Liberal Democratic Party Research Articles

Back to the Past: Analysis of the Amendments Regarding Emperor and the National Symbols in the LDP 2012 Constitutional Draft

AbstractSince the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan's (LDP) return to power in late 2012, there has been on-going discussions regarding the possibility of revising the Japanese constitution. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has made numerous remarks regarding his intention to implement significant changes. Understandably, amendments to the controversial Article 9 as well as to the Article 96 have become the main points of interests for both journalists and scholars. Judging by the LDP's constitutional draft from 2012 there are other significant changes that the ruling party would like to implement. This article mainly analyses the proposed amendments regarding the position and significance of the emperor, national flag, and anthem, as well as separation of the state and religion. Based on textual analysis of the draft and analysis of the remarks made by Abe Shinzō regarding changing the constitution, this paper argues that, if implemented, the proposed changes would symbolically link contemporary Japan with its pre-1945 past. Furthermore, both the LDP's constitutional draft and leading politicians’ comments regarding the necessity of those amendments fit into a much broader narrative regarding Japan's historical past, and signify another attempt to reconstruct collective memory of both the Pacific War and occupation years.

Taiwan in 2016

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party won decisive victories in the Legislative Yuan and presidential elections. Despite these victories, 2016 proved to be a difficult year for Taiwan’s new ruling party. As 2016 drew to a close, polls showed that most of Taiwan’s population disapproved of Tsai Ing-wen’s performance as president.

A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014

ABSTRACTIn 2014, the largest reform since the US postwar occupation was enacted in Japanese civil service. It was designed as the final step of the two-decade-long effort to restructure the “1955 System,” that is, the politico-administrative system developed under the Liberal Democratic Party’s hegemony. Its purpose was to remold Japan’s independent-minded bureaucrats into the elected officials’ obedient servants. Unfortunately, the reform is unlikely to deliver expected results. The failure’s major reason concerns the fact that Japanese bureaucracy’s unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically discourages elected officials to use their major reining tool against it, namely, appointive power.

Cross-Strait Relations in the Aftermath of Taiwan’s 2016 Elections

The 2016 elections in Taiwan resulted in a landslide victory for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). It not only won the presidency but also an outright majority in the Legislative Yuan. It is now in full control of the government. An intriguing question is how the DPP government under President Tsai Ing-wen will deal with China which has warned Taiwan time and again that it would attack Taiwan if the latter declares de jure independence. The current study investigates the possible move that may be considered by the Tsai Ing-wen government, that will not irritate its own constituents on the island, and at the same time will not escalate the tension across the Taiwan Strait. Whether Tsai’s policy is tenable given the domestic and international constraints remains to be seen.

A New Era in Taiwan Politics and its Implications

Taiwan faces an uncertain future after the electoral victory of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the January 2016 elections. The election results, which reflected growing pro-independence sentiments amongst a younger generation of Taiwanese, have set Taiwan on a collision course with China, which is increasingly impatient for reunification to occur. The new US president, Donald Trump, has also added to the tensions by openly questioning the “One China” policy. Another Taiwan Strait crisis today would be fraught with immense risks due to China's dramatic economic and military rise which has altered the regional power balance. Given the increasingly tense China-US strategic rivalry, the US is also not likely to sit idly by should China attack Taiwan. However, the key player in resolving the Taiwan problem is China. For various reasons, it is in fact in China's interest to be patient with the current situation, and maintain the status quo for the immediate and medium-term future, while it constructs a new strategy that could win over the people of Taiwan, since true reunification can only occur if the people on Taiwan willingly accept it.

Maiden Martyr for "New Japan": The 1960 Ampo and the Rhetoric of the Other Michiko

