A Legacy of Dominance: Legitimacy & Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party by Broguen Whetstone A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree (Japanese Studies) Earlham College Wednesday, March 21, 2012 Committee Members Jennifer Seeley (Assistant Professor of Politics) Chuck Yates (Professor of History)
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A Legacy of Dominance: Legitimacy & Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party
by
Broguen Whetstone
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Bachelor of Arts degree (Japanese Studies) Earlham College
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Committee Members Jennifer Seeley (Assistant Professor of Politics) Chuck Yates (Professor of History)
2
INTRODUCTION
To say that electoral success is the aim of any political party is an understatement. A
party that cannot gather votes and gain representation in government has no power and no
purpose. The ultimate goal of all parties is to dominate in politics and hold the seat of
government. For this reason many classic definitions of democracy focus on the importance of
alternation and power being passed among parties. This alternation or exchange of power can be
described as the transfer of political legitimacy from the electorate to parties—a slow trend that
can be measured across many elections and defines the power relationship between parties in any
given democratic-party system1. Legitimacy is passed from the electorate to a party, and a party
with high levels of legitimacy is able to gain the seat of government. Alternation in government
is so crucial to democracy that single-dominate party systems2 are exceedingly rare and of great
interest. Only Italy, as another modern industrialized democratic country with an equally long
standing single dominate party, is often spoken of on the same level as Japan. Both the Christian
Democratic Party (DC) of Italy and Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) enjoyed about 50
years of nearly uninterrupted power, but the legitimacy and stability of Italy’s political system
and government has been called into question more often and more seriously than Japan. This
has caused scholars, politicians, and this paper to ask a very simple yet crucial question—how?
How was the LDP able to retain and reclaim power, despite consistently low approval ratings,
koenkai6,lobbyists,andinterestgroups). This definition draws on Max Weber’(1968)
discussion of a ‘legitimate authority’. Though Weber, as a sociologist, discusses the orientation
of social relationships or conduct in regards to a legitimate authority, political parties and voters
can be understood as acting within a quasi-social sphere. Therefore, based on Weber’s
classifications, three forms of legitimacy—rational, charismatic, and traditional—have been
identified as playing a crucial role throughout the history of LDP; specifically traditional
legitimacy was central to the their return to power in 1994. Of significance at this stage are the
general qualities shared by all three forms of legitimacy, or the basic assumptions this paper will
be founded on.
For Weber(1962) the occurrence or creation of a legitimate authority depends on its
ability to take on the quality of ‘validity’:
… “validity” must therefore mean more than the mere regularity of the social conduct as determined by custom or self-interest. …only then will the content of a social relationship
represent “authority,” if its conduct can be oriented approximately towards certain recognizable axioms [,and] the orientation towards these axioms includes at least the recognition that they are binding on the individual or the corresponding behavior constitutes a model worthy of imitation(71-2)
Weber’s ‘validity’ is something more than accepting a leader because whenever you interact
with them it happens to be in a senior/junior type of situation, or because a necessary part of your
survival relies on their leadership. That is not to say these are not also important foundations for
leadership, but the afore mentioned relationships must be recognized as satisfying many needs
before they can be widely accepted as valid. If we apply this to politics, the first assumption on
the transfer of legitimacy is the acknowledgement that a state and its institutions carry validity.
In other words a democracy must be functional in a way that inspires confidence and satisfies
more than the immediate self-interest of its citizens or simply go unchallenged because it has
always existed; and all citizens through the act of political participation must recognize these
functions. This is applied to parties and the transfer of legitimacy directly through the very
notion of campaigning. To become dominant a party must constantly search for common ground
and encourage assurance with its constituency. Also this common issue or quality that parties use
must be easily recognizable and perceived as meaningful. In comparing the legitimacy of
excluded parties in Israel and Italy, Levite and Tarrow (1983) state that the amount of influence a
political actor has the creation, or transfer of, legitimacy is dependant on “…their social bases
and political power, on the monopoly they exercise over cultural understandings, and how
national and international events and alignments impinge on domestic politics…” (297). This
emphasizes the assumption that legitimacy is outside of the direct control of the parties on whom
it is bestowed; but, factors within their control can be used to attract legitimacy, primarily social
and cultural norms or institutions.
