Party Politics in Japan

Simon’s World, one of our top referrers (thanks, Simon!), had this to say after linking to my post on Koizumi’s victory and the return of the incumbent LDP to power:

The irony is the poor performance of the DPJ opposition will create another virtual monopoly in Japanese politics – a loss for democracy and for the competition in ideas that has driven Japan to a point of reform.

A valid point, but the alleged loss for democracy is a hard case to make. Japan’s opposition has long been pathetic. When the Socialist Party of Japan (JSP) took power at the head of a coalition government in 1994, they ran a terrible government with no direction that floundered for a few years before the people grugingly returned the LDP to power.

Similarly, the DPJ was not an effective alternative to the LDP. The party was a motley crew of anti-LDP politicians with no common ground beyond their opposition to the incument government. This has worked in some countries in the past, but not when the composition ranges from free market radicals to far Left critics to boring moderate centrists to right-wing hardliners. The DPJ only talked about “changing the administration.” No one had any idea what the government would look like. And with the politicians who made up the party, any administration would have been a discombobulated disaster if it came to power.

In the West, many people support opposition parties because they are dissatisfied with the incumbent party. In Japan, I long heard many people say the opposite: “I would back the DPJ, but I have no idea where they stand or what they would do if they took power, so I support the LDP…”

Remember that Koizumi’s crushing victory is compounded by the fact that it all began with him expelling no fewer than 30 members of his own party, and replacing many of the old politicians with reform-minded youngsters. The LDP will, for the forseeable future, be a party of center-right reformists with a mild nationalist streak. Koizumi is expected to push through an agenda to clean up Japan’s appalling public sector. But this shift is not a permanent entrenchment of LDP power, and the rebuke to the opposition has taught the opposition that they can’t get away with vague promises to “change Japan by changing the party in power.” In the long term, this is welcome news for Japanese democracy: prune the orchard and the best trees survive.