The Presidentialization of Politics in Britain and Japan: Comparing Party
Responses to Electoral Dealignment
Tomokazu SAKANO
Kobe University
E-mail: [email protected]
Paper presented at the 2006 IPSA World Congress
Fukuoka, Japan, July 10-14, 2006
JSO1(JPSA Session): Party System Change (308)
Abstract
Increasing attention has been given to the rising importance of prime ministers in parliamentary
democracies. This phenomenon is often referred to presidentialization of politics. In Britain
long-standing concerns about prime ministerial power have occasionally produced assertions of
presidential rule. With the advent of Tony Blair's premiership such assessments became almost
commonplace. Similar claims have been heard in respect of Junichiro Koizumi as Japanese
Prime Minister in the spring of 2001. This paper is intended a comparative analysis of changing
party politics in Britain and Japan from a view point of presidentialization. In my view,
presidentialization means the development of (a) increasing leadership power and autonomy
within the party and the political executive respectively, and (b) personalization of the electoral
process. My concern is to examine three faces of presidentialization in Britain and Japan.
Through comparing both cases, I want to consider factors that push parliamentary politics
towards a more presidential working mode and its implications for modern democracies.
Keywords: presidentialization leadership autonomy personalization of electoral process
plebiscitary party plebiscitary democracy
Introduction
Increasing attention has been given to the rising importance of prime ministers in parliamentary
democracies. This phenomenon is often referred to presidentialization of politics. In Britain
long-standing concerns about prime ministerial power have occasionally produced assertions of
presidential rule. With the advent of Tony Blair's premiership such assessments became almost
commonplace. Similar claims have been heard in respect of Junichiro Koizumi as Japanese
Prime Minister in the spring of 2001. This paper is intended a comparative analysis of changing
party politics in Britain and Japan from a view point of presidentialization. In my view,
presidentialization means the development of (a) increasing leadership power and autonomy
within the party and the political executive respectively, and (b) personalization of the electoral
process. My concern is to examine three faces of presidentialization in Britain and Japan.
Through comparing both cases, I want to consider factors that push parliamentary politics
towards a more presidential working mode and its implications for modern democracies.
Framework for Analysis
Presidentialization of politics has become catchwords in the recent study of political leadership
in Britain and in several other parliamentary democracies of Western Europe since the
mid-1990s. But increasing power of the Prime Minister is only figuratively called the
Presidential style of political leadership, and there are not few arguments equal to the prime
ministerial government in actual practice. Moreover, the personalities and images of party
leaders come to be the important determinant of voting behaviour. There is therefore researches
which regard the personalization of politics as presidentialization ( Foley, 1993; Foley, 2000;
Mughan, 2000).
While many studies have been devoted exclusively to the one aspect of
presidentialization phenomena and their conceptual definitions are not always strict, the study
by Poguntke and Webb is most noteworthy in showing elaborate framework for analyzing
manifestations of presidentialization from a comparative perspective. With regard to regime
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types, there are following major differences between parliamentary and presidential systems.
Parliamentary regimes are characterized by (a) the fusion of powers between executive and
legislature, (b) the collective executive responsibility, and (c) that the prime ministers are
selected by legislatures. On the other hand, the presidential regimes are characterized by (a) the
separation of powers between executive and legislature, (b) unipersonal nature of executive
power and responsibility, and (c) that presidents are popularly elected. According to Poguntke
and Webb, presidentialization denominates “a process by which regimes are becoming more
presidential in their actual practice without, in most cases, changing their formal structure, that
is, their regime-type” (Poguntke and Webb 2005: 1).
What kinds of processes are pointed out concretely? They say that presidentialization of
politics can roughly be divided into three aspects, namely the executive face, the party face, and
the electoral face. As regards the executive face and the party face, presidentialization means
the growth of leadership power resources and autonomy within executives and parties
respectively. The electoral face of presidentialization represents personalization of the electoral
process, which concerns following three aspects at least: a growing emphasis on leadership
appeals in election campaigning, leadership focus in media coverage of politics, and the
growing significance of leader effects in voting behaviour (Pogntke and Webb 2005: 8-11).
Another noteworthy comparative framework for analyzing presidentialization is that by
Satoshi Machidori. As to executive institutional structures, Machidori criticizes Poguntke and
Webb in that they have not incorporated the progressive results of recent studies on presidential
systems into their frameworks and he puts emphasis on that there are various variations within
presidential and parliamentary systems respectively. Based on the study by Haggard and
McCubbins, Machidori presents frameworks for comparing changing executive structures by
combining a separation of power and a separation of purpose. To the extent that a fusion of
power is the defining feature of parliamentary systems, the main stress in his study falls on the
way of reducing a degree of separation of purposes. Concerning this point, Machidori
distinguishes two ways: presidentialization and the shift toward Westminster model of
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parliamentary systems. According to his views, the concept of presidentilaization should be
confined only to the temporary reduction of separation of purposes through practical strategies
by prime ministers without formal institutional innovations. On the other hand, reducing a
degree of separation of purposes by institutional reforms such as electoral system reforms or
governmental reforms is defined as the shift toward Westminster model of parliamentary
systems (Machidori 2006: 321-325).
