Yves Tiberghien

Multi-Level Reinforcement: Explaining European Union Leadership in Climate Change Mitigation

The European Union has played a leading role in pushing for the establishment, ratification, and meaningful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although it still has significant efforts to make to achieve its target of an 8 percent cut of greenhouse gas by 20082012 relative to the 1990 level. This article explores the political factors behind continued EU leadership in climate change. It argues that a few individual states (including Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and the UK) played an essential role in establishing the EUs agenda in this domain. However, the decentralized governance structure of the EU has also encouraged a process of mutual reinforcement, whereby individual states, the European Commission, and the European Parliament are competing for leadership.

Competitive Governance and the Quest for Legitimacy in the EU: the Battle over the Regulation of GMOs since the mid‐1990s

Abstract The European Union has emerged as the global precautionary superpower, particularly in the field of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The EU has moved away from the initial World Trade Organization (WTO) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) consensus and shifted toward strict safety assessment and mandatory labelling. In addition, the pathway to this change has been beset with incoherence and a series of crises. What explains this move toward tight regulation despite enduring economic interests to do otherwise? This paper uses the framework of competitive governance to analyse this outcome. The high degree of politicization of the GMO issue has made it a key battleground for competition for leadership, particularly between the Commission and the Council of Ministers. The result has been a protracted battle over agenda setting and issue framing and a cycle of competitive regulatory reinforcement. The Council has used its leverage in comitology to shape the legislative agenda and push the outcome toward its political preferences. The paper unpacks both the steps and incoherence in GMO governance since 1995 and the relationships between key actors involved.

High Noon in Japan: Embedded Symbolism and Post-2001 Kyoto Protocol Politics

In 2001, the Japanese government committed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change against industry pressures and in spite of the US decision to withdraw from the agreement. This commitment was crucial for the survival of the protocol. Japan has subsequently introduced substantialyet, mostly voluntarymeasures. To explain the puzzle of Japans ratification, this article builds upon the agenda-setting literature and advances the concept of embedded symbolism. During the 1990s, political leaders elevated climate change and the Kyoto Protocol to the level of a national symbol. Thus, although in 2001 successful implementation of the Kyoto target looked extremely difficult and industry opposition was strong, the symbolism of Kyoto backed by strong public support tipped the balance in favor of ratification.

Navigating the Path of Least Resistance: Financial Deregulation and the Origins of the Japanese Crisis

This article reexamines the period of the Japanese bubble (1985-1990) and emphasizes ill-supervised and ill-sequenced financial deregulation as a key proximate factor. Given the subsequent costs of this political choice, what explains such a path of domestic financial deregulation without the establish ment of corresponding supervisory institutions? I argue that the suboptimal Japanese outcome represents the equilibrium point for political leaders who had to balance global pressures to deregulate the economy, corporate pressures to liberalize finance, and domestic resistance by an array of politically con nected interest groups. The government chose ill-supervised financial deregu lation as the path of least political resistance and the golden bullet that could both defuse trade tensions with the United States and readjust the Japanese political economy in a harmless way. Instead, as they interacted with other fac tors, the choices made in the early 1980s destabilized the Japanese system and carried the seeds of the ensuing financial crisis.

State Mediation of Global Financial Forces: Different Paths of Structural Reforms in Japan and South Korea 1

This article compares the process of corporate structural reforms in Japan and South Korea in the late 1990s and raises two questions. Why have state-led economies such as Japan and South Korea engaged in politically costly corporate structural reforms in the late 1990s? What explains the variation in the reform process between Japan and South Korea? I argue that the process of structural reforms in state-led economies has been the result of state mediation of global financial forces. The rise of portfolio capital inflows increases the pressure for domestic reforms, a change that is common to Japan and Korea in the late 1990s. However, the actual success of structural reforms depends on the ability of the elite bureaucracy to mediate among between global investors, domestic interest groups and the general public. In contrast to Korea, Japan exhibits a low level of bureaucratic control over the legislative agenda and a situation of tripolar deadlock. The evidence presented here includes quantitative data, government documents, and legislative records as well as information gathered from over 100 interviews with bureaucrats, politicians, business leaders, labor leaders, and other actors in the two countries.

Election Surprise: Abenomics and Central Bank Independence Trump Nationalism and Fukushima

This chapter argues that economic questions remain at the heart of voters’ concerns. Voters clearly cited economic recovery (keiki taisaku) as the top priority they set for the government (Asahi, 17 December; 27 December; Yomiuri, December 23; Nikkei, 28 December 2012). All the polls clearly put economy and employment ahead of political stability or diplomacy. The great disappointment with the failure of the social-democratic experiment launched by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and its later transformation into fiscal consolidation has given Abe a chance to rebrand old-style Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) fiscal policies under the new label of “Abenomics”. Abe’s late campaign focus on the Bank of Japan (BOJ) as a key target gave him unusual traction and allowed him to embody the hope that he could take the economy into a new direction, one that would neither bring the social pain associated with Koizumi structural reforms nor the fiscal consolidation and internal divisions experienced under Noda. The DPJ had a great mandate and a great set of ideas, but was unable to deliver on either economic growth or social progress due to internal instability and lack of governing competence (on the importance of competence, see also Midford in this volume and Reed, Scheiner and Thies 2012). External shocks also weakened its ability to governance.

Introduction: Minervian Actors and the Paradox of Post-1995 Global Institution Building

Since the early 1990s, humanity has faced unprecedented challenges of coordination and governance. In addition to traditional security dilemmas and the increasingly complex management of the global economy, we are challenged by a growing list of pressing global issues that cannot be addressed by market mechanisms alone. These issues include climate change, environmental and biodiversity preservation, global food safety, population health and pandemics, cultural preservation, human rights, and human security. The functional need for cooperation among key states, as well as the rising plethora of non-state actors, may be higher than ever in human history. In a nutshell, humanity is at a crossroads. It enjoys historically high levels of prosperity, peace, and interdependence. Yet, it will be able to preserve these levels only if it is able to provide for indispensable global public goods and minimize pressing global public risks (Attali 2011; Flahault 2011; Malloch-Brown 2011; Ruby 2010).

Successes and Limits of the Minervian Moment

An important transformation took place in international relations between the early-1990s and the mid-2000s. The international community took an important step forward in the creation of global institutions to address public good issues. A series of significant global institutions, international treaties, and international norms were created in the fields of global environment, human security and international law, and cultural diversity.

Roundtable Discussion of Richard J. Samuels's Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan

Abstract Richard Samuelss book Machiavellis Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan raises a number of important issues concerning political leadership and the role individual leaders can play in a nations history. The book won the 2003 Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the 2004 Jervis-Schroeder Prize for the best book in International History and Politics, awarded by the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association. This is a roundtable involving four critical essays and the authors response. Discussion centers on the book, its methods, its broader applicability, and the ways in which it dovetails with other intellectual concerns, particularly as these apply to contemporary East Asia.