While studies of policy analysis in other countries have assessed their needs and integrated them into training programmes for professional policy analysts, Japanese studies have been very limited. Policy analysis in Japan brings together for the first time a detailed examination of the theory and practice of policy analysis systems in Japan, at different levels. As part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series edited by Iris Geva-May and Michael Howlett, the book provides expert analysis to closely examine to what extent the Japanese government has succeeded in providing key policy actors with evidence-informed policy options, thereby improving the likelihood of better policies being adopted and implemented. The book also assesses Japan’s future policy directions, allowing policy researchers and practitioners to draw a number of lessons from the Japanese experience. The book includes empirical case studies to aid teaching and further research, and will be a valuable resource for students and academics as well as policymakers. Features of the ILPA series include: • a country-specific systematic study of policy analysis systems by government and non-governmental actors • a history of the country’s policy analysis, empirical case studies and a comparative overview of alternative approaches • a key reference collection for research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy studies

Japan's China Policy understands Japan's foreign policy in terms of power - one of the most central concepts of political analysis. It contributes a fresh understanding to the subject by developing relational power as an analytical framework and by applying it to significant issues in Japan's China policy: the negotiations for a bilateral investment protection treaty and the disputed Pinnacle (Senkaku/Diaoyu) Islands. Hagström demonstrates that Japan exerted power over China in such divergent empirical settings for the most part by using civilian instruments positively, defensively and through non-action. Given that Japan's foreign policy is often portrayed rather enigmatically in terms of power, the unique contribution of Japan's China Policy is to demonstrate how to analyze power aspects of Japan's foreign policy in a more coherent fashion. This revealing approach to Japan's foreign policy will be of huge interest to anyone studying Japanese politics, foreign policy or international relations.

Japan has increasingly emphasized democracy assistance since the mid-2000s, such that it now constitutes a major part of Japan’s foreign policy. This approach is an ostensible departure from the country’s traditional foreign policy stance, which tries to avoid bringing values to the forefront of foreign policies. This book intends to answer the questions of why Japan has started emphasizing democracy assistance and why it has relegated itself to a minor role in democracy assistance nevertheless. It argues that Japan’s emphasis on democracy assistance reveals its intention to increase its political influence with regards to China based on democratic values, and its usage of the term "democracy assistance" is a performative speech act to orchestrate a comprehensive approach for international democracy support. Shedding light on the novel aspect of Japanese policy, this book contributes to the understanding of Japanese foreign policy and democracy promotion. Providing the analysis that state’s speech act could cause to create foreign policies that counter what is predicted by structural realism, this analysis makes contributions to neoclassical realism which explains states’ foreign policy choices within the constraints of international structure.

How relevant today is an alliance that was forged between a powerful United States and a weak Japan in the context of a cold war struggle with the Soviet Union? In what ways have the changes in the relative power positions of the two countries and the structural changes in the world economy created new challenges to the U.S.-Japan relationship and how are the two countries responding to those challenges? These are some of the important questions addressed by the eight Japanese and American authors of this volume. Their focus ranges from issues of military relations, trade and financial management, and shifting security perspectives to the roles of the mass media in the bilateral relationship. A truly binational effort, the book brings together the thinking of some of the best-trained younger political scientists to focus on the present and future of one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world.

The industrialisation and modernisation in South Korea that followed the Second World War resulted in rapid progress in economic development, public administration, social service provision and the establishment of modern public policy. Bringing together outstanding researchers, this book is the first to examine the theory and practice of policy analysis in South Korea. The volume explores the historical development of policy analysis, and procedures for decision making at different levels of government. Drawing on case studies, contributors consider the issues and players that affect executive and legislative branch policy analysis, as well as policy design and analysis in the public arena and the shifting role of policy and research institutes, think tanks and post-secondary institutions.

The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

"Democratic leaders around the globe are finding it increasingly difficult to exercise strong leadership and maintain public support. Nowhere has this proven to be as challenging as in Japan, which has seen its prime ministers change more often over the past quarter century than any other major country. Why have they found it so difficult to project strong leadership, or even stay in office? Is this changing? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? In this volume, authors who straddle the scholarly and policymaking worlds explore Japan's quest for leadership and explain what is at stake."--Page 4 of cover.