Gregory W. Noble

The Decline of Particularism in Japanese Politics

Particularistic spending has played a storied role in Japanese politics, but during the last decade of LDP rule, expenditures on roads, bridges, agricultural projects, and the like steadily lost ground to more programmatic outlays on social welfare, science and technology, and public order (but not defense or foreign aid). Prime Minister Koizumi played an important role in this shift, but the trends preceded him and continued under his much weaker successors. The end of the Cold War, increasing foreign investment, and the weakness of the domestic economy probably played mostly minor roles in the decline of particularism. The aging of Japanese society, not least in rural areas, created direct pressure for programmatic spending, while partisan upheaval, the growing share of floating voters, and reforms to the electoral and administrative systems created both an incentive and a greater capacity to redirect attention to the concerns of median voters.

Industrial Competitiveness of the Auto Parts Industries in Four Large Asian Countries: The Role of Government Policy in a Challenging International Environment

Rationalization and stabilization following the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s combined with the expansion and liberalization of regional and global trade to create significant parts industries in the Republic of Korea, China, and Indonesia. Conventional policies of stabilization and liberalization, however, cannot fully explain growth patterns. Japan and Korea grew into major players before liberalizing trade and investment, while even after extensive liberalization Indonesia has yet to move from extensive to intensive growth. These anomalies suggest that to explain success in the auto parts industry we need to move beyond liberalization to look at policies and institutions promoting economies of scale, skill formation, quality upgrading, supplier-linkage cooperation, and innovation. In Japan, the regional and global leader, innovative assemblers led industrial development and supported key suppliers, but the government also supported diffusion of quality control techniques and new technology to small and medium enterprises, and encouraged stable employment among core employees. Korea remains weaker on both SME and employment fronts, but government-encouraged consolidation around a small number of business groups, an extended period of protection, and support for export promotion led to economies of scale. Liberalization of foreign investment after the financial crisis helped ameliorate the excessive statism of earlier policies and strengthened the parts industry. In China, liberalization for WTO entry, rapid expansion in demand, and strong support by local governments encouraged a wave of foreign investment in both assembly and parts. In contrast, institutional weaknesses continue to constrain development opportunities in Indonesia.

What Can Taiwan (and the United States) Expect from Japan

In the 1990s and into the new century, increased Japanese sympathy toward Taiwan and antipathy toward mainland China led to a series of moves to improve treatment of Taiwan, including enhanced transportation links, a higher level and frequency of official contacts, posting of a military attache, and expressions of support for Taiwans participation in regional and international organizations. Nevertheless, Japan remains firmly wedded to a One China policy that opposes both the use of force by the mainland and a declaration by Taiwan of independence from China. Japans willingness to cooperate with the United States to defend Taiwan is increasingly in doubt. The sources of Japans supportive but restrained policy include the decline of traditional ties with Taiwan, the increasing size of the mainland market, and above all a perception of security risks that ultimately diverges sharply from that of Taiwan. Serious cooperation in defense and diplomacy requires shared (or complementary) threats, not just shared adversaries.

Abenomics in the 2014 Election: Showing the Money (Supply) and Little Else

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s electoral platform in the December 2014 House of Representatives election cast continuation of “the three arrows of Abenomics” — monetary easing in the form of expanded purchases of bonds and other assets by the Bank of Japan (BOJ), “nimble” fiscal policy, and structural reforms to improve the flexibility and productivity of the economy — as the only way forward for Japan. This claim cleverly highlighted the lack of distinctive and convincing alternatives from the opposition. The opposition parties blamed Abenomics for falling incomes and increasing inequality, but they failed to put forth compelling alternatives. Two minor exceptions involved a symbolic conflict over opposition proposals to cut the number and remuneration of Diet members and bureaucrats, and the LDP’s insistence on prompt restarts of shuttered nuclear generating plants. The 2014 election thus became a performance contest pitting the shaky status of the economy under the LDP-Komeito coalition government against the voters’ complete lack of trust in the competence of the opposition parties. Many voters abstained, but enough showed up at the polls to give the LDP an overwhelming victory.

Too Little, Too Late? Raising the Consumption Tax to Shore Up Japanese Finances

Abstract:After a long struggle, a three-party alliance led by Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko of the Democratic Part of Japan (DPJ) succeeding in passing legislation to double Japan’s consumption tax rate to 10 percent. Though Japan’s huge public debt continues to expand at an alarming pace and the new tax is still only half the level of most European countries, its passage does suggest that the Japanese political system has unexpected capacities to take necessary but unpopular decisions. However, the new legislation bypassed other fiscal reforms that would have angered older Japanese voters, and the tax increase alone will be insufficient to defray the spending pressures exerted by Japan’s aging society. Analysis of Japan’s partisan dynamics and comparisons with the experiences of Australia, the UK, and other OECD countries suggest why the tax hike became possible—and why a more fundamental solution may prove elusive absent the stimulus provided by a financial crisis

Who—If Anyone—Is in Charge? Evolving Discourses of Political Power and Bureaucratic Delegation in Postwar Japanese Policymaking

Gregory W. Noble outlines the debates about political power in postwar Japan, pointing out that they have typically focused on the chain of delegation from voters to politicians to the elite bureaucracy: do elections give voters leverage to shape public policy to reflect their values and interests? During the rapid growth of the 1950s and 1960s, critics charged that a small power elite dominated Japan. By the 1980s, scholars came to affirm the Japanese policymaking system as increasingly democratic, pluralistic, and responsive to the concerns of voters. After the bursting of the economic bubble, however, criticism re-emerged, this time as much from the right as the left, charging that despite structural reforms an excessive number of veto players frustrated political leadership and rendered policymaking resistant to coordination or renovation.

Japan’s Economic Crisis: More Chronic than Acute—So Far

Japan’s crisis of 2011 stunned the world, as a massive earthquake followed by an equally massive tsunami killed more than 20,000 people in the poor northeast region, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and overwhelmed the defenses of many of Japan’s electric power plants, leading to power shortages and a meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The government’s faltering response to the nuclear meltdown further shocked the world. For many, both in Japan and abroad, these multiple crises seemed to symbolize and exacerbate Japan’s longer-term problems, including the decline of rural areas and the incompetence of the political system, which seemed even less capable under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) than it had in the waning years of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regime that had ruled Japan for almost all of the five decades before the DPJ gained control of the cabinet in 2009. Partisan transformation, far from leading to reform and renewal, seemed to have worsened Japan’s many woes, and the crisis in the northeast seemed to provide definitive proof of that failure.