictions

This article has two main purposes. First, it offers a critical meta-review of the literature on the recent evolution of the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) party organization, by focusing on two of the LDP’s most entrenched institutions: factionalism and the policymaking process through the Policy Affairs Research Council (PARC). Although some scholars predicted that some of their functions—such as the posts allocation norm and the decentralized policymaking norm—may not disappear at least for a while, the article argues that these norms should be inefficient in theory. With the electoral reform to a party-centered system, the cabinet now needs to appoint able and loyal agents free from factions and formulate and implement programmatic public policy in a top-down manner. Second, in light of these theoretical predictions, it offers a critical evaluation of the LDP under Shinzō Abe’s second administration. A tentative conclusion that can be drawn from anecdotal evidence is that the LDP now looks different from the old LDP before the 1990s. Rather than using traditional, pre-reform governing styles, Abe’s second administration appeared to be adept at adapting to the new institutional environment.

Ending the LDP Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan. By Ray Christensen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. 228p. $52.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-232
Author(s):  
Kenji Hayao
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
2000 Election

The Japanese party system has been in flux in recent years. In 1993, two groups defected from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and joined with the opposition to form a broadly based coalition government. A year later, the LDP regained power by creating a coalition government with its ideological opponent, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Both events shocked virtually everyone at the time. The LDP had been in power for so long-almost 40 years-that it seemed almost inconceivable that it could lose power. For just as long, the JSP had been the main opposition. By the 2000 election, a dozen parties had come and gone, the JSP's strength dropped to a very small fraction of what it was a decade earlier, and the LDP had to turn to various coalition partners to maintain its control of government. All this is quite puzzling to even close watchers of Japanese politics, because party politics, especially the role of opposition parties, has been a relatively understudied area. For those who want to make sense of how these events came to pass, Ray Christensen's Ending the LDP Hegemony will be very helpful.

scholarly journals Electoral incentives, policy compromise, and coalition durability: Japan's LDP–Komeito Government in a mixed electoral system

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam P. Liff ◽  
Ko Maeda
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Mixed Electoral System

AbstractPolitical parties’ behavior in coalition formation is commonly explained by their policy-, vote-, and office-seeking incentives. From these perspectives, the 20-year partnership of Japan's ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its pacifistic Komeito junior coalition partner is an anomalous case. The longevity, closeness, and nature of their unlikely partnership challenges core assumptions in existing theories of coalition politics. LDP–Komeito cooperation has sustained for two decades despite vastly different support bases and ideological differences on fundamental policy issues. LDP leaders also show no signs of abandoning the much smaller Komeito despite enjoying a single-party majority. We argue that the remarkable durability of this puzzling partnership results primarily from the two parties’ electoral incentives and what has effectively become codependence under Japan's mixed electoral system. Our analysis also demonstrates that being in a coalition can induce significant policy compromises, even from a much larger senior partner. Beyond theoretical implications, these phenomena yield important real-world consequences for Japanese politics: especially, a far less dominant LDP than the party's Diet seat total suggests, and Komeito's remarkable ability to punch significantly above its weight and constrain its far larger senior partner, even on the latter's major national security policy priorities.

Rational Foundations for the Organization of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan

1992 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaru Kohno
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Average Size

Over the last two decades there have been numerous changes in the organization of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan. The pattern of factionalization has changed significantly in terms of the number of competing major factions, the average size of their membership, and their internal structure. Moreover, a new set of institutionalized norms, such as the seniority and interfactional balancing principles, has emerged to govern organizational processes within the LDP. The conventional approach in the literature on Japanese politics, which focuses on factors unique or distinctive to Japanese history, culture, and social behavior, cannot adequately explain these recent changes in the LDP. This paper proposes an alternative, rational-choice explanation based on the standard microanalytic assumptions. More specifically, it argues that the pattern of the LDP's factionalization is primarily determined by the electoral incentives of two sets of rational actors, LDP politicians and LDP supporters, operating under institutional constraints, such as electoral laws and political funding regulations. It also argues that the organizational norms originate in the promotion incentives of the LDP politicians whose strategies are influenced by the uncertainty in the dynamics of the interfactional political process.

