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Japan Party Structure
At the apex of the LDP's formal organization is the
president,
who serves a two-year renewable term. While the party
maintained a
parliamentary majority, the party president was the prime
minister.
The choice was formally that of a party convention
composed of Diet
members and local LDP figures, but in most cases, they
merely
approved the joint decision of the most powerful party
leaders. To
make the system more democratic, Prime Minister Miki Takeo
introduced a "primary" system in 1978, which opened the
balloting
to some 1.5 million LDP members. The process was so costly
and
acrimonious, however, that it was subsequently abandoned
in favor
of the old "smoke-filled room" method.
The LDP was the most "traditionally Japanese" of the
political
parties because it relied on a complex network of
patron-client
(oyabun-kobun) relationships on both
national and
local levels. Nationally, a system of factions in both the
House of
Representatives and the House of Councillors tied
individual Diet
members to powerful party leaders. Locally, Diet members
had to
maintain koenkai (local support groups) to keep in
touch
with public opinion and gain votes and financial backing.
The
importance and pervasiveness of personal ties between Diet
members
and faction leaders and between citizens and Diet members
gave the
party a pragmatic "you scratch my back, I'll scratch
yours"
character. Its success depended less on generalized mass
appeal
than on jiban (a strong, well-organized
constituency),
kaban (a briefcase full of money), and
kanban
(prestigious appointment, particularly on the cabinet
level).
Data as of January 1994
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