When the Party Breaks Up: Exit and Voice among Japanese Legislators

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 857-870 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junko Kato
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Status

In exploring the conflicts between individual interests and the conditions that facilitate the disintegration of a political party, this article modifies the exit, voice, and loyalty framework developed by Hirschman. The utility of that framework is examined using the recent change in Japan, that is, the demise of the so-called 1955 system, in which the predominant conservatives confined the socialists to the status of a major but perennial opposition party. The quantitative analysis focuses on the split of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and the internal dispute in the Democratic Socialist Party of Japan. These cases provide an interesting comparison of how individual characteristics and contextual conditions affect members' decisions to exercise exit and voice. At the same time, they illuminate how party-level changes have been influenced by intraparty factors.

Race

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Business Regulation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Status

This chapter examines the status quo before the start of the civil rights realignment, showing that civil rights was simply not viewed as part of the standard “liberal program” as of the early 1930s. Although African Americans were vocal in attacking Franklin D. Roosevelt's weak civil rights record, they were largely alone. When whites on the left pushed Roosevelt to be a more forthright liberal or progressive, they criticized him for inadequate support for labor, weak business regulation, and insufficient recovery spending—but not for his failure to back civil rights. At this early stage, the “enemies” of a liberal Democratic Party generally were not identified with the South but instead were probusiness Democrats from the Northeast, associated with Al Smith of New York. Economic questions were the key battleground in the eyes of white liberals, and civil rights did not figure in these debates.

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.

Electoral Consequences of Municipal Mergers

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Full Advantage ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Local Politicians ◽  
Local Base

The dominance of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was long buttressed by the existence of a strong political support base in the rural areas led by local politicians who worked on behalf of national LDP politicians seeking reelection. In recent years, municipal mergers have drastically weakened the LDP's support base by reducing the number of local politicians and redrawing electoral district boundaries. Surprisingly, the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), could not take full advantage of these new institutional arrangements. Instead, local politicians have become more independent of both major parties. As a result, at a time of increasing numbers of floating voters, neither of Japan's two major parties has a reliable local base across the country. To succeed, both parties must pay attention to the changing needs of the increasingly independent—and very often still rural—localities.

Japan's Passionate Fight for the Status Quo

Worldview ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-10
Author(s):  
Donald Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Terror ◽  
Pension Benefits

One could argue that at the dawn of the 1980s Japan had reached a higher level of civilization than any mass society on earth. Most Japanese could aspire to higher education and a well-paying job, obtain medical, welfare, and pension benefits, live in comfort and safety, and still expect the freedom to write and talk more or less as they pleased. Inbred social constraints, the perpetual search for a near-mythical “consensus,” not to mention the legendary “homogeneity” of Japanese society— all no doubt placed inhibitions on the Japanese. But these were hardly comparable to the political terror, abject poverty, and economic and social inequities prevalent in one form or another* jn many other industrial nations.The Japanese themselves, though bitterly critical of their own shortcomings and failures wherever they perceive them, continue to believe they can do no better than retain the system and set of rulers under which they have lived for the past generation. The voters on June 22 gave the deeply conservative Liberal-Democratic party (LDP) its greatest leverage in a decade. In elections for all members of the powerful lower house and half the upper house, the LDP increased its slim majorities so that it now controls every key committee and can all but ignore the pro forma objections raised by the distant second-ranking Japanese Socialist party, which barely managed to hold its own.

scholarly journals The Decline and Fall of the LDP in Japan

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Hrannar Baldvinsson
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Opposition Parties

This article explores the reason why the LDP has stayed so long in power and why it ultimately fell out. It begins by giving an overview of the political situation in Japan in the past decades. It then proceeds to explain the main theories on why the LDP stayed so long in power and maintains that the main contributing factor has been a weak opposition. Finally it discusses how the new party has distinguished itself from former opposition parties and how and why the LDP had failed to meet that challenge. Keywords: Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Japan, Elections, New Komeito, Japan Communist Party, Japan socialist Party, Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Taro Aso.

Electoral Origins of Japanese Socialists' Stagnation

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
MASARU KOHNO
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic

Why did the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) cling to its original leftist policies for so long? Traditionally, the JSP's failure to become a credible alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been explained in terms of either the legacy of its disastrous coalition experience in the early postwar years, the party's organizational reliance on unionized labor, or its nervousness about the reactionary element in the LDP. None of these existing explanations is convincing, given that the adherence to its leftist policies had self-defeating electoral consequences for the JSP. This article explores an alternative explanation and provides empirical evidence which illustrates the link between the JSP's misfortune and the Japanese electoral system existing from 1947 to 1994.

Testing the Causal Mechanisms in Additional Cases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
System Stability ◽  
Relative Autonomy ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Liberal Democratic

Case studies of Indonesia and Japan illustrate that party-system stability in patronage democracies is deeply affected by the relative autonomy of political brokers. Over the course of a decade, a series of decentralizing reforms in Indonesia weakened patronage-based parties hold on power, with the 2014 election ultimately being a contest between two rival populists: Joko Widodo and Subianto Prabowo. Although Japan was a patronage democracy throughout the twentieth century, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) remained robust to outsider appeals even in the context of economic and corruption crises. However, reforms in the 1990s weakened the hold of central factional leaders over individual members of the LDP and their patronage machines. This was instrumental to populist Junichiro Koizumi’s winning of the presidency of the LDP and ultimately the prime ministership of Japan. This chapter also reexamines canonical cases of populism in Latin America.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document