The LDP in Transition? Mass Membership Participation in Party Leadership Selection

Abstract

A CLEAN REVERSAL and complete surprise were among the phrases commonly employed by the press in describing Masayoshi Ohira's upset victory late in the fall of 1978 over incumbent Takeo Fukuda in the first mass-membership primary for the biennial election of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's president and premierdesignate. Those phrases were seemingly quite appropriate for two reasons: no incumbent LDP leader had ever lost a bid for reelection, and Fukuda had been viewed by the press and the population alike as a sure victor in the primary. The margin of party membership vote between him and Ohira was so conspicuous that Fukuda immediately announced his withdrawal from the selection by the party's parliamentary membership between the two top primary-vote winners. Fukuda's voluntary forfeiture of his candidacy for the final stage of the new leadership selection procedure automatically elevated Ohira to the presidency of the party and, after the formality of parliamentary vote in the LDPcontrolled Diet, the premiership of the nation. Direct participation of rank-and-file members (numbering 1.5 million at the time) in the selection of party leadership was indeed epochal in the history of Japanese party politics. Prior to the fall 1978 event, LDP presidents had always been chosen by the party's parliamentary members numbering around 400 (plus 47 prefectural delegates) gathered at a national party convention or, in the case of an emergency, such as the death or resignation of an incumbent, through informal and secretive negotiations among most senior party leaders. Mass members had no voice whatsoever in the matter. The LDP was indeed a party of notables under the firm control of its MPs, and selection of its leaders