1955 System
A01=Masaru Kohno
Academic journal
Aftermath of World War II
Asahi Shimbun
Author_Masaru Kohno
Bargaining power
Bureaucrat
Cambridge University Press
Caretaker government
Case study
Category=JPA
Category=JPL
Category=NHF
Centrism
Coalition government
Communism
Criticism
Deliberation
Democracy
Democratization
Election
Electoral district
Electoral reform
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Far-right politics
General election
Governance
Government
Ideology
Incumbent
Industrial democracy
Japan New Party
Japanese Communist Party
Labour movement
Landslide victory
Left-wing politics
Legislation
Legislature
Lower house
Major party
Majority government
Meiji Restoration
Minority government
Multi-party system
Nomination
Occupation of Japan
Opposition Party
Party leader
Party secretary
Party switching
Party system
Policy
Political campaign
Political culture
Political history
Political party
Political scandal
Political science
Politician
Politics
Polity
Postwar Japan
Progressive Camp
Proportional representation
Public policy
Publication
Realigning election
Regime
Representative democracy
Right-wing politics
Social Democratic Party (Japan)
Suffrage
Two-party system
Underdevelopment
Voting
Product details
- ISBN 9780691015965
- Weight: 28g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Feb 1997
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Masaru Kohno is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is currently a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
