Factional Competition for the Party Endorsement: The Case of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party

Abstract

This Note explores the candidate-endorsement process in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan during its period of hegemony (1955–90). Even in parties without an enduring factional structure such as the LDP, nominations are often troublesome – witness, for example, the reselection controversy in Britain's Labour party at the end of the 1970s or the perennially damaging fights in American primary elections. Moreover, it is easy to understand why nomination politics is so consistently problematic: the gist of the problem is simply that different groups within a party may differ as to who should receive the party endorsement in a given district (or, in list systems, who should get the safe spots on the list). Group A naturally wants its candidate(s) endorsed (there may be more than one in multi-member districts), but so do groups B, C and D. The resulting interaction between groups can be what a game theorist would call a co-ordination, or Battle of the Sexes, game.