Previewing the DPJ election

I was on CNBC Asia again today to preview the Kan-Ozawa showdown.


In case you're wondering why I've been silent during this campaign, the reason is simple. The DPJ scheduled its election the same week as my doctoral exams (how rude! - ed.) and so I have not been able to follow this electoral campaign to anywhere near the degree I would have liked. Apparently appearing on TV to talk about Japanese politics is how I unwind after a day spent writing.

Ozawa's last stand?

"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." — Enoch Powell

Returning to his familiar role as Ozawa Ichirō's trusty factotum, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio announced Thursday that he will be supporting Ozawa in a bid to unseat Prime Minister Kan Naoto in next month's DPJ party leadership election. Ozawa himself has yet to make an official announcement, but much like when Hatoyama was DPJ secretary-general under Ozawa, Ozawa conveyed his intentions to Hatoyama, and Hatoyama revealed them to the public. Naturally Hatoyama's backing Ozawa after earlier indicating his support for Kan is an insult to the prime minister.

I have held off from commenting on the possibility of an Ozawa run at the party leadership and premiership because the idea struck me as patently absurd (for reasons that Michael Cucek captured well here and here).

And yet here we are, with Ozawa on the brink of entering the ring once more. I suppose on the plus side, at least he's competing for a public post, one that would force Ozawa to assume public responsibility instead of hiding out of sight.

There is no shortage of speculation about Ozawa's motives for running, having to do with his tenuous legal position, his desire to reinsert himself into the policymaking process by running, losing, and then bargaining for an important post, or his genuine desire to, in Hatoyama's words, "to risk his life on behalf of the country." I have long since given up trying to read Ozawa's mind and am willing to believe that any, or all, or none of these reasons is the real reason for Ozawa's decision.

Whatever his reasoning, the consequences could be dramatic. The best-case scenario would be that Ozawa is simply unable to muster enough support and goes down to an embarrassing defeat that is a prelude to his departure from politics. It is unclear just how much support from the party's parliamentary caucus Ozawa can count on — for my part, I have always thought that the media has exaggerated the extent to which Ozawa can rely on an "army" of young MPs indebted to him for his assistance. Even more unknowable is the extent of Ozawa's support among the party's rank-and-file members, who will also be voting in the party election. Given the near-universal public disapproval (including DPJ supporters) of Ozawa, it is worth asking whether there are still enough pockets of support for the former party leader to make his candidacy viable.

And if he were, somehow, to defeat Kan and take the premiership? Many seem to think that Ozawa's becoming DPJ leader would be the catalyst for the long-awaited political realignment (although Your Party's Watanabe Yoshimi insists that the DPJ will break regardless of what Ozawa does). It is easy enough to see how Ozawa could trigger the realignment. Remember the "purge" of Ozawa loyalists that marked the transition from Hatoyama to Kan? Presumably the "magistrates" who opposed Ozawa and have occupied important positions under Kan would have little to look forward to under Ozawa, and would have two options outside of the cabinet: build anti-mainstream "factions" within the DPJ to challenge Ozawa, thereby completing the LDP-ization of the DPJ, or leave the party altogether to join with Watanabe or form yet another new political party. 

The reality is that while at another point in his career Ozawa might have been able to deliver a miracle, untwisting the Diet by encouraging members of other parties to defect or hammering out a new governing coalition, there is good reason to believe that Ozawa is out of miracles. As Kan has found as he has tried to coax the opposition parties to cooperate, with the DPJ reeling the opposition parties have the upper hand. The DPJ will pay a steeper price than the opposition parties for inaction, particularly as the economy worsens. Add Ozawa's unpopularity and his notoriety as a living symbol of the bad, old politics and the opposition's advantage grows. And if a Prime Minister Ozawa were the head of a nominally united but fractured DPJ his bargaining power would be undermined even further. Whoever wins the party election will still face a miserable political situation. Having Ozawa as prime minister would only make the DPJ's situation even more difficult.

It is ultimately for that reason that I suspect that Ozawa will provide another demonstration of Enoch Powell's maxim, adding a final defeat to a lengthy political career that has seen its share of defeats along with extraordinary victories, arguably none more extraordinary the DPJ's victory a year ago next Monday. Ozawa simply does not have a compelling case for why he should take charge of the government at this juncture — and I think that the party's voters know it.

Is Ozawa back?

