Absolutely crazy result in yesterday's Japanese election, which yielded the maximum-chaos scenario. The LDP and coalition partner Komeito lost their lower house majority, while the main opposition CDP picked up 50 seats. However, no single party or grouping of parties has an obvious path to power. Nippon Ishin no Kai and the DPFP, the next two largest opposition parties, have ruled out a coalition with the LDP but are also not natural partners for the CDP. Even if Ishin, CDP, and DPFP were to somehow reach a coalition agreement, they would need to cooperate with the Japan Communist Party and other fringe parties to secure a majority, which is extremely unlikely.
It's possible that Ishin or DPFP could do an about-face and link up with LDP, given their relative ideological overlap. However, doing so would be political suicide given their aggressive posturing
against the LDP and the party's extreme unpopularity.
So what's the most likely outcome? Honestly, I have no idea. A couple wild scenarios:
1) The lower house is obligated to hold a special session within 30 days of an election, during which it must select a prime minister. A vote will be held regardless of whether a formal coalition agreement has been reached. In this event, each party will likely nominate its leader to be PM, with the top two candidates advancing to a runoff. It is all but certain that the leaders of the LDP and CDP would finish in the top two. In this scenario with a gun to their heads, I think Ishin, DPFP, and most other parties back CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda because the LDP is radioactive. The government would likely collapse very quickly given the lack of a formal coalition framework and little prospect of passing legislation, including a budget, but Noda would serve as PM for the time being.
2) Yuichiro Tamaki, the leader of DPFP, has emerged as a potential kingmaker after his party quadrupled the number of seats it holds. Even though the LDP won roughly seven times as many seats, Tamaki could demand to be named prime minister as a condition for any coalition. Unlikely? Absolutely. But Tamaki has a history of collaborating with the LDP and an insane amount of leverage; acquiescing to his demands could be the LDP's best path to retaining some level of influence.
Regardless of who emerges as prime minister, the next government is unlikely to have a happy ending. The messy distribution of seats could lead to the worst gridlock in decades. Will be very curious to see how this all resolves.
They're two different parties, though they share similar right-wing populist origins. Ishin arose from an Osaka-based regional party whose initial purpose was to reorganize Osaka Prefecture into a metropolis (I don't fully understand the logic for this, but it relates to management of tax revenue). After branching into national politics, Ishin's founder, former Osaka Gov. and nationalist scumbag Toru Hashimoto, rooted the party in right-wing ideology. Hashimoto has thankfully moved on from politics, and the party's posturing has softened as it seeks to build support beyond the Kansai region. It still straddles the right extreme of mainstream politics, though, more so than the LDP.
As soon as the PM wants to call one, I think. Elections have to be held at least once every four years, but I'm not aware of a "cooling off" period or lower bound. Would most likely be called as soon as there's an inevitable crisis (e.g. inability to pass a budget).
It seems like both parties are considered center-right, but the baseline of Japanese politics also seems far to the left of the US. I was reading up on Komeito and their positions seem very left-leaning by American standards, yet they've been LDP partners more often than not.
Many, including myself, loosely use expressions like left-leaning and center-right, but the baseline for Japanese politics lies on a separate plane of existence. For example, there is essentially no ideological debate on the role of government in society (i.e. whether limited or proactive government is preferable), which is one of the core wedge themes in US politics. The ostensibly right-leaning LDP has never met a fiscal stimulus bill it doesn't like. Debate over defense policy used to be more philosophical but is now driven more by practical considerations, like the extent of the threat posed by China. There are divisions over certain social issues, like immigration and Japan's horribly outdated requirement that wives adopt their husbands' surnames, but topics that dominate American discourse like abortion and LGBT rights are rarely if ever discussed (though LGBT issues are somewhat gaining traction). Policy that originates from ministries, which heavily influence the LDP's agenda, is brutally pragmatic and rarely tinted by ideology.
