Dear SSJ-Forumites:

At the request of Prof. Hiwatari, I offer a brief summary of a talk I recently
gave at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson Center under the title:
"Japanese Politics Since 1993: Revolution or More of the Same?"

I began by summarizing the objectives of the "reformers" who took a lead in
designing and promoting the electoral and political finance reforms which were
adopted in 1994. While the reforms were influenced to a degree by the efforts of
politicians (e.g. Ozawa) to use the new rules to advance their political
careers, I argued that there was "method behind the madness" in that the changes
were designed to address identified "problems" with the old system
(particularism, factionalism, weak leadership, corruption). These problems, I
explained, were blamed by and large on the old electoral and political finance
rules, and the reformers felt that they could "improve" a lot of political
behavior by changing these rules. Specifically, I argued, they sought to bring
about the following changes:

1) Movement toward a two party system.
2) More party alternation.
3) Decline in importance of factions within LDP. 4) Increased flow of political
money to parties / less to politicians. 5) Less emphasis on winning elections
through pork and koenkai and
more on winning through policy-positions appealing to a broader segment of the
public and through party labels. 6) Cheaper elections with less corruption. 7)
Stronger central party leadership.

While I offered an evaluation of the degree to which change is taking place in
each of these directions, I don't have space here to cover all of them. Instead,
I thought I would concentrate on one of the reform goals which has not been
discussed to any great extent on the SSJ-Forum in hopes of sparking some
comments from others out there. (Perhaps we could discuss progress on other
reform goals in the near future.)

The subject is the impact of the reforms on factionalism within the LDP. Because
factional competition was linked to problems of corruption and money-politics
and because they were also seen as limiting the ability of Japanese prime
ministers to exert stronger leadership, the reformers sought to reduce their
power by eliminating the old electoral district rivalries (in multi-member
districts) that sustained them. The new rules are arranged so that LDP
candidates will henceforth compete only against candidates (and PR-lists) of
other parties. LDP candidates should therefore have much less need for factional
money to compete with their bretheren. The political finance rules too are
supposed to deprive faction bosses of access to large sums of corporate money.
With less supply and demand for faction money, the factions (it was presumed)
would begin to dry up.

In attempting to evaluate whether the factions are indeed beginning to dry up, I
concentrated in my talk on the lessons we can draw from the recent LDP
leadership contest. Officially, Kono disbanded the factions last December, but
in August he tried to get himself reelected by playing very old-fashioned
factional politics. Kono forced Murayama to reshuffle his cabinet so that he
could obtain the position of Construction Minister for Mori Yoshiro, a leading
member of the Mitsuzuka faction. Mori's move into the cabinet simultaneously
opened up his position of party secretary general which Kono arranged to give to
Mitsuzuka himself. These moves were meant to solidify the Mitsuzuka faction's
support for Kono such that Mitsuzuka's followers (72) plus Kono's own Miyazawa
faction (69) would give him the bulk of what he needed to get reelected. This
maneuvering by itself would suggest that factions are alive and well within the
LDP.

What is interesting, of course, is that Kono's maneuvering failed. A large
number of (especially young) Diet members from these two factions refused to
follow the orders of their faction bosses and promised to vote for Hashimoto;
Kono withdrew from the race; and Hashimoto won. In the aftermath, Kono's rival
within the Miyazawa faction, Kato Koichi, has emerged as the de facto leader of
the younger rebels. This result, I argued, seems to suggest that the factions
are indeed becoming less cohesive.

It is clearly too early to write an obituary for the factions. This may be just
another factional realignment where someone like Kato will reemerge as a faction
boss in the old style. I would be interested to hear the views of others on the
list about what these recent events signal. Do others out there have additional
information about faction finances which would confirm that part of the reason
for why the younger Diet members seem to feel less constrained lies in their
reduced reliance on faction bosses for political money?

I look forward to further discussion of this question.

Len Schoppa ljs2k[atx]virginia.edu
Department of Government & Foreign Affairs 232 Cabell Hall; University of
Virginia; Charlottesville, VA 22901 (804) 924-3211 Fax (804) 924-3359