A pox on both their houses?

Writing in the Financial Times, Columbia's Gerald Curtis laments the impotence of politicians from both the LDP and the DPJ in the midst of a historic economic crisis.

The LDP, he writes, is "like the proverbial deer staring into the headlights...paralysed by fear rather than energized by it." But the DPJ is little better, as he argues, "the stark reality is that the party has no clue about what to do either in its first 100 days or thereafter."

There is much truth in what Curtis writes, but I think he takes his criticism of the opposition party too far.

The problem is this line: "The DPJ talks about replacing bureaucrats with politicians in key ministerial positions but says virtually nothing about what policies these newly empowered politicians would implement."

Curtis argues that because the DPJ has no plan for dealing with an economic crisis that may ultimately join the ranks of the most significant economic crises to hit Japan, it is to be condemned for having no ideas. If the DPJ is to be condemned for being dumbstruck by the crisis ravaging the Japanese economy today, it should be condemned alongside not just the LDP, but the entire Japanese establishment, which seems to have little idea of how to respond but with textbook economic stimulus measures. The extent of the crisis is the result of the LDP's postponing the day of reckoning for the export-led model; as Noah Smith has argued at this blog, the costs of the government's failure to transform Japan's economic model so that the "Japanese people...buy more of the stuff, or make less of it" are dire. Having failed to induce the Japanese people to do the former, the whole country is now suffering the consequences of the latter.

There is little the LDP or the DPJ can do to reverse this, aside from easing the pain in the short term, while setting to work on the overdue task of remaking the Japanese economy over the medium and long term. Pump priming at this point is nothing more than a stopgap. Japanese officials need to find a way to replace foreign demand with domestic demand, a change that will not occur overnight.

Which is where administrative reform comes in. Curtis is mistaken to minimize the value of the administrative reform plans developed by the DPJ. As politicians in both parties recognize, administrative reform is an indispensable first step to remaking Japan, because bureaucratic-cabinet rule — as the LDP system of government has been called — has been a major source of paralysis, preventing the government from establishing clear priorities and adjusting policy in response to structural shifts (demographic change, the intensification of the dual economy and the hollowing out of industry, the decay of the countryside, etc.). Without the creation of cabinet rule, the avowed goal of the DPJ's administrative reform plans, the Japanese government will continue to dither in the face of outright collapse regardless of which party is in charge.

The DPJ, in short, aspires to do what Koizumi Junichiro tried and failed to do: centralize both authority and accountability in the prime minister. DPJ reformists have studied the pathologies of LDP rule closely — in particular the failure to subordinate the party to the cabinet and the failure to unify cabinet ministers around the government's agenda — and have devised remedies to ensure that DPJ rule is cabinet rule. These plans are contained in the DPJ's transition plan, which outlines how a DPJ government will proceed in reforming governance during its first 300 days in power.

Of course, having a plan is different from implementing a plan, as plans never survive first contact with the enemy, in this case the bureaucracy. Should Ozawa Ichiro become prime minister, it will take the whole of his political acumen to inspire, bully, or bribe bureaucrats into accepting the DPJ's reform plans, and clearly the party will not get everything on its wishlist. But that doesn't mean that administrative reform shouldn't be a top priority for a DPJ government. In some sense, administrative reform can have a multiplier effect, freeing the government to establish clear priorities — based on its electoral manifesto — and then proceed with other reforms (and be held accountable for failures in meeting their avowed goals).

Returning to the question of how the DPJ would respond to the economic crisis were it to form a government later this year, like Curtis I too have recently talked with a DPJ member with expertise in fiscal and economic policy, having started his career in the ministry of finance. This member, having seen the Obuchi government's attempts to stimulate the faltering Japanese economy in the late 1990s, was skeptical about the Aso government's stimulus measures, but insisted that the response to the crisis must involve thinking about the structure of the Japanese economy and directing funds to support R & D in sunrise industries. This member also looked back at New Labor's 1997 victory and stressed that the DPJ, like Tony Blair, must stress "education, education, education." (Ikeda Nobuo, the neo-liberal economist, argues that the government is incapable of identifying and supporting growth industries in the manner suggested by this DPJ member, and that the key to promoting growth industries is opening Japan's economy to the world.)

In short, Curtis is wrong to chide the DPJ for not having the answer to the economy's falling off a cliff, with, as suggested by Edward Hugh, the worst still to come. Hugh, like Noah Smith, sees that the answer is not in short-term stimulus but in long-term reform of what he calls the "national mindset," with Japan's fixing its fertility problem and becoming more welcoming of immigrants. Similarly, Smith concludes, "After this crash — the recession Japan should have had in the 90s — Japan will have nowhere to go but up. Leaner, more profit-driven companies will start looking for hires — hopefully something between the full-time and part-time positions of today. Women will find themselves on a more level playing field. There will be room for new industries, new entrepreneurs who are not the first sons of old entrepreneurs."

They key going forward, therefore, is not having the perfect stimulus plan, because, as Yosano Kaoru argued, Japan will not escape the global recession alone. The key is for the government to be ready when the economy begins to recovery, ready with a refurbished social safety net that encourages more risk-taking by Japanese, a reformed education system that prepares Japanese citizens for life in a new economy, higher levels of immigration, and work-life reforms that enable Japanese women to balance having a career and having a family and thus enabling more women to contribute to the economy for longer periods of time. None of these changes will be realized without transforming how Japan is governed.

If the DPJ can make some progress in creating a new relationship between cabinet and bureaucracy while restarting Japan down the road to structural reform (although perhaps not structural reform of the Koizumian kind), it will have gone a long way towards making a brigther future for Japan.

Curtis may be right that there is "no optimistic short-term scenario for Japan," but the likely change from LDP to DPJ should not be viewed as pessimistically as Curtis sees it. Should the DPJ win, it will have a mandate to govern and it will be in control of both houses (although its control of the upper house will be contingent on partners). The party would of course be occupied initially with simply easing the pain of economic adjustment, but it will also be in a position to begin the hard work of administrative reform, for which it already has plans in hand.

The emerging contours of post-7/29 politics

I am back from the lunchtime session with Professor Curtis, who gave a thorough and pessimistic account of the era in Japanese politics coming into being.

I do not think it inappropriate to speak of a new era in Japanese politics; Professor Curtis is certainly convinced that Sunday's catastrophic electoral defeat for the LDP marks the beginning of a new period of policy stasis, political gridlock, and perhaps the catalyst for the final destruction of the LDP. Indeed, the one bright spot in his remarks was the idea that this election was a victory for Japanese democracy — a notion I discussed here — since the voters punished the government for its inattentiveness to their concerns.

I will not even try to provide a full summary of his talk, which contained enough nuggets of wisdom to fill a long article or two, and anyway, you will be finding bits and pieces of his talk in foreign press coverage of the election over the next several days. I will, however, give you his main points. First, this election, rather than signifying an embrace of the DPJ, represents a vote of no-confidence in Prime Minister Abe, with voters saying no to his leadership, his policy priorities, and to his predecessor's economic reforms (at least in the countryside). Accordingly, Professor Curtis insists that Abe should resign on account of the failures being a product of his insecurities, his ideological obsessions, and his reliance on yes-men, and yet he won't: "He does not get it. He does not know why the voters rejected him." (In that sense, Abe is just like his grandfather, who just couldn't understand why the people were demonstrating against him and his treaty. As Abe wrote in his book — mentioned in this post — "I asked my grandfather, 'What's ampo?' I dimly remember that thereupon he answered, 'The Mutual Security Treaty [ampo] is a treaty so that Japan will receive protection from America. Why everyone is opposed to it, I don't understand.'")

Professor Curtis sees no good scenario resulting from the election, and he does not envision an early departure for Mr. Abe, who will try to use the cabinet reshuffle to signal a "new start" for his government. (Indications suggest that the reshuffle will not come until early September, after Mr. Abe's tour of Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.) He will hold power in large part because opposition within the LDP is scattered and cowardly, an unfortunate consequence of the Koizumi era, which resulted in the emasculation and marginalization of faction heads and actors who might moderate the Kantei. At present, Abe's opponents, including the "New YKK" of Kato Koichi, Yamasaki Taku, and Koga Makoto, as well as former Finance Minister Tanigaki are unable to agree on a successor — aside from preferring anybody but Aso — and are thus unwilling to take steps to oppose formally and publicly Abe's remaining in power. This despite the widespread recognition, according to a senior LDP politician with whom Professor Curtis spoke about the election, that the LDP is like the Titanic except the passengers know it is going to sink — and they are powerless to stop it.

An intriguing question raised by Professor Curtis is whether Komeito, seeing its candidates lose unexpectedly and still caught uncomfortably between its principles and the pull of power, will use this defeat as an opportunity to back out of the coalition, or whether it too will go down with the ship. For the moment, it looks like Komeito won't be going anywhere.

And the DPJ? Professor Curtis praised Ozawa for his brilliant electoral strategy of swooping in to rural areas alienated by the Koizumi reforms, but cautioned that Ozawa has a "fifteen-year-history of upsetting expectations that he will do good things for Japan," and that his overweening pride and inability to cooperate with those who disagree with him undermine any party with which he is affiliated. He nixed the idea of any DPJ members leaving for the LDP, given the extent of the LDP's loss, but he was skeptical of the idea that the DPJ is ready to assume the reins of power and suggested that the best thing for the DPJ might be Abe's holding on to power for longer, giving them time to consolidate and build on their gains, and draft a coherent agenda — this of course runs contrary to DPJ's now publicly stated objective of using its Upper House position to force an early general election.

So at this point anything is possible. An LDP crackup, a new partisan realignment, a moderate coup within the LDP that unseats Mr. Abe and tries to draw the DPJ's conservatives to the LDP, Mr. Abe's cabinet somehow lasting until September 2009, an early election called by Mr. Abe to try to profit from DPJ obstructionism: any one of these scenarios is possible, which in the meantime will mean that the policy making process grinds to a halt.

