Noda is steering the wheel in the direction of going back to the old mold, pretty much being a mini-LDP in all aspects.

That's a pretty vague statement without specific examples.

Well, it's just a quote. Presumably the professor had more to say than that. A Google News search for his name reveals plenty more recent quotations, including:

Noda seems to be giving up on the idea of changing the means of government, says Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. [He] will be working more closely with the bureaucrats, trusting them with more discretion.