JAPAN

The new DPJ-led government aims at fostering a higher level of prime ministerial leadership and strategic government planning, inter alia by setting up a National Strategy Office (to be turned into a full bureau after appropriate legal changes are made), to be chaired by the prime minister and directed by a state minister (initially Naoto Kan, then Yukio Edano). The new organ is tasked with prioritizing policies, providing orientation and setting basic directions for policies across the spectrum of issues; it is also meant to underline the fact that elected politicians, not bureaucrats, are responsible for policymaking. At a more abstract level, the National Strategy Bureau (NSB) is tasked with highlighting the state of Japanese politics and society.

One of the core aims behind the establishment of the NSB was to restructure and centralize the functions of the Cabinet Secretariat, which had become bloated since Koizumi’s time in office. Councils had been established to address a wide variety of topics, and had the secretariat had lost orientation as a consequence. The NSB is thus designed to reestablish order within the Cabinet Secretariat, endowing the latter with “centripetal power.” However, it is important to note that final decisions can only be taken by the cabinet, not by the NSB.

The Japanese government is supported by a large number of advisory councils, numbering roughly 90 at the ministerial level alone. These are usually composed of private sector representatives, journalists, civil servants and trade unionists. It has frequently been asked whether these advisory boards truly have a decisive influence on policy-making, or whether the bureaucracy rather uses them to legitimize its policies by nudging seemingly independent bodies into making proposals that would be forthcoming in any case. As discussed above, the new DPJ-led government is quite critical of the role of bureaucrats in policy-making. From that perspective, it is also suspicious of the ubiquity of such councils, which include a significant number of academic advisors. Following the autumn 2009 election, many councils’ work was put on hold. This does not relate to all such groups, however. For instance, a new body called the Industrial Competitiveness Committee, answering to the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI), was added to the Industrial Structure Council in February 2010 and tasked with developing ideas about the long-term competitiveness of the Japanese economy. It includes a number of university professors and academics from institutes.

Under the central government reform implemented by the Koizumi government in 2001, the role of central institutions was considerably strengthened. While retaining and making use of the substantially beefed-up resources of the Cabinet Secretariat, the new DPJ-led government has put particular emphasis on transferring effective control over the budget from the Ministry of Finance to the newly established National Strategy Office (NSO), chaired by the prime minister and led by a minister of state (first Naoto Kan, then Yukio Edano). On a symbolic level and perhaps in the future also on a material level, the NSO embodies the principle of prime ministerial leadership (Takayasu 2009). It is tasked with (politically) determining priorities, including budget priorities; acting as a think tank within the core executive, by collecting and disseminating ideas, and making numerous hitherto existing councils redundant; providing political council to the prime minister, who has to date often relied on the chief cabinet secretary for this function; and fostering information flow within cabinet.

The NSO experienced a bumpy start in 2009: In setting up the first (supplementary) budget, the division of labor between the (then)-National Strategy Office and the Ministry of Finance remained somewhat vague.

Present guidelines for policy coordination, which were passed by the Japanese cabinet in 2000, hold the Cabinet Secretariat to be the highest and final organ for policy coordination below the cabinet itself. In statutory terms, the Cabinet Secretariat was thus placed above other ministries and national agencies. The empowerment of the Cabinet Secretariat has de jure enabled Japanese prime ministers to return items envisaged for cabinet meetings on policy grounds. In reality this rarely happens, as usually the only items to reach the cabinet stage are those on which consensus exists. However, this does not rule out conflicts over contentious policy issues among coalition partners, which can also flare up at the cabinet level. This has already been witnessed on a few occasions during the coalition government of the DPJ, the People’s New Party and the Social Democratic Party (between September 2009 and June 2010).

