A Research On The 'Factional Politics' Of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) In Japan

This paper aims at studying the factional politics of LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) in Japan. Faction, which is deeply rooted in the soil of the special Japanese social culture and political regimes, is the most important organization of the largest party--LDP in Japan. The factions live with LDP and also die out with LDP. The history of LDP is such a history that the factions prosper and decline, gather and part, and also conflict with each other endlessly. We can say that LDP is born, prospers and declines together with factions. As the largest party in Japan (1955-1993), its factional politics play an important role in the whole politics of Japan. For a long time, one of the characteristics of Japanese party regime is that there are a few factions (some are larger and some are smaller) in LDP. Different factions have different ideologies, interests and policies. So they often compete drastically with each other in the party, just like the competition between LDP and other parties which are out of office. The competition between factions, on the one hand, develops the democracy in the party, puts energy into LDP and keeps LDP in the state of conflicting but not breaking up. On the other hand, because of its disadvantages such as money politics, backroom politics and one faction controlling the power, the competition between factions breaks the solidarity in LDP, leads to the cleavage of LDP and at last will help Japan walk to the true democratic road gradually.The purpose and significance of this study lies in that: First, it tries to analyze and summarize the history background of faction and factional politics in LDP, generalize its structures, features and political functions and then forecast its developing trend combining with the facts. Second, through this study, we can build up a fundamental theory for the research of party politics and democracy from a new point of view of 'faction'. Third, the factional politics in LDP is more typical and representative than the factional politics in other countries. From this point, to Japan, this study will help them understand and evaluate their party politics more objectively. To their reforming and improving the political systems especially the party regimes, this study also has great importance.When it comes to its studying contents, this study is divided into three parts. The first part is studying the reasons of factional politics in LDP. It analyzes mainly from the background of historical culture and the political regimes in the light of the logical order of faction-party faction-the faction of LDP in Japan. The second party is studying the structure of the faction and the features of the factional politics in LDP. Firstly, it analyzes the scale and makeup of the faction; secondly, it generalizes the characters of factional politics of LDP: the co-existing of elitism and mobilization, highly systemized, having some basic playing rules and weakening their ideology. In the third part, it analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the factional politics. Firstly, it summarizes its positive effect on the LDP itself and on the democracy of Japan; then it sums up its disadvantages such as money politics, backroom politics and one faction controlling the power. In the part of conclusion, mostly, it evaluates the factional politics of LDP in Japan, forecasts its developing trend and then educes my own conclusion.As far as the methods of this study, it persists in the historical, scientific and dialectic analytical means. It discusses the birth and the growing of the factional politics of LDP in Japan synthetically by using the method of literature-analyzing. Furthermore, this study also adopts the method of deduction from the general things to the special things, the method of illustration, the method of comparison, and the method of standardization.