To be sure, Machidori’s frameworks for analysis are full of suggestions. Especially
noteworthy is his paying much attention to a separation of purposes, since parliamentary
systems are based on the fusion of power between the executive and the legislature. In my view,
however, the way of reducing a separation of purposes, namely, whether institutional reforms or
practical strategies, is not a key factor which decides presidentialization or not. It is because
‘through the Trojan of majoritarian democracy, the presidentialization of the political system
gained momentum and legitimacy’, as Calise demonstrates in the case of Italy under the
Berlusconi government (Calise 2005: 90). What matters here is not the method, but the
direction of changing politics.
It is noteworthy that Poguntke and Webb attach great importance not only to the growth
of leadership power resource, but also to increasing leadership autonomy. According to their
view, the growth of leadership autonomy at the executive face means that ‘executive as a whole
would become increasingly independent of direct interference from “their” parties. While
partified government means governing through parties, presidentialized government implies
governing past parties’ (Poguntke and Webb 2005: 8-9). As mentioned above, the presidential
regimes are characterized by unipersonal executive responsibility and by that the president is
not accountable to the legislature, but directly to the electorate. In this sense, we can say that the
presidentialization of politics means the centralization of executive power and responsibility
into the unipereson and that the Prime minister would increasingly seek to bypass the
legislature or parties and appeal directly to electorate and earn the confidence. To sum up, it
implies an shift from more collective partified forms of politics to personalized ones in terms of
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executive, party and electoral process respectively.
As regards to Britain, the arguments about presidentialization have been taking place
against the background of Thatcher government in the 1980s, especially Blair’s coming into
office in the 1997 general election. Is it possible to say that the developments of British politics
under the Blair government demonstrate presidentialization of parliamentary regime or not?
We will begin by examining this problem.
The Blair Government and Presidentialization of British Politics
Strengthening and Institutionalization of Prime Minister’s Power Resources
The power and role of rime minister in Britain have been based on historical custom and their
actual use is for the most part dependent on the individual intention and personality of Prime
Ministers. For instance, Thatcher intervened directly in a range of policy areas such as the
economy, education and health. Thatcher made a big impact on her government not because of
the institutions of her office, but because of her personal hyperactivity. On the other hand, the
characteristics of the Blair style of government are not only the strengthening of policy-making
capabilities within Number 10, but also the institutionalization of this mechanism of
personalized intervention by the following ways: changing in the organizational structure of
Number 10, the use of special adviser, and the close integration of the Prime Minister’s Office
and the Cabinet Office.
Under the Blair government of the first term, the organization of the Prime Minister’s
Office did not differ largely from the previous structure other than that the new post of Chief of
Staff which has direct responsibility for leading and coordinating operations across Number 10,
was created and Jonathan Powell, a former FCO diplomat was brought in as a political
appointee of this position. Before the 2001 general election the four main elements of the Prime
Minister’s Office were as follows: Private Office: this is the center of the Prime Minister’s
Office network and works directly to the Prime Minister. Policy Unit: this engages in policy
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initiative as Prime Minster’s think tank. Press Office: this oversees government relations with
the media. Political Office: this handles the Prime Minister’s direct political business such as his
link to the parliamentary and national party.
After the 2001 election, significant changes were effected in the structure of the Prime
Minister Office. The Private Office and Policy Unit have been merged into the Directorate of
Policy and Government. Moreover, the Press Office has been reorganized into the Directorate
of Communications and Strategy, and the Political Office changed also the name to the
Directorate of Government and Political Relations. The significance of these changes relates to
how they affect the resources that are available to the Prime Minister.
Among key divisions of the Prime Minister’s Office, Blair placed great importance
especially to the Policy Unit (Policy Directorate after 2001 election) and the Press Office (the
Directorate of Communications and Strategy). Blair expanded the size of the Policy Unit and
almost doubled the number of personnel compared to the Major years. It enabled the Prime
Minister to intervene in certain areas of policy by providing independent policy advice.
The same can be said also about the Press Office. Blair has made the position of press
secretary an explicitly political appointment by placing Alistair Campbell, a former journalist,
in the role. Campbell centralized further control of government communications at Number 10.
The intention is to ensure the consistency of the government line and to minimize the media
profile of any dissenting voices within the government. The new Ministerial Code which was
revised by the Blair Government has stated as follows. “ In order to ensure the effective
presentation of Government policy, all major interviews and media appearances, both print and
broadcast, should be agreed with the No. 10 Press Office before any commitments are entered
into. The policy content of all major speeches, press releases and new policy initiatives should
be cleared in good time with No. 10 Private Office; the timing and form of announcements
should be cleared with the No. 10 Press Office” (Cabinet Office 1997: 6) .
