Unattainable Mission? The Democratic Party of Japan's Unsuccessful Policymaking System Reform

Abstract

In December 2012, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) fell from power after ruling the country for only three years. An important cause of the DPJ government's downfall concerned its failure in policymaking system reform. When it came to power in September 2009, the DPJ vowed to dissolve the policymaking system created under the lengthy dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party. It pledged to practice “Cabinet‐led policymaking” by strengthening the Cabinet's leadership fundamentally. It also promised to curtail bureaucratic power. But in reality, the DPJ's policymaking system reform turned out to be an utter failure. This article points out that there are four major reasons for the DPJ government's failure in policymaking system reform: (i) lack of internal unity, (ii) ineffective top leadership, (iii) institutional depth of bureaucratic power, and (iv) the twisted Diet.

The Presidentialization of Japan's LDP Politics: Analyzing Its Causes, Limits, and Perils

“…There are two reasons for Abe's cooperative strategy toward the bureaucracy. First, he learned from the fiasco of the DPJ government's antibureaucracy experiment (Mishima 2015). The Japanese bureaucracy's strength is deeply embedded within policy‐making institutions and therefore cannot be truncated without the latter's far‐reaching restructuring.…”