In this sophisticated theoretical work, Masaru Kohno presents a
systematic reexamination of the evolution of party politics in
Japan since the end of the second World War. Because of the long
one-party dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's
parliamentary democracy has often been viewed as unique in the
developed world, and most of the existing studies of Japanese party
politics have addressed such determinants as its political culture,
historical background, and socio-ideological cleavages. According
to the author, these explanations do not adequately account for
some of the most important changes that took place in Japanese
party politics during the postwar period.
This study advances an alternative set of interpretations based
on a microanalytic approach that highlights the incentive and
bargaining power of individual political actors, and their
competitive and strategic behavior under existing institutional
constraints. According to Kohno, the evolution of political life in
postwar Japan depends on the same factors that are acknowledged to
be at work in other industrialized nations. He reveals, through
detailed case studies of government formation processes and
statistical examinations of candidate nomination patterns, that the
microanalytic approach can establish forward-looking and internally
consistent interpretations of the postwar development of Japanese
party politics. Because Japan has usually been treated as a country
of unique cultural, historical, and societal characteristics, the
analyses of this study point to the broader applicability of the
microanalytic approach in the field of comparative politics,
especially for the exploration of party competition in advanced
industrial democracies.
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