Political Consequences of Structural Change: Explaining the LDP's Loss in 2009

Monday, May 17, 2010
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM
(Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Kay Shimizu

What explains the recent large swings in the behavior of Japanese voters? Last August, for the first time in the post-WWII era, Japan's leading political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, lost power, making way for a new DPJ government. During the preceding months leading up to the lower house elections in August 2009, popular media coverage pointed to fundamental structural changes in the Japanese political economy as the underlying causes for changing voter preferences. To what extent can structural changes in the economy and society explain changing voter behavior and electoral outcomes? Japan's two decade old stagnating economy, rapidly graying society, and post-industrial advanced economic structure provide an ideal case for studying this question. Using both national and sub-national level data spanning two decades, we test both popular theories and conventional wisdom about the political effects of a graying society, widening income disparities, and industrial structural change.

Kay Shimizu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She received her undergraduate degree and PhD in political science from Stanford University (2008). Her research concerns the political economy of Japan and China, with a focus on fiscal politics, central local relations, and the politics of economic structural change. Her book manuscript, Private Money as Public Funds: the Politics of Japan's Recessionary Economy, examines the role of private financial institutions in Japan's political struggles to adjust to a changing economic and demographic landscape. She is on leave during the 2009-2010 academic year as an Advanced Research Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Program on US Japan Relations at Harvard University.