The five transitions of Japanese democracy
On a new era for Japan's politics
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On Tuesday morning, I spoke at an Asia Society policy salon breakfast in Tokyo, giving a talk titled “Japan’s democracy in an era of transition.” The video will be available later, but in the meantime, I have provided a broad outline of my talk below. The Q&A was quite lively, so I recommend watching the video as well once it becomes available.
When I selected the title for this talk several months ago, I do not think I appreciated the extent to which it would serve as an apt description for the moment that Japanese politics is in. The operative word, however, is “transition.” The pillars that have shaped Japanese politics for at least the past decade – and longer – are crumbling. What will be erected in their place is far from settled.
The first three pillars are those that made up what might be called the “2012 system,” the structures that enabled Abe Shinzō to dominate the Japanese political system for his record-setting tenure as prime minister. First, the strong, united Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has given way to a weaker, divided party. The causes of this transition are numerous. To some extent, Abe was a beneficiary of the LDP’s having recently been in opposition. With memories of the party’s defeat still fresh, LDP members were more amenable to party discipline. It also helped that the parliamentary LDP’s ranks were swelled with “Abe children,” newly elected lawmakers who owed their seats to Abe’s coattails in 2012. Meanwhile, Abe came from the ranks of the party’s largest faction and was the face of its most coherent ideological tendency, all of which made it easier to unify the party. His knack for co-opting or marginalizing would-be rivals – including the current prime minister – helped too.
In 2025, virtually none of those factors still prevails. Memories of the party’s time in opposition are distant; the opposition’s prolonged weakness (see below) has no doubt induced some complacency among the party’s backbenchers. Abe’s prolonged tenure also led to the accumulation of internal pressures within the party, due to unfulfilled ambitions of “younger” would-be party leaders and differences over policies and political methods. Abe’s premature death, meanwhile, also had unintended consequences, leaving a prime minister (Kishida Fumio) dependent on Abe’s faction but the faction itself unaccountable and uncontrollable by the prime minister, an asymmetry that would ultimately doom Kishida’s premiership. Kishida’s response to the revelation of the kickback schemes of the Abe faction and other factions – namely, dissolving the factions – would further weaken the party, dismantling the party’s key organizations for recruiting, talent development and promotion, and the collection and distribution of resources. The nine-candidate leadership race in 2024, far from illustrating the LDP’s resilience in the face of severe challenges, illustrated its institutional weakness, producing a new party leader with a weak base within in the parliamentary party who won largely because he was disliked less than his rival in the run-off election. The general election that followed, with the party losing its majority in the House of Representatives, may have temporarily unified the party, but that effect seems to have been short lived.
The weaker LDP has contributed to the second major change, the strong, top-down premiership has given way to a weaker premiership. To some extent, this is just a consequence of a more divided LDP producing weaker leaders and thus weaker prime ministers; the institutions created by years of administrative and political reforms are largely intact. Nevertheless, the transition from Abe to his successors showed that without a capable team, including both political lieutenants and bureaucrats, to manage the decision-making process; without a coherent policy agenda to organize the government’s efforts; and, ultimately, without a unified ruling party (and, for that matter, a parliamentary majority), it is difficult for a prime minister to wield power in the manner that characterized the 2012 system. With less capable political leadership, there is more space for bureaucratic influence, which now appears to mean more influence for the Ministry of Finance in particular. It is possible that with a different configuration of power, the strong premiership will snap back into position. However, it is also worth considering whether the experience with minority government – which has seen the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) push for the Diet to play a more active role in policymaking – will result in more enduring changes that enable the legislature to serve as more a check on the executive (though Japan is unlikely to depart from a basic Westminster structure).
Third, if the 2012 system was characterized by a weak and divided opposition, particularly by a Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and its successor parties that could not escape the legacy of the DPJ’s time in government and fruitlessly pursued different strategies with little success, the opposition parties are, if not strong, then more capable than they were for most of the past twelve years. While the CDP has not entirely overcome the public’s bitter memories of the DPJ’s time in government, it is pursuing a more coherent approach and is thinking seriously about how it would govern. The Democratic Party for the People (DPFP), meanwhile, has frightened the LDP through its ability to combine technocratic competence, a single-minded focus on quality of life issues that appeal to young voters feeling left behind by the post-Abe governments, and a certain facility for social media. And Ishin no Kai, while still facing constraints that limit its ability to grow beyond Kansai, remains a dominant force in one of the country’s most populous regions. Divided, these parties may struggle to sweep the LDP from power as in 2009, but they may be capable enough to prevent the LDP from winning the large majorities that characterized elections under the 2012 system. Other changes in the party system suggest that overwhelming majorities will be difficult to achieve in this environment. The steady decline of Kōmeitō’s electoral machine as its electoral base ages will necessarily make it more difficult for LDP candidates too, and introduces new stresses into the ruling coalition, as both parties contemplate the shifting costs and benefits of cooperation. Meanwhile, the left wing is also in a period of transition, as the aging Japanese Communist Party (JCP) yields ground to a younger, more vigorous Reiwa Shinsengumi, another actor that may be capable of mobilizing voters demobilized under the 2012 system.
As this last point suggests, the voter behavior that characterized the Abe years may be giving way to a new style of politics. I have already written about the rise of social media in Japanese politics at length – see below – but there are significant changes underway in how politicians and parties and voters relate to each other, how voters consume political information, and the opportunities for outsider candidates and parties versus entrenched incumbents. It remains to be seen whether this new style of politics can reverse what was the dominant political trend of the Abe years – persistently low turnout, particularly among independents, that enabled the LDP and Kōmeitō machines to prevail – by bringing out voters who have sat out elections and return to the higher turnout that characterized the elections during the first decade of the century, when dueling populisms and a nascent two-party system helped mobilize independents and swamp the established machines. Nevertheless, it feels as if Japan is still in the early stages of transitioning to a style of politics that, for better or worse, may be capable of mobilizing voters who have been missing for more than a decade.
Finally, the birth of an “America First” (or “America Alone”) United States may spell the end of the maintenance of the alliance with the United States as a central organizing principle of Japanese politics. How to maintain the alliance with the United States structured competition both within conservative politics (e.g. Kishi versus Yoshida) and between right and left during the cold war. After the cold war, the ability of a prime minister to get on with the US president – George W. Bush and Koizumi Junichirō at Graceland or Abe’s gamble on a personal relationship with Donald Trump versus Hatoyama Yukio’s “trust me” moment with Barack Obama – has helped make or break governments. The discourse around Ishiba’s summit with Trump in February suggests that these habits die hard, but as the contours of the second Trump administration’s policies become clear, it will become increasingly difficult for the Japanese political system to act as if the relationship with the United States (and personal relationships with the president of the United States) trump other considerations. The debate over Japanese foreign policy in the new era may still be in the early stages as Japan waits to see whether Trump will bring his style of “peacemaking” to East Asia, at the expense of Japan and other allies. But it feels increasingly inevitable that Japanese politicians will have to grapple with fundamental questions about Japan’s place in the world, whether and how it can contribute to efforts to preserve some kind of rules-based order, how it will relate to the United States and other great powers, and, of course, how it will defend itself, which could ultimately include a debate about the acquisition of nuclear weapons. It would not surprise me if over time these debates scrambled the party system, producing new arrangements around the challenges of the new era.
