A Dawn of Two-Party System in Japanese Politics?: The Emergence of the Democratic Party of Japan

摘要

The long rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has finally ended, and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has captured government. This article is to examine why and how that has ended and what are the major factors which have contributed to the change of government. The inability of Japanese opposition parties to capture government has been discussed for a long time. The first part of this article is to examine the strength and weakness of major structural explanations which have been discussed in existing literature. Then, the article proposes a process-level analysis which takes a synergistic effect among institution, strategy and chance seriously. The second part of the article is a short history of the emergence of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) as a ruling party. The history will start with a formation of a small political party in September 1996,and describe how a new single-member electoral system shaped the incentives of political actors, how they worked out political strategy under the new system, and how chance affect the success or failure of political strategy.