Policymaking in Japan: Defining the Role of Politicians

POLICYMAKING IN JAPAN: DEFINING THE ROLE OF POLITICIANS by Gerald L. Curtis (ed.) (Tokyo and New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2002)

With its economy wracked by a decade of persistent downturn, it is no surprise to see the policymaking process in Japan increasingly placed under the spotlight. This pressing concern in the current Japan political economy literature is further driven by the paradox that bureaucratic decision-making had played such a prominent role in the meteoric rise of Japan to the forefront of world market competition throughout much of the post-war period. Of course, as Curtis points out in the introductory chapter of his edited volume, the bureaucratizing of the policy process is not a unique feature of the Japanese political landscape, but is characteristic of the evolution of public decision-making in all advanced industrial states. Nevertheless, as in all such states, the politician-bureaucrat nexus in Japan was shaped by specific historical antecedents and particular sets of policymaking challenges. Leaving to one side the former issue1, what Policymaking in Japan primarily seeks to capture is the axis of domestic and international transformatory pressures, changing structures of governance and seemingly desired policy responses marking Japanese politics today. In the end, the volume makes the case for a particular model of reform of the Japanese political system; reform, as summarized by Curtis (p. 16), that involves "eliminating the dual structure of government-ruling party power in favor of a concentration of power in the prime minister and cabinet, and making the Diet a center for policymaking and not just policy approval."

What lends the volume...