Japanese democracy is a puzzle. We typically conceive of democracy as based on competition. One-party democracy is not supposed to happen. This study sought to understand the puzzle of party competition failure and explain how, even when facing a cynical and alienated public, a single party could remain so dominant and an opposition could be so ineffective.

Competition is critical to democracy. Fundamental to democracy is the principle that all rule is ultimately accountable to the people. Within modern democracy, this process works through representatives who, themselves, are accountable to citizens through regular elections. To overcome collective action and social choice problems, representatives organize in political parties (Aldrich 1995), which makes parties also accountable to the public. When parties enter the government, as Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes note, they “are ‘accountable’ if voters can discern whether governments are acting in their interest and sanction them appropriately, so that those incumbents who act in the best interest of citizens win reelection and those who do not lose them” (1999: 40). One would assume that incumbents who get reelected are those deemed by voters to be working in their best interest.