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Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation: Explaining the Reactive State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Kent E. Calder
Kent E. Calder
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

The concept of the “reactive state” is useful in understanding the foreign economic policy behavior of Japan and certain other middle-range powers deeply integrated in the global political economy, particularly during periods of economic turbulence when international regimes do not fully safeguard their economic interests. The essential characteristics of the reactive state are two-fold: (1) it fails to undertake major independent foreign-policy initiatives although it has the power and national incentives to do so; (2) it responds to outside pressure for change, albeit erratically, unsystematically, and often incompletely.

In the Japanese case, reactive state behavior flows from domestic institutional characteristics as well as from the structure of the international system. Domestic features such as bureaucratic fragmentation, political factionalism, powerful mass media, and the lack of a strong central executive have played an especially important part in Japanese financial, energy, trade, and technology policy formation since 1971.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , July 1988 , pp. 517 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

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19 By 1988, Japan had, at prevailing exchange rates, by various definitions either the thirdlargest or the seventh-largest defense budget in the world, with rising defense technology capabilities and a central role in funding both U.S. defense budgets and economic assistance programs supportive of U.S. basing rights in states such as the Philippines. The Japanese defense budget for fiscal 1988 by Japanese definition was ¥ 3.67 trillion (around $30.4 billion at December 1987 exchange rates). By the NATO definition, including military pensions that Japan treats as welfare spending, Japan's defense budget was around $45 billion—significantly larger than the 1987 totals for France ($34.5 billion), West Germany ($34.2 billion), and Britain ($31.8 billion). See The Economist, January 23, 1988, pp. 27–28.

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