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Disengaged And Disempowered: How Depoliticization Prevents Two-Party Competition In Japan, Cooper Price

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled Japan for nearly the entirety of its postwar history. After a short period of opposition control (2009-2012), the LDP has spent the past eight years reestablishing the dominant-party system through which it has monopolized Japanese politics since the 1950s. This article contends that the LDP’s resilience is bolstered by two important aspects of Japanese civil society: the bureaucracy’s insulation from democratic accountability, and a growing public trend of disengagement with the political process. I explain both of these tendencies through the theoretical lens of depoliticization. Flinders and Wood identify “depoliticization” as a shift …