The System of Dominant Party in Japan: Some Lessons from Historical Experience

The article describes the characteristics of Japan's dominant party during the period of the "1955 system" (1955-1993). Special attention is drawn to the political technologies used by the ruling Liberal Democratic party in order to retain its dominance while maintaining all democratic procedures, including methods of electoral policies, methods of achieving consensus on the basis of an intra-party balance, image-making technologies by changing the party leadership, technologies of splitting the ranks of the opposition. The author concludes that one of the reasons for the resilience of Japan's dominant party phenomenon is "path dependence', which reproduces the nationwide political model in various historical circumstances.