Koichi Nakano – författare

When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in September 2009, Japanese citizens expected the imminent arrival of a new political era, characterized by a two-party system. However, in addition to the triple disasters of March 2011, the DPJ faced numerous difficulties arising from its controversial policies and massive party defections following the government’s consumption tax hike legislation. The DPJ fell from power following a crushing defeat in the 2012 Lower House election, in which its seat total was drastically reduced.This book examines the September 2009-December 2012 administration of the DPJ from various perspectives, including policies, party governance, management, and legacy. It identifies the significance of the DPJ to Japan’s party politics, explains the reasons for its downfall, and derives crucial lessons for the future of party democracy in Japan. The contributors, a team of professional academics and a lawyer, analyse the policies and events of the DPJ administration based on their interviews with key DPJ politicians and related persons at or close to the centre of the administration. Together they elicit insights from the experiences of the DPJ government to inform the expectations of Japan’s party democracy. Explaining how the failure of the DPJ government has long-term importance for understanding Japanese politics, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars of the field.

Decentralization is a curious policy for a central government to pursue. If politics is essentially about the struggle for power, why would anyone want to give away the power that one struggled for and won? This book argues that it is precisely party competition in search of power that propels decentralization.Koichi Nakano develops his core argument through in-depth, qualitative research on the politics of reform in France and Japan. Introducing the concept of oppositional policy, he traces the process through which parties in opposition reinvent their ideologies and policy platforms in an attempt to present themselves as the voice of the governed, broaden popular support through the advocacy of enhanced democratic control of government, and proceed to implement some of these oppositional policies after capturing power. This book, thus, takes the role of political parties in the democratic process seriously - parties take up certain issues and espouse certain solutions actively as weapons in the power struggle both on the electoral front and in the policy process. Party competition is not merely a formal condition of democracy; it is also a mechanism with substantive policy impact on its evolution.Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France will be of interest to students of Japanese and French politics and comparative politics in general.

How an elitist concept of democracy promoted by the American political and academic establishments constrained Japan’s political development Japan’s historic pursuit of a full membership in “the West” may finally be close to fruition—even as the value of such membership seems greatly diminished. In Must the Sun Set in the West?, Koichi Nakano argues that, despite the common understanding that postwar Japan became a democracy thanks to the benevolent patronage of the United States, American interference actually stunted Japanese democracy. Tracing the interplay between American liberal hegemonic projection in East Asia and Japan’s efforts to achieve full-fledged Western status, Nakano examines the racist (and sexist) roots of the elitist theory of democracy propagated by the American political and academic establishments and its impact on postwar Japan.Nakano traces the evolution of the elitist project through its various stages—liberal-internationalist “race development,” anticommunist/liberal “modernization theory,” and neoliberal-globalist “democracy assistance.” He argues that Japan, by virtue of its ambiguous position as almost Western (but not really Western), offers a unique vantage point for analyzing the Western hegemonic strategy. He first examines the encounter between American hegemonic projection and Japan’s imperialist modernization before World War II, when the American elite granted Japan an “honorary white” status. He then turns to the postwar period, examining the ways that democracy in Japan collided with the American hegemonic agenda. By revisiting the white supremacist roots of the elitist theory that equates democracy with an elite-pluralist procedure to create strong leadership—which, he points out, is still dominant in political science today—Nakano sheds light on the hidden liberal provenance of contemporary democratic backsliding.

Japan was shaken by the 'double disaster' of earthquake and sarin gas attack in 1995, and in 2011 it was hit once again by the 'triple disaster' of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. This international, multi-disciplinary group of scholars examines the state and societal responses to the disasters and social crisis.

Decentralization is a curious policy for a central government to pursue. If politics is essentially about the struggle for power, why would anyone want to give away the power that one struggled for and won? This book argues that it is precisely party competition in search of power that propels decentralization.Koichi Nakano develops his core argument through in-depth, qualitative research on the politics of reform in France and Japan. Introducing the concept of oppositional policy, he traces the process through which parties in opposition reinvent their ideologies and policy platforms in an attempt to present themselves as the voice of the governed, broaden popular support through the advocacy of enhanced democratic control of government, and proceed to implement some of these oppositional policies after capturing power. This book, thus, takes the role of political parties in the democratic process seriously - parties take up certain issues and espouse certain solutions actively as weapons in the power struggle both on the electoral front and in the policy process. Party competition is not merely a formal condition of democracy; it is also a mechanism with substantive policy impact on its evolution.Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France will be of interest to students of Japanese and French politics and comparative politics in general.