Passive Revolution in Japan: The Restoration of Hegemony under Abe?

Abstract

This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō from 2012 to 2020. It sees the high degree of political stability that Abe achieved as a contrast to the preceding two decades of Japanese politics and asks what accounts for Abe’s success in restoring Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) dominance in an era of enduring economic and social crisis. The article argues that Abe executed a strategy of passive revolution that incorporated two “faces”: an “outward” face oriented around consent and an “inward” face rooted in coercion. The former involved economic policies (in particular “Abenomics”) designed to appear capable of resolving chronic economic stagnation, growing inequality and other social and economic problems, restoring popular support for the LDP without undermining conditions for capital accumulation or empowering subaltern classes. In contrast, the latter involved various low-profile security and administrative policies that enabled the Abe government to dramatically increase its power while silencing or disarming potential rivals and critics. The article sees this two-sided strategy of passive revolution as effective in restoring LDP dominance but unlikely to prove the basis for a more expansive hegemony or a resolution to Japan’s organic crisis.