WIDESPREAD EXPECTATIONS that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will lose the general elections called for August 30th to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan are likely to be fulfilled. But it would be premature to write off the LDP’s fate as terminal, parallel to that of Italy’s Christian Democrats in the 1990s, as some commentators are tempted to do. The party badly needs time to regroup and reimagine itself in opposition and the alternatives to it look too weak to see it off the stage.
Defeat for the LDP would certainly be historic, given its almost uninterrupted governing role since 1955. The party became virtually indistinguishable from Japan’s post-war recovery and rapid development as a dependent anti-communist ally of the United States which eventually became the world’s second largest industrial exporting power. Internally the combination of bureaucratic governance with huge pork-barrel regional subsidies larded by corruption came to epitomise its ruling style. A coalition of conservative rural voters and urban middle classes satisfied with the steadily rising standards of living delivered by its powerful industrial conglomerates and innovative smaller companies ensured victories in election after election.
This politico-economic formula came under severe strain during Japan’s prolonged depression and widespread social change in the 1990s; but it is a tribute to the LDP’s survival instincts and skills that it has managed to survive until now as the dominant party. It was helped along the way from 2000 by Jaimichiro Koizumi’s unorthodox yet conservative leadership, based on a resurgent Japanese nationalism and applied management techniques. This fresh approach won the 2005 general election, but did not survive his departure in 2006. His successor Shinzo Abe proved incompetent and gaffe-prone after a more promising start with foreign policy, culminating in the loss of the upper house election in 2007. Mr Taro Aso, who then took over as prime minister, has called the general elections following an equally damaging defeat in the recent local and regional polls and with as indifferent a record in office.
The opposition Democratic Party of Japan is the likely beneficiary of the LDP’s recent dismal record, according to opinion polls. A coalition of social democrats, LDP defectors and independent technocrats, it too is gaffe-prone, and obviously inexperienced in office. Its promises of greater welfare support, less bureaucracy and greater independence from the US would clearly benefit from better definition during the election campaign.