Analyzing Japan’s 2024 General Elections and Japan’s Geopolitical Future: A Conversation with University of Tokyo Professor Kenneth Mori McElwain

Japan held its Lower House Elections on October 27th 2024, in a surprise snap poll that took place only a month after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office. Amid public discontent, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-Komeito coalition in Japan’s lower house (House of Representatives) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2009, with the LDP suffering its second-worst electoral result in history.

Professor Kenneth Mori McElwain is a professor of comparative politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, including constitutional design, public opinion, and international norms. Since 2021, Professor McElwain has served as Editor-in-Chief of Social Science Japan Journal. He is currently at Columbia University as a Visiting Professor of Political Science.

In this interview, Professor McElwain delves into the underlying causes and implications of the 2024 Lower House Elections in Japan, whilst paying heed to the effects of the 2024 Presidential Elections in the United States. In doing so, Professor McElwain provides us a glimpse into the potential geopolitical balance of power within East Asia and Japan’s own political future. This interview was recorded on December 5th, 2024. Since the interview, Japan has conducted a trilateral meeting in Tokyo with China and South Korea, a major step towards diplomatic leadership in the region, by hosting a dialogue with two countries it has historical and territorial disputes with.

Japan recently held its lower house election in October 2024. The election was surprising in the sense that the ruling LDP-Komeito coalition witnessed a near 10 percent loss in vote share, as well as a combined loss of 73 seats. Could you share your thoughts and analysis on the recent election, specifically the underperformance of the LDP and Komeito relative to previous elections– as well as the reasons behind the success of the opposition?

One of the things that I studied, especially early on in my career, is electoral politics. In the late 90s, when I was beginning to study this, it was also the time that baseball analytics and sabermetrics were starting to become quite big, and many electoral studies scholars were also, for the lack of a better term, baseball nerds.

And, you know, I thought about it for a while, and I realized it's because the underlying questions are similar in a core way. When a batter hits a home run, is it because the batter is great or because the pitcher was very bad? And elections are very similar. Does one party win or lose because that party or that party's candidate was excellent, or was it because they faced a very weak opponent?

And so when we transpose this to thinking about general election outcomes, including the 2024 election in Japan, I think the data that we have so far suggests that it's less that the opposition parties won and more that the ruling coalition, particularly the Liberal Democratic Party, lost their absolute vote share. The total number of votes they won fell by about a quarter compared to the 2021 election. Its coalition partner, Komeito, lost about 15-17 percent.

But if you look at the main opposition party, which is called the Constitutional Democratic Party, it's a center-left party ideologically, and their vote share is fairly constant. So it's more that the LDP lost, I would say, than that the opposition won.

Now that we've established that it was the LDP's election to lose, would you attribute it specifically to the leadership of Ishiba (which was obviously a big change in LDP leadership prior to the election), or would you say it's representative of public opinion of the LDP as a whole?

I think the LDP had to make a number of calculations. One was that the party had been beset by a number of scandals in the last two years. One relates to ties between the Liberal Democratic Party–particularly its leaders– and the Unification Church, a controversial religious group in Japan (also present in Korea and the United States). The second was, depending on your perspective, poor bookkeeping of party finances, attempts at corruption, or attempts to hide bribery that ended up implicating a large number of LDP incumbent politicians. The party's popularity was declining through 2024. During Prime Minister Kishida’s tenure, the cabinet approval rating was falling. 

So, I think the party made two strategic choices. One was to hold a new presidential election for its own leadership. So this was within the LDP: “Who is going to be our boss?” And nine candidates ran. They campaigned and debated for about a month, and it did raise the profile of the party. Shigeru Ishiba ended up coming out as the victor. Ishiba had long been very popular with the public, although not necessarily popular among his peers i.e. other politicians.

Then, they made the second choice, which was to call for an election very quickly. There were 18 days between when Ishiba came to office and when the election happened. It's the shortest interval in post-war history. And they hoped that Ishiba would be popular, to have the election while public excitement wasvery high, and that would help them, or at least minimize the damage from the decreasing popularity due to the scandals that have been arising. But I think it backfired. 

