| Project/Area Number |
10620067
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Politics
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| Research Institution | OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
TANI Satomi Okayama University, Faculty of Law, Professor, 法学部, 教授 (40127569)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 1999
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 1999)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
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| Keywords | party politics / 1955 system / policy process / legislative process / the Japan Socialist Party / labor politics / opposition parties / 政策決定 / 政治文化 / 日本社会党 / 一党優位性 / 55年体制 / 政党システム / 自民党政権 / アジェンダ |
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| Research Abstract |
Party politics requires that the party or the coalition that obtains an absolute majority in an election dominate policy and legislative processes. Thus, competition over various politics among parties is critical in politics. My research is an attempt to analyze party politics in contemporary Japan focusing on the role and influence of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) in policy competition.
Needless to say, the number of JSP's seats in the Diet who was almost always around a half of that of LDP's. My research shows that such stagnation of the JSP is to some extent due to the failure of the party to develop competitive policies in many areas. Modern history of Japanese party politics would have been a different one, if the JSP had been more realistic and skillful in policy activities.
Conventional wisdom tells that LDP-bureaucrats federation effectively excluded the opposition from policy-making process. According to findings in my research, however, the JSP played a far bigger role in the formation of the so-called 1955 regime than its size in the Diet might tell. It is also true that policy activities of the party considerably affected policy formations by successive LDP cabinets. It is misleading to depict Japanese political history without paying enough attention to policy-competition dynamics. The JSP failed in election politics. But it was still competitive in policy and legislative politics.
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