Despite Japan’s economic struggles, populism has made limited electoral impact. Jiajia Zhou (Columbia University, 2017) explores how the local organizational strength of incumbent parties mitigates the effectiveness of populist rhetoric and, in doing so, may facilitate the pursuit of electorally challenging policies.

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Populism is an endogenous offshoot of representative democracy. It is a rhetoric that appeals to shared grievances among the electorate, blames representative elites, and in this process “[takes] advantage of democracy’s endogenous discontent with the domineering attitude of the few over the many” (Urbinati 2019, 119).

What is surprising about populism today is not its presence but its potency—that the basic claims of extreme majoritarianism capture the hearts of enough voters to make waves in electoral outcomes. Some scholars have opted to view populism as a strategy employed by political actors to mobilize “large numbers of mostly unorganized followers” (Weyland 2001, 14). This aligns with the origin of populism as a concept coined to differentiate electoral politics dominated by charismatic leaders in Latin America from class-based mobilization in European democracies (Roberts 2015, 144).

However, this definition magnifies the present condition while overlooking a key question, that is, why has the anti-elite claim come to amass so much electoral influence in democracies where elections used to be anchored in various loci of organized support? Part of the answer lies in the weakening geographical strength of political parties in mature democracies.

Resisting Populism at the Local Level

Japan serves as a case study to test this theory. Japan, in particular, is a democracy where populism has the potential to succeed. Since the 1990s, Japan’s economy has observed at best tepid growth. More recently, South Korea, whose economy developed later than Japan, has achieved a higher nominal GDP per capita. Not only has Japan’s economic status been shaken, but its weakening yen has also spurred an unfamiliar and trying experience of inflation for its electorate.

Although Japan lacks the presence of an immigrant population large enough to fuel nativist sentiments, democracies with similar ethnic compositions, such as Hungary, show that this alone does not preclude the influence of populism; economic ills can suffice to trigger populist support. Why, then, has populism had a relatively limited impact on elections in Japan?

One factor may be that local, organized support retains its electoral clout. My SRG research identified two sources of evidence for this. First, I revisited an episode of populism in national politics in 2005, when then Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) dissolved the lower house of the National Diet and called for an electoral referendum to overturn the upper house’s rejection of his postal privatization bill. The landslide victory demonstrated the potential for populism in Japan, as Koizumi’s anti-elite framing of opposition within his own party—as “forces of resistance” (teiko seiryoku) pursuing “vested interests” (kitokuken)—succeeded in reversing trends in falling voter turnout and secured a two-thirds majority for the LDP and coalition partner Komeito.

Prime Minister Koizumi announcing his party’s election platform calling for the privatization of postal services. ©Junko Kimura / Getty Images

Notably, though, the contests were especially challenging in divided districts where LDP candidates, mostly new blood, were assigned to compete against ex-LDP incumbent candidates who had opposed the postal bill and been stripped of their party’s endorsement.

Even though 51 LDP lower house members resisted Koizumi’s postal bill, only 37 members voted against it, and they were either expelled or ordered to leave the party. The 14 others who abstained or were absent from the vote retained their party affiliation (Shukan Asahi 2005; Asano 2006). Among the 37 who lost their LDP affiliation, 34 ran in the election, and exactly half were reelected.

Analyzing voting patterns across municipalities, I found a negative relationship between the LDP’s organizational strength and its vote gains. Specifically, in areas where the LDP was organizationally stronger, countermobilization by politicians in those districts drew significant votes away from the party. Even though Koizumi’s market-oriented postal privatization policy aimed to benefit urban voters by promoting productive investment, postal opposition candidate Seiko Noda, for example, successfully drew votes away from the LDP, winning reelection in Gifu’s first district covering the prefectural capital of Gifu City.

In another case, Ryozo Ishibashi, an LDP prefectural assembly member in the city of Hiroshima, entered the lower house race to oppose postal privatization and split LDP votes, drawing support away from the party in his district.

By contrast, in districts where the LDP was organizationally weaker and local conservative politicians had for several years been distancing themselves from the LDP, the decisions by these local mobilizers to support postal reform led to large increases in vote share, such as in Shizuoka’s seventh district.

