I am posting the following summary of Mark Ramseyer and Frances Rosenbluth's new
book, The Politics of Oligarchy, in an attempt to stimulate discussion on it and
its topics. To further this attempt, I have striven to make this summary as much
as possible an objective abstract of their argument. If there is some response,
later this week I will post a review essay on the book.

*Placing the Argument in Context*:

The book contends that most scholars have three implicit hypotheses to explain
political control in Imperial Japan: (1) Oligarchs acted largely to promote the
national interest; (2) Japanese bureaucrats and judges acted autonomously; (3)
oligarchs and bureaucrats fostered growth (on this point they say some things
like establishment of property rights and independent central banks did, but
others like model textile factories were flops).

Ramseyer and Rosenbluth find these three hypotheses individually unlikely and
together highly improbable. Instead, they see that: (1) oligarchic behavior can
usefully be understood in terms of cartel theory as oligarchs strove to maximize
individual power constrained by other oligarchs' actions;
(2) imperial bureaucrats answered to, in turn, the oligarchs, the party
politicians, and the military,
as their masters; judges and bureaucrats were agents throughout this period; (3)
case studies of the banking, and even more so, the railroad and textile
industries bear out their point two above that an electoral, not an economic,
logic governed Japanese policy-making.

*The Oligarchic Cartel*:

Central to Ramseyer and Rosenbluth's explanation is their use of cartel theory
to explain the behavior of the oligarchs. Essentially, the oligarchs were unable
to solve a collective action problem. Each oligarch was interested in maximizing
his own power, but these individually rational strategies were
collectively irrational in that they destablized the oligarchs' base of power.
Power in the oligarchs internal struggle often came from a demonstrated ability
to threaten the oligarchs' collective power, but demonstrating this could itself
undermine the power of the oligarchy.

An example should make their argument clear. In 1874, oligarch Itagaki Taisuke,
whom Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo had excluded from power decided to fight
back. He formed the Patriotic Party in January and petitioned the Meiji
government for an elected national assembly. By 1875 his new group, the
Patriotic Society was on its way to becoming a hub for regional clubs of former
samurai across the country, but he dissolved it soon after its founding. The
reason? It had already achieved its real purpose, which was to get Itagaki back
into the government, this time with an elevated status. The argument runs like
this, then: Since he was marginalized in the oligarchs internal division of
power, Itagaki played the people card, and solicited support from the
politically dispossessed. This threat got him back into the government with more
power, and Itagaki's prompt return suggests that this was his real motive. This
had two effects, first Itagaki got more power, and second, it led to the
eventual destabilization of the cartel itself by unleashing popular forces. With
reference to cartel theory, Ramseyer and Rosenbluth explain that asymmetries in
demagogic talent, the ready market for the political product the oligarchs were
selling, and the difficult y in monitoring cheating (leaks to newspapers, etc.)
were all factors in cartel instability.

Of course, some oligarchs lacked charisma and were without effective recourse in
rousing public support. Yamagata Aritomo was just such a charmless oligarch.
Yamagata's strategy was to build a personal support base in the Army, again with
one eye on the oligarchs internal contestation for power. However, while
Yamagata's strategy worked well for him, the personalization of control meant a
lack of institutionalization (which kept the politicians' hands off the
military, though) and, coupled with his lack to designate an heir, had
disastrous consequences.

Writ large, though, it was the oligarchs' inability to cooperate that led to
poor institutional design. Cartel instability explains the devolution of power
to politicians, and the need to identify the most successful (most threatening
to the cartel) entrepreneurs explains the institutional form of the electoral
system (initially, then party competition enters into the explanation for
electoral system change). Crucial ambiguities remained in the Meiji
Constitution, and these ambiguities reflected the oligarchs' failure to settle
their internecine disputes. The emperor was figurehead sovereign, and the
oligarchs' power was institutionalized in the Privy Council, but the Council had
only advisory powers (to prevent any one oligarch from becoming a dictator). As
the oligarchs died off, they created a vacuum under the puppet leader into which
the military stepped. Control of the military was weak because, in their
eagerness to protect themselves from each other and from the rise of political
parties, the oligarchs gave rise to a military more powerful and independent
than they might have wanted.

