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After the Developmental State: Civil Society in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Robert Pekkanen
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The Japanese developmental state catapulted Japan into economic prominence. However, almost just as world attention focused on Japan's distinctive model, the era of the developmental state was drawing to a close. A generation of scholars has ably documented the story of Japan's developmental state by focusing on industrial policy. They chronicled how a strong bureaucracy buffered by insulation from politicians lay at the heart of the developmental state. As Joseph Wong points out in the introductory essay to this special issue, scholars have also argued that the developmental state contained within itself the seeds of its own dismantling.1 Since the 1960s, formal powers had been stripped from the bureaucracy, leaving it increasingly dependent upon “administrative guidance” not legally enforceable.2 By the late 1980s, the very success of the developmental state had eroded the powers of the bureaucracy to set industrial policy.

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Articles
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Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 3: Special Issue: After the Developmental State in East Asia? Joseph Wong, Guest Editor , December 2004 , pp. 363 - 388
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Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

For comments on earlier drafts of this article I would like to thank Akihiro Ogawa; all participants at the conference “After the Developmental State,” Seoul, Korea, March 2004; the editor, Byung-Kook Kim; and anonymous reviewers of Journal of East Asian Studies. I am grateful to Jaeyoung Choe for his help familiarizing me with the JIGS data set. I am indebted to Joseph Wong for his comments and direction in shaping this article.Google Scholar

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24. In some ways, this development is consistent with Ronald Inglehart's argument about value shifts in postmodernization: Inglehart, Ronald, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990); although scholars have generally focused on technological changes, regime transformations, and economic development per se as explanations.Google Scholar

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31. See Pekkanen, , “Japan's New Politics” and “Hou, kokka, shimin shakai” [Law, the state, and civil society], on the NPO Law and on the tax revisions. Pekkanen, Robert, “A Less-Taxing Woman? New Regulation on Tax Treatment of Nonprofits in Japan,” International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law 3, no. 3 (2001).Google Scholar

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34. See also Pharr, Susan J. and Putnam, Robert, eds., Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. N=2091. Source: http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu, May 25, 1994, Yomiuri Shimbun poll. Accessed March 17, 2004.Google Scholar

36. Source: http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu, April 1, 1998 poll. Accessed March 17, 2004.Google Scholar

37. Source: http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu, March 22, 1998 poll. Accessed March 17, 2004.Google Scholar

38. Muramatsu, Michio, “An Arthritic Japan? The Relationship between Poltiiciand and Bureaucrats.” Asia Program Special Report 117 January 2004), pp. 26–33, 27.Google Scholar

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41. Asahi Shimbun , June 9, 2004.Google Scholar

42. Author interviews with LDP members of the House of Representatives, Tokyo, Japan. Interviews were conducted on July 10, 2002, and June 19, 2004, with two Diet Members. Electoral figures are from Asahi Shimbun , “Toshi mutouhasou to kasanari” [NPOs are the urban unaffiliated voters], June 9, 2004, and Asahi Shimbun , July 13, 2004.Google Scholar

43. Pekkanen, , “Japan's New Politics.” Google Scholar

44. Democratic Party of Japan party documents.Google Scholar

45. Without providing exact figures, the Asahi Shimbun argued that “the number of secretaries and policy staffers with NPO backgrounds is increasing in the DPJ,” in an article entitled “Genba keiken, seisaku ni han' ei“ [Experience in the field reflected in policies], Asahi Shimbun , June 16, 2004.Google Scholar

46. Calculated from Kokkai Youran [Diet Handbook] various years (Tokyo: Kokusei Jyouhou Sentaa).Google Scholar

47. For example, see Peng, (“Postindustrial Pressures” and The New Politics of Welfare State in Developmental Context); and Estevez-Abe, Margarita, “State-Society Partnerships in the Japanese Welfare State.” In Schwartz, Frank J. and Pharr, Susan J., eds., The State of Civil Society in Japan (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

48. As Chan-Tiberghien argues, between 1997 and 2001, other changes also occurred as women's groups reframed their agenda in terms of women's human rights. These changes include the 1999 legalization of the birth control pill (thirty-eight years after the government established a panel to study it), the 1999 Basic Law on Gender Equality and the 2000 Anti-Stalking Law, as well as the 2001 Domestic Violence Prevention Law. Chan-Tiberghien, Jennifer, Gender and Human Rights Politics in Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar