PUBLICATION OF A NEW BOOK ON THE ABE PRIME MINISTERSHIP

You may be interested in a new entitled The Abe Administration and the Rise of the Prime Ministerial Executive just published by Routledge in their Focus series. The blurb reads as follows:

"With the advent of the second Abe administration, the question of ‘who leads’ in Japan has become much easier to answer – the prime minister and his executive office, backed by a substantial policy support apparatus. The rise of the ‘prime ministerial executive’ is one of the most important structural changes in Japan’s political system in the post-war period. This book explains how the prime ministerial executive operates under the Abe administration and how it is contributing to Abe’s unprecedented policymaking power. The book analyses how reform of central government under Prime Ministers Nakasone, Hashimoto and Koizumi produced the necessary institutional innovations to allow the prime minister to assert more authoritative policy leadership, turning Japan’s traditional, decentralised and bottom-up policy process on its head. Comparing the Westminster and presidential models of governance and applying them to Japan’s contemporary politics, the book shows that, whilst elements of both can be found, neither captures the essence of the transformation involved in the rise of the prime ministerial executive. Providing a thorough analysis of power relations in Japanese politics, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Comparative Politics and Asian Studies."

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Aurelia George Mulgan
Professor
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of New South Wales
Canberra
Australia