From Confrontation to Coalition Formation : Political Realignment and the Formation of LDP-Kōmeitō Alliance in the 1990s

Abstract

The formation of coalition alliance between Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Kōmeitō in Japan, launched in July 1999, was a puzzling outcome of political restructuring that began with LDP’s loss of a simple majority in the 1993 lower house election. The purpose of this article is to trace the changes in the two parties’ preferences throughout the 1990s, and ask why and how the relationship between the LDP and Kōmeitō developed from confrontation to coalition formation in 1999. By placing emphasis on the holistic developmental path of political actors’ preferences embedded not only in the rules of electoral competition, but more so in the institutional contexts and subjective perceptions of political opportunities, this paper argues that the LDP’s ‘rational choice’ was reconfigured based on the logic of internal power struggles as much as number-games in the Diet, while Kōmeitō’s utmost concerns were continued to be laid upon electoral integrity of the party organization throughout the period of great political transformation. This article first discusses the rise of New Frontier Party as the beginning of party realignment in the 1990s, which ignited LDP-Kōmeitō conflicts in the mid-1990s. Second, it analyzes the internal struggles within both LDP and the Kōmeitō throughout the 1990s, which can be characterized as horizontal restructuring for the former, and vertical tension for the latter. Third section discusses how the LDP leadership manipulated Kōmeitō’s electoral concerns as minor party in inducing changes in the junior partner’s strategic choices, illuminating how it was not the policy concerns but electoral rationalism that dominated the genesis of two-decade-long coalition partnership.