During the past decade, line ministries and the central policy-making bodies at cabinet level, particularly the Cabinet Secretariat, have communicated intensively in the preparation of policy proposals. Traditionally, since the early years of the so-called 1955 system – 1955 being the year in which the LDP was founded – the LDP’s own policy-making bodies, which mirror the ministries closely, have also been involved. Contacts between ministries and cabinet-level bodies have been particularly close due to the dense relationships linking senior civil servants. However, such relations have sometimes appeared almost too close, even for recent LDP-led governments. Former Prime Minister Abe, for instance, wanted to increase the number of outsiders in Cabinet Secretariat positions.

Following the government reform in 2001, government committees were established in a number of important fields, in which coordination among ministries with de facto overlapping jurisdictions plays an important role. The most important among these is the Council for Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP), headed by the prime minister. However, in two respects, this is not a “ministerial committee” in the strict sense of the definition used in this section. First, it has only an advisory function. Second, individuals from the private sector – two academics and two business representatives in the current configuration – are included. This can increase the impact of such a council, but it also means that it is somewhat aloof from concrete political processes.
In order to break the dependence of the cabinet on the national bureaucracy, the new DPJ-led government abolished the administrative vice-ministers’ meeting. Its high-level coordination role has been given instead to a cabinet-level committee in charge of discussing key issues ahead of cabinet meetings, the members of which change depending on the issue at hand. Measures approved by this committee are then submitted for cabinet approval.

The administrative vice-ministers meeting has traditionally been the most important government committee in the preparation of cabinet meetings. It was composed of the heads of the civil services of the various ministries. It has always been a matter of some dispute whether this council simply set the agenda for cabinet meetings in a formal sense, performing tasks such as preparing documents, or whether it played a more ambitious gate-keeping role determining which issues were taken up in cabinet meetings and in which manner. However, as part of the new DPJ-led government’s drive to downgrade the role of senior bureaucrats, the vice-ministers meetings were abolished. As pledged by the DPJ in the 2009 election campaign, 100 members of parliament have now been assigned to government ministries (up from 70 under LDP rule). Time will tell how the working relationships between senior ministry personnel and these new political nominees, who often lack expertise or experience in their new field of responsibility, will evolve, or whether the political appointees will ultimately develop direct influence and even a guiding role in shaping cabinet-level decision-making. There are bound to be differences from ministry to ministry.

When the DPJ and its coalition partners took over government responsibility in 2009, a number of high-profile measures were put in place aimed at reducing the influence of civil servants in policy-making. One measure was to abolish the administrative vice-ministers meeting. Another was that political appointees rather than senior civil servants are now required to speak on behalf of their ministries, particularly in the course of official functions such as reports to the Diet or press conferences; when this happens, they are not to read from pre-formulated scripts but to speak freely about the political issues involved. It is an open question whether the new government will be successful in reducing the strength of the civil service. Because politicians will have to rely on the expertise and loyalty of civil servants in the future, the path that the DPJ-led government is taking is a very delicate one.

It is almost folk wisdom that informal contacts between Japanese decision makers are extremely important. During formal meetings, it is difficult to mention all important points explicitly, for instance in order to avoid “loss of face” situations. For that reason, considerable effort is made to prepare meetings in an informal manner, ensuring a “binding of roots” (nemawashi), or to reach the “true” decisions in an informal environment, such as during visits to restaurants or bars. While this may involve only those persons who are formally involved in the decision making, such procedures can also reach well beyond the circle of those who are formally involved, sometimes leading to collusion, nepotism or even corruption.

On the level of “organized informal mechanisms,” one of the most important channels of coordination for policy-making has been the informal meetings and debates between the ministries and the policy research departments of the major parties, particularly of the LDP. It has sometimes been suggested that the directors of the LDP policy research departments, which closely mirror the ministry structure of the government, may have been as or even more powerful than the serving ministers. With the advent of the new DPJ-led government, this system has come to a halt. The DPJ has pledged to abolish its policy research branch and to rely only on official mechanisms.

The basic framework for policy evaluation in Japan is the Government Policy Evaluations Act of 2001. According to the OECD, this was only used sporadically until 2004. The Regulatory Reform Program of 2004 ordered that regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) were to be administered in a more systematic way. By the time of a review and revision of the system by Japan’s government in 2005, it was considered to have taken root. In fiscal year 2008, some 7,088 policy evaluations were undertaken by the various ministries, compared to 3,709 in 2007. With regard to the “challenges” formulated by the OECD in its 2004 report on regulatory reform in Japan (p. 2), Japan has now fulfilled most of the points mentioned, at least in a formal sense. The new DPJ-led government has pledged to make a careful examination of existing policies, aiming to cut costly measures that lack obvious social merit; it hopes thus to create the budgetary flexibility to pursue its own priorities. As a new body attached to the Cabinet Office, the Government Revitalization Unit conducted a number of televised interviews with project leaders in late 2009, which some characterized as similar to an “inquisition,” and which were noteworthy for the lack of professionalism of some of the questions and arguably of some of the decisions reached.

The appropriate analytical depth of regulatory evaluation has been carefully defined at least since the revision of the policy evaluation system in 2005. According to the Basic Guidelines for Implementing Policy Evaluation (Revised) of March 2007, the necessity, efficiency and effectiveness of measures are to be the central considerations for evaluations; other issues include equity and priority. The structure and content of assessments are further clarified in the Policy Evaluation Implementation Guidelines of 2005 and the Implementation Guidelines for Ex-Ante Evaluation of Regulations of 2007; all of these specifications contain quite demanding tasks that must be performed as a part of the evaluations.

The Implementation Guidelines for Ex-Ante Evaluation of Regulations of August 2007 define “necessary” standard operating procedures for ex-ante policy evaluations. They explicitly include the need for comparisons with alternatives. If possible, this analysis should encompass non-regulatory means as well. As a caveat, the guidelines note that if a measure based on other laws or ordinances is evaluated, the underlying regulations are not to be questioned.

It should be noted in passing that Japan possesses another mechanism to evaluate alternative policy options, namely the experimental application of regulatory changes in specially designated regions, based on the Law on Special Zones for Structural Reform of 2002, revised in 2007. The new DPJ-led government intends to use this mechanism as a means to strengthen citizen input in reforming policies (based on a cabinet decision in December 2009).

The traditional practice of LDP-led governments was to pursue societal consultation through the so-called “iron triangle,” which refers to the dense links between the elected politicians, the ministerial bureaucracy, and large business concerns. However, these mechanisms tended to exclude other societal actors, including the trade union movement and the small and medium-sized enterprise sector. Since the onset of the 1990’s economic problems, tensions within this triangle have increased, and during the most recent years of LDP-led government, through 2009, relations were so strained that one could speak of a demise of the “iron triangle” system.

Since the start of the new DPJ-led government in 2009, government relations with the trade union sector have vastly improved. Since the DPJ’s founding in the mid-1990s, the trade union umbrella organization Rengo and a number of individual unions have supported the party and its candidates financially, with manpower and in terms of voter mobilization. Tellingly, the first two DPJ cabinets have included former labor union leaders, and lobbying government-affiliated members of parliament has become easier since the DPJ’s rise to power. However, it remains to be seen whether the DPJ-led government’s tighter links with the labor movement will have a major impact on policy-making.

Policy communication has always been a priority for Japanese governments. Ministries and other governmental agencies have been very active in publishing regular reports, often called “white papers,” as well as other materials on their work. These materials are full of rich details, though observers have sometimes found the sheer quantity of brochures, data and other material bewildering. Ministries and other agencies have sometimes used public communication to stake their claims on specific policy areas. Another critique has been that policy statements have become rather vague. Particularly with respect to visions of the future economy, recent statements have been filled with terms such as “economic individualism” or “people´s power,” for which practical definitions have been difficult to ascertain.

A major departure by the DPJ from earlier communications policy is that politicians with ministry responsibility, particularly the ministers themselves, are now in charge of representing their issue area in the Diet and in press conferences. Ministers and other politicians have used various means to hold press conferences and communicate with the public, including the solicitation of direct feedback over the Internet. There have been cases in which the ministerial civil servants were not even aware that their minister was speaking to the public. While this may seem a refreshing departure from the previous regime’s somewhat stiff communication patterns, the new practices have not yet stabilized. Communication may actually have lost transparency as a result, although this could be seen as a typical transition-period problem.

Cabinets in Japan changed in rapid succession during the period under review. Prime ministers Fukuda and Aso each lasted only about one year, while Yukio Hatoyama, the first prime minister from the DPJ, left office after only about nine months. In none of the three cases did cabinets have the time to pursue their chosen agenda effectively.

Japan’s formal institutional political framework provides the prime minister with powerful tools to control ministers. Prime ministers can appoint and fire ministers at will. Moreover, prime ministers can also propose or veto specific sectoral policies themselves if they want to do so. In practice, however, prime ministerial options have been more limited, as most of them have lacked full control over their own parties. During the long reign of the LDP, which came to an end only in August 2009,
prime ministers were often not able to choose ministers as they wished, as they had to take into account the power and preferences of intraparty factions when allocating portfolios. On the other hand, the powerful entrenched national bureaucracy and a relatively high degree of cabinet discipline all effectively constrained ministers’ opportunities to put personal before national or party interests.

The new DPJ government has initiated institutional reforms aimed at centralizing policy-making within the core executive. It remains to be seen whether coalition agreements can really help to foster the cabinet’s collective responsibility, or keep ministers hailing from small coalition partners from simply pursuing their own party’s agenda. Certainly, the experience of the relatively short-lived DPJ-PNP-SDP coalition government showed how difficult it can be to balance the need for policy coherence with the need to satisfy individual party clienteles.

Generally speaking, the Cabinet Office, established during Koizumi´s years of government, offers the means of monitoring ministry activities. It has also developed the personnel capacity to do so. However, it cannot de facto survey all activities at all times, and it is questionable whether either the prime minister or the chief cabinet secretary have the clout to use this apparatus effectively. The DPJ-government has made efforts to control the budgeting process, taking this function away from the Ministry of Finance, with the Government Revitalization Unit playing an important role in the preparation of the 2010 budget. While this unit still seems to act somewhat erratically, such a body offers a potentially strong mechanism of oversight, and the government seems determined to concentrate budget-making control at the top level of the central government.

Japanese ministries are traditionally run by civil servants that stay within the same ministry for their whole career. Government agencies that belong to the functional area of a specific ministry are thus also directed by civil servants delegated from that ministry, who may also return to it after a number of years. From that perspective, control of executive agencies below the ministerial level can be quite effective. This mechanism is supported by budget allocation and person-to-person peer networks.

In 2001, so-called independent administrative agencies were established, following New Public Management recommendations to improve the execution of well-defined policy goals by handing them over to professionally managed quasi-governmental organizations. Such independent agencies are overseen by evaluation mechanisms similar to those discussed in the section on RIA, based on modified legislation. During the period under review, voices skeptical of this arrangement have gained ground, because the effective use of this independent-agency mechanism has been hindered to some extent by the network effects mentioned above, and because the administrators in charge frequently do not possess a managerial mindset, but rather originate from the civil service.

The dependence of local governments – prefectures and municipalities – on central government is strong. Local taxes account for less than half of local revenues, and there is a complicated system of vertical fiscal transfers. Local governments can follow their own policies only to a limited extent, as they are generally required to execute central policies. During the period under review, pressure on expenditures has further increased, as local budgets are responsible for a considerable proportion of the rising costs associated with the aging population, as well as social policy expenses due to the growing income disparities and poverty rates. Moreover, tax income has been disappointing during the period, due to the sluggish economy and the contraction of the economy following the Lehman Brothers collapse in late 2008.