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Since parties must actively gather legitimacy, and is in constant competition with other
parties for voter support then it can also be inferred that legitimacy has a finite quality and must
be transferred between parties by the electorate. In Japan this finite quality can be seen in the
vote distribution of the current political system, and legitimacy through the second postwar party
system has resembled a ‘zero-sum game’7. In the field of national politics it can be said that a
political party can only gain legitimacy at the expense of another party. This is further supported
by the arrangement of the current electoral system. Per eligible voter one vote is for a specific
candidate in a single-member district and one vote is for a party to be awarded seats based on
that the LDP consistently received more absolute votes that any other single party. This
phenomenon can be directly attributed to the strength of rational legitimacy in the LDP.
The definition for rational legitimacy borrows slightly from Weber’s concept of
legitimacy derived from ‘convention’ but, deviates towards a ‘rational choice’ type of model in
order to make the description more politically focused. ‘Convention’, as Weber describes it, can
be guaranteed on either a subjective basis—i.e. emotional surrender, belief in binding values, or
religious attitudes—or due to self-interest—i.e. expectation of a particular consequence or
outcome (Weber 1962, 75). The second guarantor, self-interest, relates much more closely to
rational legitimacy as it is used in this paper. However in defining rational legitimacy Weber’s
(1968) rational grounds for legitimacy, which is based purely on the legality of an authority (46).
The transfer of rational legitimacy from voters to parties rests on the voters’ self-interest in how
a party’s abilities are assessed, which borrows from rational choice theorists as apposed to
Weber who meant self-interest in the context of social groups. In a social group deviation from
the norm can result in disapproval and even exclusion, but in politics self-interest is related to
policy benefits or, more generally, political stability.
Because it relies more than either charismatic or traditional legitimacy on time in
government, rational legitimacy is relatively predictable. In simplest terms rational legitimacy
rational legitimacy is an evaluation of a party’s ability to govern and produce positive results in
civil society. It is a description of how dependable an electorate perceives a given party to be. In
most developed democracies alternation in power is the mechanism for creating equilibrium in
rational legitimacy among dominant parties. But Japan had not experienced such a change in
decades and the LDP has used this long tenure in government to establish itself “…as the party
responsible fro the great prosperity Japan has experienced…” (Hrebenar 2000, 13). In 1982
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Yomiuri Shimbun conducted a poll to determine why voters supported the current cabinet despite
low approval ratings:
The most common response was “because it was an LDP cabinet” (44 percent). Other responses pertained to the cabinet’s “sense of stability” (16 percent), to trust in the prime minister (9 percent), and to appreciation for the cabinet’s actions, both domestic and foreign (15 percent). (Hrebenar 2000, 13)
In addition a 1990 Tokyo Shimbun poll revealed that 33% of respondents agreed that opposition
parties continued to lose elections because the electorate feared political instability; and when
asked why the LDP had retained power for so long by a Yomiuri Shimbun poll 48.8% responded
that there were no alternative parties (Hrebenar 2000, 13). This response was not meant literally,
at the time the poll was taken there were at least four national opposition parties; but rather it
reflects the lack of rational legitimacy given to those parties. The respondents felt that no party
was capable enough to take over running the government. According to Flanagan et al. (1991)
many Japanese voters viewed the LDP as a corrupt and arrogant party but “…a superior
alternative to a fumbling and fractious opposition” (439). This is highlighted by figure 2 that
shows the LDP consistently wining twice as many votes as any single opposition party. In this
chart LDP is shown as having won more than twice the number of votes than any other
opposition party, including the Social Democratic party their main opposition until 1993, and yet
rarely wining even 50% of the total number of votes. Support for the LDP despite wide spread
dislike is evidenced by the lack of rational legitimacy given to opposition parties; it is the relative
stability of this perception, according to Flanagan et al. (1991) that sustained the post war status
quo (439). In other words the LDP was able to retain a great deal of rational legitimacy due to
their long period in power, which gave precedence to the idea that they were the only capable
party.
