Abstract
The crucial question of the distribution of power in the Japanese political system has hitherto involved a major scholarly controversy between political scientists who have presented an élitist view of the system and those who have advanced a more pluralist conception of the political process.
This chapter is based on a more extensive paper published as no. 95 in the Pacific Economic Papers series (Canberra: Australia-Japan Research Centre, December 1982).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Those who have argued the pluralist case in more general terms include Robert E. Ward, Japan’s Political System (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967)
and Gerald L. Curtis, ‘Big Business and Political Influence’, in Ezra F. Vogel (ed.), Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-making (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1975).
Aurelia George, The Strategies of Influence: Japan’s Agricultural Cooperatives (Nōkyō) as a Pressure Group, Ph.D. thesis (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980);
Aurelia George, ‘The Japanese Farm Lobby and Agricultural Policy-making’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 54, no. 3 (Autumn 1981); and Michael S. Donnelly, ‘Setting the Price of Rice: A Study in Political Decisionmaking’, in Pempel (ed.), op. cit.
William T. Steslicke, Doctors in Politics: The Political Life of the Japan Medical Association (New York, Washington and London: Praeger, 1973).
Donald Thurston, Teachers and Politics in Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
Margaret A. McKean, ‘Pollution and Policymaking’, in Pempel (ed.), op. cit.; Savitri Vishwanathan, ‘Citizens Movements Against Industrial Pollution: A Case Study of Fuji City, Japan’, Annals of the Institute of Social Science, no. 18 (April 1977);
and Kawanaka Nikō, ‘Chiiki seisaku to chillō gyōsei’ [Regional Policy and Local Administration], in Nihon Seiji Gakkai (ed.), Gendai Nihon no seitō to kanryō: hoshu gōdōigo [Parties and the Bureaucracy in Contemporary Japan: Since the Conservative Merger] (Iwanami Shoten, 1967).
John Creighton Campbell, Contemporary Japanese Budget Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).
Ehud Harari, The Politics of Labor Legislation: National—International Interaction (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973).
George R. Packard, III, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966);
Donald C. Hellmann, Japanese Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: The Peace Agreement with the Soviet Union (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969); and Akio Watanabe, Policy-making Japanese Style: An Appraisal’, Study Group on Japanese Foreign Policy Choices to 1980, 8th Meeting, 16 June 1977, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.
See, for example, T. J. Pempel, ‘The Bureaucratization of Policymaking in Postwar Japan’, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 18 (November 1974);
T. J. Pempel, ‘The Dilemma of Parliamentary Opposition in Japan’, Polity, vol. 8 (Autumn 1975);
T. J. Pempel and Keiichi Tsunekawa, ‘Corporatism without Labor’, in Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds), Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation (London and Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979); and J. A. A. Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy 2nd edn (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson) p. 161.
Nihon Seikei Shinbunsha, Kokkai benran [Diet Handbook], 62nd edn (Nihon Seikei Shinbunsha, 1981) pp. 85–131.
Bradley M. Richardson, ‘Party Loyalties and Party Saliency in Japan’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (May 1975) p. 48.
For an extended discussion of why the party orientation of Japanese voters is weak and individual candidate orientation strong, see Thomas R. Rochon, ‘Electoral Systems and the Basis of the Vote: The Case of Japan’, in John Creighton Campbell (ed.), Parties, Candidates and Voters in Japan: Six Quantitative Studies (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1981) pp. 1–28.
See Scott Flanagan, ‘The Japanese Party System in Transition’, Comparative Politics vol. 3, no. 2 (January 1971) pp. 231–53. Flanagan subsumes the multiplicity of non-party determinants of electoral choice under the heading of ‘connections’, of which organisational connections are some of the most important.
Chalmers A. Johnson, Japan’s Public Policy Companies (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978) p. 49.
See Naoki Kobayashi, ‘The Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Organization Law’, in Hiroshi Itoh (ed.), Japanese Politics: An Inside View (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1973) pp. 49–67.
Takeshi Ishida, ‘The Development of Interest Groups and the Pattern of Political Modernization in Japan’, in Robert E. Ward (ed.), Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 297.
Copyright information
© 1988 J. A. A. Stockwin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
George, A. (1988). Japanese Interest Group Behaviour: An Institutional Approach. In: Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10297-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10297-6_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10299-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10297-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)