Junko Kato is professor of political science at the University of Tokyo and is currently a visiting fellow at Yale University's MacMillan Center. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University. She is the author of The Problem of Bureaucratic Rationality (Princeton University Press, 1994), Regressive Taxation and the Welfare State (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Zeisei Kaikaku to Kanryosei (The University of Tokyo Press, 1997). She has also contributed single-authored and co-authored articles to American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Politics, Governance, and Party Politics.
Steven Clemons is Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and also serves as a Senior Fellow. He is the publisher of the political blog The Washington Note and is the director of the Japan Policy Research Institute, which he co-founded. Mr. Clemons is a long-time policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center. Prior to moving to Washington, Mr. Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California. Mr. Clemons received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Mr. Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major op-ed pages, journals, and magazines around the world.
Ellis Krauss is Professor of Japanese Politics and Policymaking and Director of Japanese Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has received a Wilson Center fellowship for research in residence and was twice a Fulbright Fellow in Japan. He has been a visiting scholar at several Japanese universities, including the University of Tokyo. Krauss serves on the advisory boards of several journals and important committees of national organizations in the field of Asian studies, including being a member of the American Advisory Board of the Japan Foundation. He is currently collaborating with other scholars on three projects: two on electoral reform in Japan and other countries and one on a comparison of the U.S.-Japan security alliance with the U.S.-German and U.S.-British relationships. Dr. Krauss received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is the coeditor of Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia Pacific (2004), and the author of Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (2000), and has written or edited many other books and articles.
Since 1993, a coalition government has replaced 38 years of one-party dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan. There have been party breakups, mergers, and the formation of new parties, all events that are rare in industrialized democracies. While the LDP has survived as the governing party by forming a variety of coalitions, the Democratic Party of Japan has continued to oppose LDP governments since 1998. There have emerged two explanations for this state of affairs. What is determinative of Japanís peculiar dynamics is either politician-to-politician relationships and political leadership or systemic as well as institutional conditions. This presentation, navigating the space between the opposing views and using the cases of the LDP (Koizumi and Abe) and the DPJ (Ozawa), will show that how leaders adjust to systemic and institutional change determines the fortunes of parties.