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In their article on subnational party switching, Caitlin Milzzo and Ethan Scheiner (2010)
attribute oppositional failure in the 1990’s to the pork-barrel nature of Japanese politics. They
posit that a leader’s perceived political power, or ability to deliver ‘pork’, influenced the strength
of the relationship between subnational and national politicians-the deciding factor for whether
or not both politicians defected from the LDP (Milzzo and Scheiner 2010). For subnational
politicians maintaining access to the central government is the driving force behind establishing
a connection to national politicians (Milzzo and Scheiner 2010, 149); and a common feature of
dominant parties is their ability to monopolize public resources (Giliomee 1999), it stands to
reason that politicians and voters alike would consider a party’s ability to retain access to those
resources and deliver adequate economic returns before giving said party any measure of rational
legitimacy. In dominant party systems where state-party blurring often occurs, the amount of
rational legitimacy any opposition party can garner is severely limited by the perception that the
dominant party ultimately has the final say on where and how government resources are
allocated. In addition, a dominant party will have had an adequate amount of time in government
to establish fail-safes and institutional supports enabling it to better ride out periods of unrest and
low support, as well as capitalize on positive occurrences that draw in rational legitimacy. For
the LDP these fail-safes often take the form of institutions such as koenkai( non-party support
groups for individual politicians) and factions, which have long been seen as the source of LDP
longevity and tenacity.
Institutions, both formal and informal, are powerful mechanisms fro securing legitimacy.
Because they can be seen as playing both social and political roles, koenkai and factions bridge
the gap between parties and their constituents allowing a voter to more effectively interact with
their government. Scholars generally agree that, especially in the FWPS, vote mobilization
through well-established koenkai, keiretsu (industrial conglomerates, often associated with
certain national politicians), and standing connections to specific interest groups and sectors of
society, has been a powerful source of dominance that maintained the LDP through lean years
(Gaunder 2011, 17-18; Milzzo and Scheiner 2010, 151; Köllner 2006, 252; Krauss and Pekkanen
2010; Christensen 1998). These methods are known as ‘personal vote mobilization’ because they
are based on personal ties. But these ties follow a patron-client model based on self-interest—i.e.
the ‘patrons’ receive votes and support from the ‘clients’ who gain access to the central
government and it’s resources—and the transfer of rational legitimacy.
The transfer of rational legitimacy is based on the self-interests of the voters who assess
a party’s ability to run the government and return with ‘pork’ in the form of policy initiatives. In
order for a voter to asses a party and that party to prove its abilities it must have time in
government and ideally in a majority position, the mechanism for such transfer can be found in
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the formal and informal institutions—koenkai, keiretsu, and factions— that provide clear and
culturally acceptable channels and in through parties alternating time in power. But in the case of
the FPWPS the LDP remained the only dominant party from 1955 until 1993 creating the
perception that they were the responsible for Japan’s economic growth and the only party
capable of running the government. The perception of stability and the availability party
institutions will become a recurring theme through out both post war party systems; often times
this perception will make up for the lack of charismatic legitimacy from the LDP’s image as a
corrupt and unpopular party. However, for a brief period the LDP does experience an increase in
charismatic legitimacy that will become crucial for current politics in Japan.
CHARISMATIC LEGITIMACY & KOIZUMI: 2000-2005
In general political leadership throughout Japan’s modern history “…depend[ed] less on
oratorical skills and charismatic personality than on strong links of personal allegiance and
reputation for loyalty and sincerity” (Hendry 1998, 199). In a time when the average term for a
prime minister was two and a half years, Koizumi held the position for over twice that length of
time. In the post-electoral reform years he is the most well known example of charismatic
legitimacy at work in Japanese politics. His strong and likeable media presence and style of
popular appeal directly to the public is what differentiates him from most other LDP leaders
throughout the first and second post-war party systems. Both before and after Koizumi leaders
gathered support based on their ability to rise through LDP ranks in a very pre-described fashion,
satisfying the needs of traditional legitimacy, as we will see later, and from their ability to
provide ‘pork’ to other politicians and constituents, an example of rational legitimacy. Koizumi’s
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nearly six years in the national spotlight are an abnormality in the LDP but in recent years
charismatic legitimacy has come to play a more vital role in Japanese politics.
Weber (1968) describes charismatic legitimacy as a direct antithesis to rational and
traditional legitimacy because it outside of the every-day rules and routines, and its only basis is
personal charisma and strength and must be constantly provided to the following (22, 51-2).
Charismatic legitimacy is, therefore, a form of popularity based entirely on a party’s ability to
attract voters through the popular appeal of its ideology, the charisma of its leader(s), and/or the
devotion of its followers. Because it is usually tied to a single person or small group, charismatic
legitimacy is the least stable and most difficult of the three forms of legitimacy to share among a
whole party. Often issues of authenticity and succession cause the rapid loss of legitimacy from
the party. Taro Aso is the only LDP prime minister, to date, to openly try to mimic Koizumi’s
style of politics, and it was on his watch when the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was first able
to defeat the LDP in both houses.
