Coordinating nominations: how to deal with an incumbent surplus after electoral reform

How do parties and candidates react to electoral system reform? While the literature on causes and consequences of electoral reforms is receiving increasing attention, we lack a systematic micro-level account on how parties and candidates adopt to changes in electoral rules and district boundaries. This paper examines the case of the Japanese Liberal Democrats to explore how the party has managed to accommodate a surplus of incumbents to a reduced number of nominal tier seats following the 1994 electoral reform. By using micro-level data, I examine how the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has matched candidates based on their expected electoral strength and ideological positioning to new districts. Moreover, I investigate how the newly instituted party-list allowed the LDP to avoid its disintegration at the local level by systematically defusing local stand-offs through the handing out of promising list positions. My findings help to understand how the LDP could avoid its disintegration and could continue to dominate Japanese politics until today.

Japan's Kishida has limited scope to reset China ties

Significance Kishida's factional background within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suggests a dovish orientation towards China. Impacts A lacklustre LDP result in the general election would empower its junior coalition partner, the Komeito, to resist bold security reforms. Larger coast guard vessels and drones will enhance Japan's maritime security. Japan may decide to host intermediate-range missiles co-developed with the United States, to be deployed in Okinawa.

The Japanese conservative camp's bridging method for China–Japan relations under the separation of politics and the economic policy: investigation of the case of the Kenzo Matsumura Group, 1959–1972

From the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco to the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Japan has always adopted a political and economic separation policy that maintains diplomacy with Taiwan and economic and cultural relations with China. Within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to break the existing deadlock, Kenzo Matsumura of the Japanese House of Representatives and others formed a foreign policy group in 1959. This group spoke highly of China's importance to Japan's development on the grounds of national interests rather than ideology and national sentiments, played a bridging role in the political communication between China and Japan, and created a precedent for the nontraditional improvement of international relations in Japan.

Family Feud, or Realpolitik?

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.

Japanese Politics: An Introduction

The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of “evaluating Japan’s democracy.” Taken as a whole, the volume provides a positive evaluation of the state of Japan’s democracy. The volume is divided into two parts, roughly corresponding to domestic Japanese politics and Japan’s international politics. Within the domestic politics part, there are four distinct sections: “Domestic Political Actors and Institutions,” covering the Japanese Constitution, electoral systems, prime minister, Diet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and local government; “Political Parties and Coalitions,” covering the Liberal Democratic Party, coalition government, Kōmeitō, and the political opposition; “Policymaking and the Public,” covering the policymaking process, public opinion, civil society, and populism; and, “Political Economy and Social Policy,” covering industrial, energy, social welfare, agricultural, monetary, and immigration policies, as well as social inequality. In the international relations part, there are four sections: “International Relations Frameworks,” covering grand strategy, international organizations, and international status; “International Political Economy,” covering trade, finance, foreign direct investment, the environment, economic regionalism, and the linkage between security and economics; “International Security,” covering remilitarization, global and regional security multilateralism, nuclear nonproliferation, naval power, space security, and cybersecurity; and, “Foreign Relations” covering Japan’s relations with the United States, China, South Korea, ASEAN, India, the European Union, and Russia.

POLITICAL CHANGING FOR PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN

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.

Interest Group Politics and Its Transformation in Japan

The political reforms that have been going on since the 1990s have drastically changed the face of politics in Japan. The most significant of these reforms was the change of government, which brought an end, albeit only once, to the long-standing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regime. These changes were expected to change the power structure by altering the contact of interest groups with political elites. I examine this issue based on a longitudinal survey conducted in four rounds between 1997 and 2017. The results show a robust structure of interest group politics, although the features were weakening. That is, contacts with the LDP and the bureaucracy were sources of political influence for interest groups. The impact of the two-party system and its setbacks are seen in the change in contact with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). However, The DPJ did not function as a source of interest representation.

USE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHING NAVOI POEMS

The role of literature in the common education and inculcation of goodness in the minds of young people is invaluable. Some of the views expressed by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev in his election speech at the VIII Congress of the Movement of Entrepreneurs and Businessmen - Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan on October 19, 2016 were widely observed on this topic. The report emphasizes that today it is impossible to talk about modernization and renewal of the country, sustainable development without the widespread development of information and communication technologies, the Internet.

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

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.

The Era of Coalition Government in Japan: The Institutional Logic of Surplus Majorities and Strange Bedfellows

For nearly four decades after its establishment in 1955, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party formed every government alone. Since mid-1993, however, coalition government has been the norm in Japanese politics. Interestingly, every coalition since 1999 has included a party with a lower house majority by itself. Nonetheless, these majority parties have taken on coalition partners. This chapter shows that the logic of “oversized” coalition government in Japan is driven in part by parliamentary bicameralism, and partly by the mixed-member electoral system, which incentivizes the formation of long-lived pre-electoral coalitions.