Populism’s Impact on the 2024 Election

Second, I examined populism’s potency in the most recent lower house elections in October 2024 through an online survey experiment involving respondents from all 47 prefectures in Japan. In the survey, respondents were presented with a description referencing recent episodes of the political funds scandal, followed by hypothetical campaign excerpts from a non-LDP conservative candidate.

Respondents were randomly assigned one of two possible campaign messages. The first adopted a populist frame linking current economic woes to the collusive and corrupt LDP politicians who served vested interests over the interests of the people. The second similarly emphasized current economic woes but stressed party turnover and a change of government to strengthen policies as the solution. After reading the message, respondents were asked to indicate their support for the hypothetical candidate.

The experiment yielded evidence for the strong role played by local party representation, that is, the incumbent party’s organizational reach in local areas and role in politically fulfilling local needs.

First, the experiment found higher candidate support when respondents were exposed to populist messaging. This trend was stronger among respondents reporting weaker trust in political institutions, a pattern similar to that of populist support in European countries. However, unlike in Europe, populist support was not particularly strong among respondents residing in areas facing demographic decline or among those reporting economic insecurity in rural areas.

Instead, populist support was stronger among respondents reporting stronger feelings of representation at the municipal level and whose municipal representatives were non-LDP politicians. It was also stronger in prefectures with lower ratios of LDP party membership for each single-member electoral district.

Additional questions examining respondents’ attitudes revealed higher levels of nativist sentiments—where respondents perceive foreigners as a threat to local culture—in municipalities with higher ratios of foreign to local residents. This relationship is distinct from the inflow of tourists, which does not fuel nativist sentiments.

Importance of Local Organizations in Resisting Populist Rhetoric

These results suggest that the lack of populist support in Japan is not the result of unique resistance against the phenomenon but the geographical strength of its incumbent party organization. The idea that political party organization matters is not new to political science research (e.g. Katz and Mair 2018). But the results here reveal how, and in what ways, the incumbent party organization matters against the populist challenge.

My research also shows that the penetration of political party organizations in local electoral districts facilitates countermobilization and increases voter-level resistance against empty populist rhetoric that is devoid of policy relevance. This finding complements studies in other democracies that have identified the important effects of local mobilization but have emphasized the mobilizational effects of populist forces, such as in Sweden (Loxbo 2024).

The local electoral arena remains a salient theater for competition between incumbent and challenger parties. Ideological competition among central parties using party platforms and ideology is not a democratic ill. However, vulnerability to populism grows when attention at the center eviscerates the party of its local organization and overlooks the local arena.

This is not to imply that Japan presents a model of healthy democracy. Rather, it shows that populism, as an anti-elite appeal to majoritarianism, arises from not only commonly cited economic factors but also weak incumbent political party organization.

More broadly, there has been increased scholarly attention to the role of social media, warranted by increased reliance on information received through these platforms. Yet, even if social media has become the primary battleground for the electoral offensive, local areas remain critical flanks where electoral organization and representation matter. Strengthening these local organizational structures is essential if mainstream parties in countries like Japan wish to pursue electorally challenging policies, such as expanding immigration inflows.

References

Asano, Masahiko. 2006. Shimin shakai ni okeru seido kaikaku: Senkyo seido to kohosha rikuruto. Keio University Press.

Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199586011.001.0001.

Loxbo, Karl. 2024. “How the Radical Right Reshapes Public Opinion: The Sweden Democrats’ Local Mobilisation, 2002–2020.” West European Politics 0 (0): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2396775.

Roberts, Kenneth M. 2015. “Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political Representation.” In The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global Perspectives, edited by Carlos de la Torre, 140–58. University Press of Kentucky.

Shukan Asahi. 2005. “Jiminto zohan 51 giin, kaisan de konaru: Koizumi dokatsu hatsugen no daigosan.” August 5.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2019. “Political Theory of Populism.” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (1): 111–27. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-070753.

Weyland, Kurt. 2001. “Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics.” Comparative Politics 34 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/422412.

