The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) held power from 1955 until 1993. How did it manage to do so? In 1994 a political reform resulted in competitive elections but, starting in 2012, the LDP regained its predominant position, winning three consecutive landslide victories. How did it manage to do this even after the reform? In this paper I argue that a system of ‘party-organization patronage’, in which the patron is the LDP and the client is an interest group organization, played a significant role in maintaining LDP predominance in both periods. I further argue that the key to explaining changes in the predominant party system is the LDP’s monopoly on access to the public policy making process. When this monopoly faltered, interest group organizations began to put a foot in both camps or even defected to an opposition party but once the LDP’s monopoly was re-established interest groups returned to the LDP fold. In both cases, predominance was established in two steps. First, fortuitous events gave the LDP an overwhelming parliamentary majority and a monopoly on access to policy making. Second, the LDP granted organizations access to policy making in exchange for their votes which helped it maintain its monopoly.

中文翻译：

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赞助和优势：自民党如何保持对权力的控制

自民党 (LDP) 从 1955 年到 1993 年掌权。它是如何做到的？1994 年的政治改革导致了竞争性选举，但从 2012 年开始，自民党重新夺回了主导地位，赢得了三连胜。即使在改革之后，它是如何做到这一点的？在本文中，我认为“党组织赞助”制度，其中赞助人是自民党，委托人是利益集团组织，在这两个时期都在维持自民党的主导地位方面发挥了重要作用。我进一步认为，解释占主导地位的政党制度变化的关键是自民党对公共政策制定过程的垄断。当这种垄断动摇时，利益集团组织开始涉足两个阵营，甚至投奔反对党，但一旦自民党的垄断重新确立，利益集团又回到了自民党的圈子。在这两种情况下，优势都是通过两个步骤确立的。首先，偶然事件使自民党在议会中获得压倒性多数并垄断了政策制定权。其次，自民党授予组织参与决策的机会以换取他们的选票，这有助于它维持其垄断地位。