Changing Politics in Japan

Ikuo Kabashima,Gill Steel

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780801457630
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Parties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Changing Politics in Japan is a fresh and insightful account of the profound changes that have shaken up the Japanese political system and transformed it almost beyond recognition in the last couple of decades. Ikuo Kabashima—a former professor who is now Governor of Kumamoto Prefecture—and Gill Steel outline the basic features of politics in postwar Japan in an accessible and engaging manner. They focus on the dynamic relationship between voters and elected or nonelected officials and describe the shifts that have occurred in how voters respond to or control political elites and how officials both respond to, and attempt to influence, voters. The authors return time and again to the theme of changes in representation and accountability.

Kabashima and Steel set out to demolish the still prevalent myth that Japanese politics are a stagnant set of entrenched systems and interests that are fundamentally undemocratic. In its place, they reveal a lively and dynamic democracy, in which politicians and parties are increasingly listening to and responding to citizens' needs and interests and the media and other actors play a substantial role in keeping democratic accountability alive and healthy. Kabashima and Steel describe how all the political parties in Japan have adapted the ways in which they attempt to organize and channel votes and argue that contrary to many journalistic stereotypes the government is increasingly acting in the "the interests of citizens"—the median voter's preferences.

1

INTRODUCTION

This book is about the changes that have shaken up the Japanese political system and transformed it almost beyond recognition in the last couple of decades. We set out to demolish further the once prevalent myth that Japanese politics are a stagnant set of entrenched systems and interests that are fundamentally undemocratic. We aim to replace it with a description of a dynamic democracy, in which politicians and parties are increasingly responding to citizens’ concerns and the media and other actors play a substantial role in keeping accountability alive and healthy.

In the following chapters we examine some of the most important changes in the political system, focusing particularly on the shift in the relationship between voters and officials (elected and otherwise) to show how voters either respond to or control political elites and, in turn, how officials both respond to and try to influence voters. We describe how all the political parties in Japan have adapted in how they attempt to channel votes, and we argue that, contrary to many journalistic stereotypes, the government is increasingly acting in the “the interests of citizens”—by which we mean the average voter’s preferences.

Throughout the book, we return time and again to the theme of changes in representation and accountability. These are notoriously contested terms, and for those interested in a detailed theoretical discussion, Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes (1999) provide an excellent overview in their introduction to Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. However, our goal in this work is not to theorize about the terms but rather to track changes in political behavior, so we opt for the minimalist conceptions suggested by Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen:

By representation we mean how well and equally distributed representation is compared to the people represented; by accountability we mean how direct or distant the connection between a representative and her constituents are and whether those who represent them make policies responsive to those who elected them, as well as whether such policies respond generally to the preferences of all citizens or to narrow minorities. (2008, 11–12)

In addition, we do not assume that voters’ policy preferences are necessarily exogenous or unchanging, or that voters even have preferences on every issue. Because they are highly aware of the complexity of voters’ behavior, policymakers sometimes attempt to anticipate citizens’ judgments when creating policies, or at other times try to mobilize the public to support their own policy agendas by framing a policy issue in a particular way. This has been the case in some areas of welfare policymaking and—most famously—in postal reform. But in some cases, these attempts have proved unsuccessful, as in failed attempts to normalize relations with North Korea or the unsuccessful campaigns to get public backing for educational reform. Overall, though, we sketch a picture of increasing accountability in a society in which citizens have more tools to judge government performance and punish or reward accordingly and the government shows increasing sensitivity to these judgments.

Voters and Parties in Postwar Politics

Analysts often divide postwar Japanese politics into four periods: 1945 to 1955, 1955 to 1993, 1993 to 2007, and 2007 to the present. During each period, changes occurred in politician-voter relations, but the changes in each period were markedly different. During the first period, a multiparty system flourished with conservative and left-wing parties competing in elections and alternating in government. Most of the governments formed during this period were either coalition or minority governments, and only one of the nine governments formed before 1955 was based on a single-party legislative majority. Politicians switched parties constantly, parties merged and collapsed with alacrity, and citizens’ partisan alignment was correspondingly flexible (Yamada et al. 2008).