Maiden Martyr for "New Japan":The 1960 Ampo and the Rhetoric of the Other Michiko Hiroko Hirakawa (bio) During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shōda Michiko, the commoner who married Prince Akihito in 1959, gained iconographic status in the media (Bardsley 2002). Around the same time, another Japanese woman who happened to have the same given name attracted as much if not more attention. Her name was Kanba Michiko. A Tokyo University coed and Zengakuren activist,1 Kanba was killed in a violent confrontation between Ampo protesters and the police in June 1960. This essay examines the rhetoric surrounding Kanba Michiko and her death that appeared in a popular weekly magazine, Shūkan Asahi (Asahi Weekly). I describe how Shūkan Asahi portrayed the Ampo struggle as a polarized opposition of old, diehard fascism pitted against a newly emerging democratic force, with the fascist camp having the upper hand until the sacrificial death of a maiden martyr. As I hope to show, this clearcut depiction inevitably positioned the middle-class nuclear family as the critical element in the Ampo protests. Moreover, as I will argue, by positing the death of the maiden as a case of thwarted motherhood, Shūkan Asahi limited the definition of women's political activism to forms of middle-class motherhood. In this sense Shūkan Asahi's portrait of Kanba Michiko not only echoed the prewar ideology of a nonpolitical "good wife, wise mother" (ryōsai kenbō) but reflected and foretold the rise of "housewife feminism" in postwar Japanese society as well. [End Page 12] Ampo, Gender, and the Media in 1960 In February 1960, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presented a bill to renew the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Nichibei Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku, abbreviated in Japanese as Ampo) to the House of Representatives for approval. The Ampo bill quickly met with fierce opposition from the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) and Japanese Communist Party (JCP), both of which saw the Ampo treaty as creating the potential for Japan's remilitarization and as imposing restrictions on the nation's sovereignty. Consequently, debate on the bill soon reached an impasse. Finally, when only one week in May remained before the end of the session, the LDP took desperate measures to secure passage of the bill, using police force to push it through the House on May 19. This aggressive action outraged millions of Japanese, fueling massive anti-government demonstrations and rallies across the nation. This volatility, in turn, resulted in cancellation of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's visit to Japan, which subsequently forced Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke to resign. Despite the scale and vehemence of the protests and Kishi's resignation, the treaty went into effect in June 1960. Yet to this day, the 1960 Ampo turmoil often serves as a key reference point in narrating postwar Japanese history. What is it about this event that continues to exert such power over the collective psyche? Unlike most studies to date, which approach the Ampo controversy as party politics, Wesley Sasaki-Uemura addresses the question of its direct impact on public and personal memory. He characterizes the Ampo protests as "a struggle over the form Japanese democracy would take rather than a critique of international relations" (Sasaki-Uemura 2001, 3). Examining civic groups involved in the Ampo dissent, Sasaki-Uemura details how they perceived themselves "as small grassroots groups with fluid organization and fluctuating memberships" (7). His analysis sheds light on these movements' impact on the ensuing oppositional praxes in Japanese society. Sasaki-Uemura identifies four factors as crucial to explaining the large-scale mobilization of people involved in the Ampo struggle: 1. Memories of World War II were still a palpable presence in the minds of most people, who remained apprehensive about the possible return to wartime conditions; 2. Many of those who participated in the Ampo movements had been initiated into political activism through various bunka sākuru (cultural circles) active in the 1950s—small, spontaneous groups that gathered for cultural activities organized at people's workplaces or residences; 3. Out of the actual practices in the circle movements and contemporary debates among the leftist intellectuals, a new ethos...

The Double‐Edged Sword of Coercion: Cross‐Strait Relations After the 2016 Taiwan Elections

Whereas “optimists” argue that military conflict in the Taiwan Strait has become increasingly unlikely, “pessimists” warn that conflict remains a real option. The landslide victory for the pro‐independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of President Tsai Ing‐wen in the January 2016 presidential and legislative elections adds fire to the debate. The DPP win makes a peaceful unification on China's terms an ever‐distant prospect. Since the election, Beijing's strategy has rested on pressuring Taipei into accepting the “1992 consensus” as the precondition for constructive relations. However, this article argues that strategies of “coercion” are a double‐edged sword for China: its very success in deterring Taiwan from declaring formal independence has backfired as far as compelling the island from accepting unification on its terms. While pessimism about a new period of cross‐Strait tensions is premature, the Taiwan Strait remains a volatile regional flash point in East Asia.

Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China by Sheila A. Smith

Reviewed by: Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China by Sheila A. Smith Caroline Rose (bio) Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China. By Sheila A. Smith. Columbia University Press, New York, 2015. xviii, 361 pages. $45.00, cloth; $28.00, paper; $27.99, E-book. Relations between China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, have attracted global attention in recent years, not least due to the rising tensions between the two countries over issues such as Japan’s historical revisionism and the unresolved territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Academically, the field has benefited over the last decade or so from a wealth of studies of various aspects of the relationship, from economics, through politics, to security (see, for example, Ming Wan, Richard C. Bush, James Reilly, Yinan He, Yew Meng Lai, Linus Hagström, and Jing Sun to name but a few authors of English-language sources). Sheila Smith’s contribution to this burgeoning field focuses on the Japanese perspective, and her aim is to offer an insight into the way in which “Chinese influences on Japanese society are perceived and into the relations among the various domestic actors and agents shaping Japan’s domestic policymaking on China” (p. 16). The author argues that there is “a more complex array of interests” contributing to the formation of Japan’s China policies in the 2000s than had hitherto been the case. In particular, the role of the private sector and popular opinion are considered important elements influencing decision makers, and the book guides us through case studies of the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, food safety issues, the Yasukuni Shrine problem, and resource rivalry in the East China Sea as means of demonstrating how and why Japan’s policymakers dealt with the issues at hand. This is an ambitious task, given that most of the chosen case studies merit, and have indeed been the subject of, lengthy in-depth studies in their own right.1 Nonetheless, Smith does demonstrate the need to open up the black box of decision making in order to appreciate the complexity of Japan’s China policy over the last 10 to 15 years. The first chapter sets the scene by introducing the main structure and themes of the book, before moving on to chapter 2, which explores the evolution of Japan-China relations since the end of World War II. The key message in this chapter is the changing influences on Japan’s China [End Page 241] policymaking over time from politicians and the business elite to a broader, and varied, set of domestic interests, including political parties, advocacy groups, and public opinion. With this proliferation of often contending interests in mind, the remainder of the book is devoted to exploring the case studies and teasing out the key factors affecting policy outputs. The first study, of the Yasukuni Shrine problem, provides useful historical background and an analysis of Koizumi’s visits to the shrine between 2001 and 2006, which led to a deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations overall. The dominant domestic groups affecting Koizumi’s decisions in this case were the Liberal Democratic Party and the Izokukai (War-Bereaved Families Association), but Smith also outlines Koizumi’s own personal calculus and demonstrates the evolution of his thinking on the visits during his time in office. The brief section on China’s feelings about the Yasukuni Shrine would have benefited from a lengthier exposition given that, as Smith rightly claims, they “have been an important part of the domestic politics of memorializing Japan’s war dead since the 1980s” (p. 94). Chapter 4 deals with the problem of rivalry for potential gas and oil deposits in the East China Sea, an issue that has been on and off the diplomatic agenda since the late 1970s. As Smith shows, the agreement to shelve the issue of maritime boundaries (in this case in relation to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands) in 1978 began to be seriously tested in the 1990s with changes to the international maritime regime in the form of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Smith outlines the challenges facing successive Japanese...