According to Köllner (2006) by loosening traditional clientelistic ties, between politicians
and specific industries or economic sectors, Koizumi was able to bring in large amounts of new
voters and restore the LDP’s electoral dominance (251). What has made this prime minister the
center of so much scholarly and public attention was this non-traditional approach to politics.
Unlike previous prime ministers Koizumi appealed to the voters directly; and through snappy
slogans and dramatizing politics he “…was able to capture the imagination of the Japanese
public…” (Köllner 2006, 251). This new power was something Koizumi himself was not afraid
to exercise often. Kaihara (2007) describes what he calls the most exciting postwar political
drama:
The privatization of the postal system was an issue on which Koizumi was ready to stake his political career. On August 8, 2005, … [t]he bills were defeated and Koizumi immediately decided to dissolve the Diet, as he had warned. In an ensuing September general election,
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Koizumi did not nominate those who opposed the bill as the party’s electoral candidates. And he sent “shikyaku” (sniper) candidates to SMD[single-member districts]s where his opponents opted to run as independents. (754)
By asking the public to validate his proposed legislation through a general election, Koizumi
aggressively exercised his position as the source of charismatic legitimacy in the LDP. At its
peak Koizumi’s cabinet enjoyed approval ratings as high as 85% (McMillan 2001, P1).
Besides simple approval ratings and opinion polls, a good measure of wide spread
charismatic legitimacy is spikes in voter participation, particularly those that correlate to spikes
in approval ratings, which can be seen during Koizumi’s term. Japan has always enjoyed
relatively high levels of participation, when compared with other developed democracies, but
these numbers have been steadily decreasing. In 1996 participation hit an all time low at 59.7%;
however, in 2000—when Koizumi became the party leader and therefore was guaranteed the
prime minister-ship should the LDP win the majority—participation rose to 62.5%, and hit
67.5% for the infamous 2005 general election (MIC 2008a). However, charismatic legitimacy is
unstable. After Koizumi retired public support for his successors’ cabinets continued to fall,
culminating in the LDP’s landslide defeat in the 2009 lower house general election (Gaunder
2011, 22), and voter turnout was back down to 58.6% by 2008 (Masuyama 2008, 1030).
Kabashima and Imai (2002) found that compared with results from a similar survey conducted in
the late 70’s at Hokkaido University, voter evaluation of a party leader did have an increased
effect on the out come of the 2000 election. This correlation was, however, significant only in
the proportional representation districts ad for unaffiliated voters. In addition, evaluations of
Prime Minister Mori—Koizumi’s incredibly unpopular predecessor who became prime minister
by default when Prime Minister Obuchi suffered a stroke—were shown to have had little or no
impact in the single-seat constituencies (Kabashima and Imai 2002, 91) indicating the continued
importance of more traditional politics.
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While Koizumi’s term in office is an interesting period in LDP history it illustrates two
very important characteristics of Charismatic legitimacy. First, due to its transient nature
charismatic legitimacy is inherently unstable. It is generally connected to the charisma of a single
leader or small group and based on popular appeal, which is by nature momentary and fleeting.
This instability leads to issues of authenticity when a successor must take over as we saw when
Prime Minister Aso attempted to use Koizumi’s style of political leadership right after his
retirement. Though in recent years Japanese politics has shown a shift towards a reliance on
charismatic legitimacy the LDP though the majority relied on more stable for such as rational
legitimacy and in particular traditional legitimacy to sustain it through its 60 years of political
dominance. I posit that despite these obstacles the LDP was able to retain a great deal of
legitimacy from the electorate, in part because of the existence of factions13. A party that is able
to gather and retain high levels of rational, charismatic, and traditional legitimacy will stay in
power.