In January 1998, the Strategic Communication Unit (SCU) was established within the
Press Office. The SCU is pulling together and sharing with departments the government’s key
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policy themes and messages as well as assisting with the drafting of ministerial speeches. The
primary task for the SCU is to coordinate the weekly media presentation of stories. It prepares
‘the grid’, a weekly diary of events presented each Thursday to a meeting of heads of
information from the Whitehall departments. The purpose is to prevent unhelpful clashes
between departmental news releases. In other words, the Prime Minister Office was able to
incorporate the government’s message and themes into departmental publicity activities
through the SCU. There is no doubt that the SCU has played a crucial role in centralizing
government’s communications under the control of the Prime Minster’s press secretary
(Franklin 2004b: 60-61).
Immediately after taking office in May 1997, the Blair started to realize a series of reform
agendas included in the manifesto. But he did not necessarily trust officials’ ability to develop
and deliver policy. Thus, it is the political technique have been used which appointed the staff of
the Leader’s Office in opposition days to the post of special advisors in the Prime Minister’s
Office. There has been a dramatic increase in the overall number of special advisers. When
John Major left Downing Street in June 1997, he enjoyed the support of just eight special
advisers, but Blair had increased this to eighteen. By 2003, twenty-seven special advisers out of
eighty-one who worked across all central government ministries were located in the Prime
Minister Office (Committee on Standards in Public Life 2003: 50).
Furthermore, the change of special adviser’s authority is important. Most special advisers
should be so far to offering their political masters advice and had no authority to direct the work
of career civil servants. An executive order in council of 1997 had first legislated for the
creation of up to three advisers with executive powers. Blair’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell
retains these privileges. Until Alastair Campbell’s resignation of Director of Communications
in 2003, he had been also one.
The Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office were highly integrated into the de
facto ‘Whitehall Centre’ in following ways. First, Jonathan Powell, the Chief of Staff in the
Prime Minster’s Office sought to pull together work in both. Second, a weekly planning
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meeting has been hold at Number 10, chaired by the Prime Minister and attended by the Chief
of Staff and the head of the Policy Unit in the side of Number 10 as well as the Minister of the
Cabinet Office, the Cabinet Secretary and the heads of the Cabinet Secretariats. Finally, there
have been increasingly close policy-making links between the Cabinet Secretariats and officials
in Number 10. Thus, under the Blair government the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet
Office operate in a more unified way than ever before and the Cabinet Office works to allow the
Prime Minister to exercise more control over the Whitehall (Burch and Holliday 1999: 41-43)
Increasing autonomy of the Prime Minister in the Policy Process
Prime Minister’s power resources, as we have seen, have increased remarkably and moreover,
have been institutionalized under the Blair government. How is it about the Prime Minister’s
autonomy which Poguntke and Webb conceptualized as another element of presidentialization
in the executive face? It will be necessary to explore how Prime Minister’s power resources are
actually used in the policy making process.
The first point to notice is the increased development of policy making initiated by the
Prime Minister’s Office. Blair has developed much grater policy capability and means for
intervening in departments. The one expression is remarkable increase of bilateral meeting
between Prime Minister and individual ministers. Over his first 25 months in office Blair held a
total of 783 meeting with individual ministers; over the same period, Major held 272 such
sessions. Blair held regularly bilateral meeting with ministers and their top officials in order to
represent the Prime Minister’s preferences and themes in his key areas of education, health,
crime and transport. To such end, the Policy Unit (Policy Directorate) was systematically
involved in the development of departmental proposals from a very early stages (Kavanagh and
Seldon 2000: 278-279; Blick 2004: 276).
The Blair government has created various special Units and task forces to overcome
departmentalism. For instance, in the first term a number of these institutions such as the Social
Exclusion Unit, the Performance and Innovation Unit, and the Women’s Unit were attached to
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Number10. In the second term it created the Office of Public Service Reform, the Delivery Unit,
and the Forward Strategy Unit in order to improve the public service delivery. These bodies are
charged with to checks progress is being made in achieving goals and repot it to the Prime
Minster. In the past, departments have always had sole responsibility for the delivery services,
but now such units have institutionalized Number 10’s role in the oversight of what had
traditionally been a relatively autonomous area of departmental activity (Smith 2003: 68-69) .
