Paper short abstract:

This contribution aims at analyzing the relationship between the semi-populist communication strategy of Shinzo Abe since 2012, and the increasing distrust among the Japanese people. How has he successfully adapted his personal style, and which lessons can it provide to populism theory?

Paper long abstract:

The contemporary Japanese political situation has become a challenging case for populism theory. On the one hand, Japan seems to experience most of the main evolutions which led many scholars to consider an "era of populism" in Europe and America; but on the other hand the current executive power, which represents the traditional political elite, seems to be the most powerful one since the creation of the LDP in 1955. One could argue that there has been a "populismization" of Japan in the last three decades, due to a personalization of politics; a rise of political distrust and inequalities, etc. Such evolutions are supposed to nurture the most basic elements of populism: the emergence of charismatic leadership, from the outside of the political class, with a populist discourse that separates the people and the elites in order to manufacture popular trust and legitimacy (Schmitter, 2004; Laclau, 2007; Müller, 2016). Populism is supposed to feed on political distrust. However, the current Japanese situation shows that such evolutions do not guarantee national-scale populism in a representative democracy.

This contribution aims at understanding the apparent uncommon evolutions of Japanese national-scale populism since the successful return in power of Shinzo Abe in 2012 (Burrett, 2017). By adopting a Schumpeterian approach, we will analyze the relationship between "popular demand" (political distrust) and "political offer" (populism). The Japanese people are frequently defined as one of the most unsatisfied people in the world (Suzuki, 2015). Exploiting political distrust has become an important element for a successful communication strategy. We will focus on how, after the success of Prime Minister Koizumi as the first Japanese-style populist leader (Otake, 2000), Prime Minister Abe's communication strategy successfully adapted to political distrust by implementing a semi-populist and anti-political strategy which targeted the youth and silenced ideational and conflictual dimensions. Since 2013, the youngest segments of the Japanese people vote more for the LDP than the oldest, phenomenon which seem to be unique in the world. This new situation makes contemporary Japan a challenging case for populism theory.