Kremlin wants 2018 Russian poll to give real mandate

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Fourth Term ◽  
The Government ◽  
One Year

Subject Kremlin strategy for the 2018 presidential election. Significance With one year to go before the 2018 presidential election, the Kremlin strategy that will frame the process is starting to take shape. The nature of Vladimir Putin’s campaign has a bearing on his fourth term, during which he must either identify a successor or engineer an extension of his tenure beyond 2024. Impacts Putin will rally populist sentiment on the back of foreign policy successes in Crimea and Syria. A possible rapprochement with the United States would restrict the national narrative of ‘Russia encircled’. The Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist candidates will criticise the government but will not run opposition campaigns.

Japanese Party Politics at a Crossroads?

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-447
Author(s):  
Benjamin Nyblade
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Electoral Reforms

In 2009, the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan, which had successfully formed governments either alone or as the largest partner in a coalition government for all but a single year since 1955, suffered a devastating electoral defeat when the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won nearly two-thirds of the seats available in the House of Representatives. The landslide DPJ victory was seen by many commentators and academics as the culmination of a decade-long trend toward two-party politics, driven in large part by party and voter adaptation to the electoral reforms of the 1990s, which introduced single-member districts as the means for electing a majority of members of parliament. The three books reviewed in this essay were written primarily in the two years following the 2009 DPJ victory, and each attempts, in quite distinct ways, to update our accounts of electoral and party politics and policymaking in Japan to account for the changes in Japanese politics in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Between Pork and People: An Analysis of the Policy Balance in the LDP's Election Platforms

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian G. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Policy Mix ◽  
Pork Barrel ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
Election System ◽  
The 1960S

In this article I examine changes in the election manifestos of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party. While the existing literature agrees that the LDP's policy platform has changed considerably since the introduction of the new election system in the 1990s, their analysis focuses on material policies such as pork barrel and welfare. Postmaterialist policies such as environmental protection have hardly been discussed, even though they have been relevant since pollution swept progressive mayors into power in the 1960s. I examine election platforms from 1956 through 2013, and argue that the LDP has carefully adjusted its policy mix by putting a greater emphasis on postmaterialist policies. My analysis also shows that while electoral reform has had an impact on the policy balance between postmaterialist and materialist policies as well as clientelist and programmatic policies, these changes are not linear, but vary from decade to decade.

The Legislative Record: The Japan National Diet in 2004

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-330
Author(s):  
JUNKO HIROSE
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Major Party ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
House Election

The general election in November 2003 and the Upper House election in July 2004 indicate that the Japanese politics is going from a one party dominant toward a two major party system. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) narrowly keeps a majority in both Houses by merging the New Conservative Party and by forming a coalition with New Komeito.

Electoral Institutions, Hometowns, and Favored Minorities: Evidence from Japanese Electoral Reforms

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeo Hirano
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Intergovernmental Transfers ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Geographic Patterns ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Electoral Reforms

This article presents evidence that electoral institutions affect the geographic distribution of both candidate electoral support and government resources. The author exploits two electoral reforms in Japan to identify the effect of institutional incentives: (1) the 1994 electoral reform from a multimember single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system to a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a single-member district (SMD) component and a proportional representation component; and (2) the 1925 electoral reform from a predominantly SMD system to a multimember SNTV system. Using several new data sets, the two main findings of this article are that (1) Japanese representatives competing in multimember SNTV districts had more geographically concentrated electoral support than those competing in SMDs and that (2) intergovernmental transfers appear to be more concentrated around Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) incumbents' home offices under the multimember SNTV system than under the MMM system. The findings in this article highlight the connection between institutions and geographic patterns of representation.

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