Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan

ABSTRACT

Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequalities became a particularly salient and pressing issue. We compare institutional and socioeconomic contexts, broader governing ideas, and policy responses to this issue by major parties in their election platforms (manifestos). We find that party ideology and broader paradigms continued to shape party responses to regional inequality during both periods.     

The 1892 General Election and the Eclipse of the Liberal Unionists

This article seeks to establish that the 1892 general election marked a major change in the relative positions of the parties in the Unionist alliance. Not only did it reveal the limitations of the Liberal Unionist Party's strategy and appeal in an age of increasingly organised, mass politics, but it also acted as a brake on the ambitions of the new leader of the Liberal Unionists in the house of commons, Joseph Chamberlain. It argues that the Liberal Unionist Party suffered a more severe setback in 1892 than has been recognized hitherto and that Chamberlain's attempts to revive his party both before and after the general election were now prescribed by the reality of the political position in which the party now found itself. Rather than regarding the fluid political circumstances of the 1890s as the outcome of an emerging struggle between increasingly polarised ideologies, it seeks to reinforce the significance of local political circumstances and the efficacy of party management in the growing dominance of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour and the Conservative central organisers.     

T.H. Green and the Dissidence of Dissent: On Religion and National Character in Nineteenth‐Century England

Thomas Hill Green (1836–82) has been widely recognized for his contributions to Liberal political‐social theory and for his Liberal partisanship. Historians and political theorists continue to emphasize his advocacy of limited state interference and democratic localism, as well as his anti‐imperialist statements. Recent scholars of English nationalism, national identity and patriotism, including Peter Mandler, Julia Stapleton, Krishan Kumar, H.S. Jones, Roberto Romani and Georgios Varouxakis, acknowledge Green as an acolyte of Giuseppe Mazzini, a Cobdenite and a Little Englander. While they place Green's ideas within a continuum of Victorian Liberal nationalist ideas (blending into Conservatism and socialism during the 20th century), their investigations foster the view that Green placed little value in the nation as a focus of individual and collective identification. In their readings of Green, the abstract ‘community’, free of national peculiarities, was to him the antidote to both individual and national narrowness. However, examination of Green's statements about community, the moral ideal and religion reveals that his theorising was informed by a view of national character different from that of most contemporary liberal intellectuals. Green rejected the ‘Liberal anglican’ view that a national church or clerisy was necessary to guide the development of the English nation. He identified ideas and practices of protestant dissenters as progressive forces in English history and endorsed them as means of national development. Religious pluralism and forms of ecclesiastical organisation promoting democratic localism were to Green among the essential characteristics of Englishness.     

现代评论派政治理念及其困境探析

现代评论派作为自由主义政治派别,通过政论时评积极宣扬其政治理念,内容主要包括个人自由观、法治观、渐进改良观、精英政治观等,不过囿于现实社会的黑暗与压迫,和政治理念本身的软弱,最终导致现代评论派陷入"无地自由"的尴尬境地。通过考察现代评论派政治理念的成因和表现,以及其政治理念所面临的困境,将有助于剖析自由主义知识分子群体的政治态度和思想文化,为探究自由主义思潮在近代中国的流变提供一个入手的角度。     

The Italian Left in search of ideas: the rediscovery of the political ideas of the Action Party

In the wake of the collapse of 'really-existing' socialism and against a background of the growing influence of neo-liberal political thought, European socialist parties - and especially the former communist parties - have found it crucially important to reassert their liberal credentials. This explains the interest displayed by the Italian Left in liberal socialism, Dahrendorf 's New Liberalism and American liberalism, and especially in what is now called the 'Third Way'. In Italy, these developments have resulted in a genuine example of 'history's revenge'. The political ideas associated with the Action Party (PdA), which long played a Cinderella role in Italian politics and culture, have moved back to centre stage. This article examines how Italian leftist parties like the Democrats of the Left (DS) have been realigned to take into account the ideas of liberal socialism proposed by thinkers like Carlo Rosselli. It also explores how,since 1989, parties of the Italian Left have tried to appropriate the Actionist past and its mission, and why,after a long period of deliberate neglect, the Actionist agenda has again become the subject of lively debate.     

The Professors' Africa: Economists, the Elections of 1907, and the Legitimation of German Imperialism

German economists led by Gustav Schmoller created the KolonialpolitischesAktionskomité (colonial-political action committee) duringthe so-called ‘colonial crisis’ of 1906–1907to promote the German colonial empire at a time when it wassuffering much scandal and criticism. Widely esteemed and enjoyingthe appearance of non-partisanship, they worked closely withthe government of Bernhard von Bülow during the electionsof 1907, arguing that colonial empire was economically and politicallyindispensable and that its financial burdens were bearable.Straddling a position between the economic imperialism of manyGerman liberals and the settler colonialism prevalent in conservativeand radical nationalist circles, they helped secure a middleground that enabled the Bülow bloc and developed many ideasfor colonial reform that came into currency during the Dernburgera (1906–1910). Through lecturing, the mass disseminationof relatively high-quality literature, and the demarcation ofthe new academic sub-discipline known as Kolonialwissenschaft(colonial science), a potent complex of liberal-nationalistambitions was fused with a new ‘scientific’ colonialismthat helped redefine and legitimate a German civilizing missionin Africa and forge an imperialist ideology that gained a nationalaudience.     

The Partisan Nature of Race and Imperialism: Dadabhai Naoroji,M. M. Bhownaggree and the Late Nineteenth-Century British Politics of Indian Nationalism

This article examines Dadabhai Naoroji's and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree's contribution to politically partisan ideologies on Indian empire as London MPs and reform advocates late in the nineteenth century. Exploring politically nuanced, cultural definitions of racial difference, this article reveals how their participation in British parliamentary and press debate on Indian nationalism adhered to distinct liberal and conservative imperial political conceptions of race and governance during this period. Beyond an analysis of Naoroji and the Indian National Congress's relationship with British liberalism, this essay explores Bhownaggree's contribution to a sustained conservative imperial tradition. This article postulates that Edmund Burke's separation from a liberal imperial rationality and a British Tory critique of liberalism informed a nineteenth-century conservative governing justification in India predicated on conciliating organic national racial difference. As Naoroji's devotion, as a Liberal MP for Central Finsbury (1892–95), to a liberal civilising mission informed an advocacy of political self-governance in Britain and India, Bhownaggree's pursuit of female and technical education reform while Conservative MP for Bethnal Green N.E. (1895–1905) represented a conservative espousal of racial difference.     

Building an Ethnic Coalition?: The Liberal Party of Canada,Ethnocultural Communities and the 1962 and 1963 Federal Elections in Metro Toronto

In the early 1960s, the Liberal Party employed Toronto-area Member of Provincial Parliament Andrew Thompson as its Ethnic Liaison Officer. Under Thompson’s operation, the Liberal Party undertook efforts to engage ethnocultural communities to win the 1962 and 1963 federal elections. This article compliments existing scholarship on federal elections and shows exactly how the Liberals coordinated their efforts to appeal to ethnocultural communities. Though the Liberal Party targeted these communities, their efforts failed to include them in the Liberal Party, the election process, and the broader parliamentary system. In this sense, ethnocultural communities were marginalized in this political process. The analysis in this article also explores how the Liberals and the Conservatives homogenized “ethnic groups” in specific moments and utilizes the scholarship on the invention of ethnicity, particularly Rogers Brubaker’s idea that ethnicity is an event.     

Designing candidate selection methods: Exploring diversity in Australian political parties

The processes political parties use to select their candidates for public office constitute a crucial element of political recruitment in representative democracies and provide important insights into how power is distributed within party organisations. In this article, we develop a typology for understanding the diversity of preselection mechanisms in Australia's major parties that is based on degrees of influence between the central and local components of the party organisation. The typology in turn reflects preselection rules as public expressions of intra-party power sharing arrangements. We also identify the institutional, strategic and normative factors (including electoral systems, the accommodation of intra-party groups, candidate quality, efficiency and social norms) that influence the choices parties have to make when selecting and implementing a particular system.

政党用以选举候选人出任公职的过程构成了代议制民主国家政治遴选的一个关键因素,并提供了理解政党组织内权力分配的一个重要角度。本文根据中央和地方党组织之间影响的不同程度,提出了一种分类法以理解澳大利亚主要政党预选机制的多样性。这种分类法本身反映了作为表达政党内权力分享安排的预选规则。我们还找到了体制、战略以及规范性因素（包括选举制度、党内不同群体的相互适应、候选人品质、效率、社会规范等等）,这些因素会影响政党选择和实施某种制度时的决策。     

战后日本自民党社会统合能力分析--于政治体系的系统输入一侧

复旦大学林尚立先生的《政党政治与现代化：日本的历史与现实》一书是对战后日本政党政治,尤其是对自民党“一党独大”现象进行系统研究的一部力作。但书中有关日本自民党社会统合作用的论述只言及自民党在政治体系的系统输出一侧的社会统合战略,忽视了自民党在政治系统输入一侧的社会统合功能。本文借林尚立先生的这一论述缺欠,指出了这一问题在日本政治研究中的普遍性,并在此基础上,结合西方政治体系、政治系统理论中政党统合功能的相关论述,对日本自民党在政治系统输入一侧的社会统合能力及其根源进行了概括性的论述。