Seitokan Ido to Seito Shisutemu (Party Switching and Party Systems)

Abstract

Politics in Japan have lurched through one major change after another since the 1990s. The political arrangement known as the ‘1955 system’ that made Japan the embodiment of political stability has been dismantled and in its absence Japanese politics have become synonymous with volatility. Explaining this shift from order to entropy has been a chief concern of scholars of Japanese politics, who have tended to focus on how well, or poorly, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) managed to retain its vote winning edge over opposition parties. Saito (2010) is a recent example of this line of research on the structure of competition between political parties or party voting structures. The book reviewed here also grapples with the recent turmoil in Japanese politics but takes a considerably different approach. The question Yamamoto seeks to answer is what factors account for the scale of political realignment (seikai saihen) in Japan since 1993 (p. 10)? To study political realignment is to examine how politicians bond and detach or the ‘cohesive force of political parties’ (p. 185). Instead of focusing on interparty competition, Yamamoto scrutinizes the political mechanisms at work within parties.