Describing the LDP as center-right is not necessarily inaccurate, but party is more of a big tent like the Hawaii Democratic Party (which perhaps not by coincidence used to be dominated by Japanese Americans). Basically, anyone who wants to influence Japanese politics joins the LDP, regardless of their ideology. The result: a party with bigoted bullies like Mio Sugita and progressive adjacents like Arfiya Eri, an ethnic Uighur and former UN operative vocal on gender equality and human rights.
The Nazis were not against social welfare, for Aryans in good standing. "Right-wing" outside the U.S. is often associated with nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, racism, social conservatism and support for historical or current-day war crimes, not opposition to social welfare for the "right people."
Yep. As I've stated many times, one of the first countries to have genuine social welfare programs was South Africa. The then governing National Party - which was anti black, anti British, and pro Afrikaner - just wanted it to be limited to poor Afrikaners.
I didn't know that. I do know that the noted socialist (not!) Otto von Bismarck made Germany the first country to guarantee health care coverage to industrial laborers, through the Sickness Insurance Law of 1883; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck.
Imagine how nice it'd be if modern politics involved that kind of thinking: doing popular things that are widely supported by the populace in order to take it off the table as an advantage for your opponent.
It's such a ridiculous struggle to get basic but popular policies through these days. It gums up the whole political process and helps make people disenchanted about the whole thing.
They get away with it because of the fact that while the majority of Americans do support everyone having health insurance, they are not in favor of the complete elimination of private insurance options. Interestingly, Germany does actually have private insurance options as well as a federal health care system.
I wasn't thinking of healthcare specifically with my comment. I mean the stuff that is just bluntly popular, like increasing the minimum wage. Or expanding abortion rights: if anti-abortion cannot even get a majority in Kentucky, it's obvious that pro-abortion is wildly popular policy. I just did a quick search and free lunch for school students looks to be wildly popular based on polls. Infrastructure spending has always been popular too.
These are basic things that should pass legislatures in a walk. But they do not. It's an insane, grueling fight to make anything happen; if it weren't for ballot initiatives a lot of them wouldn't happen at all.
Correct. Just like FDR did. But most conservative politicians (which Bismarck was but FDR was not) don't follow that logic and instead oppose socialists' calls for universal health care coverage.
It's dangerous to compare policy positions between countries when trying to establish ideology. Ideology is not about an absolute policy state but instead about direction.
In countries like France or the UK, they already have universal healthcare managed largely by the government. Keeping that universal healthcare would thus align with the classical conservative view, that is to say, it's the act of conserving the status quo. Expanding on that healthcare would be a progressive ideological stance, while contracting that system would be the reactionary ideological position (most parties identified as "conservative" in the modern era would more properly be defined as reactionaries).
In the US, we do not yet have that, so movement towards universal healthcare managed largely by the government is a progressive stance.
Putting on my math nerd hat, if we imagine politics as a 2D Cartesian plane, ideology is not absolute positions with X and Y coordinates. Ideology would instead be expressed as a vector: a magnitude and a direction from a starting coordinate.
Not really, because the winning party (usually the LDP) has almost always been able to form a government with ease. There was a period in the mid-1990s where the lower house lacked a clear majority party, but that lasted three years before an election was called.
In terms of history, this is a very significant election. It's only the second time since the 2009 General election that the ruling LDP Party and it's allies failed to win an outright majority. In 2009, the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was the first party since WW2 to defeat the ruling LDP government and it's allies. This time, there isn't a clear cut opposition winner that can form a majority, so it will be interesting to see how a new coalition government is formed.
Absolutely crazy result in yesterday's Japanese election, which yielded the maximum-chaos scenario. The LDP and coalition partner Komeito lost their lower house majority, while the main opposition CDP picked up 50 seats. However, no single party or grouping of parties has an obvious path to power. Nippon Ishin no Kai and the DPFP, the next two largest opposition parties, have ruled out a coalition with the LDP but are also not natural partners for the CDP. Even if Ishin, CDP, and DPFP were to somehow reach a coalition agreement, they would need to cooperate with the Japan Communist Party and other fringe parties to secure a majority, which is extremely unlikely.