It appears that global opinion has been shifting toward a preference for neoliberal policies over the past half century, despite growing inequality in many major economies. Dai Oba (Waseda University, 2020) used an SRG award to advance his research at the University of Oxford to investigate complexities behind  this trend among British voters, who appear to have embraced a loosely defined set of attitudes that the author calls “neoliberal folk justice.”

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In May 2023, Onward, a center-right think-tank in the UK, described millennials as “shy capitalists” based on the results of a questionnaire survey. Although millennials are thought to hold egalitarian values and downplay the importance of economic growth and individual effort, Onward found that they also prefer policies of low taxes and less redistribution.[1] This is a good example of how people’s economic views can be quite complex, defying neat categorization into right or left. Similarly to this finding, my research looks into people’s complex views that I call “folk justice”.

In the past half-century, the world seems to have become gradually and increasingly more “neoliberal,” by which I mean an orientation emphasizing the role of the market and associated ideas of the economic right, such as efficiency, personal responsibility, and autonomy. To be clear, most people do not necessarily identify themselves as adhering to a coherent set of beliefs like libertarianism. Rather, many tend to hold beliefs that are loosely defined and not always coherent, which might be described as neoliberal folk justice.

My research is focused on this loosely defined set of attitudes that seems to have a strong and stable hold on a large segment of the population. Increased support for the left, on the other hand, has been relatively rare and short-lived. This is surprising because the comparative merits of egalitarian institutions seem rather indisputable for the majority of the working public, especially in the aftermath of major economic crises in 2008 and 2020. How can this be explained? Is there anything we are not seeing?

 As a political philosopher, I am primarily interested in theories of justice and equality. But in analyzing the neoliberal trend, I wished to start with what folk neoliberals on the street believe. Clarity and coherence are extremely important for theories, but people’s beliefs and attitudes can often be unclear and incoherent. So, I wanted to first identify the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice and build theoretical arguments from the bottom up in the hope they can serve as resources for reasoned democratic deliberation that are accessible to ordinary citizens.

In the following, I will describe my findings of an investigation into neoliberal folk justice, conducted with the help of an SRG award.

People’s deeply held convictions inform their political attitudes. Photo by Dylan Bueltel, https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-jacket-holding-a-cardboard-with-message-5233241/.

Complex Attitudes Toward Inequality and Wealth

The complexity of neoliberal-leaning attitudes has been documented by many scholars, whose research reveals some common themes.

Jonathan Mijs, for example, has noted the paradoxical acceptance of inequality in the face of fast-growing inequality and an apparent correlation between such acceptance and levels of inequality. Using International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data covering 23 Western countries and three different periods (1987–88, 1991–93, 2008–12), Mijs tested hypotheses regarding people’s acceptance of rising inequality. He “argue[s] that what explains citizens’ consent to inequality is their conviction that poverty and wealth are the outcomes of a fair meritocratic process.”[2] People’s belief in meritocracy tends to be stronger as society becomes more unequal because, Mijs claims, the affluent and the poor live increasingly separate lives in an unequal society. He posits that greater inequality goes hand in hand with stronger meritocratic beliefs and that stronger meritocratic beliefs, in turn, lead to reduced concerns about inequality.

He also tested the inverse relationships between inequality and notions of structural inequality (that is, lower inequality correlates with stronger awareness about structural factors of inequality, and stronger beliefs about structural inequality correlate with greater concern about inequality). He confirms the hypothesis, with the effect of meritocratic beliefs being stronger than the effect of beliefs in structural inequality. Mijs’s key finding is that economic inequality tends to be seen as acceptable when people believe their society embodies meritocratic principles, a belief which, in turn, is strengthened by a rise in inequality.

While Mijs’s findings suggest links with the idea of procedural justice, the notion of meritocracy is a vague one. In fact, Mijs construes meritocratic beliefs rather narrowly as people’s belief in the importance of hard work as a factor for economic success. There can be some variety in what people mean by the “importance of hard work” ranging from, for example, hard work in employment and non-paid work to being responsible and prudent in managing their finances and “giving back” to society.

