scholarly journals Japan – U.S. Relations under the Abe Doctrine: Shifting Policy in East Asia Regional Stability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendra Manurung
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Recent Success ◽  
The Status ◽  
Post War

Reelection of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister provides a favorable climate for both Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to Japan and an improvement of Chinese-Japanese-U.S. bilateral relations. In the 22 October 2017 ballot, Abe’s dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito, secured a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral legislature. The coalition already holds a supermajority, required for amending the constitution, in the upper house. It justified Abe for calling the national elections a year earlier than needed to secure a public mandate for addressing the growing North Korean threat and to validate popular support for deepening national economic reforms, which have had recent success in boosting Japan’s growth rate and the stock market. Still the outcome gave Abe a mandate for his policies. However, his stewardship was unclear as several other factors contributed to LDP’s overwhelming victory. At the structural level, Japan’s first past the post-electoral system tends to amplify electoral wins in comparison to proportional representation systems. Abe’s foreign and security policies highly charged with ideological revisionism contain the potential to shift Japan onto a new international trajectory in East Asia. Its degree of articulation and energy makes for a doctrine capable of displacing the Yoshida Doctrine that has been Japan’s dominant grand strategy in the post-war period. Abe will remain pragmatic and not challenge the status quo. However, Abe has already begun to introduce radical policies that appear to transform national security, US-Japan alliance ties and relations with China and East Asia. The Abe Doctrine is dynamic but high risk. Abe’s revisionism contains fundamental contradictions that may ultimately limit national effectiveness.  

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.

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.

Japanese Politics in Transition: A Theoretical Review

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Inoguchi
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Type System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Income Tax Law ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Party Dominance

THE END OF ONE-PARTY DOMINANCE BY THE LIBERAL Democratic Party of Japan came as abruptly as the fall of the Berlin wall four years before. It started with the debate on electoral system change, ostensibly as an attempt to curb corruption. The LDP has been plagued by a series of large-scale corruption scandals since the Recruit scandal of 1989. The latest concerned former vice-president Shin Kanemaru's alleged violation of the political money regulation law and the income tax law in 1992–93. The Prime Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, accepting a fair degree of compromise with opposition parties, wanted to pass a bill to change the current electoral system. The LDP initially wanted to change from the system of choosing a few persons in each district by one vote to the Anglo-American type system of selecting one person in each district by one vote. The opposition wanted to change to the continental European system of proportional representation. A compromise was made by the LDP's proposal to combine the latter two systems. Then two dissenting groups emerged suddenly in the LDP. One took the exit option by forming new political parties. The other took the voice option by backing away from the Miyazawa compromise plan. Miyazawa was humiliated by his failure to have the bill enacted and a motion of no confidence was passed. He then called for a general election, which took place on 18 July 1993. The outcome did not give a majority to the LDP and subsequently a non-LDP coalition was formed to produce a non-LDP government for the first time since the foundation of the LDP in 1955

Measuring Voters’ Multidimensional Policy Preferences with Conjoint Analysis: Application to Japan’s 2014 Election

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusaku Horiuchi ◽  
Daniel M. Smith ◽  
Teppei Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Analysis Application ◽  
The Media ◽  
Election Results

Representative democracy entails the aggregation of multiple policy issues by parties into competing bundles of policies, or “manifestos,” which are then evaluated holistically by voters in elections. This aggregation process obscures the multidimensional policy preferences underlying a voter’s single choice of party or candidate. We address this problem through a conjoint experiment based on the actual party manifestos in Japan’s 2014 House of Representatives election. By juxtaposing sets of issue positions as hypothetical manifestos and asking respondents to choose one, our study identifies the effects of specific positions on the overall assessment of manifestos, heterogeneity in preferences among subgroups of respondents, and the popularity ranking of manifestos. Our analysis uncovers important discrepancies between voter preferences and the portrayal of the election results by politicians and the media as providing a policy mandate to the Liberal Democratic Party, underscoring the potential danger of inferring public opinion from election outcomes alone.

scholarly journals Family Feud, or Realpolitik?

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Fernando Ursine Braga Silva
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Exogenous Factors ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Diverse Groups ◽  
Practical Implications

In this contribution, I use the breakup – just short of the 2017 General Election – of Japan’s former second biggest political party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), as a case study so as to assess the practical implications of splits and realignments in the most relevant party split in Japan since the DPJ was ousted from government in 2012. First, I examine DPJ’s origin as an umbrella for ideologically diverse groups that opposed the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – the government party in Japan throughout most of its post-war history, its tendency to factionalism, and the oftentimes damaging role the factional dynamics played in the party’s decision-making process throughout the years. In the case study, it is understood that the creation of the Party of Hope – a split from the LDP, and the salience of constitutional issues were exogenous factors particular to that election, which helped causing the DPJ split.

