Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Glossary of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments and a Note on the Use of the Online Appendix
- Introduction: The Puzzle of Party Competition Failure in Japan
- 1 The Importance of Party Competition and a Model of Party Competition Failure
- 2 Opposition Failure in Japan: Background and Explanations
- 3 Clientelism and Its Determinants
- 4 The Impact of Clientelism and Centralized Government Financial Structure: Comparative Analysis
- 5 Local Opposition Failure in Japan
- 6 National-Level Opposition Failure: The Impact of Subnational-Level Weakness
- 7 Political Economy Changes and Their Impact on Party Systems: Comparative Analysis
- 8 Parallel Party Systems: Political Economy Changes and the Limits to Anti-Clientelist Appeals in Japan
- 9 The Problem of Organization and Coherence in Top-Down Party Formation
- 10 Conclusion: Democracy Without Competition
- References
- Index
2 - Opposition Failure in Japan: Background and Explanations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Glossary of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments and a Note on the Use of the Online Appendix
- Introduction: The Puzzle of Party Competition Failure in Japan
- 1 The Importance of Party Competition and a Model of Party Competition Failure
- 2 Opposition Failure in Japan: Background and Explanations
- 3 Clientelism and Its Determinants
- 4 The Impact of Clientelism and Centralized Government Financial Structure: Comparative Analysis
- 5 Local Opposition Failure in Japan
- 6 National-Level Opposition Failure: The Impact of Subnational-Level Weakness
- 7 Political Economy Changes and Their Impact on Party Systems: Comparative Analysis
- 8 Parallel Party Systems: Political Economy Changes and the Limits to Anti-Clientelist Appeals in Japan
- 9 The Problem of Organization and Coherence in Top-Down Party Formation
- 10 Conclusion: Democracy Without Competition
- References
- Index
Summary
It looked like the end of business as usual in Japan as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost power in 1993. After the Diet, Japan's parliament, passed a no-confidence motion and new elections were held, a coalition of former opposition parties, former LDP members, and new parties entered into the first non-LDP government since the party was created in 1955. However, by summer 1994, the LDP was the leading party in a coalition government. After then, the party continued to be at the center of every government, with only a small party or two joining it in a coalition. As of the early 2000s, the LDP remained the dominant party in Japan, with a substantial advantage over its potential competitors.
The continuation of one-party dominance in Japan went against a worldwide trend. At the same time that former communist and authoritarian regimes were overcoming their nondemocratic legacies, one-party dominant regimes in long-time democracies were undergoing major changes, as their leading parties lost the grip on power they had held for decades. Among the clearest cases of this change was Italy, where the longtime ruling Christian Democratic Party disintegrated and was replaced by new alternatives. Even in Mexico – often left out of discussions of one-party dominance because of questions over the degree to which Mexico had been democratic – the longtime ruling PRI, which dominated politics to a greater degree than any party in Italy or Japan, lost its firm grasp on power.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democracy without Competition in JapanOpposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State, pp. 31 - 63Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005