Ellis Krauss recently provided a succinct summary of the institutional reasons Japan still deviates from the classic Westminster ideal of strong cabinet leadership, not least the retention of electoral systems that do not rely solely on single-member districts. As if to illustrate those differences, over the last couple of weeks the new Noda Cabinet has introduced a sweeping array of changes to the policy-making system.
Collectively, the changes amount to a massive repudiation of the campaign theme of “unified cabinet leadership” and breaking loose from bureaucratic control that the DPJ under Hatoyama used so effectively to win the 2008 House of Representatives election.
Among the changes:
---Replacement of unified decision-making by the cabinet with an emphasis on party harmony, reliance on bureaucrats, and cooperation with the opposition ---Balance of factions (or at least loose groupings) in cabinet appointments ---Effective revival of the infamous weekly meeting of administrative vice-ministers
(事務次官会議), widely (if not necessarily accurately) seen as the “real” cabinet meeting ---Permission for Cabinet 法制局 officials to appear in the Diet to explain the legal details of various policies ---Abandonment (for now, at least) of efforts to revive the popular proposal to cut the salaries of bureaucrats by 10%, and to institute more radical “civil service reform”
---Revival after a two-year hiatus of the DPJ tax committee, making it once again a powerful competitor to the government tax committee, which is heavily influenced by both MOF and the cabinet ---Directing petitions, private member bills and even deliberation of policy to the Secretary General rather than to the Cabinet ---Above all, revival of “preliminary screening” (事
前審査) of proposed bills and budgetary expenditures by the divisions of the ruling party’s Policy Research Committee. Preliminary screening gives individual MP and interest groups (族議員; iron triangles) greater opportunities to block policies they dislike, even those that might benefit the median voter.
All of this seems like an emphatic return to the old LDP techniques of divided governance, techniques widely thought outmoded by changes in the HoR electoral system. The changes threaten to provide another classic example of Tsebelis’s contention that increasing the number of veto players makes it more difficult to revise policy-and as the most rapidly aging and most heavily indebted country in the OECD, Japan desperately needs some policy changes.
Accompanying these “regressive” changes to the policymaking system is a series of apparent reversions to LDP approaches to policy, including reaching out to Keidanren and the business community after two years of frozen relations under Hatoyama and Kan; a cautious and pro-American stance on foreign policy issues (plus Noda’s repeated claims that wartime leaders the Tokyo war crimes tribunal had designated type-A war criminals legally were not war criminals); and a softening of Kan’s anti-nuclear stance.
The apparent implication: Noda is a sellout, the DPJ is a failure and partisan turnover has done nothing to help Japan address its pressing problems, much less the concerns of the median voter. In fact, things have gotten worse-no prime minister since Koizumi has been able to attract and sustain the public support necessary to push policy change.
Are these criticisms justified? To some extent, they
are: the changes to the policymaking system reflect the reality that political leaders need the support of backbenchers and of top bureaucrats if they are to accomplish anything. Hatoyama and Kan were constantly threatened with mutiny. The need for party unity is an important theme in the recent literature on the US and even the UK. And it’s important to note that PM Koizumi almost never ignored the “事前審査” rule and (rhetoric and occasionally conflicts notwithstanding) routinely relied on elite bureaucrats--and in the end, even his dramatic 2005 HoR electoral victory did not prevent reversal of the postal reform that he had so ardently advocated.
Compromise with opposition is also necessary, especially given Japan’s version of divided government
(捻れ国会)。Recently released statistics show that whereas the share of successful bills by Hatoyama was unusually low, under the more accommodating Kan the number of bills submitted by the cabinet and passed by the Diet was in line with the average of the preceding five years.
Finally, some of the positions staked out by the Hatoyama and Kan cabinets were unpopular or inadequately vetted and presented, such as breaking a settled agreement with the US on bases without first working out an acceptable alternative; calling for phasing out of nuclear power without adequate discussion of its replacements; or pushing tax increases while the economy is still weak and the public is adamantly opposed.
Yet a closer look at these recent developments shows that Noda is not just decentralizing and not simply adopting LDP policy positions. He has repeatedly mooted the idea of either reviving the now-dormant Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) or the National Strategy Office and of using the DPJ-government coordinating group (政府・民主三役会議),
though it is a bit worrisome he does not seem to have settled on one approach. He is trying, though not necessarily successfully, to support the examination of administrative waste, much of it related to Japan’s version of iron triangles, by the “Government Revitalization Unit” ( 刷新会議).
And on policy issues, Noda is still bravely pushing some controversial ideas aimed at addressing longer-term problems. While taking a moderate line on reopening existing nuclear power plants, he has encouraged alternative calculations of the real costs of nuclear power, and has called for increasing participation of “dissident” voices in government decision-making bodies regarding nuclear power. Despite reopening the DPJ tax committee, has still insists that Japan must increase both consumption and income taxes and seeks to gain approval for that approach. This reflects not just the position of the MOF but a consensus painfully worked out over the last five years by policy experts in and around both the LDP and DPJ.
He continues to support DPJ budgetary initiatives to reduce routine expenditures by 10% to make room for increased social security and health spending caused by the aging society, and to allow some growth of priority areas. This continues a trend from particularistic to programmatic goods that began under Koizumi or even Hatoyama and has continued under Koizumi’s three LDP and now three DPJ successors. The cuts in routine expenditures are really beginning to bite, as those of us in Japanese national universities can attest.
So yes, to some extent the initiatives of the Noda cabinet represent a return to the old LDP approach.
Hatoyama was unrealistic and his approach failed. But the reversion is unlikely to go all the way back to the old, pre-Koizumi LDP, not least because electoral and campaign funding reforms still persist, and the prime minister is a more central figure in an age of ubiquitous news media and frequent international meetings. Noda may well fail, but even his successors likely will continue seeking a balanced combination of decentralization and cabinet leadership.