FACTIONS & TRADITIONAL LEGITIMACY IN THE SECOND POST-WAR PARTY SYSTEM
At the outset of the discussion of legitimacies basic principles and assumptions was a
quote from Levite and Tarrow’s(1983) description of elites as an important foundation for any
party in securing legitimacy; two points of that description are returned to here: social bases and
monopoly over cultural understanding (297). Traditional legitimacy is based on a party’s
understanding of societal norms, and the electorate’s acceptance of the manner in which the
Such a model appears to work for Japan, given the persistence of personal ties, the significance of the group in an individual’s life, and the ability of the group to enforce conformity among its members. Flanagan argues that Japanese voting behavior can be understood in terms of such traditional attitudes as the recommendation system (sub-sensei), feelings of obligation (giri), local district consciousness (jimoto), and supporter organizations (koenkai). (Hrebenar 2000, 19)
Because japans society emphasizes the ‘group’ and speaking through eh group, voter behavior in
Japan has a dissociative and passive quality. Rather than individuals where everyone person can
change the world, the emphasis is put on finding representative groups with knowledge and
connections to make relevant decisions and accurately represent your needs. For traditional
legitimacy in Japan this means that is not an individual him/herself that holds any real power, but
rather the representation of power inherent in the office or position they occupy. Weber (1968)
describes this as a:
…case of traditional authority, [where] obedience is owed to the person of the chief who occupies the traditionally sanctioned position of authority and who is (within its sphere) bound by tradition. But here obligation of obedience is…a matter of personal loyalty within the area of accustomed obligations. (46)
In other words, it is not a person’s popularity, experience, or ability but the fact that they are
above you in the hierarchy that gives them power and respect. Anthropologists have long
stressed the importance of hierarchy to any society; in Japan its defining characteristics are age
and deference to seniority (Hendry 1998, 77). In 1973 the NHK Public Opinion Institute held a
series of polls to identify the value orientation of Japanese citizens. When asked, “What is the
most desirable form of political behavior for the general public?” 63% of respondents answered
“We should select and excellent politician and entrust political affairs to him”; to which the
researchers concluded that the Japanese concept of political participation is limited to voting
which is viewed more as a general social behavior (Hrebenar 2000, 18, 20). The same poll has
been conducted periodically since then and researchers found that not only has the overall sense
of political efficacy been declining but that views on participation, effective vs. ineffective, that
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respondent formed during their youth tend to remain unchanged throughout their life (Kono,
Takahashi, Hara 2010, 30). Since Japanese voters have a relatively one-dimensional
understanding of political participation, a party’s ability to gather traditional legitimacy is
predicated on its ability to work through proper channels as approved by society—i.e. using
connections to various groups/organizations—and respect the social structures and norms—i.e.
comprehension of seniority/hierarchy. Rather than attempting to create ‘relationships’ with
voters directly the LDP has historically relied on the endorsements of smaller political actors,
interest groups, and support organizations to mobilize votes during general elections. This
system mirrors the societal norms found everywhere in Japan.
Nakane Chie is well known for her model of Japanese society, which has its roots in the
‘family system’. This model is recreated in figure 3.
The most basic unit of the family, according to Nakane, is the relationship between B and D-E,
but it is repeated at every level of the model. The family unit was comprised of a head who was
the ultimate authority—A—but delineated certain responsibilities and tasks to other members—
B & C—who were organized hierarchically with distinction un member levels based on age, sex,
and expectation of permanency in the house (Hendry 1998, 24-5). The relationship between
members of the same strata have an underlying egalitarianism—F & G and B & C—and are in
many ways independent of each other with the only connection being a mutual superior. In this
system “Benevolence from a person in a superior role is to be reciprocated with deference and
loyalty form a partner in an inferior role” (Hendry 1998, 85) with the understanding that the
inferior will one day move up and take the superior’s place when the superior is also promoted.
The classic example of the family unit in Japanese civil society is the company, particularly in
the early post-war era, with informally ranked rival groups within firms, comprised of
individuals within a fixed hierarchy (Hendry 1989, 85). But this structure can be seen in both
rural and urban neighborhood organizations, yakuza—Japanese mafia/gangs—groups, and the
interaction between factions and voters, the focus of this section.
Neighborhood organization
Hendry (1998) describes neighborly interactions in rural communities as being primarily
between households or representatives of households rather than individuals, “…and people tend
to refer to one another as ‘the grandmother of House x’, or ‘ the father of House y’, and so
on”(60) which correspond to the lowest family units of Nakane’s model. For most village
meetings and communal activities a representative from each household was the only person
required to participate, and all communication between the village and city hall was through the
village head (Hendry 1989, 60-2). In more apparent terms, the family members—D&E and
F&G—are represented at the village meetings by the head of the family—B and C—who then
entrust the village head—A—to represent them at the district level and so on and so forth. An
anthropological study of a Tokyo neighborhood found that not only do the structures and
traditions associated with the village a feature of neighborhood organizations, but these traditions
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were found in women’s and senior citizens’ groups, PTA’s, schools, volunteer fire brigades, and
a variety of special interest clubs (Hendry 1998, 68-70).
