The LDP: Return to Dominance? Or a Golden Age Built on Sand?

Abstract

The results of the 2014 election cemented both Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s hold on power and the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) position as the dominant political party operating in Japan — and by a huge margin.1 It made for the third LDP victory at the polls in three years, bookending the 2013 House of Councillors (HC) election with two House of Representatives (HR) wins in 2012 and 2014. Now, the LDP is in the best position it has been in the past two decades (the only possible contender being 2005–2007, after Prime Minister Jun’ichro Koizumi’s stunning 2005 HR win and before a first-term Abe led the LDP to defeat in the 2007 HC election). The party enjoys a huge majority in the HR, controls the HC (with Komeito), and is relatively untroubled by factional strife or leadership rivalry, or indeed by internal disputes over power or policy. The weakness and division of the opposition are not necessarily going to last, and floating voters today are less reliable than the organized vote of the 1980s, but at this point the LDP looks to have cleared the field of its rivals in a manner reminiscent of the 1980s glory days of LDP hegemony.2 A good measure of this is that we feel relatively sure that the LDP will win the next HR election — whenever that is. A lot can happen in politics in four years, but the LDP looks more likely to win the next election than it has in the immediate aftermath of any election since perhaps 1986.