The LDP System

The second period began in 1955 when both the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) formed within a short period, replacing the multiparty framework. For the next thirty-eight years, the LDP dominated politics and generally formed single-party majority governments.1 While various other parties won a considerable share of the vote, until the 1990s none of these parties posed a serious threat to the monopoly of the LDP. Both their own actions and the electoral system marginalized the opposition parties.

As we outline in the next chapter, in the LDP system (analysts often refer to it as the “1955 system”), the relationships between ordinary voters and politicians were based on the personal ties that candidates cultivated within their own constituencies. For this reason the national government could in some ways be considered “representative,” but it came to its own conclusions about what was in the best interests of the country (see Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes 1999), conclusions that largely centered on government-managed economic growth.

This was a period of growth that was export led, extensively regulated, and included protection of the domestic economy, which was costly but kept companies in business and employment levels high (see Pempel 1998). Rather than being laissez-faire capitalism, it was what T. J. Pempel (1998) has referred to as a kind of neomercantilism that amplified the connections between politics and business.2 The standard view of the period therefore describes a pedestrian, locked-in system in which the so-called Iron Triangle of top bureaucrats in cahoots with conservative politicians and business groups controlled decision making, leaving a limited range of political action open to ordinary citizens (see, for example, Johnson 1982; Pempel 1974).

Machine politics fueled the system, and the party used all its incumbent muscle to channel public projects and financial assistance to rural areas. In turn, rural voters overwhelmingly supported the LDP, making it extremely difficult for other parties to challenge them in these constituencies. Critics derided the wasteful pork barrel public works projects that typified the system, but the construction industry, swollen from postwar reconstruction, continued to grow and sponsor the LDP political machine. A good deal of the construction industry’s business was based on government contracts during this period, when “paving, erecting, and damming . . . became a national obsession” (Schlesinger 1997, 141). The LDP awarded contracts with little disclosure or justification, and bid-rigging and bribery became the order of the day. Politicians gained access to the money and employee votes that construction companies offered, and bureaucrats and companies sought to keep spending high. In the early 1960s, construction spending was about one fifth of Japan’s GNP, and by the 1980s, it still employed 10 percent of the workforce (Schlesinger 1997, 141).

Under this system, the LDP was able to win a majority of the seats in elections for the House of Representatives until 1990, with only three exceptions (1976, 1979, and 1983). Between 1983 and 1986, the LDP entered a coalition with the New Liberal Club, a small conservative group that had broken away from the LDP in 1976. But apart from this, the LDP consistently formed single-party governments throughout these years.3 In retrospect, these episodes look like minor exceptions to overall dominance, but at the time things were much more dramatic than they now appear, and the LDP managed to pull through by astute political maneuvering. Even during its heyday, the LDP was forced to deal with several serious crises that threatened not only its dominance but its very existence. It overcame these crises in sometimes astonishing ways—at times through astute maneuvering, at times through sheer luck.

The cliché of Japan’s bubble economy, a bubble that reached its peak between 1986 and 1990, was that Japan had a first-rate economy and a third-rate government. Despite the existence of democratic institutions and the public’s overwhelming support for democracy as a system, many observers view Japanese democracy during this period as substandard and inferior to other (Western) democracies. These unsatisfactory politics were tolerated when the economy was buoyant, but at the beginning of the 1990s, when the economy sank into recession, commentators began to blame the government for the state of the economy and used this as a reason not only to disparage the ruling parties for their perceived failure but to blame the political system itself.

Some see Japanese citizens as complicit in the failure of the democratic process (see Stockwin 1999), and they have labeled the system a “spectator democracy” in which uninvolved and apathetic voters do not choose parties or candidates according to policy preferences or ideological commitment but simply “deliver” their vote when requested. In response to repeated political scandals and the unpopular consumption (sales) tax, however, citizens briefly mobilized in the late 1980s, contributing to the demise of the LDP system. And though that flash of citizen activism was not sustained, voters began to distance themselves from the corrupt system as the 1990s progressed. Voting rates plummeted dramatically during the elections held in the 1990s. By 1993 only 23 percent of citizens said they were satisfied with contemporary politics, while 29 percent said that they did not support any political party at all, according to the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai (ASSK) (Society for the Promotion of Clean Elections) Lower House Election Survey 1993.

