Explaining Opposition Failure in Japan: Institutions, Party Fragmentation, and the Rural-Urban Divide

Abstract

Japan’s democracy poses a unique question that scholars have been struggling to answer. Japan is a democratic country, and yet the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled the country almost continuously since 1955, despite being unpopular among the Japanese public. The opposition, except in 1993 and 2009, has never mounted a credible challenge against the LDP and has failed to be electorally competitive. This pattern of democracy, with an unpopular dominant party and almost no opposition, is an anomaly within contemporary democratic states. Our report, then, addresses the question: why does the opposition continue to lose in Japan? We answer this question in three different sections: 1) overview of key institutions: electoral system and fiscal centralization, 2) op-down party organization and party fragmentation, and 3) clientelism and LDP popularity.