Snap polls are not uncommon, and these corruption scandals, whilst they have featured within LDP internal politics, also occur because the LDP has been the dominant party for most of Japanese post-war history. Would you say that these electoral results resemble a trend more specific to this election, or does it actually represent a broader trend of declining LDP popularity?

The Liberal Democratic Party, as you noted, has been in power for all but four years since 1955 when the party was founded. Its first major loss was in 1993, then in 2009.

In 2009, in particular, the LDP lost because the opposition made massive gains. One way this manifests is that voter turnout increased by close to 7 or 8 percent in the 2009 election. People really wanted to replace the LDP with something else. In this election, I mentioned that the LDP lost more than the opposition won, but one manifestation is that voter turnout was the third lowest in post-war history.

So, I think there is a sense of resignation and disappointment with the LDP, including many voters who may have previously voted for the LDP. I don't think many of them necessarily switched to the opposition, but they decided not to turn out. And the disappointment, I think, is not necessarily with Prime Minister Ishiba himself. 

I think it's more the inability or the lack of commitment of the LDP to close loopholes in how finances are reported, for example, or ways in which they can receive corporate or individual donations without reporting it in a careful way. But I should also note that it combines with economic dissatisfaction. Inflation in Japan is nowhere near the level of Europe or the United States. It's much less. But Japan has effectively had almost no inflation for 25 to 30 years. So even things like a 2 to 3 percent price increase all of a sudden hits consumers' pocketbooks very directly. And so I think on the one hand, there's targeted dissatisfaction with the LDP's trustworthiness and at the same time, a desire to punish incumbent governments for poor macroeconomic management.

Switching gears a little bit to analyze it from the opposition’s point of view as well: The Constitutional Democratic Party was obviously one of the big winners from this election. As you alluded to, it's possibly more the loss of popularity for the LDP, not really the opposition's success. How should the opposition parties actually look to convert this into a more broad-based win in the future? And how should they look to capitalize on their gains in the context of Japan’s asymmetric bicameral legislature?

I think many observers, including myself, didn't expect the LDP-Komeito coalition to lose its outright majority. And the result of the election is that the current government, LDP-Komeito, does not have a majority, so it's what's called a minority government. They have to rely on partnerships or agreements with different opposition parties on individual legislation if they want to get this done, and this is even more important in the Upper House. So the question is: who to partner with? 

Japan has many opposition parties. The Constitutional Democrats won the most seats. But the party that's now regarded as the ‘kingmaker’, or the ‘casting vote’ in discussions, is a smaller party called the Democratic Party for the People, or DPP. I think their vote share increased by 2.5 times compared to the last election. They are more centrist than the Constitutional Democrats, and they've long evinced a willingness to cooperate with the LDP on policies where their interests overlap.

The Democratic Party for the People and the LDP don't differ that much on, for example, foreign policy. But on economic policy, the DPP wants varying kinds of additional redistribution, and one issue that's being discussed is effectively a tax cut for low-income citizens. You know, cutting taxes is popular, but it does put a lot of pressure on how much money the government can spend, and I think that will constrain the LDP as it thinks about its budget priorities going forward.

I do want to expand a little bit more on what you said, because you alluded to this balance of interests in terms of security policy and domestic interest as well. Japan is a country with demographic decline (births reached a record low of 730,000 in 2023), and it's also had a history of deflationary spirals (a period of economic stagnation and falling prices that began in the mid-1990s). There is this very strong narrative of a power in decline on the global stage. How should Japan manage that? As you mentioned, there are domestic interests to adhere to, but also on a foreign policy stage. How can it ensure that it stays dominant and also well-represented in terms of its interests within the international order?