Furthermore, Blair established his own diplomatic staffs, Chief Adviser to the Prime
Minister on Europe and Chief Adviser to the Prime Minster on defence and foreign affairs so
that he could to take the initiative in foreign policy through bypassing the advice of the Foreign
Office. The symbolic example is a decision-making process of the Blair’s Iraq war. In theory,
key decision over policy on Iraq would be resolved not by full Cabinet, but by the cabinet
committee on Overseas policy and Defence (OPD). Blair found, however, the OPD ‘too
formal’ and ‘insignificantly focused’ and so he secretly established a small informal meeting
before each OPD. It was this group that was the real decision-making body (Seldon 2004: 580)
As such an example shows, there is a growing tendency to centralize the decision-making
into the Prime Minster’s Office, especially the inner circle around the Prime Minister under the
Blair government. There is no doubt that the role of full Cabinet as the highest and collective
decision-making organ within the government has declined. The reduced length of Cabinet
meetings demonstrates that Blair downgrades the Cabinet. Weekly Cabinet meetings now
rarely last more than an hour, and have been known to finish in 30 minutes. Blair makes less use
of Cabinet Committees than did any of his immediate predecessor. Blair operated with
considerably fewer Cabinet Committees, 12 to Major’s 16. The Prime Minister’s Cabinet
Committees places (all of which are chair position) greatly reduced, from nine under Major to
just five under Blair (Dunleavy 2003: 346). The real decision making takes place, as I have
mentioned before, in meetings involving the Prime Minister and his closest advisers, in some
cases, between the Prime Minister and a senior minister alone outside of the Cabinet as well as
its preceding Cabinet Committees.
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The important point to note is Blair’s neglect of, even disdain for Parliament. The decline
of Prime Minister’s activity in Parliament is of long standing but it has sharply accelerated since
1997. Blair concentrated his parliamentary attendance on Wednesdays, attending for Prime
Minister’s questions. Apart from the annual Budget and important defence or foreign policy
statements, he very seldom sat on the bench listening to speeches or statements by even senior
Ministers. Furthermore, his voting record in Common division was much less than that of any
Prime Minister sine the War. This was only 3 % in Blair’s first session as Prime Minister. Blair’s
voting record then improved a little to 8.6% during the 1997-2001 parliament, 7.7 % during the
2001-2004 parliament. This was, however, only about half Thatcher’s record at her low point
(Riddell 2004: 826). Blair made also not so much speeches and statements in the Commons.
Blair preferred to put over a message about government policy via press release at Number 10,
broadcast or newspaper interviews, and town meetings with electorates than on the floor of the
Commons. We may safely say that Blair attached much greater importance to the direct
accountability to the public vie such sessions and indirectly vie media interviews, than the
accountability to the Commons.
Labour’s and Conservative Organizational Reforms and the Shift toward Plebiscitarian Party
Since its third successive general election defeat in 1987, the British Labour Party launched
organizational reforms under the name of ‘modernization’ in concurrence with the
comprehensive review of party policy. While a series of organizational reforms included
empowering individual members in selecting party leaders and parliamentary candidates, these
reforms under the name of ‘decentralization’ have certainly been motivated by the desire to
enhance the strategic autonomy of the leadership in decision-making process within the party.
The introduction of one member one vote was intended to counter organizational reforms
which led to the rise of left activists in constituency Labour parties and the dominance of lefts
within intra-party power balance from 1970s to the early 1980s. It may safely be assumed that
theoretical base of such reforms was May’s law of curvilinear disparity about opinion structure
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in political parties. There is not always agreement that May’s law can apply perfectly to British
political parties (Norris: 1995). Anyway the leadership under Kinnock sought to dismantle
influences of constituency activists and to change party policies in favour of the leadership by
giving more power to moderate individual members. In deed, Blair’ success in abolishing
clause four of the party’s constitution was mainly to the direct membership enfranchisement. In
1995, he secured the support of 85 percent of those taking part. A year later, party members
were balloted on Labour’s pre-election manifesto, no les than 95 per cent voting in favour.
The second radical recasting of the Labour’s policy-making process was the introduction
of Partnership in Power by Blair after the 1997 general election. In this case, we should not
overlook that empowering individual members, namely decentralization of decision-making
process within the party reinforced to enhance the leadership autonomy in practice. To be sure,
individual members were given power to participate directly in the policy-making process
through the National Policy Forum (NPF) or Regional Policy Forums. It is, however, not to be
denied that the introduction of intra-party direct democracy led to strengthen the leadership
control of policy-making process, as Seyd points out. First, the NPF’s agenda is heavily
influenced by the well-resourced ministerial team, given that the initial policy drafts are
submitted by ministers. Second, senior party officials act as ‘facilitator’ of discussion at the NPF
and have considerable interpretive power when drafting NNPF reports and statements. Finally,
the NPF meets in private, which clearly undermines the capacity of party dissidents to mobilize
opposition to the leadership (Seyd 1999: 393-394).
The same can be said about organizational reforms of the Conservative party. After the
1997 election defeat, the Conservative party issued organizational reform proposals under the
title of ‘Fresh Future.’ While the document was suffused with the rhetoric of participation and
democratization, it involved a series of reforms to strengthen the party leadership in practice.
First, the legal autonomy of the Constituency Associations was lost with reform of local
organizations. According to new rules for the conduct of the Constituency Associations, they
should submit to the new Board of Management, the supreme decision-making body of the
10
party, an annual report on their activities, membership and financial accounts. Second,
Constituency Associations were allowed to send representative to the Annual Party Conference,
the Spring Assembly and the National Conservative Convention which deals with mainly with
organizational issues, and to submit motions for debate at conference via the Conservative
Policy Forum. It is, however, the party’s Committee on Conference which determines the
agenda. In this sense, party members still lack formal rights of control of decision-making.
