Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. xiii, 184 pp. (Tables, figures, graphs.) US$120.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5261-1468-6.
Masahiro Mogaki’s book broaches some well-established questions concerning Japanese politics: “Who governs Japan?” and “How is Japan governed?” (161). These have been controversial topics in the study of Japanese politics, as seen by the author’s summary of existing English-language literature on the Japanese state and state transformation (11–12). This is especially true since the appearance of Chalmers Johnson’s developmental state theory in the early 1980s. While the author explores an established topic, his unit of analysis (concept of the core executive instead of a unitary state) and his method (elite interviews) provide fascinating new insights into the characteristics of the transforming Japanese state.
This book consists of three parts. Part 1 introduces existing literature regarding the Japanese state and state transformation, and the concept of the core executive. Borrowing R. A. W. Rhodes’ definition, Mogaki defines the core executive as “all those organizations and procedures which coordinate government policies, and act as final arbiters of conflict between different parts of the government machine” (15) and specifies three major actors in the core executive as Cabinet ministers, party politicians outside the Cabinet, and civil servants (16). In part 2, the author provides case studies of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector and the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), focusing on power relations between actors in the core executive. Although the ICT sector and the JFTC have adopted different paths of institutional growth and regulation mechanisms, the power of the core executive, especially that of party politicians within the Cabinet, became stronger in the 2000s. Overall, we can observe the increasing regulatory power of the regulation organizations as a part of the state and politicization of policy making in regulation. Through an analysis of both cases, Mogaki argues that “the emergence of the regulatory state in Japan corroborates the proposition by revealing the reconstitution of the Japanese state, rather than the hollowed-out state” (137). As a conclusion, in part 3, he outlines the implications of the research and illustrates the unique characteristics of the Japanese regulatory state, which puts emphasis on “accountability compared with those of the UK and New Zealand” (157).
Since economic globalization and neoliberalization challenged the Japanese developmental state in the 1980s, its governments have launched reforms of the economic system and there could be a possible hollowing-out of the state. Some studies argue that there has been a reregulation instead of a deregulation of the state over the years, while others argue that the role of the Japanese state has been weakened with liberalization, as seen in the state’s retreat from industrial policies. This book allows readers to identify the transformation of the Japanese state from the developmental state to the regulatory state. To prove his argument, Mogaki conducted a wide range of interviews with party politicians, civil servants, private company officials, consumer group officials, and professionals. He effectively mobilizes his interview data to tell a very persuasive story. But the interviews data comes with a subjectivity problem as the interviewees have different perceptions of the same issue. For this reason, objective evidence could have been added to supplement the interviews and strengthen the author’s arguments. Another criticism of his actor-centred analysis is the lack of exploration of structuring factors. It would have been better for the author to have emphasized the attempts to reconstruct a governing system initiated by politicians (seiji-shudō) from the 1990s and structural reforms by Prime Minister Koizumi (2001–2006) to understand the fluid power changes within the core executive, while Mogaki only briefly mentions those factors to explain the development of both regulation organizations. In any case, policy-making in the Japanese state became highly politicized in the 2000s, and as Mogaki points out, this is an unusual characteristic of the Japanese regulation system, compared to other regulatory states. The logic behind the politicization of the Japanese policy-making system can possibly be traced to a shared effort by Japanese politicians since the 1990s to strengthen the power and role of politicians, the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister’s Office (Kantei) as well as the prime minister. In this sense, politicization didn’t just happen in the regulatory sector, but in fact affected most policy areas under the central government’s governance.
We can assume that the politicization of the Japanese regulatory state has contributed to intensifing the power of the state over society. But the politicization of regulatory policy also involves accountability in regulatory policy making. If so, one can argue that politicization or an increase in the power of politicians reflects the increasing power of society (vested interests or interest groups) instead of that of the state. In other words, it creates more room for societal actors to influence the state’s policy making, because elected officials have to answer to their constituents. To whom is the Japanese regulatory state accountable would be the next question for this study. Whether politicians should be defined as part of the state or as representatives of society is not a simple question.
Exploring the transformation of the Japanese state since the 1980s, this book contributes to studies of the regulatory state and its governance. Among the many strengths of this book, identifying changes in power relations between multiple actors within the state, and engaging in a wide range of interviews to discover the institutional development of the ICT sector and the JFTC are impressive feats, and noteworthy to anyone who studies public policy, governance theories, and Japan.
Euisuok Han
Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul