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International Norms and Domestic Politics in Japan
Organizer and Chair: Michael Strausz, University of Washington
Discussant: Joyce Gelb, City College of New York
In the last 15 years scholars of international relations have become increasingly concerned with international norms—transnational standards of appropriate behavior for states and individuals. However, scholarship on international norms has yet to make substantial inroads in the academic study of Japanese politics. This is particularly surprising because popular accounts of Japanese politics frequently suggest that international norms are extremely important; journalists and other popular authors on Japan frequently note the importance that Japan places on transnational standards for appropriate behavior, particularly those standards that originated in the West.
This panel will evaluate existing theories of international norms through an examination of the relationship between international norms and domestic politics in Japan. Specifically, papers will focus on international norms regarding human rights, gender equality, and population growth. Papers will examine the processes through which norms are incorporated (or not incorporated) into domestic politics, and will also focus on the ways that domestic actors use the rhetoric of international norms to advance their own goals. All four of the papers will rely on extensive Japanese language primary research and field research conducted in Japan.
Ethnic Minority Policy in a One-Ethnicity Country: International Human Rights Norms and Japan’s Asylum and Citizenship Policies
Michael Strausz, University of Washington
Why do some international norms influence the behavior of states more than others? Why has Japan adopted policies to comply with international norms on the treatment of foreign residents and failed to comply with international norms regarding burden sharing in refugee admissions? This paper will examine the process through which Japan made its asylum and foreign resident policies in the 1970s and 1980s with a view toward addressing this question. Ultimately, I will argue that Japan’s response to international human rights norms has been shaped by elite debates about whether Japan should westernize or preserve its culture.
During that period, both the major changes that were made in regards to the treatment of foreign residents and the comparatively minor changes that were made in refugee admissions can be explained as a part of the same strategy which emerged in the 1970s: preserve Japanese ethnic homogeneity through granting more rights to existing foreign populations (thus removing their grievances) and limiting the admission of new foreign populations (such as refugees). This strategy was adopted because it appealed to elites on both sides of the debate about whether Japan should westernize or preserve its culture.
In order to test this argument, this paper will examine media accounts, government reports, debates in the popular press about the foreigners and refugees, and interviews with key policymakers.
Social Implications of International Law: Women’s Employment and Gender Equality in Japan
Petrice R. Flowers, University of Hawaii
International human rights law has far reaching consequences for social and cultural transformation. State compliance is often used as a measure to gauge the effectiveness of international law with the assumption that compliance implies something about the impact of treaties. The social implications of international law are qualitatively different from compliance and require different but complementary methods of study. Understanding the longer-term social implications of international law for both domestic and international politics require that we look more closely at processes that start with ratification and continue to unfold over time. When Japan ratified CEDAW in 1985, there was a high degree of conflict between the domestic and international norms on this issue. If conflict between the international and domestic norm were the only factor determining whether Japan would adopt CEDAW, the norms literature would predict that domestic norms would prevail and CEDAW would not be adopted. In fact, not only was CEDAW adopted, it has been progressively implemented first with the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) in 1985 (revised in 1997) and a series of legislation including the 1999 Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society. This paper will explore how processes of getting the EEOL and other gender related legislation passed in Japan, and getting the government to ratify CEDAW, has effected social, cultural and political change in Japan’s domestic politics and the mutually constituted relationship between these domestic level changes and Japan’s state identity.
Building Parents of the Next Generation: International Population Policy Norms and Japanese Family Policy
Liv Coleman, University of Wisconsin
Nearly all advanced industrial countries today are undergoing large- scale demographic change due to declining birthrates and aging populations, but Japan’s family policy response has been an outlier in some respects. Just as countries are converging on a policy response to lower the costs of raising a family, including lowering the opportunity costs for women working, Japan has mixed these types of policies with its own initiatives to recreate traditional gender roles also based on interpreted family norms. In its attempts to provide young people with the material and psychological wherewithal to marry and have children, the Japanese government has gone beyond what advanced industrial countries typically do to provide family support by attempting to influence broader socio-demographic trends of family formation. This paper traces the development of these family formation policies, suggesting the ways that global social policy scripts in fields such as health, education, and youth employment have been reoriented around a contemporary nation-building project centered on reproduction.
Transnational Norms and Japan's Environmental ODA
Derek Hall, Wilfrid Laurier University
This paper examines the official development assistance (ODA) that Japan provides for environmental purposes in the co text of the debate over how transnational norms interact with domestic politics. The paper's central claim is that while Japanese actors moved very quickly in the late 1980s to respond to the emergence of a transnational expectation that rich nations should take some responsibility for improving environmental conditions in poorer countries, Japan's ODA has had much more difficulty incorporating the more specific norms in individual environmental issue areas. The paper shows that while the vagueness of calls for ODA for the environment or "sustainability" allowed many actors in Japan to support environmental ODA in the late 1980s, domestic political structures in Japan have complicated efforts to respond to norms in aid areas like wetlands protection, dam construction, and energy, while also creating a strong focus on environmental technology transfer. Finally, the paper considers the Japanese government's use of ODA as a tool for encouraging friendly voting at the International Whaling Commission, and argues that in this case Japan's ODA has been used quite clearly against transnational environmental norms. The paper thus claims that a proper understanding of the role of transnational norms in Japan's environmental ODA requires disaggregation by issue area and a consideration of the interaction between norms and domestic politics in each case.