If there is one lesson that this upper house campaign has taught us, it is a lesson that we all should have already learned: there is no stopping Ozawa Ichirō. Despite what looked like a marvelous coup by Hatoyama Yukio in getting Ozawa to step down as DPJ secretary-general, Ozawa has been a public critic of the Kan government throughout the campaign.

However, is Ozawa's criticism of the government — he's been particularly harsh about the Kan government's comments about raising the consumption tax to 10%, which he argues with plenty of justification that the government has made life more difficult for DPJ candidates — the prelude to Ozawa's being a thorn in Kan's side after the election (as Yuka Hayashi suggests in this post at the Wall Street Journal's Japan Realtime)?

It is tempting to see Ozawa's remarks as the beginning of an Ozawa-led anti-mainstream within the DPJ that will force the Kan government to make further concessions to party backbenchers when it comes to policymaking, particular if the DPJ falls short of a majority on Sunday.

Working in Kan's favor, however, is that he has government and party leadership united behind him. United in their opposition to Ozawa's influence, Kan's leadership team already looks more effective than the Hatoyama-Ozawa team, missteps regarding the consumption tax notwithstanding. More importantly, Kan has already made concessions to the party's backbenchers, giving them a vehicle for having their voices heard by the cabinet. Ozawa's concerns about the government's abandoning last year's manifesto would carry more weight if the Kan government had not already begun working on a mechanism for incorporating the concerns of backbenchers into government decision making. Furthermore, there are few signs that Ozawa is any less unpopular now than he was before resigning as secretary-general — or that MPs are keen on preserving every piece of the 2009 manifesto. While there are still concerns that Ozawa stands at the head of a proto-faction that could number more than 100 members, I wonder how many members Ozawa can actually count on to back him. How many backbenchers would be willing to buck the new party regime to stand with Ozawa? It is worth noting that few senior party members have echoed Ozawa's critique of the Kan government.

That's not to say that party members are happy with how the government has handled the consumption tax issue over the past month. The understandable desire to give the voters a chance to render judgment on the Kan government's new approach to the consumption tax likely forced the government to roll out the proposal before properly vetting it with party members, which in turn led the government to back away from its initial position, ironically damaging the position of the government and the DPJ even further.

But backbencher dissatisfaction does not automatically translate into support for Ozawa. Far from signaling the beginning of an Ozawa-led anti-mainstream, Ozawa's behavior during the campaign could signal a new role for Ozawa as an internal critic, concerned less with vying for control of the party than with keeping the party on what he sees as the right path. It seems to me that the Kan government could live with Ozawa's moving into this role.

Regime change?

It seems that in addition to Hatoyama's resigning from the premiership, Ozawa Ichirō will resign as secretary-general of the DPJ.

If Ozawa does resign — together with his lieutenants in various leadership positions within the DPJ with him — and actually manages to retire from politics and not try to run the party from the shadows, the twin resignations of Hatoyama and Ozawa may actually provide the DPJ with an opportunity to reclaim the hope that accompanied the party's victory last year.

That Hatoyama and Ozawa were at the head of the new regime when the DPJ took power was a bit strange. Of course they were among the party's most senior and experienced politicians. There really was no alternative, and no other candidate — aside from Okada — was capable of challenging last year's passing of the torch from Ozawa and Hatoyama (thanks to Maehara Seiji's disastrous tenure as party leader). But these two hereditary politicians whose careers began in the LDP wound up at the head of a parliamentary majority composed largely of newcomers to politics, very few of whom had relatives in politics. The DPJ's promise was less in its policy program, aside from its institutional reforms, than in the new blood it injected into the Japanese political system. But between their corruption scandals and the fact that no one could tell just what Ozawa's role was in policymaking, the DPJ diarchy managed to squander its new majority.

More than Hatoyama's, Ozawa's departure provides the DPJ with a chance to reclaim some of the energy. It will enable a party leadership to abandon Ozawa's courtship of fading interest groups and focus once again on speaking to floating voters. Inevitably the next secretary-general will not overshadow the prime minister, meaning that the secretary-general might actually help the prime minister sell his policies to the public while corralling the party's backbenchers.

At the same time, however, the new secretary-general will not inspire the same fear in the party's backbenchers. The result could be more give and take between the leadership and the rank-and-file — or it could be complete chaos.