 Regarding what makes inequality (appear) legitimate, Rachel Sherman conducted interviews with 50 wealthy couples in New York and found that the affluent feel a strong need to be able to justify their wealth. Her interviewees had household incomes within the top 5% in New York City—the most unequal large city in the US—and were characterized as the “new elite” who “believe in diversity, openness, and meritocracy rather than status based on birth.”[3] To Sherman’s surprise, many affluent New Yorkers expressed moral conflicts about their privilege and shared various narratives to demonstrate their worthiness, which she broadly categorized into three types.

The first narrative is that of the hard worker marked by such redeeming qualities as productivity, self-sufficiency, discipline, and independence. The second narrative is that of the prudent consumer. The rich New Yorkers cast themselves and their spending habits as “normal” in an attempt to distance themselves from the negative image of the “leisure class.” In line with the Protestant ethic, disciplined spending is considered part of the meritocratic ideal and thus a legitimator of their wealth. The third narrative is that of someone actively “giving back” to society typically by donating their money or time to charitable organizations.

We can see certain aspects of folk neoliberal values underlying these research findings, namely, the idea of meritocracy, under which economic success is ascribed to an individual’s personal merits; the value placed on hard work over idleness and dependence; the ideal of prudence and responsibility; and the imperative of “giving back” to society.

Four Values of Neoliberal Folk Justice

Rather than describing the minute details of people’s complex attitudes, I focused on the following two claims as being the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice, namely, that redistribution is unfair and that government should not intervene in the market.

These claims can be unpacked  into the following four normative values. First, social cooperation should be on a quid pro quo basis, and freeriding  should not be allowed. This requires that there is  a certain equity between contributions and benefits. Second, those who rely on welfare do not deserve further assistance because they lack a sense of personal responsibility. This claim points to a  personal virtue of using of resources (including time and talent) in a prudent and thoughtful manner. Third, market outcomes are morally fair. This can be understood as an expression of trust in the market mechanism and its ability to legitimate distributive outcomes. Fourth, each person is the sole author of his/her life, and the government should not interfere or even offer any help. This expresses the moral ideals of self-sufficiency, independence, and, most importantly, the ability to advance one’s life as his or her own project and no one else’s.

In sum, the four core values of neoliberal folk justice are (1) reciprocity, (2) responsibility, (3) procedural fairness, and (4) autonomy.

Survey Findings

What do people believe about just economic policies? Photo by Karolina Grabowska, https://www.pexels.com/photo/quote-board-on-top-of-cash-bills-4386367/.

I conducted an online opinion survey of 2,065 adults living in Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) to directly test the above selection of core values. Along with two dummy values (“solidarity” and “efficiency”) and after explaining what each value stands for, I asked respondents to rate the importance of the four values when thinking about economic policies that are fair for everyone  (respondents were asked to select from ‘very important’, ‘fairly important’, ‘not very important’, ‘not at all important’, and ‘don’t know’).

The results of the survey confirmed my selection of the above four values. Comparing the percentages of those who answered “very important” or “fairly important,” the four values all scored 70% or higher (79% for “procedural fairness,” 78% for “responsibility,” 71% for “reciprocity,” and 70% for “autonomy”), while the dummy values scored significantly lower (59% for “efficiency” and 58% for “solidarity”). Additionally, correlations with respondents’ past voting behavior revealed that for both the 2015 and 2019 general elections, those who voted for the Conservatives supported the four values significantly more than those who voted for Labour (the difference ranging from 10 percentage points to 30 points). This supports my hypothesis that the four values have particularly strong resonance with folk neoliberals.

Toward Theoretical Arguments and Policy Consensus

Based on the above findings, the next stage of my research will offer repertoires of theoretical arguments regarding the four values of neoliberal folk justice, each of which represents a potential salient political position that citizens may adopt. As a final output, I aim to describe potential areas of policy consensus between those different arguments, showing that reaching an agreement on desirable and feasible social welfare policies for the twenty-first century is a realistic possibility.

[1] Jim Blagden and Sebastian Payne, “Missing Millennials,” Onward, May, 2023, https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing_millennials-1.pdf, accessed 19 October 2023.

[2] Jonathan Mijs, “The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy Go Hand in Hand,” Socio-Economic Review, vol. 19, no. 1: 7–35 (January 2021), p. 29.

[3] Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp.13–15.