As I showed in the previous chapter, Japan's Clientelist/Financially Centralized system greatly hindered opposition parties' capacity to develop subnational-level strength. In this chapter, I demonstrate how this subnational-level weakness led to opposition party failure at the national level.

The 1990s and early 2000s were seen as a period of opportunity for a challenge to the LDP to arise. Voters proved themselves more than willing to support the new opposition of the era. The first new challenger, the New Frontier Party, fell just short of the LDP in proportional representation balloting in the 1996 House of Representatives election. Similarly, the Democratic Party of Japan ran nearly even with the LDP in PR balloting in the 2000 HR race and even won more PR votes than the ruling party in 2003. At the same time, the opposition won far fewer district races and was therefore unable to topple the LDP.

In the 1990s, there were many changes in Japanese politics that ought to have benefited the opposition (see Chapter 2), but there was a clear constant that remained from the pre-1990 era: the Clientelist/Financially Centralized system. In a Clientelist/Financially Centralized system, parties that are not strong at the national level have great difficulty winning local-office. In turn, parties that hold little strength at the local level have weak foundations and face difficulty getting their message out.