Focus: Return of the Thought Police: Japan's new ‘anti-conspiracy’ law

6 | International Union Rights | 24/3 FOCUS | FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Return of the Thought Police: Japan’s new ‘anti-conspiracy’ law Japan’s parliament has passed a controversial ‘anticonspiracy ’ Bill which critics say could be used to curb civil liberties across the country. The Bill has been criticised by trade unions and general public, as well as both the Japanese Bar Association and the United Nations Special Rapporteur. There are fears that the vague nature of the new law, which covers 277 crimes, will erode personal liberties in Japan by providing authorities with broad surveillance powers, leaving the question of who can be monitored open to interpretation. It was passed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition, which holds a majority in the Diet, the nation’s Parliament and comes at a time when workers’ right to freedom of expression is seen to be under attack in a number of quarters and state surveillance of trade union organisations is on the rise. False justifications On 15 June, Japan’s parliament ratified the controversial ‘anti-conspiracy’ Bill into law. Despite concerns by opposition politicians, citizens and even UN commentators about how the vague, ambiguous and dangerous nature of the Bill will affect ordinary Japanese citizens with no connections to organised crime, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s ruling coalition used every parliamentary trick in the book to cut off debate and ram the Bill through Japan’s bicameral Diet before a parliamentary recess starting on 18 June. Headed by Prime Minister Abe, Japan’s ruling coalition has argued that the new law is needed before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, at a time when threats to national security are perceived to be on the increase. However this argument belies the fact that his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has tried for years to revise Japan’s existing Act on ‘Punishment of Organised Crimes and Control of Crime Proceeds’. The goal, according to the Japanese government, is to join the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The Japanese government has suggested that conforming with UN conventions is the main motivation for creating the Bill. But two UN representatives have explicitly criticised the new law. Ever since the Meiji Period (1868-1912), treaties and pressure from other countries have been used to justify laws the Japanese people neither want nor need, so there’s nothing new here. However, in this case there hasn’t been any serious effort to articulate concrete deficiencies in existing laws – such as bad guys who got away because of them – that will be remedied by the new ones. In fact, I read the UN Convention and found no mention of a requirement to criminalise conspiracy, other than in connection with money laundering. The fact that a UN treaty is central to the justification for the new law might explain why the government seems particularly annoyed at concerns expressed by not one but two UN experts regarding the law’s potential for arbitrary use and infringement of civil liberties. In a letter sent to the Japanese government in May, UN Rapporteur Mr. Cannataci criticised the anti-conspiracy Bill, which was at the time being debated in committee before being passed into law.1 Cannataci raised concerns that the broad scope of the law may ‘lead to undue restrictions to the rights to privacy and freedom of expression’ in Japan. Specifically, Cannataci says that the law, which is ostensibly aimed at organised crime in Japan, does not precisely define what an ‘organised criminal group’ might be, while including 277 types of crimes that might be covered under the law. One example of a possible implementation of the law, Cannataci notes, is that it may legitimise and facilitate government surveillance of NGOs perceived to be acting against the government interest. Under the new law, it will be illegal to plan to commit 277 criminal actions, from arson to copyright infringement. Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University, told CNN the new legislation ‘fundamentally’ changed Japan’s legal system. “Unless a crime is committed in Japan, you don’t get punished ... now if they think you are thinking of preparing to commit a crime, even before you’re arrested, you...

A Lib Dem Perspective on Centre‐Left Politics Post‐2015

AbstractThis article analyses the political crisis faced by the centre‐left, not just in the UK but throughout the Western world, with few exceptions (Canada). The Liberal Democrat party has been a victim of that crisis, though there are encouraging signs of recovery and there is scope for a wider realignment on the centre‐left.

China-US Relations Under Trump: More Continuity Than Change

China-US Relations Under Trump: More Continuity Than Change Zha Daojiong (bio) Pragmatism has prevailed but suspense remains. There is, in reality, more continuity than change in how China and the United States relate to each other. Such is the aggregate state of relations between the two countries seven months into the Donald Trump presidency. Work plans announced at the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping in early April 2017 marked an end to months of suspense. In China, there was a sense of relief that US policy has not followed through—not in letter, that is—on the onerous options Mr. Trump articulated before January 19, 2017, which cover the entire spectrum of political, economic, and military ties. At the same time, hard work remains ahead to prevent the coin from flipping to the other side to conflict escalation. For China, the rise of Trump to the US presidency has introduced a new level of unpredictability into its bilateral relationship with the United States, which is traditionally complex. Chinese foreign policy elites adopted the Western “black swan” analogy to indicate their level of unpreparedness for the arrival of a new style of head of state in the White House. But then, since the legacy of bilateral ties at the end of the Obama administration was hardly cordial and, with the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton having a track record of hawkishness toward China on East Asian regional security and Chinese domestic political issues (Dyer and Mitchell 2016), expectations for an improvement in ties had not been high, either. In this commentary, I am going to try to situate my observations of the US-China relationship during the past half year in the context of some of the structural geopolitical issues that are certainly going to remain throughout and after the Trump administration. These [End Page 701] issues—over which the two sides have differences each finds difficult to walk back from—have worked to shape Chinese policies toward the United States and vice versa. The remaining question is how to manage them in order to avoid the kind of shocks that may risk a downward slide in the relationship to a point of no return. Viewed from China, how the United States acts over Taiwan continues to be the issue that alone can define the overall level of political relationship Beijing can have with Washington, bilaterally and multilaterally. Given Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party’s refusal to pay even lip service to a One China orientation, an increase in Washington’s contacts with Taipei does not bode well for Beijing at all. North Korea for decades has succeeded in defying calls, including those from China, to denuclearize, and it is too early to say if Trump’s talk of an end to “strategic patience” can make a real difference. China should continue to work with the United States on North Korea, if only to reduce the chance for the latter to drive the wedge between the two even further. The maritime space in East Asia attracted US attention in recent years in part due to the popularity of the simplistic notion of an inevitable clash between the United States in decline and China on the rise. That notion needs to be debunked. Taiwan On December 2, 2016, Trump spoke by phone with Tsai Ing-wen, leader of Taiwan. This was unprecedented for a US president-elect since the United States switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Coming on the heels of China-bashing as a key component of his campaign, few believed Trump simply found it impolite to take yet another congratulatory call from abroad on his election victory; Trump later made clear this was not the case and that the call was planned (Gearan, Rucker, and Denyer 2016). By the time of the Trump-Tsai conversation, official contacts between Beijing and Taipei had been effectively put on hold, due to Tsai’s refusal to explicitly acknowledge the “one China, respective interpretations” version of the One China principle both sides [End Page 702] have operated under since 1992. Under Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, structural ties between Taiwan and the mainland did...