Yakuza groups
Iwai(1966) identifies the strong adherence to these traditional structures and norms as the
common characteristic between delinquent groups and fully-fledged Yakuza(Japanese mob)
organizations(204). Adelstein(2010) describes yakuza groups as pyramids with three distinct
tiers(67).
Young recruits pledge their allegiance to the oyabun(a father figure, of sorts), and the oyabun of the third tier reports to an oyabun above him, and so on. Alliances are made in ritual ceremonies, with yakuza paring off as equals(kyodai or brothers) or in teacher and disciple relationships.(Adelstein 2010, 67)
These smaller local factions are each managed by a corporate board, which controls the position
and title of every member and the status of each individual factions; the board chair is the most
powerful person in the organization and usually doubles as the head. For Iwai the superior-
inferior relationships and strict hierarchy is the core of these groups. Matters of succession,
which are informed by this hierarchy, are vital for the survival of the group; “…only those who
have shown complete loyalty to the group and devotion to their [leader] will be considered
eligible”(Iwai 1966, 206). In the yakuza structure ‘A’ is the board chair, ‘B’ and ‘C’
representatives for the corporate board, and ‘D’ through ‘G’ are the various local factions which
have no direct knowledge or interactions with each other except through their representatives. To
this model we can also add the idea that no all factions and board members are equal. Depending
on the number of local factions they have under their command and the size of those factions,
certain board members will stand a better change of succeeding to the ‘A’ position when it is
vacated.
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This type of situation is exactly what is seen in factions. Where ‘A’ is the LDP’s party
presidency and ultimately the prime minister’s office when the party is in power. As with the
Yakuza groups succession is also a core issue at all levels of a faction, but even more so for the
faction leaders, who often begin grooming a successor well before they even run for the party
presidency. Succession has more recently come into play in koenkai due to the 1994 redistricting,
and an increase in the number of hereditary politicians that inherit the support groups of a father
or husband. What is important here and in both the yakuza and neighborhood organizations is not
so much who the successor is or how they got their but, the positions themselves. In all of the
previous examples, and as we will see later in the interactions between factions, koenkai, and
voters, those towards the bottom of the pyramid are only connect through their loyalty to a
superior, and communication between levels is carried out through representatives. These
channels of communications like the offices/positions are important because it does not matter
who holds them the organizations and still function and interact with each other as long as the
ones holding the office know the internal hierarchy and structure of each and therefore who
should contact who and how. It is precisely the prevalence of this structure that is easily
recognized by politicians and voters alike that allows traditional legitimacy to be transferred and
was the key to LDP success in the SPWPS.
The beginning of the Second Post-war Party System
Though discussions of Koizumi’s term in office took us well into to the SPWPS, to better
give a sense of the context that made traditional legitimacy so important to the LDP, a reminder
of the events that started the SPWPS—an internal split within the LDP and an overhaul of
Japan’s electoral system—is needed. Although ultimately it was Ozawa Hata and his faction—
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the largest in the LDP—leaving to form an eight-party coalition government that toppled the
LDP in the 1993 elections, in 1994 after the new reforms took over both LDP and other parties
experienced even greater fragmentation as individual politicians and whole factions left to create
their own parties. The framers of the reform packages had hoped to create an electoral system
and political landscape that would not only encourage the emergence of a two-party system but
to ensure the fall of the LDP as the only dominant party. First, and probably the most infamous
reform package, was a complete renovate of Japan’s electoral system. The lower house,
comprising of 500 members is now elected from 300 single-member districts and 200
proportional representation districts using party lists. By splitting the seats the framers hoped to
encourage the consolidations of left and right wing parties behind single candidates in the single-
member districts and facilitate the emergence of new parties in the proportional representation
districts. This was supported by a section of the reforms on public funding which would give
parties public subsidies based on the percentage of votes received in a national election.
However, the reform that had the greatest impact on LDP factions, and caused the majority of
they chaos within and between parties, almost negligible. It created a Redistricting Committee
tasked with redrawing the electoral constituencies, primarily for the 300 single-member districts.
But, separated most politicians from their koenkai and other support bases and wreaked havoc
with the faction’s logistics. Now instead of three or four members of different factions fighting
for six seats, if parts of two or more districts were combined there were six or more politicians
from a variety of factions plus the members of other parties fighting for one seat.