Finally, by integration of party organizations the leader is now leader of the entire party,
whereas before he or she was leader only of the parliamentary party. It means that the leader
now gains authority over all other sections of the party (Conservative 1998; Webb 2000:
195-198).
Although party members have gotten more voices at policy-making process by a series of
organizational reforms in the Labour and Conservative party, there is still no change in that the
policy agenda and the procedure of debate are fundamentally determined by party leadership.
As has been conceptualized as ‘paradox of intra-party democratization’, empowering
individual members actually served to strengthen the party leadership autonomy through
bypassing the activists. In this sense, “democratization on paper may therefore actually coexist
with powerful elite influence in practice” (Mair 1994: 17). It is likely to say that growing
participations of individual members into policy-making process within parties serve only to
ratify the decisions which have been taken by the party leadership in practice. These facts
suggests that the shift of British political parties toward the plebiscitarian party in which party
leadership makes an appeal to individual members directly and the latter gives a support to the
former through direct ballots.
Personalization of Electoral Campaigns and Leader’s Effect
As to presidentialization at the electoral face, Poguntke and Webb point out following three
aspects: a growing emphasis on leadership appeals in election campaigning, media coverage of
politics focuses more on leaders and the growing significance of leader effect in voting behavior.
11
As regards the first aspect, main parties have made leaders a more prominent focus of the
election campaigns since Kinnock himself took an unusually prominent place in the Labour’s
1987 campaigns. For instance, it is made for Blair’s photograph to appear all the time in various
kinds of print media such as a newspaper, a magazine and so forth. Moreover, the party leader’s
press conference and the schedule of his national campaign are adjusted carefully so that party
leader’s figure may be reported certainly by the news programme of television. Particularly
notable in this respect was the Party Election Broadcast in Labour’s 1987 campaign which was
simply entitled Kinnock. This concentrated exclusively on the personality and qualities of
Labour’s leader. Since then, the Party Election Broadcasts which focused on Major, Blair have
been produced.
On the other hand, the media has devoted greater attention to party leaders. It was the
remarkable instance that the Sun newspaper which switched its allegiance from Conservative to
Labour in the 1997 general election, carried in the front page headline of ‘The Sun Backs Blair.’
The degree of attention to the party leader is further great in the broadcast media than in the
print media. For instance, in 2001 election campaign, Tony Blair was quoted in TV and radio
news items nearly five times more Gordon Brown. The same tendency can be seen in the case
of opposition party leaders, as Table 1 shows (Harrison 2002: 140, Table 8.4).
How about party leader’s effect on voting behavior? Opinions are divided among
researchers on this subject. While some studies argue that personality and image of party
leaders had considerable impacts on voting behavior, there is not little research which stands on
negative conclusion. Notable in this respect is the recent study by Bartle and Crewe. Using data
of three election panel studies about 1997 general election, they examine the impact of
personality of Blair and Major on both individual voters and the aggregate election outcome.
They suggest that effect of the party leaders’ perceived personal traits were small. This is not to
deny that the two party leaders, Blair in particular, had substantial indirect effects on the vote.
Influence of this type is exerted indirectly via the leader’s influence on his political party or his
government (Bartle and Crewe 2002)
12
Table 1 Politicians quoted in radio and television news (number of times)
Source: Harrison 2002: 140, Table 8.4
A ‘Koizumi Presidency’?
It seems reasonable to conclude, from what has been observed above, that the
presidentialization of British politics has occurred under the Blair government. These changes
are remarkably noteworthy, because the British politics has been traditionally characterized by
highly partified form of parliament. How about, the Japanese case then?
Opinions are divided among researchers on this subject. For example, Izuru Makihara
refers to Koizumi as ‘presidential Prime Minister’ because of strengthening the Cabinet Office
and the Cabinet Secretariat under the Koizumi government. Moreover, Krauss and Nyblade
argue that the importance of the public image of the prime minister as a factor in Japanese
politics has grown significantly since the early 1980s. Therefore, ‘The recent focus on the
Japanese prime minister in the media and increased academic interest in the subject is not an
aberration; it is recognition of a long-term trend towards the greater “presidentialization” of the
Role.’ On the contrary, Tomohito Shinoda characterizes recent transformations of Japanese
policy-making processes in the core executive since the mid-1990s as a shift from
13
‘Un-Westminster system’ to a ‘new style of Westminster system’ His views have much in
common with those of Harukata Takenaka and Satoshi Machidori. Furthermore, Mulgan has
drawn a cautious conclusion on this subject and expressed in the following words: ‘What
Koizumi is attempting to do is to refashion executive power along standard Westminster lines.