China’s Troubled Waters: Maritime Disputes in Theoretical Perspective, by Steve Chan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 250 pp. US$99.99 (cloth).

<i>China’s Troubled Waters: Maritime Disputes in Theoretical Perspective</i>, by Steve Chan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 250 pp. US$99.99 (cloth).

Political legitimacy in Japan: a Luhmannian perspective

Despite widespread public opinion against many of his policies, Abe Shinzo’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is not only maintaining its electoral success but expanding on it. Furthermore the LDP has been in almost continual power since 1955, making Japan in the eyes of some a de facto one-party state. This paper will explore the question of legitimacy in Japan’s political system, especially the ones raised by Karel van Wolferen the 1980s, and whether the current power structure can be considered to hold it. Through using Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, in particular his concept of political legitimacy, it will be shown that while electoral reforms in 1994 addressed most of the systemic legitimacy issues in Japan’s political system, a potential deficit in the government/opposition coding remains.

An Analysis of the Fall of the Democratic Party of Japan

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won the Lower House election in 2009 and became the first party that defeated the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in terms of the number of seats. The DPJ controlled both chambers, the Upper and Lower House when it formed a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the People’s New Party (PNP). However, the DPJ administration lasted merely three years and three months stretching from September 2009 to December 2012. The DPJ was badly defeated in the Lower House election in 2012, losing 75 percent of its seats. The party obtained only 57 out of 480 seats contested compared with the LDP that won 294 seats. Furthermore, eight of the DPJ cabinet members were defeated in the elections, including the finance minister. The former Prime Minister, Naoto Kan also lost his seat in the election, but he was saved by the Proportional Representative (PR) election system. The objective of this paper is to analyze the defeat of the DPJ in the Lower House elections in December 2012. Researchers argue that the change of the electoral system in 1994 which aimed at elevating the importance of manifestoes in the election as the main cause of the defeat of the party.

Rethinking the triangle: Washington-Beijing-Taipei. Edited by Brantly Womack and Yufan Hao

Rethinking the triangle: Washington–Beijing–Taipei. Edited by Brantly Womack and Yufan Hao. Singapore: World Scientific and University of Macau. 2016. 236pp. Index. £65.60. isbn 978 9 81471 312 2. Available as e-book. The starting-point for this book is a challenge to the idea that Taiwan is, or should be, a ‘problem’ in US–China relations. Rethinking the triangle between Washington, Beijing and Taipei could, it is argued, see the relationship become an ‘inclusive, opportunity-driven one’ (p. vi), overcoming the entrenched suspicion which has existed since the early years of the Cold War. As Brantly Womack demonstrates in his chapter offering ‘an American perspective’ on the triangle, this is actually going with the grain of recent developments in cross-Strait relations, which have been characterized by growing economic interdependence (including in production networks for goods for the US market) and improved political relations. That better cross-Strait relations are the first step for a more inclusive triangle would appear to be supported by the PRC (People's Republic of China) perspective provided by Ren Xiao. Taiwan's transition in 2008 from independence-leaning president Chen Shui-bian (Democratic Progressive Party, DPP) to Ma Ying-jeou (Nationalist Party, KMT) was a key step to improved ties across the Taiwan Strait, but Ren also highlights a longer process of gradual softening and increased pragmatism in Beijing's policy, from changes in language in the 1970s (as US diplomatic recognition shifted from Taipei to Beijing) to the adoption of the ‘1992 consensus’ which allowed both sides space for different interpretations of ‘one China’ (pp. 53–5). He sees policy developments under Hu Jintao (2002–2012) as continuing this trend, with cautious optimism about prospects if the DPP were to regain power in 2016—as it has since done.