The Contemporary System

The LDP system had kept the party in power, but by the early 1990s a sense of crisis had emerged, and there was a feeling that politics as usual could not continue. As we discuss throughout this book various factors undercut the established relationships between parties and voters, leading to the declining viability of the old-style system. First, the system was obviously exploited by vested interests, and when repeated scandals revealed this, voters turned against the inherent corruption. Second, the system was financed by deficit spending that became increasingly untenable as Japan endured the prolonged recession of the 1990s. Simply put, as the economic slump continued, political leaders no longer had the resources to distribute their largesse: the pork was being sliced thin. Third, the electoral system that had contributed to the marginalization of the opposition was reformed. And fourth, citizens’ expectations of party leaders and politicians changed: from the early 1990s onward leader performance rather than personal ties at the local level became increasingly important in voters’ decision making, and this was augmented by increasing media coverage of politics.

As we describe in chapter 3, in 1993 the largest faction within the LDP broke into two groups, one of which eventually joined the opposition in passing a no-confidence bill against the LDP government. The LDP lost the subsequent lower house election and was replaced by a coalition government that did not include the LDP. This coalition collapsed less than a year later, but astonishingly, the LDP then managed to form a coalition with both its long-time enemy, the JSP, and Sakigake, a small party that was mainly composed of ex-LDP reformers, to establish a majority government that lasted from June 1994 to October 1996. The JSP changed its English name to Social Democratic Party of Japan in February 1991, though it continued to be called Nihon Shakaito in Japanese, and it became the Social Democratic Party (Shakai Minshuto) in January 1996. From then on, the LDP managed to continue its dominance by forming coalition governments with various smaller parties.4

Commentators love to evoke the bubble years in anecdotes about sushi sprinkled with gold flakes and jaw-droppingly expensive Tokyo real estate. After decades of growth in Japan, the G5 Plaza Accord in 1985 sent the yen soaring, and the Japanese government responded with monetary easing and low interest rates, which artificially pumped up real estate, stocks, and capital investment (Katz 2003). For the next few years, the bubble expanded precariously, peaking in 1989. But the massive asset-price bubble burst the following year with the simultaneous collapse of the stock market and readjustment of real estate prices, which ushered in the Heisei recession of the 1990s, an expanded national debt, a financial crisis, and a destabilized yen (Pempel 1998, 136).

Economically, the 1990s may have been a “lost decade,” since none of the plans to revitalize the economy took hold, but politically, the decade was anything but lost: voter behavior changed, the parties realigned, and Japan radically transformed its systems of administration and governance. In reforming its system of governance, the crucial relationship between voters and politicians was transformed, making the system more representative.

In the coming chapters, we outline how the government became more responsive to shifts in public opinion and public demands, since it could no longer simply follow its own judgment in deciding what was best for the country as it had done during the years of the LDP system. We will show how the connection between parties and voters is shifting from the local to the national level and is increasingly tied to citizens’ evaluations of government, of party leaders and politicians, and of government effectiveness. We also describe how political elites are more accountable and responsive to citizens, who now have the tools at their disposal for overseeing the actions of the political elites.

Outline of the Book

In chapter 2 we briefly describe the LDP system and how politicians and voters benefited from this system. During the period of economic growth, the LDP’s “creative conservatism” incorporated a degree of responsiveness to a fairly wide range of groups, distributing enough benefits to a sufficiently broad range of people to keep them satisfied, and in return voters continued to vote for the LDP.

