Unexpectedly, summer seems to be a good time for such discussions. I concur with most of what Steve writes, but we should not forget that "the very people with the requisite policy expertise and experience in coordinating the policy process" may have a different agenda than the government. If the DPJ people complain that bureaucrats are preventing change, they may be right. It might be that the DPJ people do not listen to bureaucrats, but it could equally be that the bureaucrats do not want to give useful policy advice.

Almost every official over 35 I've spoken to seems determined to preserve existing policies. We had a recently retired very senior official here earlier in the year who claimed that the handling of the nuclear crisis by the government had been disastrous, but completely denied that the cause of the nuclear crisis might have anything to do with previous policies, or the cozy relationship between regulators and TEPCO. He also complained about the inexperience of the government. Fair enough. The only way to avoid having inexperienced governments is to either never change the governing party or have the country run by unelected officials. Sounds like the good old days to me.

Welfare reforms are even more difficult. The kodomo teate is a policy example that could not be more pathetic. It is a 1:1 copy of the policy in place for decades in the country with the second-lowest birthrate in Europe: Germany. Only that Germany abolished its kodomo teate in 2006 and introduced a parental insurance that pays a substantial sum to cover some of the mother's salary in the first year after giving birth. Even that is a half-baked policy. For an effective policy, look to Sweden, Norway, Finland or in fact Quebec.

Quebec was a natural experiment. The province had the lowest birthrate in the industrialized world, and introduced a parental insurance plan that pays 75% of the mother's (or father's!) salary for up to a year after birth, with an insurable income of up to $60,000. Since the introduction of the policy, the birth rate has been rising every year (well, with a lag of just over 9 months its introduction...), and is approaching replacement rate. QC also subsidizes childcare to bring it down to $7/day, but that policy has been in place for ages, so it can't have been the deciding variable.

When I asked an official in Japan about such policies, the reply was that Japan was merely a few decades ahead of other countries in its dramatic demographic shift, and that the decline in the birth rate was inevitable. The DPJ at least recognizes the problem, which is more than you can say for the LDP and (most) of the bureaucracy. I'm not saying such a policy would work equally well in Japan --- there's still an expectation that mothers do not go back to work, and if you're a haken, your existence will be so precarious that you'll think hard about having a child. But it would certainly help.

Oh, and this may not be very deferential to the towering figures in our field like Gerry Curtis, but the "the DPJ leadership is incompetent" and "Kan has lost touch with reality" account sounds like LDP propaganda to me. Try Abe and Aso for incompetent politicians.

--Mark

Dr Mark S MANGER
Lecturer in International Political Economy International Relations Department London School of Economics m.s.manger@lse.ac.uk
+44 (0) 20 7955 6525