Political Dynamics Of Japan And Japan - 1311 Words

Topic #11: Political Dynamics of Japan The party politics of Japan, which is characterized by the dominance of the LDP close to â€Å"One-and-a-half Party System,† has two peculiar aspects. First, none of the parties, including the LDP, is truly mass political movements. Even the LDP, Japan’s largest party, has a membership of one million, slightly more than 1% of the population. Second, all major parties, due to their factional intra-party politics, are unstable and internally disunited. Japan’s â€Å"1.5 Party System† began with the merger between two conservative parties, the Liberal Party and Democratic Party and continued until 1993. Fully understand the dominance of the LDP over the Japanese politics, which sets Japan apart from Western†¦show more content†¦Also, there are extreme left and right wingers who fail to gain a broad support. The bond between zaikai and the LDP politicians has remained strong throughout 60 years of the party history. All of main economic federations such as Keidanren and Nikkeiren that represent zaikai interests regularly present their position papers to LDP PMs and MPs, who reflect zaikai interests in their policy decisions. Also, zaikai leaders directly influence government policies through their participation in deliberation councils, half-public, half-private organizations set up by ministries. In addition, zaikai leaders form personal connections to LDP politicians through having them as their consultants with high payrolls or giving financial supports through koenkai, or association of supporters. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of LDP dominance from 1993 to 1996. The first factor is the side effects from PM Takeo Miki’s intra-party reform in 1977. In order to clean up factions within the party, make the party less dependent on zakai and make party leadership more democratic, Miki introduced primary system. The first primary election held in 1978 showed that primary elections would not reduce the party’s dependence on zaikai but actually increase it, since candidates had to ‘buy off’ voters and pay their registration fee instead. Also, primary elections led to breakdown of party solidary and led to splintering of the LDP. Secondly, demographic shifts also