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进程。因此，政党之间对各种政治的竞争在政治中至关重要。本研究的目的是分析日本现代的政党政治，重点研究日本社会党（JSP）在政策竞争中的作用和影响。当然，日本社会党在国会中的席位几乎总是自民党的一半左右。我的研究表明，JSP的这种停滞在某种程度上是由于党未能在许多领域制定竞争政策。如果日本民主党在政策活动中更加务实和灵活，日本政党政治的现代史将是另一个样子。传统观点认为，自民党官僚联盟有效地将反对党排除在政策制定过程之外。然而，根据我的研究结果，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。此外，自民党的政策活动也对历届内阁的政策形成产生了很大影响。如果不对政策竞争动态给予足够的关注，就描绘日本的政治历史，这是一种误导。联合战略计划在选举政治中失败了。但它在政策和立法政治方面仍然具有竞争力。

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.