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Governance for a New Century

Thomas E. Mann and Sasaki Takeshi, eds.

May 2002

Japan and the United States face many similar challenges of governance. Japan is confronted with a serious crisis of governance with profound implications for its ability to deal with the decade-long economic stagnation and the deteriorating public trust of political processes. Governance for a New Century explores the evolving patterns of governance in the two countries as they grapple with the changes wrought by the forces of globalization, international events, and domestic crises.

Focusing on the volatile period of Japanese politics since the burst of the bubble economy in the 1990s, this volume discusses Japanese public opinion, elections, political finance, party politics, policymaking, institutional reform, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Five Japanese scholars and practitioners write about the efforts under way in Japan to restructure its electoral and governing processes and to cope with its major policy challenges, and five American policy experts respond with insights from American experience. Contributors endorse a positive but measured approach to political reform in Japan, and American experience recounted here offers both encouragement and pointed cautions for Japanese reformers.

Contents

1. Overview
Thomas E. Mann, W. Averrell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies, Brookings Institution
Takeshi Sasaki, President, University of Tokyo

2. Distrust of Politics: Will Voters Transform the Nature of Governance?
Shin’ichi Yoshida, Editor of News Projects and Opinion, Asahi Shimbun; Visiting Professor, University of Tokyo

3. Why Does the Wind Blow? The Economy and the Future of Japanese Political Reform
E.J. Dionne Jr., Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program, Brookings Institution

4. Breaking the State Monopoly on Public Affairs
Hideki Kato, Representative, Japan Initiative; Professor of the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University

5. The Tides of Reform Arrive in Japan
Paul C. Light, Vice President and Director of the Governmental Studies, Brookings Institution

6. Change in the Japanese Policymaking Process
Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Member of the House of Representatives [Liberal Democratic Party]

7. The Promise and Peril of Legislative Reform
James M. Lindsay, Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program, Brookings Institution

8. Money and Politics in Japan
Masaki Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Policy, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, Warsaw University

9. Managing the Problems of Political Finance
Thomas E. Mann

10. The Changing Shape of Party Politics and Governance in Japan
Takeshi Sasaki

11. The Limits of Institutional Reform in Japan
R. Kent Weaver, Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program, Brookings Institution

12. Index

Copyright © 2002 Japan Center for International Exchange. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 4-88907-061-3; 134 pages; paper

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