72 Japan’s New Prime Minister: Reform or Return to Past Form?
Yoshihide suga represents stable continuity after the surprise resignation of shinzo Abe. But his selection by party leaders behind closed doors sends a questionable message out of the past.
Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, represents stable continuity after the surprise resignation of Shinzo Abe. A loyal man long at the side of the colorful Abe, Suga was the preferred choice of the Liberal Democratic Party elite and so far he has represented continuity with the Abe years.
But is this a good thing? Chosen behind closed doors by party leaders, Suga’s selection sends a message out of the past, write Ellis S. Krauss and Brad Glosserman. The result could set the stage for political crisis in the future.
future Historians will view the choice last september of Yoshihide suga to succeed shinzo Abe as prime minister as a defining moment for Japan. suga’s selection is a product of the tensions that define Japanese politics in both policy and process. His ascendance was made possible by forces unleashed by earlier reforms and the equally powerful pull of traditional Liberal democratic party (Ldp) politics. Abe proved that stability has its merits, but it is not clear that the return to tradition has prepared Japan for the challenges that it, and suga, will face.
in many ways (and certainly in retrospect), suga was the obvious choice to replace Abe, whose decision to step down for health reasons was a surprise. there had been no clamor for him to resign; there was little “push” for changes in policy or personnel. in that context, suga was “the continuity candidate,” considered best able to promote Abe’s policies and keep the country on its current track. that promise of stability allowed Ldp members — and especially the leadership — to rally behind him without concern.
Moreover, he has extensive experience at the heart of government, serving as chief cabinet secretary throughout the many party and government reshuffles that occurred during Abe’s almost eight years as prime minister. that attests
to the support and confidence that he enjoys from senior party officials. He is by all accounts hard working and capable of rallying and directing the bureaucracy. equally, if not more, important, he doesn’t have the negatives of other contenders for the prime minister’s job.
suga’s election as party president, which made him prime minister, proceeded on two tracks. the first was the “public” process. normally, each of the 1.08 million Ldp members who have paid an annual membership fee for two years can cast a vote for president, and then the Ldp diet members and executives vote. Concerned by the prospect of a leadership vacuum if it stuck to the usual procedure, which would take about two months, Ldp leaders instead proposed an election confined only to diet Members and cutting out local chapters. After some resistance from prominent party members, the leadership changed course to follow the “emergency procedure” that allowed 394 lawmakers and 141 delegates from local chapters to vote, effectively ensuring that the diet Members would predominate.
the need for “urgency” was real — the country faces too many pressing problems to allow for a continuing leadership vacuum — but so too was a desire to leave the outcome as little to chance as possible. rank-and-file preferences have often diverged from those of party leaders; former defense minister ishiba shigeru bested Abe in the first round of previous elections on the back of that support. Abe only prevailed after a second round restricted to parliamentarians and senior party members. the two have been rivals since. party leaders’ desire to ensure that they selected the next president was the second track of suga’s success. they caucused behind the scenes to agree on a candidate and guarantee his victory, delivering votes from their factions (habatsu) that remain integral to the Ldp’s personnel operation.
those leaders could rally behind suga as a “unity” candidate, because he was the next best thing to Abe — literally. the chief cabinet secretary is the second most important person in government, responsible for seeing that the prime minister’s ideas are transformed into policy. suga was at Abe’s elbow throughout his eight years as premier and has thus far at least shown no inclination to depart in any substantive way from his predecessor’s agenda. While that policy agenda has had a mixed record of success, its political success is unmistakable. Abe crushed the opposi
The evidence of how much the LDP has prioritized factions and rejected popular opinion in the selection of Yoshihide Suga can be seen in the fact that the three most popular possible candidates — Shigeru Ishiba, Taro Kono and Koizumi’s son Shinjiro — were all “demoted” in some sense after Suga’s victory.
tion in six elections, and there is little sign that it has established itself — despite yet another reorganization in september — as a credible alternative for Japanese voters.
