Japan: The trouble with one-party rule

The Economist ^ | 9/19/2007

[bruinbirdman]

After Shinzo Abe's resignation, Japan needs more than just a new prime minister

NOTHING in Shinzo Abe's occupation of the Japanese prime minister's office became him like the leaving of it: he made a mess of that too. But his departure on September 12th should be an occasion for more than lamenting his hapless year in office. The trouble is not one lousy prime minister but a political system that no longer works. The reign of Mr Abe's starry predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, helped disguise this failure. But he, not Mr Abe, was the aberration.

Ill health may have precipitated the present crisis by forcing Mr Abe's final blunder: the poor timing of his resignation. But thanks to a sorry saga of his cabinet's incompetence, corruption and ill-fortune (see article) his poll ratings have been plumbing new depths for most of the year. At the end of July voters delivered the most damning of verdicts on his tenure, with a crushing defeat for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the upper house of the Diet, or parliament, where, for the first time since 1955, it is no longer the biggest party. In the past Japanese prime ministers have fallen on their metaphorical swords for much less. Yet he refused to resign. He then bought himself a little time by shuffling his cabinet, bringing in some LDP heavy-hitters who recalled the party's history of corrupt faction-ridden politicking, but at least, in the public eye, went some way to filling the government's competence deficit. He opened parliament, attended a regional summit in Sydney and then made a big policy speech on September 10th.

Two days later he stood down on the flimsiest of excuses: that Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), had refused to meet him to discuss a compromise over extending important anti-terrorism legislation. If Mr Ozawa did indeed refuse a meeting, it should surely have been taken merely as one skirmish in a campaign—for extension of the law—that Mr Abe regards as vitally important for Japan, rather than as a pretext for surrender.

Mr Abe is right that the lapsing of the law, which would entail Japan's calling off its operations refuelling ships in the Indian Ocean for the American-led campaign in Afghanistan, would damage Japan's international standing. But his staking his position on the issue highlights four big problems facing the Japanese electorate. The first is that too many LDP leaders, including Mr Abe and his most likely successor, Taro Aso, are obsessed with Japan's international stature and have lost touch with voters. They want to amend the pacifist constitution so that Japan can play a role in the world commensurate with its economic might. Voters are more interested in the economic might itself, and what it could do for them.

That is the second problem. Mr Koizumi's flair and common touch enabled him to sell voters a bill of goods which, on closer inspection, they do not like. His liberalising, market-friendly reforms will, if followed through, do much to sustain Japan's recent economic revival. But in the short term they are bringing pain to many areas. Unlike Mr Abe, Mr Koizumi timed his departure well.

Third, the DPJ's ability to stall and ultimately thwart the anti-terror legislation is not a temporary phenomenon. The next upper-house elections are six years away; it may be 12 before the LDP wins its majority back. After a Koizumi-inspired landslide in the 2005 lower-house elections, the LDP can carry on governing. But Mr Ozawa has a stranglehold.

Enough shuffling: time for a new deck That would not matter so much if he led a party that might form a credible government. He does not: indeed, he himself does not want to be prime minister and is in poor health. The fourth big problem is the lack of a serious opposition. The DPJ is less a coherent party than a job lot of competing factions: rather like the LDP, in fact, but without the experience of more than 50 years of nearly uninterrupted power.

That one party has held sway for so long is of course itself a symptom of the sickness affecting Japanese politics. That is why many in Japan are hoping that the present mess does not, as usual, produce merely a factional compromise around an uninspiring new prime minister. Mr Koizumi is gone. But some of his followers are still around, frustrated by the return to the bad old days. They are mirrored by young Turks in the DPJ. For years idealists have dreamed of a realignment in Japanese politics, away from factional wheeler-dealing and towards true policy-based competition. In the present climate, hostile to Mr Koizumi's legacy if not the man himself, such a reformist grouping would have its work cut out. But the disarray of the big parties is such that it is surely worth a try.