Dear SSJ-Forum members:

The discussion of epistemic communities/policy networks sparked by Jonathan Lewis's short piece has been interesting. Campbell's comment about how the traditional "subgovernment" view emphasized interests in comparison to how the newer "policy network" view emphasizes ideas was especially well put.

In my own work (book manuscript on _gaiatsu_, focusing on U.S. attempts to influence Japanese policy under Bush and Clinton administrations), I have been using _both_ concepts, because I found that in different issue areas, the relative importance of interests and ideas varies. In some areas (e.g. the Large Store Law during SII), interests are clearly much more important than ideas.
Policy there has long been dominated by existing stores that received clear and sizable benefits from the established regulatory regime and thus fought to maintain and strengthen it, their supporters within the LDP, and their regulators within MITI. In this classic "subgovernment," ideas about the benefits of free competition, for example, had zero impact on policy. It was all interest, and policy was only changed (somewhat) when U.S. pressure combined with MITI's interest in modernizing the retail distribution system, an increased willingness on the part of an aging mom&pop workforce to accept payoffs for rationalization, and the interest of LDP leaders like Kaifu in appearing to support broader consumer interests over traditional LDP support groups.

In another area targeted by the U.S. during SII, however, ideas were more important, and here I found John Kingdon and John Campbell's work on policy networks much more relevant. In the area of land policy, there were certainly plenty of "interests" at stake, including--in the case of urban farmland owners protected by giant tax loopholes--some very similar to the above case. Given the much greater number of ministries, interest groups, and politicians involved in this area at a time when rapidly rising land prices had generated a feeling of "crisis", however, there was room for ideas to have some impact. A Japanese policy community of land economists, including people like Noguchi Yukio and Hasegawa Tokunosuke, were busy trying to shape popular and elite ideas about the source of the land price "problem" and the appropriate solution, and given the extreme complexity of the issue their attempts (amplified by U.S. pressure which embraced their view) to "socially construct" reality made a difference. Land tax reform, the favored solution of these economists, went much further than anyone expected.

My point is that when thinking about whether to draw on "subgovernment" or "policy network" literature, it is important for us to think about the nature of the issue involved. In some cases (the level of tariffs on a particular product, for example), the costs and benefits of the policy issue are so clear cut that ideas are not going to have any impact. Epistemic communities are not going to have much impact in these cases. But in other case (like the environmental issues which concern Peter Haas) the science is so complex that the way it is presented to elites can make a difference.

Len Schoppa

Len Schoppa ljs2k[atx]virginia.edu
Department of Government & Foreign Affairs 232 Cabell Hall; University of
Virginia; Charlottesville, VA 22901 (804) 924-3211 Fax (804) 924-3359