An interesting set of questions.

Last year I went through an exercise with my undergraduates that was revealing. I asked each of them to collect three pieces of news on Japanese politics from the newspaper that discussed an event occurring in the previous month. After some small group discussion, we split the board into domestic and foreign policies, and I went around the room soliciting news stories. We then recorded the issues in the appropriate column.

In the end I think we ended up putting more than 20 issues on the board, with each article invariably mentioning the name of the prime minister or some other senior member of the cabinet or party. The conclusion I quickly reached was how utterly overwhelmed the leadership of the party was. This wasn't something I had thought about before. I am always struck here in DC about the importance people place on the decision of when to kick an issue upstairs for more senior consideration, or keep it at their level. It seems that this process is broken in the DPJ, or perhaps more accurately, they do not have an alternative to the system of substantial delegation to the ministries in place. Senior government figures are paying the price for this failure.

I'd also second Jun's point about media management.
Anecdotally, it seems to me that big decisions are almost never made with a media handler in the room planning how to communicate with the public. In managing the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, for example, there has been no equivalent of the famous photograph of President Obama etal.
watching the special ops against Osama Bin Laden in real-time. This is surely another reason the government has lost control of its message.

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Llewelyn Hughes
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, The Elliott School of International Affairs & Department of Political Science, Monroe 465, George Washington University
2115 G St., NW, Washington, DC 20052

http://home.gwu.edu/~lhughes/Home.html