Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. xiii, 206 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8014-5105-8.
The Japanese model of development in the postwar period, represented as rapid growth with equitable distribution, has been weakened by political and economic challenges since the 1990s, a period during which Japan has confronted protracted economic recession and experienced the end of the one-party-dominated political system. In particular, rising economic inequality (or kakusa) has provoked intense political and social debates in Japan over the past two decades, casting doubt on the egalitarianism of Japanese society. Miura raises the very timely and important question of the establishment and decline of Japan’s postwar social protection system. Welfare through Work is an excellent addition to our understanding of Japan’s postwar social protection system through a lens of labour market reform, which has caused important changes in the welfare-through-work system during the 1990s and 2000s.
In this book, Miura makes several important claims about the politics of Japan’s social protection system. First, she argues that Japan’s social protection system, based on the principle of “welfare through work,” where employment maintenance has functionally replaced income maintenance, allowed Japan to maintain high employment and high equality with a relatively small amount of public spending on social protection, compared with other advanced industrialized countries. Yet she also points out that the stability of Japan’s social protection system was sustained by a “gendered dual system” in the labour market, composed of male regular workers under the privileges of strong employment protection and female non-regular workers with job insecurity and low wages. Second, she claims that the value and role of the ruling party’s ideas shaped Japan’s social protection system in the postwar period. In particular, the three ideological pillars of Japan’s conservatism—statism, productivism, and cooperatism—contributed to the distinct characteristics of Japan’s welfare-through-work system in the 1950s and 1960s, while the replacement of productivism and cooperatism with neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, led to the decline of its social system over the past two decades.
While Welfare through Work sheds light on Japan’s social protection system, this book is less persuasive on several points. First, while Miura elaborates the ways in which the conservative LDP formulated its vision of the social protection system through the linkage of statism, productivism and cooperatism in the 1950s and 1960s, the question of how neoliberalism became the alternative value and vision of the LDP, which replaced productivism and cooperatism in the 1980s and 1990s, is not fully examined. The author points out that party competition is one part of the mechanism of policy changes, leading to the promotion of one vision over another (e.g., neoliberalism), and the rise of neoliberalism during the 1990s is attributed to the collapse of the LDP-dominated party system. The Hashimoto cabinet (1996–1998) and the Koizumi cabinet (2001–2006), both of which advocated neoliberalism, implemented a series of market-oriented reforms, including labour market and social protection reforms. Yet the LDP government following the Koizumi cabinet in the second half of the 2000s chose not to pursue neoliberalism as its primary political vision and value, especially with respect to labour market reforms and the social protection system, without offering a clear alternative to replace it. The author might have clarified the mechanism of competition for different visions and ideas, not only among different parties (based on party competition) but also within the ruling party itself, as the driving force shaping Japan’s social protection system. As Miura suggests, a political party does not converge to a single coherent set of ideas and values, but the ways in which certain political values and ideas dominated others within the ruling party are not clearly addressed. In addition, while Miura defines neoliberalism as welfare retrenchment and the transfer of responsibility for social protection from the state to individuals, neoliberalism as the political vision and value of the ruling party needs to be further clarified in the context of labour market reform and its consequences on changes in the social protection system.
Second, related to the first point, while Miura identifies the political party as the agent of change, it is not clear whether she refers to the ruling party (in particular, the LDP) as a unit of analysis (e.g., organizations) or to the top political leadership, such as the prime minister, as a unit of analysis (e.g., individuals). In some parts of the book, she emphasizes the personal convictions and strategic calculations of political leaders as the key variable in the establishment of and changes in Japan’s social protection system, while at other moments, she indicates the ruling LDP as a unit of analysis.
Lastly, while this book provides an excellent account of the role of ideas in explaining the social protection system, it remains unclear whether this analytical framework is transferrable to other contexts. This book situates Japan’s social protection system in a comparative context, illustrating the characteristics of the welfare-through-work social protection system, but the ways in which the role of ideas shaped the social protection system in other advanced industrialized countries are not fully analyzed.
Mari Miura’s book presents an in-depth and detailed approach to the politics of social protection in times of political and economic challenges. This book turns our attention to controversial but important social and political tasks not only in Japan but also in many advanced industrialized countries, most of which have confronted rising inequality over the past few decades. It will be required reading for years as a valuable addition to the study of Japanese politics, of social protection in advanced industrialized countries, and of the role of ideas in explaining policy changes.
Jiyeoun Song
University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA
pp. 155-157