Japan’s Democratic Backsliding: Why is it invisible to ‘the West’?

Concerns over "democratic backsliding" – the destruction of democratic institutions and constitutional safeguards by populist "outsiders" –  have been spreading in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. In political science, the phenomenon has spawned a growing literature on "competitive authoritarianism" and a popular discussion on the crisis, even death, of democracy. Oddly, Japan – a country known for its perpetual conservative one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (that is often said to be neither liberal nor democratic) – has been largely missing from the picture. If anything, Japan has been receiving praises for standing up for the defense of the liberal democratic order in recent years. Why is this? Is there really no democratic backsliding in Japan today, or is it just invisible to "the West"?

Speaker: Professor Koichi Nakano, Sophia University
Moderator: Professor Linus Hagström, Swedish Defence University

Registration: nanhee.lee@hhs.se by August 18 

The Japan seminar series is jointly organized by the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics, the Asia Programme at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University and the Swedish Defence University. It features monthly seminars on Japanese economy, politics and society.