Party System Institutionalization in Japan

Abstract

Introduction The literature on party systems is composed of two related strands. Studies of emerging democracies typically ask whether the party system is institutionalized : are parties the primary legislative and electoral actors, with deep social roots and routinized patterns of interaction? Those of established democracies, on the other hand, are more concerned with whether the party system is in equilibrium : given status quo socioeconomic and political institutions, are the number of parties and ideological cleavages stable? As this volume’s editors propose, these two approaches are based on distinct conceptions about the role of parties in democracy. In a celebrated quote, Schattschneider (1942: 1) writes, “Political parties created modern democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties.” In new democracies, parties are seen as organizations whose existence – before, during, and after democratization – is crucial but fragile. Scholars of established democracies, by contrast, assume that parties are here to stay and focus instead on more granular distinctions in the character of the party system. My goal in this chapter is to integrate these two literatures through the lens of party system institutionalization in Japan. Japan has had the longest history of party politics in Asia, but its functions and salience have varied over time. Parties emerged during the autocratic Meiji period, and they played a valuable role in political liberalization. Despite being derailed by military governments during World War II, parties quickly became a focal point of legislative politics during and after the U.S. occupation. They took on many of the organizational characteristics of their prewar predecessors, and the primary partisan cleavage in Japan, interregional fiscal redistribution, retained its salience throughout. In this sense, the Japanese party system has been institutionalized for a long period of time: legislative politics – both in the autocratic and democratic periods – was the province of political parties that represented urban versus rural socioeconomic divisions in society.