Elections as beauty contests

With two weeks left in the "non-campaign" season, before candidates officially file, which marks the official campaign season during which candidates can actually ask for votes, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a passage from Gerald Curtis's Election Campaigning Japanese Style. For those not familiar with the book, in 1966-1967 Curtis lived and worked under Sato Bunsei, an LDP candidate in Oita Prefecture's second district (back in the days of multi-member medium-sized electoral districts). With the date of the dissolution of the Diet and the subsequent election unknown, Curtis noted Sato's efforts to build a support base in the rural parts of the district, raise money to sustain political activities, and fight to muscle into the Diet in the face of competition from two senior LDP Diet members in the district.

Not being in a rural district, I cannot speak to changes in rural campaign methods, but I can attest to relative continuity in urban campaigning, in part due to the ongoing constraints imposed by Japan's public election law. While campaigning in other democracies has been transformed by new media, legal restrictions in Japan have limited the impact of television, the internet, and even radio on campaign strategy. And so this passage caught my eye:

The prohibition of pre-election campaigning, restrictions on the distribution of written materials and on the use of the mass media, and other seemingly minor things such as the prohibition of the use of convertibles or other open cars work their greatest hardship against the new and unknown candidate. The incumbent, who receives constant publicity in his constituency through his activities in the Diet, has all to gain by maintaining a law that effectively prevents new candidates from gaining public exposure. It is for this reason that efforts to substantially revise the Election Law have been doomed. Once a man becomes a member of the Diet he has all to gain by maintaining and extending the restrictions on campaign practices.

The Law has another important and deplorable effect. It makes the general voter a mere observer of the campaign. By effectively preventing popular participation in campaigns it inhibits if not actually works counter to the political socialization of the electorate that should be a major function of election campaigns. The Election Law's ideal campaign is much like a beauty contest. When the official begins the contestants, supposedly having had no pre-contest opportunity influencing the judges, walk out on the stage and go through a rigorously supervised series of performances that gives each an exactly equal opportunity to demonstrate his attributes to the judges. They then all leave the stage for the judges to make their decision. The voters are in the position of passive judges. They can read posters and listen to speeches but can take almost no direct part in the contest. Not only does this make an election campaign unbearably dull for the average voter. It makes a fundamental function of systems of representative government frightening to the politically concerned electorate because of the fear that efforts in support of a candidate may result in a violation of the Election Law.

In the time since Curtis wrote this, Japan has become the world's number two economy, inspiring fear in the US, and seen its bubble burst, the LDP briefly driven from power, the economy dip into crisis in the late 1990s, and the Koizumi revolution come and go — and still the restrictions on campaigning exist. Whatever tinkering with the details of the law, the pattern of Japanese campaigning remains largely unchanged, critically undermining the role elections ought to play in relations between government and governed.

Gauging Japan's normalization

Two articles provide a solid, realistic look at the process of Japan's normalizing its security policy and possibly reducing its dependence on the alliance with the US in its grand strategy.

The first, by David Pilling in the FT, provides a belated report on Prime Minister Abe's speech to graduates of the National Defense Academy. (I just watched the speech via podcast on the train coming home from Yurakucho; very nearly put me to sleep, especially since Abe was reading his address from a sheet of paper.)

Pilling looks at Japan's evolving defense priorities in the face of an uncertain regional environment, and, despite a headline that contradicts the body of the article, provides more nuanced analysis than most discussion of contemporary Japanese security policy in international media sources. Citing comments by Temple University Japan's Robert Dujarric, Pilling notes the difficulties in expanding its defense budget beyond the customary one-percent of GDP ceiling, including public opinion, the fears of Japan's neighbors -- and large projects, namely missile defense and funds going to the realignment of the US presence in Japan, that limit the Japanese government's flexibility in defense spending. While Japan's Gaullist-nationalists may want greater independence in Japan's foreign policy, without a major shift in budgetary priorities -- preceded by the "normalization" of Japanese economic conditions -- Japan is dependent on the US for its security for the indefinite future.

The second article of note is a short interview with Columbia's Gerald Curtis in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, which focuses on the comfort women issue but also briefly mentions the limits of Japan's normalization. Said Curtis:

It’s hard to find Japanese who can explain what Japan is thinking in a way that foreigners can understand. It’s very different when you interact with Chinese elites. They’re very articulate. They have a global vision. They have a worldview. They know what they think and they tell you. But the Japanese cultural tradition is quite different, so you have to be able to read between the lines. You have to be able to hear it in the Japanese language, and there aren’t very many people who can do that. So they’re not very good at articulating their views, and that leads to all kinds of guesswork about what they’re up to. The fact is, even with all the changes going on, and this right-wing leadership in power now, the Japanese defense budget is not increasing. They’re reaching out for a bigger role abroad, but in a pretty tentative and limited manner. They’ll probably continue to muddle through—take some tough positions like they have on the abductee issue with North Korea—but the idea that they’re on the march to become a great military power with power projection capabilities and challenge the Chinese and so on? I don’t buy it.

Read the whole thing.