Opposition in Parliamentary Democracies : British and Japanese Political Parties in Comparison

Abstract

Participation and legitimate opposition are two central features of what Robert Dahl identified as polyarchies. Despite normative emphases on the importance of political opposition for ‘more’ democracy, studies of opposition parties are yet to flourish. By comparing the British Labour Party and the Democratic Party of Japan, this paper will explore the way in which the practice of a political party in opposition has an impact on the party's performance once in government. Both Britain and Japan are known to be parliamentary democracies, experiencing an alternation of power by landslide: Britain in 1997 and Japan in 2009. However, the Labour government in Britain and the coalition government led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) showed a remarkable difference in their abilities to put their election manifestoes into practice, as well as in their courses of policy position after they took power. To understand the discrepancy between the Labour Party and the DPJ in their performances in government, this paper will argue that the power resources provided for the party leadership, and the intra-party decisionmaking system, both of which are set during the years in opposition, define, to a significant extent, the strength of the political leadership once in government.