Tomohito Shinoda

Koizumi's Top-Down Leadership in the Anti-Terrorism Legislation: The Impact of Political Institutional Changes

Japans response to the September 11 terrorist attack was quick and conducted through top-down leadership by Prime Minister Koizumi. It was seen as a sharp break from Japans pacifism and slow, unclear response patterns of the past. As the lack of leadership became a focal issue for Japanese politics in the 1990s, three major institutional changes were introduced to shape the leadership of future prime ministers: the 1994 electoral system, the Diet and government reform of 1999, and Hashimotos administrative reform efforts, which took place in January 2001. This paper analyzes the impact of these changes on crafting Japans 2001 anti-terrorism legislation.

Japan's Top-Down Policy Process to Dispatch the SDF to Iraq

In July 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi successfully passed the legislation to dispatch ground SDF units to Iraq in the Diet. His top-down policy process was completely different from Japans traditional bottom-up system, which Aurelia George Mulgan calls the ‘Un-Westminster System’ in which the bureaucrats in the ministries play a central role with the LDP being the only political power to negotiate with them. Mulgan also argues that the system has not changed despite recent institutional changes. On the contrary, this paper illustrates how Koizumi and his Cabinet took advantage of the strengthened authority of the Cabinet Secretariat to initiate policies, and successfully pushed the controversial national security legislation through LDP decision-making organs and the Diet by gaining support first from the coalition partners, presenting a new style of Westminster system.

Governing from the Centre: Core Executive Capacity in Britain and Japan

The article contributes to debates about core executive capacity by analyzing the British and Japanese cases. First it examines the historical development, contemporary structures and current operations of the two cases. Then it compares their performance in five key areas: overseeing government policy in the domestic sphere; overseeing government policy in the external sphere; managing executive relations with the legislature; overseeing public finances; and managing public relations. It finds that the performance of the two systems is variable both internally across distinct areas of business and, to a lesser extent, comparatively across similar areas. Overall, however, the British core executive is shown to have considerably greater capacity for coordinating and managing policy flows through the system than the Japanese. Governing from the centre is more feasible in Britain than in Japan.

Ozawa Ichirō as an actor in foreign policy-making

Ozawa Ichirō was probably the most visible Japanese politician in the 1990s. During this period he was not only active on the domestic political scene, but also in the process of Japan’s foreign policy-making. His position towards foreign policy was consistent and he strongly argued and acted for a bigger role for Japan in world politics. This study focuses on Ozawa as an actor in foreign policy-making in the following three case studies: 1) United States (US)-Japan economic issues under the Takeshita administration; 2) the Gulf War under the Kaifu administration; and 3) the Uruguay Round and the US-Japan framework talks under the Hosokawa administration. Although Ozawa was not in an official position with legal authority, he effectively used his informal sources of power to deal with these issues.

DPJ's Political Leadership in Response to the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Prime Minister Naoto Kan took this crisis seriously, and made himself personally involved with damage control, especially during the first week. This study examines the responses to the incident by the prime ministers office. Universal wisdom is that crises are better handled at the level closest to which they occur. Shifting the decision making to the higher authority is needed when a crisis spills over the local boundary or when the local authority fails to deal with the situation. This is called ‘upscaling’. Frustrated by the lack of communication coming from the bureaucracy and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Kan upscaled the decision making and began micromanaging damage control. The upscaling, however, did not contribute to improvement in the accident situation in most cases. Even in one case, it exacerbated it. On the other hand, upscaling made a significant difference when the TEPCO officials considered withdrawing from the accident. By upscaling to the higher authority, Kan stopped their withdrawal. After the establishment of a joint headquarters with TEPCO, the political leaders, instead of upscaling, moved down to a closer level to the accident and successfully coordinated the recovery work.

Searching for a Dream Plan: Two-Level Game Analysis of the Futenma Relocation Issue Under the Hatoyama Cabinet

Employing a two-level game framework, this study examines the decision-making process of the Hatoyama government on the replacement of the US Marine air base in Futenma, Okinawa. Before reaching the final decision to revert to the existing plan of relocating it to Nago City, the cabinet members explored different possible alternatives. Prime Minister Hatoyama simultaneously pursued different international and domestic goals. Misperception and miscommunication between Tokyo and Washington were at play. A two-level game framework provides a clear picture of what Hatoyama tried to pursue and why he failed.

Political Reform in Japan: Leadership Looming Large (review)

Does political leadership matter in Japan? Karel van Wolferen, in his bestselling The Enigma of Japanese Power (Knopf, 1989) provides a negative answer to this question. He describes Japan as a country with an elite system and a submissive middle class. “The System”—elites in the political, bureaucratic, and business worlds—somehow makes decisions as one unit. This system does not have or need political leadership. Even before van Wolferen’s book, the most popular explanation of the Japanese policymaking process was the power elite model. This model characteristically featured three actors: bureaucrats, politicians, and interest groups. Although supporters of this view markedly disagreed on the balance of power among those groups, bureaucrats were often described as pivotal. With a strong bureaucracy, the role of the prime minister was limited. The Japanese prime minister faces strong constraints that come from the decentralized nature of the political system. Two dimensions of friction between the government and the ruling party are issue-specifi c sectionalism that is policy oriented and factionalism that involves intraparty power struggles. My view is that prime ministers have played very important roles in major policy decisions by effectively utilizing their resources—such as connections within their own parties as well as with other parties and the bureaucracy, appointment powers, and media and public support—and that political leadership indeed matters. The prime ministership of Koizumi Jun’ichirō supports this view, and many studies have been published to describe his leadership. Most of those studies stress differences between his leadership and that of his predecessors. I welcome Alisa Gaunder as a new scholar in this school of thought, one who believes that political leadership mattered even before Koizumi. Gaunder presents an interesting and useful framework of analysis to evaluate leadership in political reform since the 1970s. In addition to politi-