*Bureaucrats and Judges as Agents*:
_Bureaucrats_: Imperial bureaucrats were agents to oligarchs, party politicians,
and then military, in turn. Although dismissal of bureaucrats was constrained,
selective promotion functioned as the means to control bureaucrats. Pre-war
Japanese elections, especially, placed a premium on bureaucratic loyalty and
control of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Governorships was crucial.
Ramseyer and Rosenbluth examine personnel records from the entire prewar period
for the Ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, and Railroads to see whether career
success correlated with changes in the parties governing the cabinets. They find
that the personnel records disclose a deep and wide-ranging connection between
bureaucratic appointments and cabinet control . Beginning with Kato Takaaki's
Kenseikai cabinet in the mid-1920s, the bureau directors, section chiefs, and
senior police personnel, routinely changed hands when a new party took office.
Politicians manipulated the governorships with special ferocity. They find data
for turnover in the Ministry of Home Affairs to reflect an unambiguously
political pattern, while the Finance Ministry shows less, if still considerable,
influence, and the Ministry of Railroads shows some partisan-motivated turnover.

_Judges_: Neither democratic nor autocratic governments maintained independent
courts in imperial Japan. Judges were somewhat more insulated than bureaucrats,
and political manipulation started somewhat later, but the pattern is still
distinct. Institutional insulation existed in the form of (a) no mandatory
retirement age, so an effective life tenure, (b) a prohibition against
transferring a judge against his will or forcing him to retire, unless,
crucially, to fill a vacancy, (c) the Minister of Justice could order a judge to
retire only if the judge could no longer do his work and the en banc High Court
or Supreme Court approved.

Nevertheless, the oligarchs fired judges by (a) bribing them to retire, (b)
packing the High and Supreme Courts with supporters who agreed to the judge's
dismissal. The politicians were less interested in manipulating judges than
bureaucrats, because the electoral consequences were more remote, but in 1931
the Seiyukai Prime Minister Inukai made massive changes and dominated the judges
and prosecutors outright.

_The Military_: Yamagata was the primary architect of the military's
institutional framework and it gave power to those who (a) retained access to
the Emperor or (b) cultivated particularistic ties of loyalty within the
military. Reference to their cartel theory of the oligarchy explains Yamagata's
motives (above). Yamagata's strategy (a) insulated the Army from the party
politicians and (b) kept the Army personally loyal to himself. Unfortunately,
Yamagata died without an heir.

*Regulatory Consequences*:
_Banking Industry_ : The oligarchs did little more than let entrepreneurs form
banks when they wished and created a few special-purpose banks. In the 1920s,
party politician dominance gave financial policy a distinctively partisan
quality. Financial regulation was more a weapon in the electoral battle for a
legislative majority than a means to achieve any economic supremacy. The
Kenseikai and Minseito favored big banks and international firms, whereas the
Seiyukai cultivated ties to farmers, small firms and small banks, and
domestically oriented manufacturers. This politicization is reflected in two
pieces of evidence (1) the Banking Act of 1927 and (2) the gold standard policy.
The Banking Act of 1927, which the Kenseikai was attracted to because it closed
the small banks which supported the Seiyukai (and sold them at fire-sale prices
to the big bank supporters of the Kenseikai). The Seiyukai risked financial
panic in its response which revolved around the Bank of Taiwan's loans to Suzuki
Shoten (connected to Kenseikai). The gold standard was favored by the Kenseikai
and disliked by the Seiyukai (because of their different supporters' different
interests), and Japan's hopping onto and off of the standard can be explained
largely in terms of which party held power, and not in terms of a bureaucratic
plan to achieve rapid economic development.

_Railroad Industry_: Railroads were not as important to economic development as
scholars claim. The usual spillovers argument is weak because (1) trains faced
close substitutes in coastal shipping, and (2) there were few externalities. The
Japanese government intervened in the railroad industry less to promote national
economic growth, and more in accordance with a political logic. This is shown in
three areas: (a) The Seiyukai, backed by rural interests, favored extending new
track lines. The Kenseikai, backed by urban interests, favored repairing the
heavily used lines in the cities. The parties' alternation in power explains
shifts in spending patterns in these two categories (extension vs. repair). (b)
Procurement: Kenseikai favored Mitsubishi and Seiyukai Mitsui. (c) Private
Railroad Licenses: another policy seesaw as Seiyukai granted licenses generously
and voided them sparingly, while the Kenseikai did the opposite.

_Textile Industry_: (1) The Kenseikai politicians organized the weaving sector
in order to obtain organizations they could use to divide the votes of their
supporters in the MMD-SNTV system. (2) The government gave the spinning firms a
statutory cartel in 1931 to please the military leaders who would soon run the
country. (3) The 1929 ban on night work reflects the 1925 expansion in suffrage,
and it was a political attempt to raise the welfare of current textile workers.