Organizer: Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College
Designing and Testing a Model of Japanese Trade Policymaking: Japan's Role in the
GATT Uruguay Round Agricultural Negotiations
Christopher C. Meyerson, Columbia University
While much print has been devoted to Japanese trade policy, as Kent Calder noted in his 1988, World Politics "Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation" article, "competent book-length empirical studies of Japanese foreign economic policy behavior are still remarkably scarce." One could make the same argument today, and for that reason, I chose to write my Columbia University Political Science dissertation on trade policymaking in Japan and the United States.
My paper summarizes the sections of my dissertation in which a model of Japanese trade policymaking is designed, and tested and refined through the examination of a particular case study-Japan's role in the GATT Uruguay Round agricultural negotiations.
The first part of my paper sets forth a model of Japanese trade policymaking which incorporates well-defined variables at the domestic and international-system levels.
The second part of my paper uses the model proposed in the first part of the paper to analyze Japan's role in the GATT Uruguay Round agricultural negotiations (1986-1994).
The paper concludes by discussing what the case study examined reveals about certain characteristics of Japanese trade policymaking, and by considering ways in which the model of Japanese trade policymaking proposed could be refined.
Party Competition for Power and the Impact of its Changing Contexts upon
Legislative Outcomes: The Case of Japan's Electoral Reform
Takayuki Sakamoto, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper studies Japan's three most recent electoral reform attempts by the Kaifu (1991), Miyazawa (1993), and Hosokawa (1993-4) Administrations. It examines the policy processes and outcomes in the attempts with a view to explicating the fundamental causes of the failure of the first two and the success of the last attempt. Its main purpose is to reflect upon the general, theoretical issues of the determinants of the behavior of politicians and political parties, and their impacts upon policy processes and outcomes. In so doing, it also addresses the issue concerning the applicability to the Japanese case of general theories of political science such as rational choice theory, which has received the attention of scholars of Japanese studies.
The analysis is conducted through a systematic inspection of: (1) Japanese politicians' motivations and parties' strategies; (2) electoral conditions; (3) the dynamics of and situations surrounding party competition; and (4) trends in public opinion. It focuses particularly on the impact of parties' changing calculations and strategies in a changing situation in party competition, upon the outcomes of the policy processes. I argue that the case of electoral reform represents one in which the policy contents of the attempts did not exercise decisive influence upon their outcomes. I argue instead that it is a case in which politicians and parties were caught in a series of sub-optimal decisions, although politicians' electoral goals and parties' quest for power were the principal driving forces behind the politics of electoral reform.
Overview and Issues of Privatization in Japan: Cases of Japan Railways and NTT
Eunbong Choi, Kang Won National University
Coming after years of governmental expansion, the movement toward privatization has been spread internationally. At the same time, a concern for improving the performance of public sector undertakings (PSUs) has been markedly growing, in the countries where the public sector has assumed an important role in the economy. Both reexamination of poorly performed PSUs and their privatization programs have been conducted simultaneously in most places, particularly after the world economy has got on the tide of globalization. First of all, this study intends to overview this trend, specifically focusing on Japanese experience.
The upsurging trend of privatization is due to the reality that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have failed to play the strategic role in the promotion of industrialization that governments desired. If only economic terms are concerned, privatization can be considered as an alternative for improving productivity, profitability and competitiveness of industrial sector of the economy, and an effective instrument for dynamism of a national economy. However, the logic of politics is also working behind it. Thus, effective operation of existing public enterprises and successful privatization of poorly-performed public utilities are problematic policy alternatives which should be seriously chosen, and well balanced if the whole economy of a country would be worked out efficiently and productively.
Keeping the above background in mind, this study will cover issues of privatization in Japan in special reference with Japan Railways and NTT. Moreover, it investigates political implications of privatization in the contemporary Japanese social context. The findings of the study would be expected to be useful for policy makings for privatization, and to provide significant implications for the study of political economy and comparative policy analyses.