The thrust of his political reform initiative suggests that the writing may be on the wall’ because
of the continuing predominance of the traditional policy-making model (Makihara 2005; Kraus
and Nyblade 2005: 368; Shinoda 2005; Shinoda 2006; Takenaka 2006; Machidori 2006:
325-332; Mulgan 2003: 90-91).
Which arguments are valid in the case of Japan? In this section, I will examine
developments of Japanese politics under the Koizumi government in terms of three aspects
which are identified by Poguntke and Webb.
As far as the executive face of presidentialization is concerned, the important point to note
is the change of selecting cabinet ministers and decision-making process since Koizumi’s
coming into power. Regarding the former point, the Prime Minister’s appointment of cabinet
posts has been based on a factional recommendation system. Prime Minister Koizumi, however,
did not adopt this system and he neglected also the seniority rule by ‘pole and line fishing’ way
of appointment (ippon-zuri). Indeed, under the Koizumi government, there are much
appointments to the cabinet members of MPs who are elected less than 4 times. Among other
things, it symbolized the further destruction of seniority rule that he appointed Shinzo Abe who
was elected only three times, to the post of Secretary-General of the LDP in the second
reshuffled cabinet of the first term (Ito 2006: 26-29). Moreover, it is noteworthy that Koizumi
appointed from outside the government Heizo Takenaka, Professor of the Keio University, as
the most important brains of the Prime Minister to the post of Minister of State for Economic
and Fiscal Policy, one of the Ministers for Special Mission which are established in order to put
all their energies into the prompt implementation of key government reform policies.
More important is the strengthening of the policy-making capability of the Prime Minister.
The amended Cabinet Law which was enacted in 1999 and implemented in January 2001
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clarifies that the Prime Minister may submit to the cabinet proposal on basic principles on
important policies. In the amended Cabinet Law, the functions of the Cabinet Secretariat, which
directly assists the Prime Minister, were also expanded to include planning and drafting basic
principles in addition to comprehensive coordination. New positions based on Prime
Ministerial appointment were created to strengthen these functions. The number of staff
directly assisting the Prime Minister has been increased and made subject to political
appointment, including more than five private secretaries to the Prime Minister and special
advisers. The administrative reforms of January 2001 included the creation of a much more
powerful Cabinet Office (Naikakufu) to replace the former Sorifu. Under the Cabinet Office,
four councils, including Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP: Keizai Zaisei Shimon
Kaigi) were created to execute state strategy. The CEFP, which is modeled on the US White
House Council of Economic Advisors, is chaired by the Prime Minister and has a maximum of
11 members including of the Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy, Takenaka. The
Cabinet Office and the CEFP in particular, provides an effective new leverage for the Prime
Minister to realize his own policies. Thus, there are growing and institutionalizing of power
resources that are available to the Prime Minister rather than the Cabinet as a whole under the
Koizumi government.
The strengthening power resources of the Prime Minister led to the growth of his
autonomy from more collective partified forms of politics, since Koizumi made full use of these
power resources in the policy-making process. Regarding this point, what has to be notice is the
downgrading of ‘advance scrutiny’ (Yoto Shinsa) of the LDP’s policy making machinery. The
CEFP, as mentioned above, is concerned with basic policies for overall economic management,
fiscal management and budget preparation. In deciding the Budget Request Ceiling of the fiscal
2002, Koizumi decided his government’s first comprehensive plans, the first round of the
so-called ‘big-boned reform agenda’ at the CEFP before the LDP’s prior approval at Executive
Council (Somukai). Since then, it became established in the budgetary process that the CEFP
decides the ‘big-boned reform agenda’ at first, and then the overall plan and basic direction of
15
the budget are made. In this sense, the CEFP has become the headquarter of the Koizumi’s
structural reforms. The growing importance of CEFP in the policy-making process was due
partly to the openness of discussion and the presentation of the papers by four members from
the private sector. Namely, it was taken consistently the technique that members from private
sector present at first the papers which establish reform agenda and they plan a schedule for one
fiscal year to come under the open discussion (Shimizu 2005: 246-277).
The same can be seen in the decision-making process of the privatization of postal
services. In April 2004, Koizumi established the ‘preparatory committee for privatization of
postal service’ not in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somusho) which
should take originally charge of this matter, but in the Cabinet Secretary. After the election of
House of Councilors in July, Koizumi directed the CEFP to make concrete plans for postal
reforms. In September, basic postal privatization plan which envisioned dividing the current
Japan Post, a public cooperation, into separate companies, was approved at the meeting of the
CEFP and at the Cabinet meeting.. The LDP was forced to acquiesce in the decision of the
Cabinet ex post facto. This process illustrates remarkably the dismantling of the LDP’s advance
scrutiny system in practice. In April 2005, Koizumi bypassed the LDP’s Policy Affairs
Research Council (Seimu Chosakai) as well as Executive Council, and tried to submit his postal
reform bills directly to the Diet in face of strong dissent against the bills within the LDP (Ito
2006: 31; Takenaka 2006: 211-222).
