Big day for Japan

Japan’s election has ended with the resounding defeat of the LDP — the party that has ruled Japan continuously (with one short interruption) since that country had its first free election in 1955 without the supervision of the victorious powers in WW II. This is really a huge step in the maturation of Japan’s democracy. Nothing improves the quality of policy more than the realization that electoral defeat follows the failure to produce good policy in a competitive political system. Now we can just keep our fingers crossed that other maturing democracies will, like Japan and Mexico just a few years ago, continue on the path to electoral defeat for the incumbent party. In thinking about places at risk, we should look to South Africa. there, following a heroic struggle for independence, the grip of the African National Congress has not yet been shaken. Of course, the voters may be happy with the job the ANC is doing (although the record is spotty) and that may be why no other party has yet won control of the national government. But as lnog as that remains true, there is a serious risk of poor econonomic and political progress and a grave danger of sliding down the path of robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I sure hope not — it would be interesting to see someone out there design a data set to predict South Africa’s political future, and Japan’s too. The web model will be up very very soon so this is a good time to start thinking about issues like that to look at for the future.

Cheers,

Bruce