Japanese authorities are well aware of these issues. At least until 2007, the level of local government indebtedness had been stabilized. Measures aimed at this goal included a merger of municipalities designed to create economies of scale, lower personnel costs and lower levels of public investment. This latter policy was implemented by LDP-governments and is being continued by the new DPJ-led government. The new government also hopes to increase fiscal decentralization further, but no concrete progress has been made yet.

Local autonomy is guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution. However, Articles 92 to 95 of Chapter VIII, which discuss local self-government, are very short and quite unspecific. The central state makes its power felt through three mechanisms in particular: control over vertical fiscal transfers, the delegation of functions that local entities are required to execute, and personnel relations between the central ministry in charge of local autonomy and local entities. Moreover, ”carrots” exist as well as “sticks,” such as cofinancing schemes for public works. In the last decade, there has been a growing number of initiatives aimed at increasing local autonomy further. To some extent, this has been motivated by fiscal necessity, as local autonomy was seen as a way to save money. However, some of the pressure has come from local populations and civil society organizations seeking to take over local functions, arguing that they have more insight into what is needed and sensible on their level.

Japanese government authorities lay great stress on providing reasonable unitary standards for the provision of public services. The recent move toward decentralization makes it particularly important to raise standards for the local provision of public services. On the central government level, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is in charge of this task, which involves direct supervision, personnel transfer between central and local entities, and training activities. While direct administrative supervision has lost some importance compared to legal and judicial supervision, the result of a reform in the year 2000 that abolished local entities’ agency functions in a strict sense, other channels were still important during the period under review. On the local level, particularly on the level of prefectures, there is a rather elaborate training system that is linked in various ways with the national level.

Japan´s reform processes are usually driven by domestic developments and interests, but international models or perceived best practices do play a role at times. With respect to the extensive governmental reform program initiated by the DPJ, for example, the (somewhat idealized) “Westminster system” operating in the United Kingdom has served as a role model for top DPJ personnel. Other actors interested in reform have frequently appealed to international standards and trends to support their position. However, in many cases it is doubtful whether substantial reform is truly enacted, or whether Japan rather follows international standards in only a formal sense, with underlying informal institutional mechanisms changing much more slowly.

During the period under review, Japan was actively involved in the new G-20 mechanism designed to meet the challenges of global financial turmoil. As its part of the multilateral effort, Japan contributed a considerable economic stimulus program. In foreign and security policy, the so-called Peace Constitution, and particularly its Article 9, makes it difficult for Japan to engage in international missions that include the use of force. Under recent LDP-governments, Japan did take part in a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean to support antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan. However, this was domestically controversial, and the new DPJ-led government stopped the mission in January 2010. However, it promised to help international efforts financially, pledging up to $5 billion in aid to the region over the next five years. With respect to global warming, Prime Minister Hatoyama sought to show international leadership in late 2009 by promising a reduction in CO2 levels of 25% by 2020 (as compared to 1990 levels), provided that other major economies made comparable efforts. However, some observers doubt that Japan could achieve this goal without substantially undermining economic growth, thus sparking domestic opposition strong enough to derail the program. Japan has emphasized its Asia-Pacific regional roots, and has actively forwarded and contributed to regional programs. However, with respect to global and regional leadership, Japan has found it difficult to contribute visionary plans attracting support by others, although it is noteworthy that plans for regional financial cooperation, such as the Chiang Mai program, have gathered momentum in recent years and have been quite markedly shaped by Japanese proposals. Still, it is often difficult for Japan to voice its positions on international cooperation forcefully enough against the sometimes conflicting and competing views of the United States and, more recently, China.

Considering and debating government institutional reform has been a major theme in Japanese politics for more than a decade. His credible attempt at institutional reform was the key reason why former Prime Minister Koizumi realized such a decisive election victory in the lower house elections of 2005. Later governments have not been afforded the time to develop strong reform initiatives, but each of the succeeding LDP governments ranked restoring trust through institutional reform as an important task. The new DPJ-led government too included a wide-ranging consideration of institutional alternatives as a major chapter in its election manifesto, and performing this task has occupied a considerable amount of the new government’s first months in office.

In recent years, the most significant organizational reform attempts were then-Prime Minister Koizumi’s measures in 2001 – 2002 to strengthen cabinet-level policy-making. A second major attempt is currently ongoing, represented by the new DPJ-led government’s attempt to put elected politicians in charge of the government apparatus. However, it is too early to pass judgment on the new DPJ-government’s reform measures, particularly as many of them have not even successfully passed the legislative process.

There is a substantial amount of information about policies and policy-making available in Japan.
However, while there are significant opportunities to become informed, this does not necessarily mean that citizens feel satisfied and consider the information trustworthy. In the 2006 AsiaBarometer study, 56% of respondents stated that they were very or somewhat satisfied with the scope of the right to be informed about government. A 2007 survey found that 38% found NHK and 37% found newspapers to be reliable sources of information. While these percentages are not particularly high, it may nevertheless be concluded that, compared to many other countries, Japanese citizens seem to enjoy a high standard in terms of available information on government policy, but that they are also critical viewers and readers.

Government documents can be obtained at the discretion of legislative committees. There are typically no problems in obtaining such papers in a timely manner. As the internal culture of committees varies, depending for instance on the personality of the chairperson, the actual use of this right differs among committees.

Committees may demand the presence of ministers and lower-ranking top ministry personnel, such as senior vice-ministers, among others. There has been no formal change in this power since the 2001 administrative reform. Previously, senior civil servants frequently attended legislative hearings, while junior politicians are expected to do so today. This change was aimed at increasing the role of elected politicians. Under the new DPJ-led government, one can expect the tendency for appointed politicians to answer to parliament to increase; indeed, as the review period drew to a close, there were even proposals to forbid civil servants from answering questions from the Diet.

Under Article 62 of the constitution, the Diet, including committees, can summon witnesses, including experts. Summoned witnesses have the duty to appear before parliament. The opposition can also ask for witnesses to be called, and under normal circumstances such requests are granted by the government. However, the use of expert testimony in parliamentary committees is not widespread; experts, academic and otherwise, are relied upon more frequently within the context of government advisory committees, in particular at the ministry level.

The Diet’s standing committees closely correspond to the jurisdiction of the government’s major ministries. Indeed, the areas of committee jurisdiction are defined in this manner. The portfolios of the ministers of state – there have been up to five such ministers in recent cabinets, coving task areas such as financial services, consumer affairs and civil service reform – are not covered by committees with the same task areas. There are a number of additional standing committees carrying out tasks such as disciplinary matters or other functions.

The Board of Audit of Japan is considered to be independent of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary system. It submits yearly reports to the cabinet, which together with the cabinet’s financial statements are forwarded to the Diet. The board is free to choose its own points of focus, but parliament can request audits on special topics. Since 2005, the board has been able to forward opinions and recommendations between submissions of its regular yearly audit reports.

According to Article 16 of Japan’s constitution, each citizen has the right to peaceful petition. While there is no “ombuds office” as such, the two houses of parliament handle petitions received by them through their committees on audit and administrative oversight. However, a more important petition mechanism is found in the Administrative Evaluation Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. This is Japan’s member of the Asian Ombudsman Association. The bureau runs an administrative counseling service that handles about 180,000 complaints per year. It has various offices throughout the country, and supports some 220 civil servants. In addition, about 5,000 volunteer administrative counselors serve as go-betweens.

