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Bureaucratic Development And Bureaucratization: The Case of Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
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One of the aspects of Japanese political development most puzzling to historians and political scientists is the seemingly rapid pendulum change from bureaucratic oligarchy to parliamentary cabinet to civil-military bureaucratic forms of government in the period between 1868 and 1945. Generally the argument that has been presented at least by Western observers is that, as Japan proceeded through the modernization process, each major stage of that process was reflected in a political transformation. One recent description states:
…the Japanese have experienced a variety of political systems over the past hundred years. They began their emergence from traditionalism under the direction of an oligarchy of bureaucrats whose power was sanctioned by imperial restoration. They adopted a limited kind of parliamentarism in 1890 (the Meiji Constitution) that came to a brief flowering in the immediate post-World War I years. Military authoritarianism was in the ascendancy in the 1930’s and became dominant in World War II.
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References
Notes
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