Political Leadership in Japan: Long Way toward a Westminster Model

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has just won another landslide victory from snap election last December. After two years of governance, his cabinet is still popular and powerful. There are high chances for him to accomplish tax reform and win the LDP presidential election this fall. The current political situation is often reported as “Prime Minister’s Office’s dominance” or “Abe dominates.” This Abe cabinet is becoming a sharp contrast to past six cabinets, including his own first cabinet. All six cabinets were short tenured, serving just for around a year, and prime ministers’ leadership were weak. Before these six prime minister, however, Junichiro Koizumi commanded strong power and leadership, succeeding in a series of reforms. Why do we witness two totally different outcomes of Japanese prime ministers’ power in the last decade?

In this presentation, Professor Takenaka gives an institutionalist explanation to this puzzle by examining the Japanese parliamentary system. To highlight its nature, he will make a brief comparison with the British system.

 

Harukata Takenaka is a professor of political science at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.  He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a particular focus on Japanese political economy. His research interests include democracy in Japan, and Japan's political and economic stagnation since the 1990s. 

He received a B.A. from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  He is the author of Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime, (Stanford University Press, 2014), and Sangiin to ha [What is House of Councillors], (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2010).