The NHK public broadcasting station traditionally provides ample and in-depth information on policy issues. It had a near-monopoly on this role until the 1970s. Since that time, the major private broadcasting networks have also moved into this field, while trying to make the provision of information entertaining. NHK dominates the 7 p.m. news slot and also provides a long news program at 9 p.m., in addition to its widely seen morning programs (“Ohayô Nihon”). Private broadcasters have various interesting programs in the 11 p. m. slot. TV Asahi´s “Sunday Project” and NHK´s “Nichiyo Toron” are examples of a tendency to present high-profile information and serious policy-related talk shows on Sundays. NHK also operates a news/speech-based radio program (Radio 1). It is difficult to determine the extent to which TV-based information has been influential with respect to political developments and policy-making. This is certainly the case when political content can be combined with powerful pictures or video footage. In the early 1990s, TV Asahi´s Sunday Project famously and repeatedly featured a group of three younger LDP politicians (nicknamed YKK), among them Yunichiro Koizumi, and it is said that his publicity rose remarkably through this exposure. In recent years, the appearance of a drunken Japanese finance minister in February 2009 during a televised interview in Rome contributed significantly to the public´s disillusionment with the LDP.

Both major parties, the LDP and the DPJ, prepared detailed election programs for the 2009 lower house election. Such “manifestos” were introduced by the DPJ in the 2003 lower house election, and they represent a growing tendency to draw closer connections between parties, their policy propositions, and their candidates. Previously, elections had very much been based on personalities, candidates’ electoral networks, and pork-barrel spending aimed at supporting and maintaining such networks. Despite shortcomings in the actual programs identified, the overall positive contribution of these manifestos to Japan’s political process should not be underestimated. As for the 2009 programs, the DPJ was rather clear in its priorities, distinguishing between five major pledges, five major principles and five major policies, for instance. It provided a clear distinction between superior objectives, subordinate objectives and related policy measures. The DPJ even attached specific cost estimates and deadlines to its proposals. However, it is a major weakness in this process that it remains unclear how the various costly schemes are to be realized during Japan’s post-crisis period of economic hardship and severe fiscal strain. Some of the measures appear overly simplistic, such as the promise to find “hidden treasures” in the existing budget, or to effectively diminish the role of bureaucrats through a number of formal changes. There are also a number of obvious contradictions, such as the inherent conflict between the populist promise to eliminate highway tolls and the need for fiscal restraint and environmental incentives. Some controversial issues are not mentioned at all, like the DPJ´s stance toward the refueling mission in the Indian Ocean. The LDP´s “promise” (yakusoku) was considerably less specific in comparison. For instance, it did not as clearly distinguish between principles, overarching goals, subordinate goals and instruments. Information about individual policy proposals’ cost and timeline was much more vague, an issue that has long been subject to criticism. To be fair, it should be noted that the evident specificity of the DPJ proposals may have been more apparent than real. The LDP was handicapped by having been in charge of most of the policies that it was now criticizing as having been from another era. To the LDP’s credit, it has not shied away from a number of possibly unpopular policy proposals, such as the more or less explicit demand for an increase in the consumption tax.

Japan´s leading business and labor organizations regularly prepare topical policy proposals designed to stir public debate and influence government policy-making. Specifically, the business federations Nippon Keidanren and Doyukai, the national organization of the Japanese Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and the leading trade union federation Rengo should be mentioned in this context. Such organizations can make their impact felt not only by publishing policy papers, but also through their membership in government advisory committees. As the financial support of political parties by business has declined, particularly with respect to the demise of the traditional “iron triangle” linking large businesses with the LDP and the bureaucracy, politicians have also become less willing to consider the views of these interest groups seriously. Some competition between the organizations has helped to raise the quality of their proposals. While there is an obvious scramble for influence between Rengo and the business organizations, sometimes leading to explicit statements criticizing each other´s views, there is also growing competition among business organizations themselves. For instance, Nippon Keidanren is dominated by large enterprise groups, and has been somewhat slow in demanding a further opening of the economy. The Doyukai is more characterized by strong independent companies, and is outspoken in demanding a more open business environment.

Civil society organizations do not have a long tradition in Japan. Until 1998, it was very difficult to found such an organization and ensure a steady flow of membership contributions. The Non-Profit Organization (NPO) Law of 1998 improved the situation considerably. Nevertheless, the depth and breadth of such organizations in Japan is still limited. This has to some extent been overcome in selected policy fields such as international development issues or environmental concerns, and in regional or local policy arenas.