Before beginning any discussion of factions in the LDP it is important to note that they
are not informal groups of politicians, but highly organized and disciplined assemblies (Bettcher
2005; Köllner 2004; Park 2001). Throughout most of the LDP’s history defection or switching
35
factions was rare “Once a politician was elected and joined a faction, his fate was usually tied to
the same faction until he died or retired.”(Bettcher 2005, 345). According to Park (2001) factions
develop strong group identities through mutual support and “…the norms shared by its
members”(442); at the faction general meetings, held weekly from noon to 1:00 p.m. on
Thursdays, coinciding with the opening of Main Diet sessions to maximize attendance, members
share information and negotiate endorsements to run in specific districts versus on the party list
strengthening group unity and confidence. In figure four we can see a version of Nakane’s model
for Japanese society that has been filled in with the various LDP positions and key support
post-reform elections these structures continued to lend the LDP a sense of stability and
capableness. Köllner (2004) quotes self-proclaimed ‘electoral junkie’ Steven R. Reed:
…factions have become part of the cultural repertoire of politics in Japan. People know how to organize and run a faction and they will utilize this knowledge when facing analogous problems under new circumstances. Factions will evolve in new directions in the changed environment but will not disappear(96).
Factions, especially in the immediate post reform years played a crucial role not just
institutionally, gathering votes and support, but culturally by lending stability and some means of
organization to the chaos of Japanese politics. By mimicking traditional hierarchical structures
both within and outside of the party organ the LDP showed a stronger united front than the
opposition, which was highly fragmented and undisciplined. While note to the degree of
immediate post-reform years, the LDP still showed electoral dominance through absolute
number of votes, and was able to win over 50% of the seats in the House of Representatives from
1996-2005(MIC 2008e).
Figure7VotespolledperpoliticalpartySource:MIC2008
0
20000000
40000000
60000000
80000000
100000000
120000000
140000000
160000000
1996 2000 2003 2005
Totalnumberofvotespolled
LDP
2ndrunnerup
3rdrunnerup
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As we can see in figure 7 while the LDP still remains unable to consistently gather a true
majority, in terms of number of votes, its dominance has remained clear through a majority of
the SPWPS, and has only recently been challenged by a single party—the DPJ. Such dominance
was made possible through LDP’s ability to effectively gather rational and traditional legitimacy
throughout their long run in power, and charismatic legitimacy during Prime Minister Koizumi’s
term in office. Through a lack of alternation or exchange of power between parties and constant
squabbling and infighting of smaller parties, the image that the LDP was the only party capable
of running the government. As rational legitimacy is passed on self-interests and the assessment
of how effectively a party can deliver policies that directly benefit their constituents the apparent
capabilities and resources available to a party create the basis for the transfer of legitimacy. The
institutions and control they were able to exercise over national resources, which gained them the
continued loyalty of many subnational politicians and various interests groups, furthered the
transfer of rational legitimacy to the LDP and supported their capable image. Likewise
traditional legitimacy is a measure of a party’s ability to recognize and utilize social norms and
structures to appear more familiar and acceptable. As I have shown within the LDP factions are
important agents for the transfer of traditional legitimacy. These highly organized groups of
politicians use strict hierarchies and are led by individual senior politicians; movement through
the ranks of a faction is quite straightforward and is based on assumptions of strict loyalty and
deference to immediate superiors. The hierarchy utilizes Nakane’s structure of Japanese society,
which is based on the idea of a large formal family, which, particularly in the FPWPS, could be
seen in most sectors of Japanese life. Asserting that when assessing parties voters look for
recognizable and familiar characteristics that they can easily identify with. Factions provide clear
hierarchies that not only allow voters to distinguish the lines of power within the LDP, adding to
41
the perception of the party as stable, but by mirroring social conventions related to seniority and
hierarchy found throughout Japanese society, factions lent a sense of familiarity for the voters.