Ultimately it will depend on the prime minister, whether Kan, Okada, or someone else entirely. With decisive leadership at the top the policymaking system the DPJ tried to put in place when it took power might work better than it did under Hatoyama.

Ozawa will stay home

On a visit to Tokyo in February, Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met with embattled DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro and extended an invitation to visit Washington. Ozawa said he would visit on the condition that he be able to meet with President Barack Obama. At the time I suggested that since Ozawa's visit could undermine the Hatoyama government's tortuous process of reviewing the 2006 agreement on the realignment of US Forces in Japan, he should keep his Washington meetings as perfunctory as possible — and also wrote that "perhaps it would be better off if an Ozawa visit to Washington fell through."

The visit has in fact fallen through: on Wednesday it became clear that Ozawa would not be going to Washington during the Golden Week holidays and will instead be going sometime after this summer's Upper House election. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, a number of DPJ officials suggested that by going to Washington Ozawa would raise the specter of "dual diplomacy." Asahi similarly suggested that the trip has been postponed so as to not cast a shadow over the Hatoyama government's ongoing effort to find a solution to the Futenma problem.

While some will fret that Ozawa's not going to Washington after having taken such a high-visibility trip to Beijing last year sends a signal that the DPJ is more interested in good relations with China than with the US, it would be a mistake to interpret the decision to postpone in this light. If anything, it should suggest that perhaps too much value was attributed to Ozawa's trip to China in the first place.

I remain convinced that it is an unqualified good that Ozawa will not be in a position to intervene in diplomacy over Futenma at a critical moment for the Hatoyama government. Any expectation in Washington that Ozawa holds the key to solving the impasse over Futenma rests on a distorted impression of Ozawa's power within the DPJ-led government, an especially distorted impression now that the one thing the public is largely in agreement on is the desirability of Ozawa's being removed as secretary-general and that Ozawa has been forced to tolerate criticism from DPJ members. Indeed, reminiscent of the idea in American politics that power in a presidential administration depends on physical proximity to the Oval Office, Asahi suggests that a "new troika" may be forming, composed of Hatoyama, Finance Minister Kan Naoto, and reform czar Sengoku Yoshito, as the latter two now have offices in the Prime Minister's residence.

The solution to the Futenma dispute will ultimately depend on the prime minister and his cabinet, which is why Watanabe Kozo, a senior DPJ legislator, suggested that Hatoyama would have to step down in the event that he fails to resolve the dispute by the end of May. The real risks of Ozawa's further complicating the process is not worth the trivial symbolic benefits that would come from Ozawa's trip.

Building a Westminster system

"Nowadays the members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet members (and a few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-disciplined 'yes' men," lamented Max Weber in "Politics as a Vocation."

"With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to take care of one's correspondence on his desk, thus indicating that one was active in the weal of the country. Such gestures are not demanded in England; the member of Parliament must only vote, not commit party treason. He must appear when the whips call him, and do what the cabinet or the leader of the opposition orders."

Essential to the Westminster system — parliamentary cabinet government — is an apparatus linking the cabinet to the ruling party that ensures the cabinet has the votes to smooth the passage of its legislation through the parliament, hence the link between the emergence of cabinet government and the growth of strong, top-down parties in Britain. Even in Britain, this system is not foolproof, as "backbench rebellions" have not been uncommon.

I call attention to this feature of the Westminster system because, of course, the DPJ is keen on growing a similar system on Japanese soil. And few DPJ members are as adamant about reforming how the cabinet and ruling party operate as Ozawa Ichiro, the DPJ's secretary general. Six months into DPJ rule, however, some DPJ members are pushing back against the new system being put into place by Ozawa, having little interest in being "well-disciplined 'yes' men."

The latest example is the party's dismissal of Ubukata Yukio as one of the DPJ's deputy secretaries general after criticizing the party executive for its centralization program and its stifling of debate within the party. As Michael Cucek observes, having been removed from office, Ubukata is going all-out in his campaign against the "Westminsterization" of the DPJ.

Ubukata's insurgency is connected to the push to revive the party's policymaking apparatus, which closed shop when the Hatoyama government took power last September. Ubukata is one of nearly fifty members of a study group that has formed to advocate for a new policymaking body. The intent, it seems, is to create a forum for receiving briefings from the government on current legislation and brainstorm new policies. Coupled with restrictions on the access of backbenchers to bureaucrats, a new policy outfit could be a useful safety valve for the government without unduly undermining the cabinet's ability to formulate policy.

