有別於戰後以來政治思想史、歷史與文化的研究，多元主義於 1970 年代中期後在日本政治學界正式登場。利用個案研究、深度訪談與調查計量方法，多元主義針對現代日本政治的運作進行實證分析，而日本的政經與社會結構也出現多元化的現象，賦予多元主義解釋的有效性，使得多元主義研究蔚為日本政治學的新潮流。然而，1993 年自民黨的下野，以及聯合政權形態的常態化，政治決定架構出現重大的轉變，多元主義在此挑戰下，採取政策爭論點研究途徑與特定行為者的個案研究，努力建構普遍的解釋模..

Differs to the traditional approaches of political theory history and the historical-cultural studies in postwar Japan, the pluralism approach had been introduced and connected to Japan’s political studies since the mid-1970s. Because of various changes of political, economic and social structure in Japan, the pluralism approach, which especially emphasizes on the research methods such as case study, in-depth interview and survey study, was efficiently utilized to analyze Japan’s practical politics and gradually b..