Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 770-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Leiserson
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Post War ◽  
Straight Lines

In constitutional form and in practice, the Japanese national government is parliamentary. Authority is centered in the Diet, and power is held by the parties in the Diet. Unlike the pre-war system, for example, the Diet parties really do choose the Prime Ministers.The post-war party system changed fundamentally in 1955, when the non-socialist parties combined and formed the mammoth Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). Since its formation in 1955, the LDP has always had a safe majority in both Houses of the Diet. But, from its beginning as a union of several political streams to the present, the LDP has been made up of several rather stable factions. These factions are the key actors in the biennial election of the party president, who naturally becomes the Prime Minister. As a general rule, votes in a party presidential election are on straight lines. So a Prime Minister is chosen by a coalition of LDP factions which controls a majority of votes at the party convention. Furthermore, the factions present nominees for Cabinet posts, and Ministers are chosen from among these nominees. Cabinet posts become rewards for the factions which voted for the Prime Minister, inducements to opposing factions to enter the Prime Minister's coalition, and buffers to soften or weaken the opposition of hostile factions. In short, the struggle over top political leadership in Japan—the president and the top officials of the ruling party, the Prime Minister, and other Cabinet members—is waged by the LDP factions. (The struggle over policy, on the other hand, is waged by other actors, within the framework established by the outcome of the factions' struggle over leadership.) And because of the wide range of opinion within the LDP, the outcomes of the factions' struggle over top political leadership are very important for Japan. A switch from an Ishibashi to a Kishi, or from a Kishi to an Ikeda, is certainly as significant as, say, the replacement of a Laniel by a Mendès-France.

The Policymaking Process in Japan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomohito Shinoda
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Japanese Prime Minister

Long into the postwar period, the policymaking power of the Japanese prime minister was limited. The cabinet’s collective responsibility did not allow him to control the executive branch independently from the cabinet. The Cabinet Law divided the executive power among cabinet ministers, allowing the sectionalism that developed among different ministries. As a result, a bureaucratic supremacy developed in the policymaking process. The long-time governing party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), also developed a decentralized, bottom-up policymaking structure. As a result, the prime minister had difficulty exercising strong leadership in government decision-making. This situation changed after the 1994 electoral reform, which encouraged Diet members to become policy generalists and weakened the influence of the LDP policy subcommittees. Further, the administrative reform efforts under the Ryūtarō Hashimoto cabinet strengthened the authority of the prime minister and his cabinet. Benefiting from these institutional changes, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi introduced a top-down policymaking process. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) governments in 2009–2012 tried to further strengthen political leadership in policymaking. However, instead of political leadership, they created a weak bureaucracy with lowered moral. During the second Shinzō Abe government, the prime minister successfully established the cabinet-led policymaking system.

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.

Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
pp. 109-116
Author(s):  
Tai Wei LIM
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Nuclear Reactors ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Energy Politics ◽  
Gubernatorial Election

A 2011 earthquake damaged the Fukushima nuclear reactor and provided a galvanising point for anti-nuclear resistance groups in Japan. Their public cause slowly faded from the political arena after the Democratic Party of Japan fell out of power and anti-nuclear politicians lost the 2014 Tokyo gubernatorial election. The current Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Abe holds a pro-nuclear position and urges the reactivation of Japan's nuclear reactors after all safeguards have been satisfied.

Executive Turnovers in 2000

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-331
Author(s):  
Masaru Kohno ◽  
Atsuko Suga
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Education Science

On April 5 2000, the Diet elected Yoshiro Mori as Japan's 55th prime minister. His predecessor, Keizo Obuchi, had suffered a stroke and became unable to carry out his official responsibility. Mori, who was the former Secretary General of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), inherited the three party coalition between the LDP, the new Komei Party and the Conservative Party, and reappointed all of Obuchi's cabinet members. Yohei Kono was reposted as the Minister of Foreign Affairs; Hideo Usui as Justice; Kiichi Miyazawa as Finance; Hirofumi Nakasone as Education, Science and Technology; Yuya Niwa as Health and Welfare; Tokuichiro Tanazawa as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Takeshi Fukaya as International Trade and Industry; Toshihiro Nikai as Transport; Eita Yashiro as Posts and Telecommunications; Takamori Makino as Labor; Masaaki Nakayama as Construction; Kosuke Hori as Home Affairs, Mikio Aoki as Chief Cabinet Secretary; Kunihiro Tsuzuki as Management and Coordination; Tsutomu Kawara as Defense; Taichi Sakaiya as Economic Planning; Kayoko Shimizu as environment; and Sadakazu Tanigaki as Financial Reconstruction.

The New Generation of Conservative Politicians in Japan

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BABB
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Internal Management ◽  
New Generation

AbstractThis study examines the extent to which there has been a rise in ideologically based politics in Japan due to the decline in factionalism in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The study is based on two cases studies. The first is based on the notion of ‘Koizumi's children’ recruited by former Prime Minister Koizumi and his allies, who were heavily discouraged from joining a faction. The second model is based on an analysis of a junior MP groups which have played a role in the internal management of the LDP independent of established party organizational structures.

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.

Evaluating Political Reform in Japan: A Midterm Report

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven R. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cost ◽  
First Time

In the 1993 general election the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. The coalition government that followed enacted the most far-reaching political reforms Japan has experienced since the American Occupation. The country has now experienced two elections since these reforms so we can begin to analyze trends and dynamics. It is now possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the effects of these reforms. I evaluate the reforms under three headings: (1) reducing the cost of elections and levels of corruption; (2) replacing candidate-centered with party-centered campaigns; and (3) moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the parties of the government and the parties of the opposition. In conclude that, with some notable exceptions, the reforms are working well, about as well as should have been expected.

Japan in 2004: ““Courageous”” Koizumi Carries On

Asian Survey ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nobuhiro Hiwatari
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
True Colors ◽  
Opposition Parties

Betraying all expectations, Japanese political developments in 2004 show Prime Minister Koizumi's true colors as a reformist leader, willing to use his popularity and an empowered cabinet against the entrenched vested interests of the Liberal Democratic Party while compelling the opposition parties either to converge to his position or become marginalized.

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.

The Cartel Party and Populist Opposition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Katz ◽  
Peter Mair
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regulatory State ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Consensus Democracy ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Policy Failures ◽  
Recent Policy

Cartelization has given rise to opposition in the form of anti-party-system or populist parties. While this possibility was clear as early as the 1990s, in the last decade the growth of these parties has led to alarm in some quarters about the continued viability of liberal democratic party government. In contrast to accounts that attribute this rise to the recent policy failures of the political mainstream, this chapter suggests that its roots lie in internal contradictions in the expectations that the parties have raised in the process of cartelization. Rather than being solutions to these problems, models of “the regulatory state” or “consensus democracy” are strikingly similar to democracy under the cartel party model.

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