Rational and traditional legitimacy have been powerful features of the Japanese politics well
before even the birth of the LDP and it is not until quite recently that charismatic legitimacy has
begun to play a more significant role. Charismatic legitimacy, which is based of the popular
cultural, religious, or moral appeal of a party’s ideology generally stems from a single party
leader with notable oratory and social skills and is therefore highly unstable. With in the LDP the
most common example of charismatic force was Prime Minister Koizumi; but recently
opposition parties, most notably the DPJ, have begun to utilize charismatic and media savvy
politicians to gain legitimacy. Legitimacy—rational, charismatic, and traditional—is not only a
useful measure of a party’s past political success but, due to its basis in distinctive cultural traits
of a given society, one could in theory use legitimacy to predict the success or failure of new
parties. Tracing the flow of legitimacy in past party systems, then comparing the parties and the
societies in which said parties are based has strong implications for single-dominant party
systems, insofar as they are a supposed anomaly in the democratic world.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
In 2008 the LDP won 305 of the 500 lower house seats, yet with in a year this number
plummeted to 119 and the DPJ took control of both houses with a startling majority (Masuyama
2009; 2010). After nearly sixteen years the aggressive reforms instituted by a fleeting coalition
government, finally seemed to be taking effect. Not only was the monolithic LDP out of the seat
of power, replaced by the relatively young Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), but also non-DPJ
42
opposition parties were on average receiving seats numbering in the single digits indicating the
onset of a true two-party system. Scholars and politicians had been predicting that by eliminating
the multimember districts and creating more seats elected from the party lists by proportional
representation, these reforms would create incentives fro smaller parties to combine and either
create two new catchall-parties or at least a single party that could challenge the LDP on fairer
grounds. Which is exactly what happened. In 2009 the DPJ, conglomeration of smaller parties
that had come together, took over both houses and the executive. Fast-forward to 2012; the DPJ
is still in control of the government with the LDP running a close second, and smaller opposition
parties quickly loosing more and more seats, yet current scholarship would indicate an overall
pessimistic bent. Rosenbluth (2011) states, “the DPJ’s “year in mishaps” illustrates the rich
layering of inter- and intra- party competition in Japan” which some fear might inevitable lead to
a renewal of LDP dominance (41-2). But, as the LDP has proved over and over again, a rocky
year in power doesn’t necessarily signal the death of a party. The transfer of legitimacy is a
relatively slow process that speaks to the strength of Japan’s political processes. While a more
in-depth study is necessary to determine the actual composition of the current party system,
uncertainties about prolonged DPJ dominance would seems to lie in a single undeniable fact
“The Japanese electorate had voted against the LDP on August 30, 2009, more than it had voted
for the DPJ”(Rosenbluth 2011, 49). In an era of global recession and in the aftermath of the
largest earthquake Japan has ever experienced the future is unsure. But recent scholarship into
the internal structure of the DPJ, though a cause of much concern to Political Science, is of
interest to the future of this paper.
In 2004 Patrick Köllner wrote an article comparing the factional structures of the DPJ and
LDP; he found a startling number of similarities between the two parties and was able attribute
43
every major difference to the DPJ’s youth and lack of time in government. LDP faction have had
decades to become deeply institutionalized in both the party and political sphere, this is a fact
recognized by most scholars of Japanese Politics. Due to the comparative youth and inexperience
of most DPJ politicians, factions tend to focus on information sharing and “conveying the feeling
of belonging to a group of like minded politicians”, but two highly organized factions are
moving to the foreground (Köllner 2004, 100). The Yuai kurabu faction mimics LDP factions
quite closely. It has its own office that keeps membership records, regular weekly meetings
(usually once a week), and internal regulations. The chairman leads the faction while the actual
management is taken care of by the faction’s general affairs manager (Köllner 2004, 99). Also
like the young LDP, DPJ factions are a result of the different parties that merged in 1996, and as
such factional identity is close related to party roots (Köllner 2004, 96). For many scholars these
structural similarities are cause for great concern, and they fear that this factionalism, rather than
creating safe channels for policy diversity and disagreement, will simply cause infighting and
tear the DPJ apart. However I must ask, “If the LDP survived such issues then why not the
DPJ” ?
As long as the party continues to vote as a cohesive whole to pass legislature, utilize their
popular position as the ‘new’ government of change in Japan, utilize their position as the ‘new’
government of change, and make use of certain political traditions to give voters straightforward
channels for participation, the future of gathering legitimacy from the Japanese public looks
bright. Because the transfer of legitimacy, especially rational and traditional, is so intrinsically
tied to the amount of time a party has spent in government, the DPJ should not be dismissed or
criticized after a mere two years in power. It took over a decade for the reforms instituted in
1994 to bear significant change. Thomas Carlyle Said “Democracy is cumbersome, slow and
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inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will
prevail” which should be a lesson in patience to us all.
45
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