A recent survey found that popular support for Aso’s cabinet had dropped 3.6per cent compared to soon after its inauguration in late September (“Approval rating for Aso Cabinet falls to 46per cent”, The Daily Yomiuri, 15 October 2008, p 2). This is despite the financial crisis that spread from the US this month, fortuitously making it easier for Aso to assert the need for extra budgetary stimulus for the Japanese economy (legislated last Thursday, with possibly another dose for January 2009: “Aso won’t submit 2nd extra budget until January”, ibid, 16 October 2008, p 3).
Japan’s citizens are likely to be even more unimpressed now that its closest ally, the US, has just removed North Korea from its list of terrorist “rogue nations”. That occurred with little, if any, prior discussion with Tokyo about what this would imply for the problem of those Japanese abducted by North Korea over many years (“US removes DPRK from terrorism list”, ibid, 13 October 2008, p 1).
The ruling LDP had been hoping that the excitement of electing a new leader, like the outspoken Aso, would create momentum towards calling an early election well before it has to – by September next year. Japanese law allows for that possibility, like other Westminster democracies including New Zealand. This contrasts with US law (L Sandy Maisel, American Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction, OUP 2007). America’s otherwise remarkably fluid and complex electoral system sets a bright-line rule for when elections must take place – even if its financial system crashes!
But the new LDP government lost its opportunity for various reasons. Aso emerged as the clear favourite to take over from PM Yasuo Fukuda, who resigned abruptly after popular support for his Cabinet plummeted from an initial 57.5per cent after only a year in office. People were also distracted by food safety scandals, such as rice condemned for human consumption being sold ostensibly for glue-making but ending up in food products (including school lunches), as well as melamine-laced dairy products from China. And Aso’s Transport Minister, Nariaki Nakayama, had to resign soon after appointment due to an outcry over his slurs on the Japan’s Teachers’ Union (Nikkyoso) particularly in Oita Prefecture – adding to earlier gaffes about Japan being supposedly ethnically homogenous and not liking foreigners. Another blow came when former PM Junichiro Koizumi suddenly announced, the day after the Aso cabinet was inaugurated, that he would not seek re-election. This even fuelled some speculation that he and others may split from the LDP to form a more reformist party (Tetsuya Harada, “Political weather hard to gauge”, ibid, 1 October 2008, p 4).
Even without these events, Japanese citizens would probably have soon realized that the Aso government represented a return to pre-Koizumi traditional LDP values and policies. The latter include support especially for small businesses, rural communities and the US, as well as appointing politicians to Cabinet because of important local constituencies rather than for their views and capacities concerning crucial policy issues. It was not only NYU Professor Edward Lincoln who noticed that “of 18 Cabinet posts, four have gone to politicians with fathers or grandfathers who were prime ministers, and ten cabinet ministers are the children of former LDP parliamentarians” (Christian Caryl with Akiko Kashiwagi, “Mr More-of-the-Same”, Newsweek, 27 September 2008, p 39). Shiro Armstrong has also remarked that one feature of “the Aso cabinet circus” was the appointment of 34-year-old Yuko Obuchi (whose father Keizo died in the PM’s office in 2000) and of the inexperienced Fumio Nakasone as Foreign Minister (whose father Yasuhiro persevered as PM over 1982-7).
Nepotism is further highlighted by the fact that even Koizumi, in announcing that he would not be seeking re-election, anointed a son to go into politics. And Yasuo Fukuda was the son of Takeo Fukuda, prime minister over 1976-8 (and for whom Koizumi once worked as a political secretary). The maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe, who succeeded Koizumi as prime minister over 2006-7 and preceded Fukuda (Jr), was Nobosuke Kishi – prime minister over 1957-60 (and Commerce Minister over 1941-5 in Hideki Tojo’s cabinet, which got Kishi arrested as a suspected Class A war criminal in 1948 – although he was never brought to trial). Abe’s paternal grandfather, and father (former Foreign Minister), were also conservative politicians.
Aso himself, as Tobias Harris reminds us in contrasting the nationalism of Aso (proud of Japan’s post-War system) and Abe (still less impressed), is the grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, former diplomat and prime minister twice over 1946-54. Indeed, as Kwan Weng Kin pointed out (“Aso elected by a landslide”, The Straits Times, 23 September 2008, p A6), Aso is also the great-great-grandson of Toshimichi Okubo, one of the founders of modern Japan. Okubo was a samurai from Satsuma (in Kyushu) who served as Finance and then Home Affairs Minister until his assassination in 1878. Okubo’s second son was adopted into another political family, as Nobuaki Makino, becoming a famous diplomat and politician until retiring in 1935. And Aso’s wife is the daughter of Zenko Suzuki, prime minister over 1980-2 (and whose son Shunichi is himself a Lower House politician).
Does “money politics”, reinforced now by the impact of the mass media, underlie this phenomenon of political dynasties? The US also has such dynasties – the Bush family in the White House, of course, but consider also the Kennedys or the high proportion of congressmen related to former congressmen. Australia seems susceptible to this phenomenon too. Think of former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer – whose father was Immigration Minister and grandfather, Premier of South Australia. And, from the Labor Party side, the current Trade Minister Simon Crean – son of a former Trade Minister and brother of a former Labor member in Tasmania. Or former Deputy Prime Minister Kim Beazley, whose father was Gough Whitlam’s Education Minister.
By contrast, Winston Peters remained suspended as NZ’s Foreign Minister despite being cleared recently by the Serious Fraud Office, and this saga was one reason for PM Helen Clark calling the early general election in that country. Yet the campaign contributions allegedly unaccounted for in the case of Winston Peters are trivial in amount by Australian, American or Japanese standards. And it’s hard to think of similarly entrenched “political dynasties” in NZ, except perhaps among Maori (such as Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, daughter of Sir Eruera Tihema Tirikatene). There have been close links between some influential New Zealanders and politicians across several generations (as with the Fletcher family), but there doesn’t seem to be the same tradition of politicians succeeding their parents or even grandparents. That now seems particularly unlikely to emerge in the Mixed Member Proportional representation electoral system implemented since 1996, although MMP itself seems to be getting quite bad press recently in NZ.
Testing such correlations between money politics and political dynasties, and drawing some normative implications for improving democracies especially in the Asia-Pacific region, deserves a multi-national regression analysis. That should control also for electoral law rules, media patterns, and perhaps population size. North Korea may be difficult to add to such a study, though!
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Japan’s next general election will finally bring victory to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the main opposition party already in control of the Upper House. After many false dawns (depending on one’s perspective), that might just begin to institutionalise two-party alternate rule characteristic of Westminster democracies, but also especially the US. Yet DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa is himself somewhat of a blast from the recent past, as well as a second-generation politician. Can he really respond and do it again – precipitating another fall from power for the LDP, as in 1993?