he Role of Factions in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in the Beginning of the XXI Century

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan was formed in 1995 and has been remaining at power almost without interruptions during the second half of the XX century. According to some scholars, the role of separate politicians offering local projects and thus winning the votes in the regions as a peculiarity of the Japanese politics played not the least role in that (Cox & Rosenbluth, 1993, Scheiner, 2005, Feldhof, 2002). Meanwhile, within the LDP itself there were formed special groups of interests, i.e. factions, which were crucial for the party in the second half of the XX century. However, their current role since the beginning of the XXI century is vague, especially after Koizumi’s attempts to disperse them. The problem here is that it still remains unclear whether Koizumi succeeded or not. As among the motivational reasons for factions we may outline their struggle for sits in the Parliament, for the Prime Minister position, duties allocation and economic interests as well. This is the so called typical Shumpeterian/Downsian framework (Leiserson, 1968, Wohlgemuth, 2005). This study intends to explore how relevant is this framework today and could the faction role alteration, if any, be explained by the change of the rules of the Japanese political “game”. The purpose of this research is to explore how the LDP factions function in the beginning of the XXI century. The study intends to research how their role was changed since the 2000s. This study seeks to address the following questions: 1. What are the factions within the Japanese LDP in the beginning of the XXI century? 2. Did their role remain the same in comparison to the previous century? 3. Did the changes in the Japanese politics influence the role of the LDP factions? Finally, we came to the conclusion that the functions were changed, and the factions lose their power, which might be directly linked to the strengthening position of the Prime Minister.