Who Governs Japan? Politicians and Bureaucrats in the Policy-Making Processes
| Author | Maurice Wright |
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00240 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Who Governs Japan? Politicians and
Bureaucrats in the Policy-making Processes
MAURICE WRIGHT
University of Manchester
The long-running debate about who governs Japan has been given a new twist by
`rat-choicers' who argue that Japan has been governed for the last thirty years or
more neither by bureaucrats nor by a `conservative coalition' of bureaucrats,
politicians and businessmen but by the Liberal Democratic Party alone. This article
examines their arguments and sets them in the context of other competing and
con¯icting explanations. It is argued that more relevant and researchable questions
are what is governed and how, an approach calling for a more nuanced analysis of
policy making in order to observe the impact on dierent policies and policy-
processes of the role of the state and its institutional structures and their embedded
`collective identities'.
How the Conservatives Rule Japan (Nathaniel Thayer, 1969).
`Japan's a system of bureaucratic rule' (Chalmers Johnson, MITI: The
Japanese Miracle, 1982).
`No one is ultimately in charge' (Karel Von Wolferen, The Enigma of
Japanese Power, 1989).
`Members of the Liberal Democratic Party, not bureaucrats or judges or
even LDP faction leaders, control Japan's policy-making process' (J. M.
Ramseyer and F. M. Rosenbluth, Japan's Political Marketplace, 1993).
Japan, the world's second economic power and its largest creditor nation, has
been in crisis for almost a decade. The collapse of the `economic bubble' in
1990 triggered the longest recession in Japan's post-war history. After the
briefest of respites the economy plunged into a still steeper decline in 1997. A
decade earlier, such was the apparently unstoppable progress of its economy,
the strength of its currency, and the breadth of its expansionism through direct
investment in the USA, Europe and the emerging markets of China and East
Asia, that Japan's capacity and willingness to play the hegemonic role in global
trade and ®nancial markets assumed by the USA since World War II was
seriously debated.
At that time a mixture of admiration and fear of the Japanese `economic
miracle' sparked o a wide-ranging debate among American economists and
political scientists about its principal characteristics and causes; and con-
sequences for the US economy. It was conducted against the back-drop of an
apparently secular decline of the US economy, attributed partly to the loss of
comparative economic advantage to Japan in several high-tech sectors such as
computers, semi-conductors and micro-processors, chronic Federal ®scal
de®cits and debts, and a savings and loans crisis undermining its ®nancial
# Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
940
Review Section
system. The competitive challenge was accompanied by the rapid overseas
expansion of Japanese corporations and ®nancial institutions, symbolized by
the purchase of the Rockefeller Center in New York and the Pebble Beach Golf
Club in California.
Since the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan in 1952, research and debate
about the role and in¯uence of bureaucrats and politicians in Japanese policy
making has been conducted among (mainly American) scholars within a
political context encompassing some of the major issues of the evolving special
relationship between the US and Japan ± issues of national security and defence
as well as those of trade relations and industrial structure and performance. The
questions posed and the answers given commonly have a normative bias, most
academic studies concluding with policy prescriptions and advice for US
Governments, legislators and businessmen. Analysis is not only of Japanese
policy and policy making but also for US policy and policy making. Who is
perceived to be in¯uential in the policy processes, in the roles of entrepreneur,
broker, mediator, gate-keeper, has been signi®cant for the design and
implementation of US policies. Conversely, policies and policy making in
Japan have been in¯uenced, at times decisively so, by perceptions of the
attitudes and behaviour of US governments and congressmen. Changes in
Japanese policies for trade and trading relations have not infrequently been
justi®ed domestically and carried through on the grounds of the need to bow
before the demands of `foreign pressure' (gaiatsu) of other governments and
international organizations, but especially to pressure from the USA.1
Two main schools of thought have dominated the debate about the `secret' of
Japan's post-war economic success: those who believed that Japanese economic
behaviour was market-rational, explicable almost wholly in terms of conven-
tional Western neo-classical economics, and the so-called `revisionists' who
argued that Japan, its institutions, its political economy, and economic
behaviour were fundamentally dierent, even unique, the de®ning and disting-
uishing characteristics of its `economic miracle' partly or mainly culturally
determined. The most basic issue raised by the debate was the extent to which
Japan had a long-term economic strategy directed by the state. Neo-classicists
argued that while Japanese corporations had such objectives, they were not
synthesized and directed by state institutions. By contrast, revisionists argued
that Japan had a state-directed economic strategy, but were divided whether the
motivation was defensive ± to achieve economic self-suciency and industrial
equality with the West ± or oensive, to achieve economic domination by
destroying American industry. The two explanations produced radically dier-
ent policy prescriptions. Revisionists argued that Japan posed a major security
threat to the USA, and recommended that the USA should respond with a set of
trade, industrial and other policies to defend the American economy, and
contain Japanese economic imperialism. Neo-classicists urged that such action
was unnecessary because expansionism would slow as Japan closed the
economic and technology gap with the West.
