Why Was the Liberal Democratic Party Able to Achieve Long-Term Power in Japan? A Book Review of 'Democracy without Competition in Japan'

Researchers from around the world focus on Japanese politics because, despite Japan adopting democracy, there has been almost no change in government. Since its founding in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has succeeded in maintaining power for a long period, but public opinion polls do not confirm the fact that the LDP receives overwhelming support from the Japanese people.

Until now, researchers have explained that the LDP was able to achieve long-term power in Japan because it formed a solid support base through clever budget allocation suited to the electoral system. This type of political method is generally called clientelism.

Ethan Scheiner's 'Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party-Dominant State' (2006) is a study on clientelism in modern Japan. This is a work I previously covered in an article summarizing some research literature on Japanese politics.

Scheiner, E. (2006). Democracy without competition in Japan: Opposition failure in a one-party dominant state. Cambridge University Press.

How does the LDP's clientelism function?

Simply put, clientelism is a political method of strengthening one's own support base by distributing financial or non-financial benefits to voters who support one's party.

According to the author's explanation, Japanese clientelism has formed a support base consisting of farmers, self-employed individuals, construction workers, small and medium-sized enterprises, and large corporations, centered on local electoral districts. The author believes that it was because of this support base that the LDP has been able to maintain power in Japan for a long time since its founding in 1955 and overcome numerous corruption scandals.

While this view itself is not particularly new to researchers specializing in Japanese politics, the author uses a comparative politics approach to compare it with the political systems of other countries such as Italy, Austria, and Sweden, and attempts to demonstrate that the LDP's clientelism makes resistance by opposition parties difficult by combining and utilizing centralization and the electoral system.

In order to maintain power in Japan, it is a condition to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, and a majority of seats in the House of Representatives is allocated through a single-seat constituency system. The single-seat constituency system is not only an electoral system that is inherently advantageous to large parties, but it also has the characteristic that a party with a support base in rural areas is more likely to gain an advantage because the value of a single vote in rural electoral districts with low population density is higher than in urban electoral districts with high population density.

Furthermore, because local industries tend to have a high degree of dependence on government spending, including public works, local businesses build relationships with the LDP through local assembly members and attempt to attract public works projects that contribute to local economic growth. The author points out that the tendency for Japanese voters to prioritize candidates over issues, and the fact that many influential candidates in national elections are recruited from those with local political experience, also strongly function as the LDP's clientelism, which directs benefits from the national government to local areas, making it difficult for opposition parties to expand their influence in local areas.

As long as such a system of clientelism exists, the author explains that it is institutionally difficult for opposition parties to challenge the ruling party as follows.

However, the author points out that when examining past election records, there are cases where opposition parties succeeded in getting candidates elected even in electoral districts where the influence of clientelism is strong. Therefore, clientelism cannot explain everything about Japanese politics.

The LDP has lost power in the past, albeit for a short period (the 40th House of Representatives general election in 1993, the 45th House of Representatives general election in 2009). This work can generally explain the history of how the LDP has achieved long-term power. However, regarding the reasons why such exceptional cases occurred, a separate explanation must be prepared because it is thought that factors exceeding the advantage that clientelism brings to the LDP were at work. However, the author focuses on the fact that despite the occurrence of such fluctuations, the LDP's administration has consistently continued thereafter, and argues that clientelism persists deeply.

However, Chapter 7, 'Political and Economic Fluctuations and Their Impact on the Party System,' which examines the characteristics of clientelism using the methods of comparative politics, considers patterns in which clientelism becomes destabilized. There, it analyzes what the political impact of economic fluctuations was in Italy, Austria, Israel, and Sweden, where the influence of clientelism is said to be strong. In this analysis, the author does not go so far as to identify a general pattern, but it is pointed out that basically, voters tend to reconsider their relationship with the ruling party if economic conditions change and they can no longer extract sufficient returns from the government.

Although this work was published in 2006, there are also arguments in more recent research that the LDP's clientelistic methods have become constrained due to the impact of political reforms since 1994, and that a transition to a new support base is underway. This work should be read while taking such arguments into account. The analysis, which relies on statistical analysis using data and interview surveys with relevant parties, is still valuable for studying Japanese politics.

Summary

For clientelism to function politically, it is necessary to distribute sufficient financial or non-financial rewards to one's own supporters. In the author's view, the Liberal Democratic Party was able to achieve long-term power because it was able to strategically allocate national budget funds to rural areas with limited financial resources. It has been pointed out that there are several problems with this explanation, and caution is required when applying it to the political situation since the 1990s, but I believe it is a research finding that provides interesting insights for understanding the contemporary Japanese political landscape.

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