It's possible that Ishin or DPFP could do an about-face and link up with LDP, given their relative ideological overlap. However, doing so would be political suicide given their aggressive posturing
against the LDP and the party's extreme unpopularity.
So what's the most likely outcome? Honestly, I have no idea. A couple wild scenarios:
1) The lower house is obligated to hold a special session within 30 days of an election, during which it must select a prime minister. A vote will be held regardless of whether a formal coalition agreement has been reached. In this event, each party will likely nominate its leader to be PM, with the top two candidates advancing to a runoff. It is all but certain that the leaders of the LDP and CDP would finish in the top two. In this scenario with a gun to their heads, I think Ishin, DPFP, and most other parties back CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda because the LDP is radioactive. The government would likely collapse very quickly given the lack of a formal coalition framework and little prospect of passing legislation, including a budget, but Noda would serve as PM for the time being.
2) Yuichiro Tamaki, the leader of DPFP, has emerged as a potential kingmaker after his party quadrupled the number of seats it holds. Even though the LDP won roughly seven times as many seats, Tamaki could demand to be named prime minister as a condition for any coalition. Unlikely? Absolutely. But Tamaki has a history of collaborating with the LDP and an insane amount of leverage; acquiescing to his demands could be the LDP's best path to retaining some level of influence.
Regardless of who emerges as prime minister, the next government is unlikely to have a happy ending. The messy distribution of seats could lead to the worst gridlock in decades. Will be very curious to see how this all resolves.
Absolutely wild result, couldn’t happen to more deserving old dinosaurs
Am I mixing up my right wing splinter parties, or is Ishin different at all from Shintario Ishikawa’s old ultra-nationalist Sunrise Party?
They're two different parties, though they share similar right-wing populist origins. Ishin arose from an Osaka-based regional party whose initial purpose was to reorganize Osaka Prefecture into a metropolis (I don't fully understand the logic for this, but it relates to management of tax revenue). After branching into national politics, Ishin's founder, former Osaka Gov. and nationalist scumbag Toru Hashimoto, rooted the party in right-wing ideology. Hashimoto has thankfully moved on from politics, and the party's posturing has softened as it seeks to build support beyond the Kansai region. It still straddles the right extreme of mainstream politics, though, more so than the LDP.
I guess the other obvious question is, when can new elections be called?
As soon as the PM wants to call one, I think. Elections have to be held at least once every four years, but I'm not aware of a "cooling off" period or lower bound. Would most likely be called as soon as there's an inevitable crisis (e.g. inability to pass a budget).
Start the clock: “Can Shigeru Ishiba outlast this daikon?”
Ishiba needs to resign within the next 27 days to go down as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.
https://nitter.poast.org/IrishPatri0t/status/1850863065153097997#m
It seems like both parties are considered center-right, but the baseline of Japanese politics also seems far to the left of the US. I was reading up on Komeito and their positions seem very left-leaning by American standards, yet they've been LDP partners more often than not.
Left leaning on economic management but right leaning culturally, such as immigration and gender?
Many, including myself, loosely use expressions like left-leaning and center-right, but the baseline for Japanese politics lies on a separate plane of existence. For example, there is essentially no ideological debate on the role of government in society (i.e. whether limited or proactive government is preferable), which is one of the core wedge themes in US politics. The ostensibly right-leaning LDP has never met a fiscal stimulus bill it doesn't like. Debate over defense policy used to be more philosophical but is now driven more by practical considerations, like the extent of the threat posed by China. There are divisions over certain social issues, like immigration and Japan's horribly outdated requirement that wives adopt their husbands' surnames, but topics that dominate American discourse like abortion and LGBT rights are rarely if ever discussed (though LGBT issues are somewhat gaining traction). Policy that originates from ministries, which heavily influence the LDP's agenda, is brutally pragmatic and rarely tinted by ideology.
