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Japan's ‘Un-Westminster’ System: Impediments to Reform in a Crisis Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Aurelia George Mulgan
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Abstract

Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi is attempting a bold program of ‘structural reform’ in order to revive a moribund economy. However, his actual achievements after more than a year in office have fallen far short of his original goals. Such lack of progress for a prime minister bent on reform can only be understood in the context of Japan's ‘Un-Westminster’ system in which the cabinet is not an authoritative decisionmaking body for government policy. Although modelled along Westminster lines, Japan does not have strong cabinet government; it has party-bureaucratic government. In practice this means that Koizumi's push for reform faces the de facto veto power of bureaucrats and his own ruling party.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , 2003 , pp. 73 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2003.

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References

1 See, for example, Stockwin, J. A. A. et al. , Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, London, Macmillan, 1988 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Compton, Robert W. Jr, ‘Political Culture as a Source of Japanese Immobilism’, in Compton, Robert W. Jr, (ed.), Transforming East Asian Domestic and International Politics: The Impact of Economy and Globalization, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 68–82 Google Scholar.

2 Postal services will be transferred to a new postal public corporation in April 2003 and mail delivery services will be privatized under highly restrictive conditions.

3 Stockwin, J. A. A., Governing Japan, Divided Politics in a Major Economy, 3rd edn, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1999, p. 44 Google Scholar.

4 Lijphart, Arendt, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1984, pp. 4–9 Google Scholar.

5 The ‘he’ may also be a ‘she’.

6 Yamato, Hiroshi, ‘Political Parties and the Diet’, in Valeo, Francis R. and Morrison, Charles E. (eds), The Japanese Diet and the US Congress, Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1983, pp. 35–6Google Scholar.

7 As Weaver and Rockman point out in their discussion of veto points that arise in parliamentary systems, ‘party bodies exercise an important influence over decision-making in addition to the cabinet’. Weaver, R. Kent and Rockman, Bert A., ‘Assessing the Effects of Institutions’, in Weaver, R. Kent and Rockman, Bert A. (eds), Do Institutions Matter? Government Capabilities in the United States and Abroad, Washington, DC, The Brookings Institution, 1993, p. 26 Google Scholar.

8 The system dates back to 1962 under the Ikeda Administration, when Munenori Akagi, who was Chairman of the LDP Executive Council at the time, tendered a written request to Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Ôhira for the government to have cabinet-drafted bills referred to the Executive Council in advance of cabinet decisions on the bills. The practice was solidly established in the LDP in the 1970s with bills screened, modified and approved first by PARC committees and then by the Executive Council before they were finalized for presentation to the cabinet and the Diet. Daily Yomiuri, 30 November 2001.

9 Nikkei Weekly, 4 June 2001.

10 The Australian, 7 December 2001.

11 Under the new system, 41% of Diet members represent Lower House SMDs. A further 7% of Upper House Diet members also effectively represent SMDs because of the number of two-seat constituencies in which there is a half turnover of members at each election. In total, therefore, 48% all Diet members represent SMDs.

12 PARC committees are divided into divisions (bukai) which correspond to the main bureaucratic ministries and agencies, investigation committees (chôsakai) which correspond to whole policy systems (like defence and security policy, foreign policy, pension policy, comprehensive agricultural policy), and special committees (tokubetsu iinkai) that correspond to specific policy issues (like coal policy, policy relating to women, military base policy).

13 Editorial, Nikkei Weekly, 11 March 2002.

14 Influential politicians reputedly protected the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries from restructuring during the reorganization of the bureaucracy which took effect on 6 January 2001.

15 Asahi Shinbun, 11 October 2001.

16 For the notion that Japan does not have cabinet government, the author is grateful to Professor Ellis Krauss of the University of California, San Diego.

17 The management of the cabinet requires that matters are coordinated through the administrative vice-ministers' conference before they are decided at the cabinet meeting. 〈http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_and_government_of_japan/national_adm_e.html〉

18 Quoted in Shikari Asahi and reported in Straits Times, 1 August 1997.

19 Quoted in Asahi Shinbun, 11 November 2000.

20 This occurred in the 1998 LDP presidential election, for example. Former Prime Minister Keizô Obuchi obtained the most votes, Seiroku Kajiyama won the second highest number of votes and Koizumi was placed third even though public opinion polls at the time indicated that he was the public's first choice for the job.

21 Yomiuri Shinbun, 3O November 2OO1.

22 Headquarters for the Administrative Reform of the Central Government, Central Government Reform of Japan, 01 2001, p. 2 Google ScholarPubMed.

23 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

24 Ibid., p. 4.

25 The Cabinet Secretariat's functions prior to the administrative reforms were formally described as arranging the cabinet agenda, conducting the coordination necessary for maintaining integration of policies, and collecting information and research. 〈http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_and_government_of_japan/national_adm_e.html〉

26 Central Government Reform of Japan, 01 2001, p. 6 Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 7.

28 Ibid., p. 7.

29 Ibid., p. 7.

30 Ibid., p. 8.

31 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

32 Krauss, Ellis and Nyblade, Benjamin, The Changing Role of Japan's Prime Minister, unpublished ms, p. 18 Google Scholar. As they explain: ‘In the past, the Prime Minister's Office would often informally request information from other ministries, but without legal authorization’ (p. 41).

33 Central Government Reform of Japan, 01 2001, p. 6 Google Scholar.

34 The previous position was known as parliamentary vice-minister, and was given to relatively junior politicians to enable them to learn the policy ropes.

35 Asahi Shinbun, 14 March 2002.