Evaluation of the first 100 days of Shinzo Abe's administration.

As of January 4, 2007 100 days have elapsed since Shinzo Abe’s inauguration as Prime Minister of Japan. In order to find out what well-informed people from various sectors in Japan felt about the government’s first 100 days, GENRON NPO conducted an urgent opinion poll and then published the results on its website.

The opinion poll was dispatched by various means in December 2006 to over 2000 people and was answered by central government officials, newspaper reporters, university students and scholars.

When asked, “What role do you expect of Abe’s government’” many replied “rectify perversions” of current structural reforms and “implement new productive structural reforms”, however doubt exists in the government’s ability to accomplish this.

The number of respondents evaluating the government’s achievements within its first 100 days as having “exceeded expectations” which they had before the present government’s inauguration was a mere 4.6%. Even when combined with the 13.4%, who chose “in line with expectations”, it didn’t manage to exceed 18%. 36% evaluated Shinzo Abe’s administration as not having lived up to their expectations and the same 36% “had no expectations of the government to begin with.”

At this stage the level of support for Shinzo Abe’s government is no more than 24%, with the largest group of supporters being government officials at 44%. Only 11% of the media representatives polled supported Shinzo Abe’s government.

Even after Shinzo Abe’s administration had been in power for 100 days 70% of the people polled replied that they had no idea what policies the government was pursing.

When asked what role people expected of the government, 70% replied that they did not just wish the government to pursue structural reforms that Koizumi had implemented alone but rather to rectify the perversions and implement new productive structural reforms. When asked whether they could expect this of the present government almost 1 in 3 people claimed they “could not expect this” and almost 50% could not reach a decision.

Foreign policy appeared to be the only policy that those polled considered possible to assess from Abe’s first 100 days. When asked about how long they expected the present government to last, almost half of those polled considered that the possibility of the administration changing during 2007 was high whether it was before or after the election of the House of Councilors.

We added the results of the opinion poll again and then combined them with the overall assessment of Abe’s first 100 days carried out by well-informed people from various sectors in Japan. We then published the results. However, in the overall assessment based on a scale of 1-5 the present government only managed to gain 2.2 points. Although many people considered that the Prime Minister had an amicable personality, apart from this, other positive evaluations remained scarce. As far as individual policies were concerned, it was clear that besides diplomacy in Asia, Japan-USA relations and economic growth, there were few other policies that could be positively evaluated.

350 respondents to the opinion poll included amongst others, central government officials and newspaper reporters.

The opinion poll assessing Abe’s first 100 days in office was made up of 12 questions, which were structured to evaluate Abe’s government itself, the Prime Minister’s competency and further more the policies that the government has tackled during the first 100 days since its inauguration.

350 people participated in this opinion poll including 50 officials currently active in ministerial and government offices, 100 national and regional top editorial executives and reporters in the field working for newspaper companies and broadcasting stations and 100 students from Tokyo, Keio, Waseda and Tokyo Medical and Dental Universities. Furthermore 100 well-informed people including corporate CEOs, senior executives and scholars who are actively involved in GENRON NPO’s mission also took part.

Abe’s government was inaugurated in September 2006, but the government is yet to
stand the test of an election and thereby gain the public’s approval.

Once the government’s first 100 days have elapsed it is subjected to the critical eye of the Japanese electorate. The opinion poll that we conducted was an attempt to create a constructive atmosphere tension between the Japanese government and well-informed people who constitute a part of the electorate.

The reason for targeting scholars and other well-informed people, government officials, individuals involved in the media and university students was so that we could establish the trends in opinions amongst the current and future architects of Japan’s policy market and then bring these to bear in our future assessment work and debate aimed at assessing the government.

GENRON NPO has been conducting assessments and evaluations of the Japanese government and other political parties since its establishment in 2001. The results of the opinion poll that we carried out will also be reflected in our political assessment that we will publish this year before the elections of the House of Councilors in July.

See the Detailed Results and Graphs here (PDF)
Read The Japanese Version