Japan's New Electoral System: Has Anything Changed?

Abstract

When the old order of successive Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governments and highly predictable elections fell apart at the end of 1992, an unlikely coalition of opposition parties filled the void. Its components ranged from three new splinter conservative parties, virtually indistinguishable in lineage and policy from the LDP, to their erstwhile arch enemy, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), with substantial numerical support from the centrist (or, perhaps more accurately, amorphous) Komeito, and the moderate Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). Apart from political opportunism-the chance to advance their own political fortunes while jumping on the now-minority LDP-the glue that held this non-too-solid structure together was commitment to political reform. The new coalition that came into being following the July 1993 general election was pledged to respond to electorate demand to stem the seemingly endless tide of major scandal. This was what had catalyzed the successive mass LDP defections in the first instance, but despite the atmospherics, fanned by the media and the hopes of the man-inthe street, logic, if nothing else, preordained the new coalition's failure. For a few shining Camelot hours, high hopes were placed in Hosokawa Morihiro, the young, charismatic, idealistic leader chosen as the new prime minister. Commentators in Japan and abroad waxed eloquent about a turning point in Japanese politics, the outset of what would rapidly develop into a two-party system, and prospects for across-the-board deregulation and administrative reform. None of this transpired, but before Hosokawa, hoisted on the petard of his own idealism, hastily resigned when confronted by a minor scandal, he was able to chalk up one major piece of legislation: a new lower house electoral system, the first such major reform since right after