In chapter 3 we describe long-term trends in the vote share won by the parties, that is, who voted for each party and why. We show that whereas most voters once thought they had little choice but to select the LDP (although they voted strategically at times to force the party to remain at least somewhat responsive), they are now more willing to try the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). We also focus on recent trends such as the dramatic increase in independent voters and the equally dramatic way in which support for the LDP rose when the populist Koizumi Junichiro led the party, noting that when the LDP reverted to its old ways, voters were less willing to cast their vote for the old-style party. We show how a pluralistic system has emerged in which power is less concentrated and different parties have the possibility of participating in government and policymaking. The LDP has a genuine fear of being tossed out of office unlike under the old LDP system.

In chapter 4 we turn to the role of the media in changing the both the style and the substance of Japanese politics. Politicians can no longer rely on “gathering” votes through local notables, now that voters increasingly turn to the media for information and adroit politicians and political leaders are able to exploit this. Politicians have had to become media figures, and they expect to win votes as a result of media appearances. As a case study, we show how the quintessential media politician Koizumi Junichiro took advantage of changes in television news to win the 2001 LDP leadership election, and we discuss why newspapers and television were so important in this case.

In chapter 5 we look at prime ministerial popularity. When constituencylevel politics was all-important in Japan, party leaders were of minimal importance to citizens’ voting preferences. Now, party leaders have become important, and their popularity is crucial to party fortunes. We examine what prime ministers can do to increase their chance of survival.

In chapter 6 we look at change—and some continuity—in policies and in the policy-making process. Rather than generally being cogs in a system in which nonelected bureaucrats dominate, we show how contemporary prime ministers, who are policy entrepreneurs, are able to enact their policy agendas. We discuss the extent to which Koizumi achieved his goals and how he was able to do so, even though his reforms were outside LDP norms. We then turn to his successors and show how they have curbed the reforms and managed to pull the party back toward the old system.

In chapter 7 we turn to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). For decades, the opposition parties failed to emerge as a credible alternative to the LDP, but during the 1990s, the DPJ created a two-party system at the district level and managed to seize control of the Diet’s upper house in 2007 and its lower house in 2009. After briefly describing the party’s history and prominent members, we examine the increasing conservative bent of the party’s platform and ideology, before turning to current trends and the future of the party.

In the afterword, we briefly summarize some of the crucial changes in Japanese politics, showing how these have altered voter-party relations and speculation about the future.

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1. Both houses in Japan’s bicameral parliamentary system are directly elected. Appendix A outlines the structure of the Diet for readers unfamiliar with Japan’s institutions.

2. Pempel (1998) describes changes in the political economy of the period in detail.

3. The New Liberal Club was tiny in comparison to the LDP, and this period can barely be described as an interruption in LDP dominance. Most members of the New Liberal Club returned to the LDP after the 1986 election.

4. These coalitions were the LDP–Liberal Party coalition (January 1999–October 1999); the LDP–Liberal Party–Komeito coalition (October 1999–April 2000); the LDP–Komeito–Conservative Party coalition (April 2000–November 2003); and the LDP-Komeito coalition (since November 2003).

2

CITIZENS AND ELITES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE LDP SYSTEM

When the Allies occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952, the authorities at the general headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) enforced many sweeping political and economic reforms designed to facilitate political democracy. New Deal beliefs galvanized Occupation personnel who aimed for the demilitarization and democratization of Japan and worked zealously in every sector—political, economic, and social—to replace the old prewar systems with democratic ones. Reforms included the extension of political rights, including the rights of women to participate in politics; the legalization of the labor movement; educational reforms; land reform; and the dissolution of the zaibatsu (familyled industrial and financial conglomerates). The Occupation forces held war crimes tribunals and purged from public life political, administrative, and educational leaders who had advocated militarism or military nationalism (Dower 1999).

Some Japanese citizens enthusiastically responded to the expansion of their rights: they joined unions and engaged in collective bargaining and striking, joined leftist parties, demonstrated for food and better conditions, and occupied and managed their workplaces to improve conditions (Dower 1999, 254–64).

As the cold war escalated, Occupation policy reversed course to emphasize Japan’s strategic importance as a capitalist ally and as a bulwark against communism. Many of the democratizing...