I think Japan's strategic goal is to be the linchpin in the world in many different economic and security arrangements. Japan is in one formal alliance, and that's with the United States. But at the same time, it has significant partnerships with other countries. One of the big initiatives in the last five years has been what's called the ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’, or FOIP. That involves India, for example. There's what's called the security ‘Quad’, which is Japan, Australia, and some other countries, that is about sharing intelligence. And a lot of the discussions in Asia and geopolitical security in Asia have focused on the rise of China. Trying to contain China, so to speak, is something that many countries are focused on, including in Europe, as well as the United States.

But for Japan, China is a major trading partner. And so, these are relationships that cannot be severed in a practical sense. So, where Japan may be falling behind in population, total economic size, and military might, I think what it wants to do is be a partner with India in some arrangements, Southeast Asia and others, Korea in a third, Europe in a fourth, United States in a fifth. And so for any negotiation, Japan needs to be involved. I think that's a way to demonstrate influence because you're the one that can talk to everybody.

Is Japan sort of at the behest of great power politics or larger geopolitical dynamics between other countries, or is there still room for it to assert itself on the international stage?

I think there's long been a debate –but particularly in the last 20 years – in international relations about the function of middle powers. During the Cold War, you had the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Cold War, you had just the United States, and some may argue that China is now the second pole. I think that may or may not be true, and it depends on how we define these terms, but middle powers remain important, in large part because of where they are geographically located. 

Germany and France are still important because the EU is important, and they are the major powers. The UK is no longer in the EU but is a major counterbalance and reliable US ally in Europe. They're in the right place, and they are big enough to wield influence and to be mobile on the ground where needed. I think Japan plays that role in East Asia, generally speaking, and I don't think it's really realistic to expect Japan to become a major superpower. I think an effective middle power, the linchpin, is the most effective way it can achieve its goals.

The big concern for every country now is: What does a second Trump administration mean? As you said, the U.S. is Japan's biggest strategic ally. How would people in Japan as well as Japanese politicians and the government actually view a second Trump administration?

I think for many countries, they have gotten a preview during President Trump's first term, and they're trying to figure out what's going to continue into the second. So I think there's a lot of attention on who's going to take on major cabinet roles, particularly Secretary of State (which looks like Senator Marco Rubio) and Secretary of Defense, for which I don't think we fully know what's going to happen.

And one thing that's important about U.S.-Japan relations is that something's changed with leaders, but there has been 70 years of bureaucratic negotiations and academic conversations that undergird the foundations of the relationship.I think this withstands any kind of administration as long as the commander-in-chief doesn't decide to blow everything up, and by that, I mean change fundamental treaty agreements. 

I think that's where many people in Japan are not sure if Prime Minister Ishiba, who is very good at talking in Japanese to the domestic public, necessarily has the experience or the inclination to go to Mar-a-Lago, glad-hand the President, and engage in a mixture of both small talk and flattery that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was very good at. So I think there is some trepidation, but also an expectation that, hopefully, there will not be a major change to the status quo relationship between the U.S. and Japan.

Japan’s 2024 general election marks more than just a rebuke of the ruling LDP. It signals an electorate disillusioned by scandal, economic stagnation, and a political class increasingly out of touch. Yet, this moment of political uncertainty also opens the door to a reimagining of Japan’s role in a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. As Professor McElwain reminds us, Japan’s strength lies not in military might or demographic weight, but in its strategic centrality, specifically its ability to convene, mediate, and engage across alliances. With tensions in the Taiwan Strait escalating, the future of South Korea-Japan relations hanging in delicate balance, and with the polarizing policies of the second Trump administration, Japan must now navigate both domestic instability and external unpredictability. Whether it can transition from passive middle power to active geopolitical linchpin will depend not only on who governs, but also on how that governance adapts to the urgent realities of a new global era.

Shan Then (GS ‘27) is a staff correspondent at the Columbia Political Review and a sophomore at Columbia GS, double majoring in Political Science and Economics. Shan spent the past summer working as a Legislative Assistant in the Singapore Parliament, as well as volunteering in his grassroots community.