Democracy without Competition in Japan
Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State

This book explains why no opposition party has been able to offer itself as a sustained challenger in Japan.

Ethan Scheiner (Author)

9780521609692, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 August 2005

288 pages, 32 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.39 kg

'This book is a serious work of comparative government aimed at a scholarly audience.' Political Studies Review

Despite its democratic structure, Japan's government has been dominated by a single party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 1955. This book offers an explanation for why, even in the face of great dissatisfaction with the LDP, no opposition party has been able to offer itself as a credible challenger in Japan. Understanding such failure is important for many reasons, from its effect on Japanese economic policy to its implications for what facilitates democratic responsiveness more broadly. The principal explanations for opposition failure in Japan focus on the country's culture and electoral system. This book offers a new interpretation, arguing that a far more plausible explanation rests on the predominance in Japan of clientelism, combined with a centralized government structure and electoral protection for groups that benefit from clientelism. While the central case in the book is Japan, the analysis is also comparative and applies the framework cross-nationally.

1. The importance of party competition and a model of party competition failure
2. Opposition failure in Japan: background and explanations
3. Clientelism and its determinants
4. The impact of clientelism and centralized government financial structure: comparative analysis
5. Local opposition failure in Japan
6. National level opposition failure: the impact of subnational level weakness
7. Political economy changes and their impact on party systems: comparative analysis
8. Parallel party systems: political economy changes and the limits to anti-clientelist appeals in Japan
9. The problem of organization and coherence in top-down party formation
10. Conclusion: democracy without competition.

Subject Areas: Political parties [JPL], Politics & government [JP], Regional studies [GTB]