The End of Gridlock.(the influence of the global financial crisis on Japan's Liberal Democratic Party )

One of the most dramatic effects of the global crisis could be the end of the LDP's 53-year-long rule.

Hard economic times will be politically risky for many countries, bringing populism, protectionism, mass protests, internal strife, revolution and even perhaps war. Yet at least one important country stands to benefit politically from the recession. That country is Japan, the world's second biggest economy after the United States, but which has suffered from political gridlock in recent years. With a general election due by September this year, the chances now are that the gridlock will at last be broken. More dramatic even than that, the conservative group that has ruled Japan for virtually all of the past 53 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), looks set to be crushed, and perhaps even destroyed altogether.

For in truth, Japan's political woes date back a lot further than the Upper House election in July 2007 that handed control of one of Japan's two houses of Parliament to the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Since then, however, government has been brought virtually to a halt. That is the immediate problem that needs to be rectified. Some blame the gridlock on Japan's Constitution, written for the country by its American postwar occupiers. That gave it two houses of Parliament, of which the Lower House, equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives or the British House of Commons, is more powerful. The Lower House can override the Upper House on the budget or on international treaties by a simple majority, but needs a two thirds vote to override it on other laws.

As luck would have it, the governing coalition, led by the LDP, does hold a two thirds majority in the Lower House, thanks to a huge election victory achieved in 2005 by its popular then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, who retired a year later. But the more it tries to use that override power, the further its poll ratings fall. For the DPJ's 2007 success reflected a political reality: the LDP is deeply unpopular. And since Upper House elections are held partly using proportional representation, it is hard to claim that the DPJ's blocking efforts in that house are illegitimate.

A more profound political reality is that the LDP has been in decline and even disarray for more than a decade. It has run Japan since 1955, barring just nine months out of office in 1993, but with decreasing levels of effectiveness and an increasing propensity for scandals and blunders. Koizumi came to power in 2001 essentially by running against his own party, under the slogan "Change the LDP, ...