The Post-Election Outlook

Here’s a memo that I whipped up yesterday morning for an event that took place today. Some of it I didn’t use because I couldn’t, some of it I didn’t because I did not keep my wits about me due to a misunderstanding on my part over the substance of the session. So here it is, their Qs (UPR be damned), my As.

Q. Three years after the historic election of the DPJ, Japan's liberal-left experiment appears dead in the water. The DPJ will be lucky to survive the Dec. 16th election, which is expected to produce a shift to the right. Has Japan's brief flirtation with a 2-party system ended and are we now in for a period of autocracy?

Yes, there was a marked shift to the right in the lineup of LDP candidates to replace Tanigaki, but you are talking mostly about foreign affairs and national security. Domestically, maybe a few more words about national symbols and traditional values, but the Abe administration is not going to send goons to smash Asahi Shimbun headquarters, have the riot police break up the anti-nuclear squatter village in front of METi… but you get the point; authoritarianism my foot. Several factors constrain Abe’s nationalist inclinations on the external front: 1) the permanent need for the pacifist Komeito—read Sokagakkai, since it’s the Sokagakkai votes and Komeito seats, in that order, that the LDP needs—as a coalition partner, 2) the permanent need for the United States as a national security partner, 3) the lack of public enthusiasm for anything more than a reactive stance towards external threats; and 4) Abe’s own cautious character makeup. There’s no reason to believe that a two-aprty system is the default mode for Japan, let alone any democracy lacking a sharp national-values divide. One thing for sure, though, is that authoritarianism is not in the works.

Will Japan stick with two-party democracy, or shift more towards autocracy?

What about muddling through under the current, very democratic constitution under a variety of configurations? The need to appeal to a broad range of constituencies to win elections makes it difficult for the DPJ or any Third-Force movement to really separate itself from the LDP-Komeito coalition policy-wise, while the need to keep Komeito onside makes it difficult for the LDP to follow the more nationalist or any autocratic inclinations of some of its members. And of course big business—all businesses—will also help constrain any administration that wants to engage in truly counterproductive external engagements.

What are future policy priorities?

First and foremost are the challenges of Japan’s rapidly aging demographics. The problem is economic and fiscal, and political too, since it’s one-man, one-vote. Prime Minister Hashimoto recognized the problem but didn’t last long enough to do much about it, Prime Minister Koizumi put a partial cap on expenditures but demurred on revenue—that is, the consumption tax—but it was mostly kick the can down the road after that until Prime Minister Kan came along and popped the consumption tax question. Now, both the DPJ and the LDP-Komeito coalition have gotten behind social security and tax reform. Let’s hope that they muster the courage to face up to the need to raise the age for pension eligibility, raise copayment requirements for the elderly, and do other things that help contain expenditures. Then there’s the need to battle vested interests that stand in the way of reform. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Second, there’s the need to determine how we engage the global economy. The Doha Round is dead, has been for a couple of years, so it’s the free trade agreement route for the foreseeable future. If we don’t jump into the TPP negotiations now, we’ll be faced with a take-it-or-leave it situation a few years down the line. The timidity of the campaign rhetoric from the DPJ and the LDP-Komeito coalition worries me; I hope they all get their act together after the election. There’s the Japan-China-South Korea and Japan-South Korea FTAs too. Let’s hope that a Prime Minister Abe listens to Keidanren instead of the voice in his head—it’s certainly not his grandfather’s voice, whatever you may choose to believe—and follows his tendency to walk softly.

Nuclear power is actually much less of an issue for the foreseeable future. Construction resumed on two nuclear reactors under the Noda administration and will continue under an Abe administration, but no other nuclear reactors will be constructed in the foreseeable future. Nuclear reactors sitting directly on live fault lines were going to be decommissioned under the Noda administration, and an Abe administration is unlikely to push legislation that would be necessary to overturn decisions by the Nuclear Regulation Authority. The others will come back online, one by one, once the NRA goes into full-operation mode.

How can the media engender constructive political debate?

If all media outlets behaved like the Economist, we would certainly have constructive political debate. But they can’t, for obvious reasons. And it would be a very boring world if they did. To be sure, media outlets, at least the mainstream daily newspapers, usually make an honest effort on the substance, the obvious ideological bias and all, but their resources are limited. And the parameters that shape media behavior are not likely to change dramatically in the near future—maybe less newspaper and broadcast TV revenue but what else?—so what you see now is mostly what you’ll get, and the politicians and the members of the chattering class like me will have to take media behavior as a given, and mold their own thoughts and actions around that. Some politicians can handle it, others can’t. I think that the bright minds in a political party that has serious national aspirations should take some time off to study the media and come up with an operation manual on how to engage the media.

Can the public have a stronger say in Japan’s future, via direct democracy?

I assume that you are talking about referendums. I am partial to representative democracy, since I do not trust the public, myself included, to make a truly informed decision on policy issues. And the policy issues are more numerous and complicated and there’s vastly more information out there and we all have more important things to do than to read up on them, like our lives. For now, I’m willing to leave most matters to politicians who I hope broadly share my policy preferences supported by the bureaucracy and non-governmental experts to make the decisions for me, and I suspect that it will be that way for the foreseeable future.

Is a two-party system suitable for Japan?

I don’t see the configuration of political parties as a normative question. Regionalism, ethnicity, religion, castes…the tribal urges that produce multiple, enduring cleavages in parliamentary politics has been weak in post-WW II Japan. Perhaps that is why Japan has been under a quasi-two party system since the 1955 Big Bang that produced the LDP and the Socialist Party. Do we now have a more or less viable two-party system? We’ll know that we do if the Abe administration fails the competence test and the DPJ manages to make a comeback in the event. Two major parties sharing a consensus on the broad parameters of the main issues their solutions consistently challenged by the need to prove their competence? It certainly could be worse.

Presidential or parliamentary politics?

Isn’t a twisted Diet enough? Does this really matter? A prime minister can do as much to mold his nation’s future as a president can if he/she has control of the legislature. If he/she doesn’t, it’s the same thing. Japan does not need two chambers as long as we have a free press.

Does the media hinder Japanese democracy?

If all media outlets behaved like the E…….., we would certainly have constructive political debate. But they can’t, for obvious reasons. And it would be a very boring world if they did. To be sure, media outlets, at least the mainstream daily newspapers, usually make an honest effort on the substance, the obvious ideological bias and all, but their resources are limited. And the parameters that shape media behavior are not likely to change dramatically in the near future—maybe less newspaper and broadcast TV revenue but what else?—so what you see now is mostly what you’ll get, and the politicians and the members of the chattering class like me will have to take media behavior as a given, and mold their own thoughts and actions around that. Some politicians can handle it, others can’t. I think that the bright minds in a political party that has serious national aspirations should take some time off to study the media and come up with an operation manual on how to engage the media.

How to make voters speak out

The voters speak with their votes. To be a better voter, it’s probably more important to listen than to speak. So the politicians and the chattering class share the responsibility to properly inform the public. More generally, though, I am partial to representative democracy, since I do not trust the public, myself included, to make a truly informed decision on most policy issues. And the policy issues are more numerous and complicated and there’s vastly more information out there and we all have more important things to do than to read up on them, like our lives. For now, I’m willing to leave most matters to politicians who I hope broadly share my policy preferences supported by the bureaucracy and non-governmental experts to make the decisions for me, and I suspect that it will be that way for the foreseeable future.