Session 68: Civil Society Groups and Policymaking in Japan

Organizer: Robert J. Pekkanen, University of Washington

Chair: Andre Sorensen, University of Toronto

Discussant: Susan J. Pharr, Harvard University

The panel investigates the role of civil society groups in the policy-making process in contemporary Japan. The panel’s chief virtue lies in the combination of this single focus with a broad range of approaches to the question of what role civil society groups play in making policy in Japan today. Political scientists Yutaka Tsujinaka, Robert J. Pekkanen, and Takafumi Ohtomo provide a macro-level overview based on statistical analysis of the JIGS survey of Japanese interest groups. This is complemented by more detailed studies of particular policy areas. Another political scientist, Apichai Shipper, examines how groups representing foreigners and foreign laborers are influencing immigration policy and perhaps even the conception of citizenship. In a comparison of Japan and Korea, sociologist Ito Peng investigates the sphere of social welfare policy-making, where she finds actors from civil society newly active and influential in both countries. In other areas, however, the panelists find evidence of continuing limitations on the role of civil society organizations. Anthropologist Akihiro Ogawa finds the autonomous activities of civil society groups engaged in continuing education to be constrained. Tsujinaka, Pekkanen and Ohtomo are balanced in their overview about both the possibilities and the limitations of civil society groups’ influence over the policy-making process. Through these examinations of several facets of policy-making, we gain a more sophisticated understanding of the overall scope of the role of civil society groups in the making of policy in Japan today.

Civil Society Groups and Policy-Making in Contemporary Japan

Robert J. Pekkanen, University of Washington; Yutaka Tsujinaka, University of Tsukuba; Takafumi Ohtomo, University of Tsukuba

This paper presents a broad analysis of the influence of civil society groups. The evidence is drawn from the JIGS survey of interest groups. JIGS is an extensive survey of more than 1,600 associations in Tokyo and also in Ibaraki Prefecture, involving 36 questions and 260 sub-questions. The survey utilized random sampling of telephone book directories (the NTT telephone book). Not all groups necessarily have their own telephone line, but this method of sampling allows the research to include groups that have not obtained legal status—in this way, the JIGS data is more comprehensive than government data and catches many groups that would otherwise be uncounted.

Our analysis provides a general overview of the involvement of civil society groups in the policy-making process. We focus on three main aspects. First, we distinguish among the types of groups that involve themselves in policy-making. These groups are broken down in the JIGS survey by their predominant activity (e.g., agricultural groups, sports groups, etc.) and their legal status. Second, we investigate in which areas groups seek to influence policy. This means both the broad issue area (e.g., agriculture) as well as the groups’ response to a specific list of policy changes over the past decade. Third, we probe the relationships that these groups have with other groups, as well as with other political actors (e.g., local governments, political parties, etc.). Finally, we are concerned with the means by which the groups seek to influence policy-making—and we include in this category specific information such as whether the groups offered electoral support or provided post-retirement posts to bureaucrats. Along these lines, we also investigate the success the groups have in influencing policy-making and politics.

Civil Society and Social Policy Reforms in Japan and Korea

Ito Peng, University of Toronto

This paper examines the impact of civil society on social policy reforms in the 1990s, a decade of welfare state transformation, in Japan and Korea. In Japan, the path of neo-conservative welfare retrenchment rationalized by such rhetoric as the Japanese-style welfare society of the 1980s gave way to the expansion of social care (e.g., expansion of child care and family support policies, and introduction of the long-term care insurance scheme) and to the Basic Structural Reform of Social Welfare in the 1990s; in Korea, conservative social policies of the Kim Yong Sam and earlier regimes were radically overturned by the pro-welfare state policies under the Kim Dae Jung and Rho Tae Woo regimes after 1997 (e.g., expansions of unemployment insurance, family and income support provisions, and social care). Studies have pointed to a number of different conjunctual factors behind the changes, including political regime shifts, economic crisis, changes in demographic, family, and gender structures, and changes societal norms and ideas vis-à-vis state-society relations. In both Japan and Korea, there has been a burgeoning of civil society activities since the 1980s. In the 1990s, civil societies in these countries became even more deeply engaged in the social policymaking process. The paper focuses on civil society groups representing social welfare interests, for example, organizations and groups interested in social care issues, to find out how they engage in the policymaking process and how they help reshape social policies in their countries. In comparing and contrasting civil societies in Japan and Korea, this paper hopes to contribute to the emerging literature on civil society and welfare state restructuring in East Asia.

Shaping the Japanese State: The Role of Foreigner Support Groups in Redefining Membership Rules and State Responsibilities

Apichai Shipper, University of Southern California

Defining membership rules and state responsibilities is traditionally seen as a monopolized activity of Japanese state officials. In a response to a recent influx of foreigners and a lack of government programs to assist unskilled Asian workers, Japanese citizens are organizing support groups to help those unprotected foreigners. Some groups have successfully pressured the government to grant certain overstayed foreigners with "special residence permission" while others have challenged the government to extend National Health Insurance to certain unqualified foreigners. More significantly, these groups are pushing some local governments to accept responsibility for caring for all their residents. The Kanagawa prefectural government, in particular, has responded to the growing importance of these NGOs by establishing an NGO Advisory Council along with its Foreign Residents Council. Such institutional innovation provides a sort of democratic deliberation to both marginalized Japanese activists and foreign residents of Japan at the local level. More impressively, it provides a "voice" to illegal immigrants through Japanese activists. These associative efforts demonstrate how civil society groups in Japan can play a role in redefining membership rules and state responsibilities for its residents.

Power and Contested Rationalities: Policy Collaboration in Continuing Education between an NPO and the State

Akihiro Ogawa, Harvard University

This paper examines a case of policy collaboration in the area of continuing education between an NPO and a municipal government in downtown Tokyo. The collaboration, currently called Kyōdō, between NPOs and the government in policy-making has been a fashionable political strategy in Japan’s politics since the enactment of the 1998 NPO Law as it promises to facilitate successful, effective policy implementation while achieving cost cutting. It is realized through the entrusting of projects to NPOs by the government. An NPO, for instance, might provide specific social services to the public in place of (but promoted by) the government. My case is that an NPO is an actual provider of lifelong learning opportunities to the local residents, while the municipal government funds the business.

I introduce as an example an entrustment case that failed, however. I argue that power sharing is often problematic, as power tends to be tipped toward the government by virtue of its hold over policy development. The government is a trustor. It has money. It has laws which legitimatize its actions. I identified the following problems that arose in this NPO-government collaboration: a preoccupation with persistent formalism in administrative rationality, the framing of issues and procedures, and practices of the government. At the same time, there was resistance from the NPO. They tried to insert meaning into the project. Their actions went beyond the rational, purposive function of the assignment. Due to this tension, the introduction of NPOs in politics has left many grassroots NPO participants disillusioned.