Len Schoppa's and John Campbell's discussion on the relative importance of interests and ideas in Japanese politics strikes on a very universal theme. I have been puzzling over how these two aspects fit together for a long time myself. In studying the relation between the developmental local state, elites and environmental protest movements in Oita Prefecture, I tried to look at interests and ideas, not as dichotomous states, but (following Homan's comment that exchange networks are "rich organic mixtures" of sanctions) as potential and varying mixtures of various sanctions, some composed more or exclusively of types of "material" sanctions and of more "ideal" sanctions.

I found, like Schoppa, that in different areas and times of contention or alliances, different mixtures dominated the exchanges and "glued" the actors into action sets. (My first attempt at expressing how to do this may be found in Sociological Forum 4:2 1989). this is a tricky problem because social constructionists and cultural anthropologists will say that all relational sanctions are "interpreted," including material ones, so there is no difference between interests and ideas.

However, I contend that material interests at least in capitalist societies have a certain commonality across capitalist societies while ideas may be more readily and powerfully defined by culturally-specific content (such as say, in prewar times, the action implications of the symbolism of the Emperor/prime minister versus an elected president in comparing politics in Japan and the US).
The specific contribution of cultural symbols to the institutional complex is more variable, aside from whether it is strong and motivating or not (another question).

Jeffrey Broadbent
Dept. of Sociology
University of MN
broad001[atx]maroon.tc.umn.edu