Advice and Consent: The Politics of Consultation in Japan

If the postwar era has witnessed a pluralizing trend in Japan, that is not to say that many diverse, fluctuating groups compete equally in the political marketplace. Instead, small sets of well-organized, narrowly-focused interest groups typically join specific bureaucratic agencies, groups of politicians, and individual experts to dominate policymaking in relatively self-contained issue areas. One useful window on interest-group politics is Japan’s system of consultative councils. More than 200 of these councils, or shingikai, are attached to the ministries. Composed of business people, bureaucrats, scholars, journalists, union members, and others, they deliberate on virtually every aspect of public policy. This book reviews the functions and operations of Japan’s council system, and presents three case studies of specific governmental decisions involving the use of shingikai in the late 1980s.

• The sole, up-to-date, full-length study of Japan’s consultative councils • One of very few studies of contemporary interest-group politics in Japan • One of few recent books on Japan’s political economy to engage a broad range of Western theory

Preface; 1. Interest-group politics in Japan: competing interpretations; 2. The Shingikai system; 3. Shingikai in the spotlight; 4. Amending Japan’s labor constitution: revision of the labor standards act; 5. Regulating the invisible giant: the introduction of financial futures markets; 6. The god that fell: reducing the price of rice; 7. Comparisons and conclusions.

‘… this book is a valuable data resource. Published in 1998, when central government reform was being widely debated, it is also timely and useful in understanding the character of recent Japanese administrative reform. if students read the case studies carefully - especially the passages where Schwartz’s interviewees give blow-by-blow accounts of specific debates - they will surely discover important materials for future studies in this area.’ Social Science Japan Journal