THE DESIRE FOR STABILITY
the desire for stability was evident in the election for party president — suga won by a handy margin, with 377 of 534 votes — and his subsequent appointments for top Ldp posts. party secretary general toshihiro nikai and diet Affairs Committee leader Hiroshi Moriyama stayed in those jobs, as did many cabinet members, including taro Aso as deputy prime minister and minister of finance. Key staff in the prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet secretariat will remain, including deputy chief cabinet secretary in charge of administrative affairs Kazuhiro sugita and national security secretariat secretary general shigeru Kitamura, two especially important posts.
the most important changes are the selection of Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Katsunobu Kato as chief cabinet secretary, the move of defense Minister taro Kono to minister in charge of administrative reform, and the appointment of nobuo Kishi, Abe’s younger brother, as defense minister in his first cabinet assignment.
is this continuity a good thing? the Ldp leadership certainly thinks so. there are good reasons to be concerned, though. Any balanced assessment of Abe’s tenure will conclude that his record is mixed. He accomplished much, but the unfinished business is as important as what he did. public support for his cabinet had fallen to 36 percent by the end of August, just before he resigned. the government had been struggling to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis that it intensified (don’t forget the economy was contracting before coronavirus). in these circumstances, continuity is most assuredly not the right response.
But even if this is the best team that the Ldp can muster to deal with the country’s problems, the way it was chosen does not inspire confidence. Late-night, tokyo hotel sit downs among party elders are all too familiar to students of Japanese politics and are a sign of the ease with which the Ldp has fallen back into the old habits it practiced before the electoral reform of 1994 and then losing power in 2009. some younger, more astute Ldp members (including some current cabinet members) have warned against this reemergence of old habits.
process matters. One important hallmark of contemporary Japanese politics has been falling voter turnout, with just over 53 percent of voters casting ballots in the 2017 general election; less than 49 percent showed up for the 2019 Upper House election. Japanese voters, normally cynical about politics, have become even more so, with almost an equal number, 47 percent, saying they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in their country as are satisfied, at 50 percent.
Unlike in the 1990s to mid-2000s, there is little indication now that Ldp members (or the Japanese public as a whole) support major reform. they too seek stability and continuity and have little appetite for the potential risk of structural change. in other words, the party could risk antagonizing its base for nothing, not because of its policies but because of its internal processes for selecting leadership. And the heart of that process are factions.
BACK TO THE FUTURE?
studying the impact of Japan’s 1994 electoral reform on Japanese politics was a cottage industry among specialists for a decade and a half. the effects were myriad but two things everyone agrees on is that it strengthened the importance of the prime minister in general elections and his ability to govern by weakening factions. the new
electoral system’s single-seat and proportional representation tiers strengthened the image of party leaders in elections. instead of competition among several Ldp candidates in a district and the concrete benefits they could bring to constituents being the focus for voters, now voters would be more concerned with who the party leader was and the party’s policies.
factions were weakened because they lost two of their three major functions under the new system. no longer was their financing of candidates as important because the financial reform accompanying electoral reform centralized campaign financing in the party and the individual single candidate in the district. the factions’ ability to get one of their members nominated among the party’s candidates in a district was also not so important because now only one member could be nominated, and incumbents were favored. As a result, the backroom deals of faction leaders who could deliver loyal followers to Ldp diet Members were no longer needed.
the results of these changes were obvious within the decade. in 2001, former prime Minister ryutaro Hashimoto looked to be a shoo-in to win the party’s nomination following the resignation of the very unpopular Yoshiro Mori. Concerned about the party’s popularity in the upcoming House of Councilor’s election, prefectural federations rebelled and forced a new primary system on the party’s leaders. the result was the selection of Junichiro Koizumi as prime Minister. Koizumi, a maverick Ldp politician never in favor with party leaders, had used his television image to become popular among the public.