The privatization of postal services is the centerpiece of Koizumi’s reform efforts. In this
sense, Prime Minister Koizumi invoked a personalized mandate based on his electoral appeal,
which is one of indicators of presidentialization at the executive face, as Poguntke and Webb
point out (Poguntke and Webb 2005: 19). While Koizumi has not completely changed the
decision-making structure which was traditionally characterized by the bottom-up system, the
Cabinet Office, the Cabinet Secretary and CEFP had a growing tendency to serve as the Prime
Minister’s Machine which supports the top-down decision-making initiated by the Prime
Minister. Based on our observation on increasing leadership power resources and autonomy
16
and a declining of more collective partified form of politics, it seems reasonable to suppose the
emerging sift toward presidentialization of Japanese politics under the Koizumi Government,
as far as the executive aspect is concerned.
Then, how about the party face? As the effects of electoral reforms and introduction of
public subsidies for political parties since 1994, LDP’s factions have lost their central role in
nominating candidates and raising funds. Moreover, as Koizumi neglected the seniority rule as
well as the factional recommendation system, the importance of factions in allocating posts has
also declined. While the LDP has not carried out such drastic organizational reforms as those of
British Labour and Conservative Parties, it must be noted that the LDP introduced the primary
system in the election of its president in 2001. In April 2001 after the resignation of the Prime
Minister Mori, LDP’s internal opposition to another back-room deal and widespread prediction
of a catastrophic defeat for the party in the forthcoming House of Councillors election,
combined to pressure the party leadership to open the process for selecting its next president to
the rank-and-file party members. The party leadership decided to give each of the forty-seven
prefectures three votes each, for a total of 142, to be primary elections, which would be added to
the votes reserved for each of the 386 LDP Diet members. Koizumi won 123 votes of the 141
available from the prefectures and the former Prime Minister Hshimoto won only 15. There is
no doubt that Koizumi’s winning the presidency was due to his overwhelming victory of
primary elections.
While the LDP under Koizumi carried forward centralization of the party organization, it
was not so active to expand the party membership. Being backed by high popular support for
the Koizumi government, the LDP’s leadership appeals directly to the electorate around
targeted independent voters in urban areas and seeks to win their electoral support rather than to
organize them as party members. LDP’s Diet members with strong preference for reelection
look also for a electorally appealing leaders such as Koizumi and follow actively to him. In this
sense, it is likely to say that we are witnessing the emerging shift of the LDP toward the
plebiscitarian party like in the case of British main parties.
17
With respect to the electoral face of presidentialization, it is not so difficult to find in the
Japanese politics under the Koizumi government following evidences: increasing
leadership-centered campaign strategy, growth of media coverage of leaders, and growing
leader effect on voting behavior. Since in his first few months in office Koizumi government
got unprecedented level of support, around the 85% level, Koizumi took an unusually
prominent place in the public campaign. The LDP headquarter, for instance, put up a huge
poster of Koizumi on the building and started to sell various items of so-called ‘Koizumi goods’
such as his campaign posters, calendar with Koizumi’s photography, cellular phone’s straps
with miniature size of Koizumi’s figure and so forth. Koizumi also takes advantage of the
internet to communicate with his supporter, producing an email newsletter called the ‘Koizumi
Cabinet Mail Magazine’, which he uses to advance his views. Furthermore, Koizumi has
started regular interviews to answer questions by journalists of his ban-kisha, so-called
‘burasagari’ which is taken place in the Prime Minister’s Office two times every day. As a result,
media coverage of Prime Minister Koizumi has been highly increased in television news.
With the appearance of a new TV programme: Kume Hiroshi’s ‘News Station’, media
coverage of party leaders has increased. Krauss and Nyblade’s study on presidentialization in
the Japanese electoral politics makes it clear that newspaper coverage of the prime minister
during election has gradually increased since the early 1980s. Above all, their data analysis
shows Koizumi’s remarkably increased coverage in 2001. Using the level of support for the
Prime Minister’s cabinet as the standard measures of Prime Minister’s popularity in Japan, they
demonstrate that the Prime Minister’s support has increasingly affected support for the LDP
and election results since the early 1980s (Kraus and Nyblade 2005). It seems reasonable to
suppose that the personalization of party politics is also taking place in Japan.
Concluding Remarks
All observations in this paper show the trend towards presidentialization of politics not only in
Britain but also in Japan. To be sure, the Japanese case seems to be not so clear in comparison
18
with the British case. In my view, however it is not appropriate to conclude that changes under
the Koizumi government preset the shift from the ‘Un-Westminster System’ to a ‘new style of
Westminster system’. It is because there are much evidences which demonstrate the growth of
leadership power resources and autonomy at the executive and the party face, and the
personalization of politics at the electoral process. What has to be notice is the movement from
collective to personalized government, and the movement from a pattern of governmental and
electoral politics dominated by the political party towards one where the party leader becomes a
more autonomous political force.