In fact market forces halted that expansionism, but in ways that were wholly
unanticipated. The collapse of the `bubble economy' left in its wake grossly
over-valued and unrealizable land and property assets, bankruptcies, and banks
1 For a critical discussion of gaiatsu and its limitations, see L. J. Schoppa, Bargaining with Japan:
What American Pressure Can and Cannot Do (New York, Columbia University Press, 1997).
# Political Studies Association, 1999
Review Section
941
and ®nancial institutions with bad debts and an overhang of non-performing
loans totalling 87 trillion yen, some 17% of nominal GDP. It triggered the
longest recession in Japan's post-war history and precipitated the most serious
®nancial and ®scal crisis since the 1930s.
The reversal in Japan's economic fortunes combined with the end of the
LDP's 38 years of rule in 1993, and the political turbulence which ensued, raises
questions about the continuing eectiveness of Japanese institutions. This
article reviews the arguments and considers some of the evidence adduced by
the main protagonists in the continuing academic debate about the relationships
between politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen which underpin those institu-
tions. The evidence is mainly drawn from the work of American scholars and
those Japanese whose work has been published or translated into English. The
work of other scholars writing in Japanese is normally accessible through both.
We begin with Chalmers Johnson's concept of the `developmental state' in
which bureaucrats are accorded the pre-eminent role in policy making, the
trailblazer and the inspiration or provocation for much that followed.2 We then
look brie¯y at the quali®cation to theories of bureaucratic dominance to
accommodate the evidence of competition and con¯ict in the policy processes
provided by the neo-pluralists. The work of area and sector specialists is brie¯y
reviewed in the general context of the thrust of a `counter-revisionist' challenge,
emphasizing the interdependence of relationships of politicians, bureaucrats
and societal interest groups in sub-governments or networks. This leads on to a
more detailed and critical review of the recent work of the `new institutionalists'.
Adopting and adapting theories of rational choice, they have attacked both
revisionists and counter-revisionists, arguing that the relationship between
politicians and bureaucrats is one of principal and agent, bureaucrats acting
merely as the instruments of politicians.
Bureaucratic Dominance in the `Developmental State'
Revisionists reject both behaviouralism and the tenets of neo-classical econo-
mics, especially trade theory, as inappropriate in analysing and accounting for
the success of Japan's post-war political economy. They argue that Japan is
dierent from Anglo/American models of capitalism; its institutions, the role of
the state, and its mercantilist economic policies are unorthodox. Hence those
who pointed out those dierences were `revisionists'. Central to the argument
was the role of the state, in which the dominant role was played by elite
bureaucrats; by implication the ruling Liberal Democrat Party was accorded a
subordinate role.
In MITI and the Japanese Miracle Johnson explains the origins and causes of
the `economic miracle' which occurred in Japan, roughly from the mid 1920s to
the mid 1970s. The centrepiece of his...
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