Koizumi used skillful public relations to downgrade the role of factional appointments in his cabinet. this worked for a while, but following Koizumi stepping down in 2006, a series of three Ldp prime ministers — including Koizumi’s immediate successor, Abe — all backtracked on reform and lasted no more than a year. this was one major cause of the Ldp’s defeat in the 2009 election under prime Minister taro Aso. reform had led to the rise of the new democratic party of Japan (dpj) composed of a hodgepodge of liberal parties.
the dpj, however, proved inept at governing effectively, and its three prime ministers also lasted less than a year, giving Abe his chance in 2012 to win leadership of the Ldp and return to power, this time successfully for over seven years.
factions had been weakened but had not disappeared. the one major function they retained was in personnel, bargaining for their members to influence the annual party appointments to its internal policymaking organ, the policy Affairs research Council, and to parliamentary committees. they also retained influence on the crucial selection of cabinet ministers. indeed, they had intensified their efforts in these personnel roles and gradually Koizumi’s party reforms waned. Once again, back-benchers found it very difficult to rise in their careers without belonging to a faction. selection of the prime minister hadn’t occurred during Abe’s record-setting long tenure in office, but now again, factional power reasserted itself for his successor.
the evidence of how much the Ldp has prioritized factions and rejected popular opinion in the selection of Yoshihide suga can be seen in the fact that the three most popular possible candidates — shigeru ishiba, taro Kono and Koizumi’s son shinjiro — were all “demoted” in some sense after suga’s victory. ishiba was shut out of the cabinet, Kono went from his important Minister of defense post to his previous and much less important post as Minister for Administrative reform, and Koizumi was kept on as Minister of environment but not promoted to any other key post.
the Ldp, however, is in little danger for the short-run despite ignoring public opinion. the
utter inability of the dpj to govern when it was in power has poisoned the public against the opposition. the dpj fractured when it lost power, and its remnants have coalesced and split with regularity. On sept. 15, as the Ldp was lining up behind suga, the center-left Constitutional democratic party (Cdp), the largest opposition party, and the democratic party for the people (dpp), a center-right group, officially merged, creating the first opposition party with 150 diet members. A unified opposition is a critical step toward actual political contests in Japan but there is little precedent for the opposition to remain unified, or to have sufficient national support to pose a threat to the Ldp anytime soon. this lack of an opposition may allow the Ldp to ignore popular will in its selection of prime minister and count on the public’s desire for continuity and stability to continue to win elections.
if this sad state of affairs continues, then the key questions for Japanese politics are those that concern the Ldp, and they are eerily similar to those the party faced in 2001 and 2009. How much will the public want reform in the future? Have three decades of economic ebb and flow, unfulfilled promises and undisturbed comfort leached the public of any real interest in politics, encouraging cynicism or apathy? Can the two opposition parties regain the trust of the public and offer a credible alternative? Will the Ldp make the case for reform and opt for populism or does it continue to revert to its pre-reform past of factional dominance?
the Ldp appears to believe that its best shot is going “back to the future.” its new president was selected by time-tested backdoor maneuvers, hasn’t a spark of charisma or popular appeal (the media campaign to humanize him post-selection implicitly makes that very case) and his pre-eminent objective is the continuation of his predecessor’s legacy. Younger politicians first rebelled against the reassertion of old habits, but they checked their complaints and got in line. this is a sure indication that the Ldp is a party in conflict again over whether to promote reform or stick with elite factional politics.
the Ldp’s choice about its future is also a choice about the future of Japan. there is the risk of a return to the revolving door of prime ministers that was the norm from 1988-1999 and 20062012, without the stable governance of a leader who can mobilize popular support to remain in power long enough to achieve something. during the unstable period, the country could not identify a leader who was popular enough to win elections and knew how to govern; most had one ability but not both. Many democratic industrialized countries are facing crises created by a surfeit of populism, on the left and right. Japan and the Ldp now face a dearth of populism and the inability to find a leader who can combine popular appeal with the ability to govern.
Ellis s. krauss is Professor in the graduate school of international relations and Pacific studies at the university of California, san diego.
Brad Glosserman is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Tama University Center for rule Making strategies and senior advisor for Pacific forum.