Japanese Political Realignment in Perspective

Neither the loss of the LDP's majority position, nor the subsequent emergence of a new coalition politics, should be seen as marking a really fundamental change in the Japanese party system. Conceptions of party system change are both elusive and ill-defined, and it is often the case that relatively small but sudden shifts are treated as being of lasting importance. In the Japanese case, however, there has been little in the external environment that would have led us to expect any major transformation in the party system, and it now looks increasingly likely that the LDP will continue to enjoy a dominant position. What changes have taken place have been largely the result of inter- and intra-party manoeuverings in which the failure to exclude the LDP from power in the longer term has allowed the party to recover much of its integrative capacity. In this sense, the frequently cited comparison with recent developments in the Italian case is not very convincing, and a more suitable West European analogue might well be found in Ireland.