Democratic Party of Japan
The Democratic Party of Japan was a centrist to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Party of Japan, which was founded in September 1996 by politicians of the centre-right and centre-left with roots in the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan Socialist Party. In April 1998, the previous DPJ merged with splinters of the New Frontier Party to create a new party which retained the DPJ name. In 2003, the party was joined by the Liberal Party of Ichirō Ozawa. Following the 2009 election, the DPJ became the ruling party in the House of Representatives, defeating the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and gaining the largest number of seats in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The DPJ was ousted from government by the LDP in the 2012 general election. It retained 57 seats in the lower house, and still had 88 seats in the upper house. During its time in office, the DPJ was beset by internal conflicts and struggled to implement many of its proposed policies, an outcome described by political scientists Phillip Lipscy and Ethan Scheiner as the "paradox of political change without policy change". Legislative productivity under the DPJ was particularly low, falling to levels unprecedented in recent Japanese history according to some measures. However, the DPJ implemented a number of progressive measures during its time in office such as the provision of free public schooling through high school, increases in child-rearing subsidies, expanded unemployment insurance coverage, extended duration of a housing allowance, and stricter regulations safeguarding part-time and temporary workers. On 27 March 2016 the DPJ merged with the Japan Innovation Party and Vision of Reform to form the Democratic Party(Minshintō), which in turn merged with the Party of Hope to form the Democratic Party for the People. It is not to be confused with the now-defunct Japan Democratic Party that merged with the Liberal Party in 1955 to form the Liberal Democratic Party.