Shades of purple: A discursive analysis of mainstream political party responses to UKIP

This paper considers the rise of UKIP and the mainstream parties' reactions to its stance on immigration. This paper accordingly seeks to examine the specific themes contained within the rhetoric of the mainstream political party leader speeches conveyed between September 2013 and December 2014 in order to ascertain the underlying messages being employed regarding immigration - a key UK 2015 election campaigning topic. This examination will entail a comparative analysis of speeches conveyed by the leaders of the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour Parties, and UKIP. Combining two forms of discourse - Benoit's (2007) functional theory and Wodak and Meyer's (2015) analysis of ideology and political discourse - this study addresses the following research question: How have the mainstream political parties responded to UKIP's challenge on immigration as part of their political communication? The results of the analysis provide fresh insights regarding the use of message themes, namely, acclaims, attacks, defences, policy and character, in the treatment of the question of immigration by mainstream political parties, including UKIP.

대만 민진당 출범과 양안관계의 전망에 대한 연구

대만 민진당 출범과 양안관계의 전망에 대한 연구

Postnational homelands: Migration and memory in two novels of Taiwan

Subject to colonial incursions for centuries, Taiwan has long struggled to define itself. Even today, after the May 2016 inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-supporting Democratic Progressive Party, the island is once again wracked by debate over its status: Is it an independent nation, or a province of China? Which aspects of its complex history should be seized upon to define its present and future? By some definitions “postnational,” modern Taiwan people are actively shaping their citizen-identities based on social experience and economic and cultural reality rather than unwieldy and outdated ideological constructs. In this essay I look at two recent English-language novels set in Taiwan, Francie Lin’s The Foreigner and Julie Wu’s The Third Son, which feature Taiwanese American protagonists who struggle with personal and cultural history in coming to terms with their own complex identity. Approaching these characters as “postnational” figures, I find ways in which their experience can be seen to parallel Taiwan’s own uncertain and dynamic situation.

After the Fukushima Disaster: Japan's Nuclear Policy Change from 2011 to 2012

AbstractThis article analyzes why and how the cabinet of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) decided in September 2012 to phase‐out nuclear power plants by 2039—the decision representing a large policy change from previous energy‐supply policy, in which the dependence on nuclear power would continuously grow. In doing so, this article examines the causal relationship between three factors identified on the basis of theoretical models explaining policy change; change in the governing coalition from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to DPJ in 2009, the Fukushima accident, and the change in public opinion. Based on opinion poll and deliberative polling data, as well as discourse analyses of DPJ leaders’ statements, the article concludes that the change in public opinion on nuclear energy after the Fukushima accident was crucial in inducing the DPJ's decision to phase‐out nuclear power plants by affecting DPJ leaders' interests in vote‐ and office‐seeking. Finally, I discuss the applicability of the theoretical models developed on the basis of U.S. pluralistic cases to Japan and the issues to be explored for the further development of policy process models.

Ideology and Hegemonic Party Rule in South Africa, Hungary, and Turkey

ABSTRACTIn recent years, there has been an increasingly prevalent trend observed in emerging democracies in which popular parties rise to a position of dominance and engage in actions that seriously threaten democracy and democratic consolidation. I ask, why do some dominant parties veer into authoritarianism and undemocratic rule while others do not? I theorize that in societies where dominant parties veer into authoritarian practices (which we call hegemonic party system) rests on the fact that there are deep, long-standing, and seemingly irreconcilable social cleavages around race, religion, or the economy. Using the cases of ANC (African National Congress) in South Africa, Fidesz in Hungary, and AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkey, I find that only in countries in which a particular party or viewpoint has been institutionally marginalized will hegemonic party rule become more likely. This is in contrast to parties such as Japan’s LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) which did not become hegemonic, for it had no ideological rival to pit itself against. My analysis goes beyond the argument about a lack of experience with democratic contestation as the cause of the rise of hegemonic parties, offering a generalizable framework demonstrating the factors that facilitate the process of authoritarian slip.