Japan’s
party leaders have argued that voters face a stark choice in the July 10
election for the Diet’s upper house. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has warned that
the opposition wants to undo Abenomics and bring Japan back to economic
stagnation; Katsuya Okada, leader of the opposition Democratic Party (DP) has
called upon voters to stop Mr. Abe from “running wild” over Japan’s democracy.
In
reality, however, the most likely result of the election is that it will
reaffirm the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-Komeito coalition’s stable
control of the Diet.
Although
Mr. Abe took power promising to overcome Japan’s long-term economic decline and
introduce “bedrock reforms,” the prime minister’s most notable achievement has
been his durability. He has ended Japan’s revolving-door premiership that saw
seven new prime ministers take office 2006-2012 (including Mr. Abe twice); used
the newly expanded powers of the premiership to control the bureaucracy and
dominate policymaking; and disciplined members of his own Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP). He has run some risks – reinterpreting Japan’s constitution and
then updating legislation to allow its armed forces to exercise the right of
collective self-defense – but generally Mr. Abe has governed cautiously.
As a
result, his government’s approval ratings have remained historically strong.
Since the start of 2016, its approval ratings have only briefly fallen below
45% and never below 40%, and have occasionally risen above 50%. These approval
ratings have persisted despite growing disapproval of Abenomics and other
policy initiatives. Voters are therefore likely to ensure that the ruling
coalition retains a stable upper house majority on July 10. After all, 49% of
respondents told the Yomiuri Shimbun,
Japan’s largest daily newspaper, that they support the Abe administration
retaining its upper house majority next month, compared with only 36% who do
not. In other words, the Japanese people are not joining in the global
anti-establishment wave; indeed, to the extent that populist revolts like the
United Kingdom’s Brexit vote have global economic consequences, they may make
Mr. Abe’s stable grip on power even more appealing to voters.
Ironically, the greatest risk to Japan’s political stability may be not
that the ruling coalition loses ground to the opposition, but that the Abe
government performs so well as to win an upper house supermajority and so have
the votes with which to pursue constitutional revision.
The risk
is not, however, as Mr. Okada and other opposition lawmakers have presented it,
that Mr. Abe will be “run wild,” replacing Japan’s postwar constitution and
otherwise eroding existing democratic institutions. If the LDP, its coalition partner
Komeito, and a handful of smaller pro-revision parties win the seventy-eight
seats needed to win an upper house supermajority it would enable Mr. Abe to
pursue his long-cherished goal of revising Japan’s postwar constitution – which
is guaranteed to be a divisive process. Indeed, a revisionist push by Mr. Abe
would be so controversial that it is difficult to see how Mr. Abe could survive
in office. Even an innocuous amendment relating to something other than Article
9, the so-called “peace” clause, could be the source of controversy, since
critics would try to present any amendment as a Trojan horse for a broader
revisionist campaign.
Meanwhile,
it is not even clear whether the ruling coalition could agree on a plan for
revision. Although Komeito, the centrist junior partner, is nominally in favor
of revision, its members have a dramatically different vision for what should
be amended than their LDP counterparts. A survey of
upper house candidates by University of Tokyo political scientists and the Asahi Shimbun found Komeito candidates
largely prefer amendments regarding environmental protection and privacy
rights; LDP candidates prefer amendments recognizing the Self-Defense Forces
(SDF) as a military and strengthening the state’s ability to respond to
emergencies. Meanwhile 68% of LDP candidates would want the constitution
revised during their term, 80% said they were not particularly fixated on the
next term. Not a single one said they thought it should be a priority for the
upper house over the next six years.
No less
importantly, given that Japan’s parliamentary norms protect the right of
minority parties to be heard, opposition parties are categorically opposed to
Mr. Abe’s vision for the constitution and would use every parliamentary tactic
at their disposal to stall the debate. Heated parliamentary debates would
undoubtedly be accompanied by enormous protests outside the Diet, as happened
in 2015 as Mr. Abe guided controversial national security laws through the
parliament. After all, polls consistently show that not only does the public
oppose revision, but few voters think it should be a top priority for the
government.
For these
reasons, it is possible that Mr. Abe could pass on constitutional revision even
with an upper house supermajority. However, there is no question that with
supermajorities in both hands Mr. Abe will be tempted to pursue a goal that he
inherited from his grandfather, wartime cabinet minister and postwar prime
minister Nobusuke Kishi, and which has been fundamental to Mr. Abe’s identity as
a politician.
Therefore, from the perspective of Japan’s continuing political
stability the best possible outcome for Mr. Abe, Japan, and the opposition may
be for the opposition to exceed expectations and deny the government a
two-thirds majority in the House of Councillors. Winning by less than he had
hoped will force Mr. Abe to devote his energy to a much-needed course
correction for Abenomics instead of gambling on constitutional revision. No
less importantly, a stronger-than-expected performance could breathe some life
into the Democratic Party, which has struggled to remain relevant in the face
of Mr. Abe’s dominance. After all, over the longer term, the best guarantor of
political stability – and effective policymaking – will be meaningful competition
for power between Japan’s two major parties.
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