Describing the LDP as center-right is not necessarily inaccurate, but party is more of a big tent like the Hawaii Democratic Party (which perhaps not by coincidence used to be dominated by Japanese Americans). Basically, anyone who wants to influence Japanese politics joins the LDP, regardless of their ideology. The result: a party with bigoted bullies like Mio Sugita and progressive adjacents like Arfiya Eri, an ethnic Uighur and former UN operative vocal on gender equality and human rights.
The Nazis were not against social welfare, for Aryans in good standing. "Right-wing" outside the U.S. is often associated with nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, racism, social conservatism and support for historical or current-day war crimes, not opposition to social welfare for the "right people."
Yep. As I've stated many times, one of the first countries to have genuine social welfare programs was South Africa. The then governing National Party - which was anti black, anti British, and pro Afrikaner - just wanted it to be limited to poor Afrikaners.
I didn't know that. I do know that the noted socialist (not!) Otto von Bismarck made Germany the first country to guarantee health care coverage to industrial laborers, through the Sickness Insurance Law of 1883; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck.
Bismarck was a corporatist; healthy workers are productive
He also very explicitly wanted to kneecap the Social Democrats by cribbing their most popular policies
True that
Imagine how nice it'd be if modern politics involved that kind of thinking: doing popular things that are widely supported by the populace in order to take it off the table as an advantage for your opponent.
It's such a ridiculous struggle to get basic but popular policies through these days. It gums up the whole political process and helps make people disenchanted about the whole thing.
They get away with it because of the fact that while the majority of Americans do support everyone having health insurance, they are not in favor of the complete elimination of private insurance options. Interestingly, Germany does actually have private insurance options as well as a federal health care system.
I wasn't thinking of healthcare specifically with my comment. I mean the stuff that is just bluntly popular, like increasing the minimum wage. Or expanding abortion rights: if anti-abortion cannot even get a majority in Kentucky, it's obvious that pro-abortion is wildly popular policy. I just did a quick search and free lunch for school students looks to be wildly popular based on polls. Infrastructure spending has always been popular too.
These are basic things that should pass legislatures in a walk. But they do not. It's an insane, grueling fight to make anything happen; if it weren't for ballot initiatives a lot of them wouldn't happen at all.
Correct. Just like FDR did. But most conservative politicians (which Bismarck was but FDR was not) don't follow that logic and instead oppose socialists' calls for universal health care coverage.
That's how the system is supposed to work, though. Sometimes you don't have to win an election to get some of your policy agenda enacted.
It's dangerous to compare policy positions between countries when trying to establish ideology. Ideology is not about an absolute policy state but instead about direction.
In countries like France or the UK, they already have universal healthcare managed largely by the government. Keeping that universal healthcare would thus align with the classical conservative view, that is to say, it's the act of conserving the status quo. Expanding on that healthcare would be a progressive ideological stance, while contracting that system would be the reactionary ideological position (most parties identified as "conservative" in the modern era would more properly be defined as reactionaries).
In the US, we do not yet have that, so movement towards universal healthcare managed largely by the government is a progressive stance.
Putting on my math nerd hat, if we imagine politics as a 2D Cartesian plane, ideology is not absolute positions with X and Y coordinates. Ideology would instead be expressed as a vector: a magnitude and a direction from a starting coordinate.
Well explained!! Fantastic math analogy.
Does Japan do snap elections if they fail repeatedly to make coalitions?
Not really, because the winning party (usually the LDP) has almost always been able to form a government with ease. There was a period in the mid-1990s where the lower house lacked a clear majority party, but that lasted three years before an election was called.
In terms of history, this is a very significant election. It's only the second time since the 2009 General election that the ruling LDP Party and it's allies failed to win an outright majority. In 2009, the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was the first party since WW2 to defeat the ruling LDP government and it's allies. This time, there isn't a clear cut opposition winner that can form a majority, so it will be interesting to see how a new coalition government is formed.