Curzon,

Angel’s asserting that the Moriya scandal—in addition to its direct affect of making the Indian Ocean refueling mission much more difficult to restart—is going to have an indirect affect is more substantial than it might seem. Like he says, the historical evidence implies that scandals like this don’t matter in the long run. To publically assert otherwise is commonplace for journalists—who are eventually proven wrong—and rare for academics. His argument is that the 1994 reformed changed the electoral institutions in such a way that scandals matter now.

During the Koizumi years it looked like Angel was right. The new LDP leadership makes one wonder, though. The guy in charge of elections, Makoto Koga, is about as old-school LDP as they come. We’ll see in the next election whether Angel is right (if the LDP loses big) or if he is wrong (if Koga engineers a victory).