Gender and Voting Preferences in Japanese Lower House Elections

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
GILL STEEL
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Using Data

This paper analyzes voter choice in selected House of Representatives elections during the past 30 years. I estimate multinomial probit models using data from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai (Society for the Promotion of Clean Elections) surveys and use qualitative data gathered in focus groups. I argue that no gender gap exists in the votes garnered by the main parties because, first, influential people are not simply able to ‘deliver’ votes from their networks — most accounts of voter choice fail to discuss gender, an oversight considering that most networks are gender-based — and, second, ‘women's issues’ have no special relevance to women in their vote choice. Instead, women and men vote for the Liberal Democratic Party because they associate the Party with stability and increased standards of living, including substantial social provisions.

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 Removing Boundaries, Losing Connections: Electoral Consequences of Local Government Reform in Japan

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusaku Horiuchi ◽  
Jun Saito ◽  
Kyohei Yamada
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
National Level ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Local Politicians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Electoral Mobilization

In this article we examine the role of local politicians in affecting national-level election outcomes by focusing on the drastic municipal mergers in Japan that took place in the early 2000s. Specifically, we argue that the political party that relies most extensively on local politicians' efforts for electoral mobilization and monitoring will suffer an electoral slump when municipalities are merged and the number of municipal politicians is swiftly reduced. We empirically show that municipalities with a history of mergers exhibit significantly lower voter turnout and obtain a smaller vote share for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in national elections when compared to other municipalities without an experience of mergers. This result indicates that municipal politicians are indispensable human resources for LDP candidates running for the national parliament.

scholarly journals The “Nixon China Shock” in the Mirror of Japanese Domestic Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 61-77
Author(s):  
V. V. Nelidov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Japanese Foreign Policy ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Post War ◽  
The U.S

The “Nixon China Shock” (the July 15, 1971 statement by the U.S. President R. Nixon about the recent trip of his National Security Advisor H. Kissinger to the PRC and about the President’s upcoming visit there) became one of the pivotal points in the history of Japanese foreign policy and contributed to Tokyo becoming more independent from Washington in its diplomatic course. Using the case of Japan’s reaction to this event, the article explores the characteristic features of the foreign policy making process in post-war Japan and demonstrates the considerable influence of these features on the character of Japanese foreign policy of the so-called “1955 System” period (the prolonged and continuous dominance of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in 1955-93). The paper shows the decentralization of the foreign policy making process, expressed in the limited ability of the Prime Minister to determine foreign policy, the presence of considerable internal contradictions in the MoFA of Japan, the factionalism of the ruling party, and the high degree of dependency of the government’s policy course on the public opinion. It proves that these factors were one of the reasons for Japan’s political leadership avoiding decisive actions to normalize relations with the PRC before the “Nixon shock”, cautious that it might damage its relations with the U.S. and unable to discern the signs of upcoming U.S.-Chinese détente, and after this event, vice versa, making every effort to normalize its relations with Beijing as soon as possible, reaching this goal even before their American partners did. Given the historical importance of the “1955 System” for contemporary Japanese politics, the article’s conclusions are significant for the understanding of the logic of Japan’s domestic politics and foreign policy of the entire post-war period.Author declares the absence of conflict of interests.

scholarly journals POLITICAL CHANGING FOR PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Osamu Ryoichi
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Other ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Commander In Chief

The prime minister of Japan (日本国内閣総理大臣, Nihon-koku naikaku sōridaijin, or shushō (首相)) (informally referred to as the PMOJ) is head of the government of Japan, the chief executive of the National Cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Japan; he is appointed by the emperor of Japan after being designated by the National Diet and must enjoy the confidence of the House of Representatives to remain in office. He is the head of the Cabinet and appoints and dismisses the other ministers of state. The literal translation of the Japanese name for the office is Minister for the Comprehensive Administration of (or the Presidency over) the Cabinet. The current prime minister of Japan is Yoshihide Suga. On 14 September 2020, he was elected to the presidency of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). After being confirmed in the Diet, he received an invitation from Emperor Naruhito to form a government as the new prime minister, and took office on 16 September 2020.  Japan's parliament has elected Yoshihide Suga as the country's new prime minister, following the surprise resignation of Shinzo Abe. After winning the leadership of the governing party earlier this week, Wednesday's vote confirms the former chief cabinet secretary's new position. It happened because the needed of political interest for Japan.

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