T. J. Pempel

Soft Balancing, Hedging, and Institutional Darwinism: The Economic-Security Nexus and East Asian Regionalism

East Asia has increased its formal institutional linkages in both the economic and security arenas. This article addresses three questions concerning this expansion. First, why has the number of institutions increased? Second, why is there so little overlap in the purposes and memberships of these many new bodies? Third, why have most regional institutions achieved such limited policy successes? The article demonstrates that the bulk of the new economic institutions represent collective responses to generalized pressures from globalized finance, whereas the new security bodies deal with regionally endogenous problems of a highly particularistic character. Furthermore, most regional bodies in East Asia still reflect the preeminence of individual state strategies rather than any collective predisposition toward multilateralism per se. East Asian regionalism thus represents a complex “ecosystem” of institutions whose future is likely to see the enhancement of some and the diminution of others through a process referred to here as “institutional Darwinism.”

The Bureaucratization of Policymaking in Postwar Japan

To assess bureaucratic penetration of the policymaking process in postwar Japan, four indicators are examined: the declining role of the Diet as an independent legislative organ; links between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the bureaucracy; the bureaucracys use -of the ordinance power; and the significant control exercised over allegedly independent advisory committees. All show a strong and growing role for the bureaucracy and attest to the institutional bases of bureaucratic power in Japan.

How Bush bungled Asia: militarism, economic indifference and unilateralism have weakened the United States across Asia

Abstract Criticism of the Bush administrations policies in East Asia is hardly common fare. Roseate colors certainly pervade the picture painted by defenders of Bushs policies toward Asia who argue that relations between the US and that region have never been better. This paper shows to the contrary that the Bush administration politicized wide swaths of public policy, including foreign relations, in an effort to create a permanent Republican electoral majority. That effort created a host of failures in Americas Asian relations. The article focuses on three central problems: excessive militarization of American foreign policy; economic mismanagement; and a unilateralism that distanced the US from the rising Asian regionalism. The failures are not irreversible however and a change in administration has the potential to revitalize cross Pacific ties.

Japanese foreign economic policy: the domestic bases for international behavior

By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and the upper levels of the national bureaucracy, coupled with the consistent rule of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, the systematic exclusion of organized labor from formal policy-making channels, and the lack of social overhead spending, has permitted the Japanese state to function as official doorman determining what, and under what conditions, capital, technology, and manufactured products enter and leave Japan. The strengths acquired from such past policies make it likely that the Japanese state will remain capable of dealing with the increasing domestic and international threats to its capacity to make relatively autonomous choices about Japans international economic behavior.

The Japanese Civil Service and Economic Development: Catalysts of Change

This volume analyses the way in which the Japanese civil service has contributed to Japans phenomenally successful economic growth and the lessons that experience may offer for other developing countries. It provides much new information about the structures, functioning, and policymaking activities of the Japanese civil service. In its analysis, emphasises the degree of competitiveness within the Japanese bureaucracy, the extent to which political authority is wielded rather than formal power, and the way in which government policy has encouraged rather that inhibited market forces.

Japanese Democracy and Political Culture: A Comparative Perspective

Japan is an excellent case for the comparative study of the connections between democracy and culture. —It is a country with a well established system of constitutional democracy with roots in the nineteenth century. Politically, the country has been constitutionally and electorally democratic for the entire period since the end of World War II. —Democracy in Japan also has strong social and cultural underpinnings. Despite a hierarchical Confucian tradition, the country is largely egalitarian in its educational, economic, and informational systems. The Japanese citizen enjoys a democratic day-to-day existence. —Because Japans democracy, like that of all countries, is far from perfect, it is a good case study for examining ideal conceptions of democracy in contrast to practical democratic realities.

Structural Gaiatsu International Finance and Political Change in Japan

This article contends that key structural changes in Japans political economy have been the result of Japans new interactions with world capital markets. A once closed system is now substantially more open to currency fluctuations and enhanced capital movements into and out of Japan. These have led to sweeping systemwide alterations in Japans prior system.

Japanese Strategy under Koizumi

Strategic thinking within the Koizumi administration, not surprisingly, reflected far more elements of continuity with past policies than stark adventures into unexplored territory. In particular, Japan continued to base much of its strategic thinking on a “comprehensive” notion of national security—a conceptualization transcending any exclusive focus on overt military security of national borders and domestic security from terrorism. Instead, it has been expansive enough to weave in concerns about economic security, security from illicit migration and drugs, energy and food security, protection from the worst forms of environmental pollution, and the like. This broader orientation can be traced to the early 1980s, and remains largely in place.

The Politics of Enrollment Expansion in Japanese Universities.

There is a significant correlation between the level of industrial development in any country and the percentage of its population attending institutions of higher education. The reasons for this would appear to be obvious: among other things, more people with greater skills are demanded to meet labor needs in a complicated, highly industrialized society than would be necessary in a primarily agricultural society. In addition, as the economic levels of a society increase, both the collective societal resources to support a massive higher educational establishment, and the individual resources to take advantage of such an establishment, increase in tandum. Thus it should be no surprise that all major industrial countries have undergone rather significant increases in higher educational enrollment.

International finance and Asian regionalism

This article examines the linkages between changes in international capital movements and currency values on the one hand and Asian regionalism on the other. It argues that economic ties within Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s can be traced primarily to the increasing values of currencies in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Foreign-direct investments from companies in these countries increased throughout the Asian region. Intra-regional trade grew rapidly as well. Still, by the turn of the century, in contrast to regionalism in Europe, that in Asia remained deeply institutionalized and far less responsive to any central direction from potential leaders such as Japan.