‘ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF THE SUBJECT OF OPPOSITION IS THAT, although the problem of opposition is one of the oldest, very few works have ever dealt with it specifically and exclusively.’ These introductory remarks to their 1968 volume by Ghiţa Ionescu and Isabel de Madariaga still hold remarkably true, despite a number of subsequent works and collections devoted to the subject. Their explanation was that although opposition is the altera pars of government it is a concept which is necessarily relative to that of power upon which political action centres and around which political science moulds itself.

ALTHOUGH THE CLASSICAL WORK ON POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN Western Democracies, edited by Robert Dahl, was published decades ago, in 1966, the analysis of the characteristics of opposition, in democracies or elsewhere, has advanced rather less than other aspects of comparative politics. The word ‘opposition’ is used daily to account for a variety of developments; but its many meanings have not been systematically related to the differences among the political systems of the world. A number of comparative studies did appear after the 1966 seminal work, admittedly, including one by Dahl himself in 1973, as well as those by Ionescu and Madariaga in 1968, by Schapiro in 1972, by Tokes in 1979, by Kolinsky in 1988 and by Rodan in 1996; these volumes explore aspects of the concept which could not have been even referred to in the original study, since that study was confined to Western democracies and to the part played by political parties in the context of opposition. Yet the problem has still not been tackled truly comprehensively, as, with the exception of the 1973 Dahl volume, the works on the subject are comparative only in the sense that they deal with more than one country; but their scope remains limited to a region or to a particular type of political system. Meanwhile, many country analyses examine the nature of political opposition in each particular case, but the information which they provide has to be brought within a common framework before we can hope to obtain a general picture of the characteristics of opposition across the world.

BY 1997 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY HAD BEEN IN POWER FOR EIGHTEEN years, the longest period of uninterrupted rule by a single party this century. To many it looked as if the alternation of two parties in government had stopped. And if that really had been the case, it would have meant that the British conception of opposition as the institutionalization within the workings of everyday politics of a standing alternative to the government of the day had broken down or been abandoned. But this is not what happened. The official opposition, the Labour Party, had re-established itself as a viable alternative government and was then able to gain not just an effective, but an overwhelming majority in Parliament in the general election of 1 May 1997. This outcome testified to more than the triumph of one party over another, marking the revival of the victor and the exhaustion of the loser: it also reasserted a crucial element in the constitutional practices of modern Britain.

SURELY IN THE MANUFACTURE OF VARIETIES OF PEACEABLE AND legitimate political opposition the American political system leads the world, and from a comparative perspective the United States is therefore extremely atypical. This essay will review briefly some of the more familiar ways in which political opposition in the United States is expressed and encouraged, will consider some of the consequences for a political system so rich in opportunities for opposition, and in conclusion will discuss changes in patterns of opposition over the last 30 years.

A STRIKING FEATURE OF THE EMERGENCE OF THE ‘NEW’ SOUTH Africa following the first democratic election in April 1994 was the widespread expectation that both the mechanism of transition and the electoral outcome in coalition government (the Government of National Unity: GNU) might serve as a model to other African regimes similarly placed. This may well be true with respect, for example, to the relevance of power-sharing arrangements of the kind that were built into South Africa's interim constitution in 1993, but as I shall explain, South Africa's experience of constitutional change and its outcome is best understood as sui generis. I am inclined to be sceptical about this assumption on the grounds that ‘models’ imported from elsewhere have not served Africa well; that the establishment of Westminster-style democratic structures in newly independent states in the 1950s and 1960s based on winner-take-all electoral systems failed to take into account historical and cultural differences — in particular the absence of anything resembling a Western-style tradition of democratic participation. Whether it could have served as a model, given the constraints of the time — loss of imperial will, insistent claims of indigenous nationalist elites etc. — is another matter. As Michael Oakeshott remarks: ‘[democracy] has been homegrown in Western society and to seek to transfer its beliefs and habits to an exotic soil will always be difficult.’

AT THE START OF THE 1990S, THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF opposition movements in tropical Africa was dramatically transformed. Prior to 1990, in only a minimal number of states had legally tolerated opposition parties even been permitted, while in no case had any opposition party been able to assume power after defeating the incumbent government at the polls. Within a few years, multi-party systems were introduced within almost all African states, while several opposition parties achieved the ultimate test of gaining state power by electoral means. At first sight, at least, opposition in Africa had undergone a radical shift, bringing the continent into line with a movement towards multi-party electoral political systems that was taking place throughout the world.

ONE OF THE VERY RARE OVERVIEWS OF OPPOSITION IN THE ARAB states was published by Professor Lisa Anderson in 1987. The very title set the tone: ‘Lawless Government and Illegal Opposition’ (emphases mine), as well as the opening quotation, ‘A government which is not beholden to any law ceases to be legitimate’, by the famous Sayyid Qutb, one of the prophets of radical Islam (as it came to be named) who was executed by Nasser's government. Opposition was meant to combat a tyrant (a lawless government meaning an unjust government, unjust because disregarding the laws and the religious Law) and to restore Justice, Law and Order. Admittedly, Professor Anderson's purpose was much broader: she would stress the close relationship between the exercise of political power, and particularly the modern state as the organizational framework of political life (the independent variable, so to speak) and, on the other hand, opposition as a response or reaction to the state and the government.

ANY INVESTIGATION OF POLITICAL OPPOSITIONS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC must necessarily begin, if not end, with the obvious. First of all, there is the evident weakness of political oppositions in much of this part of the world today — whether we focus on the commonly capitalized ‘Opposition’ denoting ‘a political party opposing, and serving as a check on, the party in power’ (Webster's, italics added), or on the more variegated lower case ‘alternative oppositions’ often associated with so-called ‘non-governmental organizations’ of some sort or another. To a considerable extent, therefore, this question involves the compounded difficulty of not merely explaining the careers and conditions of manifest political groupings and their respective trajectories but also, significantly, of retrieving the historical traces, lived experiences and collective memories of oppositions displaced — whether by means of incorporation or of exclusion. Secondly, despite its remarkable recent rise in political, financial and academic discourse, ‘the Asia-Pacific’ remains a highly elusive — and eminently elastic — conception in terms of historical, economic and cultural content. Significantly, for the present discussion, no ‘wave’ of regime transitions comparable to those witnessed in other regions — Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Tropical Africa — can be discerned across the countries encompassed within ‘the Asia-Pacific’.

WHILE ‘REPOSITIONING’ MAY BE AN APPROPRIATE TERM TO DESCRIBE developments in political opposition in many contemporary societies, it falls some way short of capturing the significance of changes in Russia, where in a few years the political landscape has changed out of all recognition. Until little more than a decade ago, political opposition in the Soviet Union was barely visible and, with rare exceptions, of little consequence. In the decades following Stalin's death in 1953, the existence of interest groups and lobbies within the party and state apparatuses was persuasively argued by foreign observers; and occasionally fractional opposition within the ruling elite surfaced. The latter aimed at reversing specific policies and, twice, at replacing the country's leader — Khrushchev on both occasions, unsuccessfully in 1957 and successfully in 1964. From the 1960s onwards, dissent from the regime's values and goals was reflected in the statements and actions of individuals and small groups, often described as the ‘Soviet dissident movement’, though lacking either common objectives and strategy, or impact on the Soviet Union's rulers.

THE EVENTS OF 1989 IN EASTERN EUROPE HAVE BEEN INTERPRETED in diverse and often contradictory ways: from the end of history to its rebirth, as both negotiated revolutions and popular uprisings. In many countries a fundamental repositioning of opposition and dissident forces was observed — changing from groups of anti-system activists quite outside the political establishment into major statesmen and national leaders involving, in some cases, rapid transformation into the occupants of major or even prime ministerial roles. Similarly, the former monopolistic ruling parties often found themselves quickly relegated to the margins of political life as oppositions of dubious legitimacy and minuscule political influence. Yet these roles were also subject to rapid reversal and further repositioning in a number of countries. The major difference now was that former governments became formally constituted oppositions rather than political pariahs or enemies of the people. That was a measure of the significance of the change that had been effected.

FIRST, TWO DISCLAIMERS. DIPLOMATS ARE NOT ACADEMICS. THIS WILL be a personal account, based on some firsthand experience of contemporary Japanese politics (pursued always in terms of the UK interest) supported by some — though not enough — background reading. It will not, however, be an academic text.

The second disclaimer is more complicated. Japan had five different prime ministers during my relatively brief stay in Tokyo. It experienced four coalitions of varying complexions. Fluidity was the name of the game. It challenges ingenuity, to define ‘opposition’ in this context. And it must be right to pay some regard to the culture. To say that times and fashions change is to undersell a more tricky and rewarding set of questions about Japan's political characteristics. This is not just another G7 system. The strength of Japan's culture hits the newcomer to Tokyo like a wave. Moreover, within continuities, Japan has undergone repeated convulsions. Today's political structures draw on domestic as well as foreign traditions, in a subtle mixture.

IN ROBERT DAHL'S ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT ‘OPPOSITION’ IS SEEN AS a political actor, opposing the government in parliament, having goals and strategies, being cohesive or not, well identifiable or not, aggressive or less aggressive in its action, and so on. As it is a ‘theory of action’, applying it would necessarily require (as Jean Blondel also shows in his essay) determining the ‘goals’ of the opposition. One would then be able to predict what a certain opposition would probably be doing, and explain why one type of opposition must be classified as different from another. I maintain, however, that the concept of ‘the goals of a political actor’ is a very elusive, and at the very least, an oversimplified concept. Indeed, it is impossible to match it with the facts and operationalize it. The analysis of the Italian case during the First Republic shows this clearly.