There is no doubt that these developments are due in large part to institutional reforms
such as the introduction of the single-member district system, and governmental reforms since
the-mid 1990s, as far as the Japanese case is concerned. These institutional reforms were
originally intended to transform the Japanese ‘Un-Westminster System’ into the Westminster
style of parliamentary system through strengthening the Prime Minster’s power and dissolving
a dual power structure of party-bureaucracy policy-making. The result, however, has been the
emergence of a presidentialized type of politics and the mediatization of electoral campaigns
has been the dominant political figure of the past decade in Japan. In this sense, we may also say
that ‘the road to British parliamentarism got sidetracked onto the path of American-style
presidentialism’ in the same way as the case of Italy under the Berlusconi government (Calise
2005: 102).
In addition to those institutional factors, the presidentialization of politics is dependent on
contingent factors such as the political context and the personality and strategy of leaders.
Indeed, Blair and Koizumi pursued a deliberate strategy to make the most of the new
institutional leverages which are available to the Prime Minister. Their personal images had also
considerable impacts on the voting behavior, as mentioned as ‘Blair effect’ or ‘Koizumi effect.’
Then, what structural factors are important for explaining shifts towards a more
presidentialized mode of government in Britain and Japan? Concerning this point, Poguntke
and Webb point out following common factors which cause presidentialization phenomena in
19
advanced industrial democracies: the internationalization of politics, the growth of the state,
changing structure of mass communication, the erosion of traditional social cleavage politics
(Poguntke and Webb 2005: 13-17). While those five factors can be applied to both cases of
Britain and Japan, I would like to focus attention to the last factor in this paper.
Since Japan is linguistically, ethnically, and regionally homogeneous society in general,
Japanese voting behavior is difficult to explain in terms of social cleavages. In this sense, it
seems to be appropriate to reinterpret the erosion of traditional social cleavages politics as the
weakening traditional linkages between parties and their base of social group support including
not only of class and religion, but also of social networks. Many observers have contended that
social anchorage of a party has weakening, in other words, a process of class and partisan
dealignment has taking place in Britain and Japan. There is a clear decline in class voting and
identification with the two main parties in Britain since the1980s. With declining of social
networks to determine voting behavior in Japan, the percentage of voters identifying
themselves as independents increased gradually and the share of independent voters had
reached more than 50 percent in 2000s. As a result, social group identities no longer dictate
voter loyalties and related ideological conflicts have become less acute. In particular, since the
Blair government adopted major policy principles of Thatcher and Major governments, there
have been growing convergences of two major British parties’ policies in left-right terms since
1997, as Figure 1 shows clearly.
It is, therefore, no surprise that a range of other factors such as voters’ evaluations of the
government’s performance and personal qualities or images of party leaders may become more
important in guiding election campaigns and voting behavior. In other words, ‘if voters become
“available” as a result of loosing social ties and clear programmatic alternatives are increasingly
lacking, party politicians may take refuge in a growing leadership-centredness of politics.’
Furthermore, ‘the presidentialization of electoral processes generate greater leadership
autonomy from the party and encourages victorious party leaders to infer that their party’s
mandate is to a considerable extent a personal mandate, thus justifying their more dominant role
20
Figure 1 British Parties’ Ideological Movements on a Left-Right Scale, 1945-2001
Source: Bara and Budge 2001, p. 32, Figure 2
within the executive’ (Poguntke and Webb 2005: 16-17). In this respect, it is not too far from the
truth to say that the presidentialization of politics means efforts as well as results of party
responses to electoral dealignment (see Mair et als. 2004).
What are its implications for contemporary democracies? Takenaka regards changes of
Japanese politics since the mid-1990s as the shift from the ‘1955 regime’ to ‘2001 regime’
which has been characterized by centralization of power to the Prime Minister, namely ‘rule by
the Prime Minister’. Furthermore, he concludes that since the ‘2001 regime’ coming into
existence, the quality of Japanese democracy has improved undoubtedly owing to unification
of power and responsibility into the Prime Minister (Takenak 2006: 257-259).
While it is not to be denied that it has become clearer where the responsibility lies, we
should not overlook other aspects of changes. What matters here is the emerging plebiscitary
model of democracy. The Prime Minister would seek now to bypass more collective
decision-making bodies such as the parliament and parties and appeal directly to voters by
21
media. While the voice of voters is clearly important, it does not set the political agenda in
advance. The popular voice which is expressed via elections, referenda, and opinion polls, is
only to endorse or reject policies which have been decided in practice by the inner circles
around the Prime Minister. To offer people the choice of saying yes or no is not the same as
offering the choice of real alternatives, and engaging them in a public competition of ideas
which constitute the basic principles of deliberative democracy. In this sense, there seems to be
much truth in Mair’s following words: ‘Despite its populist faced, plebiscitarian democracy is
flawed democracy’ (Mair 2000: 34).
22
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