Competition between Political Parties and Policy-Development by the Opposition

政党政治要求在选举中获得绝对多数的政党或联盟主导政策和立法程序。因此，政党之间的各种政治竞争在政治中至关重要。我的研究是试图分析当代日本的政党政治，重点是日本社会党（JSP）在政策竞争中的作用和影响。不用说，JSP在国会的席位几乎总是在自民党的一半左右。我的研究表明，JSP的这种停滞在某种程度上是由于该党未能在许多领域制定有竞争力的政策。如果JSP在政策活动中更加现实和熟练，日本政党政治的近代史将会是一个不同的历史。传统观点认为，自民党官僚联盟有效地将反对派排除在决策过程之外。然而，根据我的研究发现，JSP在所谓的1955年政权的形成中发挥的作用远远大于它在国会中的规模。党的政策活动对自民党历届内阁的政策形成也有很大影响。如果不充分关注政策竞争的动态，对日本政治史的描述会产生误导。JSP在选举政治中失败了。但它在政策和立法政治上仍然具有竞争力。

Party politics requires that the party or the coalition that obtains an absolute majority in an election dominate policy and legislative processes. Thus, competition over various politics among parties is critical in politics. My research is an attempt to analyze party politics in contemporary Japan focusing on the role and influence of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) in policy competition.Needless to say, the number of JSP's seats in the Diet who was almost always around a half of that of LDP's. My research shows that such stagnation of the JSP is to some extent due to the failure of the party to develop competitive policies in many areas. Modern history of Japanese party politics would have been a different one, if the JSP had been more realistic and skillful in policy activities.Conventional wisdom tells that LDP-bureaucrats federation effectively excluded the opposition from policy-making process. According to findings in my research, however, the JSP played a far bigger role in the formation of the so-called 1955 regime than its size in the Diet might tell. It is also true that policy activities of the party considerably affected policy formations by successive LDP cabinets. It is misleading to depict Japanese political history without paying enough attention to policy-competition dynamics. The JSP failed in election politics. But it was still competitive in policy and legislative politics.