But even with a new policy council within the DPJ, the problems associated with the transition to a Westminster system remain. In truth, Hatoyama, Ozawa, and the other senior leaders of the DPJ face a challenge similar to that faced by William Gladstone and other British politicians who built the Westminster system in the first place. 

During the first half of the nineteenth century, patronage was rampant, as parliamentarians distributed jobs and favors with little regard for party leaders and the cabinet. The result was ineffective government, which, Gladstone and other reformers insisted, was increasingly unsuited the problems facing Britain. Bernard Silberman describes Gladstone in terms that would not be inappropriate for describing Ozawa: "Gladstone was in many respects an étatist who viewed Parliament, but especially the Cabinet, as the necessary source of legislation which would enhance utilitarian and commonsensical economic and social development." According to Silberman, the solution was building a rational, centralized civil service, with admittance based on merit rather than political connections. "Deprived of patronage," he writes, "parliamentary parties were now forced to turn to constructing party organization in order to finally subjugate the backbencher to party discipline."

The DPJ-led government is trying to perform a similar feat, transform the civil service by breaking its ties with the ruling party, and by doing so, centralize the cabinet and ruling party leadership's control of policy (and pork-barrel spending). From the perspective of a backbencher, it is not an especially favorable arrangement. Little wonder that many DPJ members — particularly more senior backbenchers accustomed to the permissiveness of LDP rule — are chafing against the new system. Controlling backbenchers is hard enough in Britain, with its well-established institutions; controlling backbenchers as those very mechanisms are put into place is considerably more difficult.

To a certain extent, the problem is Ozawa. While Ozawa is probably the most enthusiastic advocate of a Westminster system in the DPJ, he may also be the least well suited DPJ member when it comes to inducing backbenchers to accept their fetters. Intimidating first-term Diet members is one thing. Bullying more senior Diet members, including at least one with ministerial experience (Tanaka Makiko), is quite another. Being an effective whip — which Ozawa effectively is — takes more than bullying, especially in the case of more senior members, presumably those most prone to rebellion. It also requires persuasion and timely dispensation of favors and perks. It takes, in other words, subtlety and guile, traits which do not seem to be among Ozawa's strong suits. (For more on the role played by whips and other actors in the Westminster system, I cannot recommend Donald Searing's Westminster's World strongly enough.)

At same time, however, the problem is also structural. After decades of permissive LDP rule, Westminster-style control does look "dictatorial," in the words used by LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and others to describe the DPJ under Ozawa. (In which case might we describe LDP rule during the glory days of the 1955 system as "anarchic?) I wonder whether the problem is that actors in the Japanese political system — including voters and the media — are simply not able to wrap their heads around the new system being introduced by the DPJ leadership. Not being clear on the goal of a Westminster system — more effective executive power — the system just looks like heavy-handed suppression of speech, not helped by Ozawa's being the one doing the suppressing. Indeed, to a certain extent the DPJ faces a dilemma. In order for Westminster-style politics to take hold among both backbenchers and the public, it needs to deliver policy results. But to deliver results, among other things the party needs to be able to control its members.

Naturally introducing a Westminster system means trading the LDP system's representativeness for the Westminster model's executive effectiveness. There is no perfect system. But the outcome of the current dispute — which may widen to include cabinet ministers — could determine whether the "statists" like Ozawa are able to succeed in building a more top-down policymaking structure or whether they are forced to make concessions to backbenchers that preserve an important role for them in policymaking and the management of party affairs.

There is a point here about institution building. It is not enough for leaders to draft new institutions on paper and then put them into motion. To be durable, institutions require broader legitimacy. To date, the DPJ's leaders have been mostly concerned about putting new institutions into place. The backbencher insurgency suggests, however, that it may be time to focus on cementing the legitimacy of new institutions.

A terrible idea from DPJ backbenchers, quickly nixed

On Wednesday Ubukata Yukio, the deputy secretary-general, Tanaka Makiko, Koizumi Junichiro's controversial foreign minister who joined the DPJ last year, and other DPJ Diet members proposed to Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro that the party establish a new policy research arm to replace the policy research council that closed shop when the DPJ took power in September.

Once again showing that whatever the DPJ-led government's shortcomings, it is entirely serious about centralizing policymaking in the cabinet and neutering the ruling party, both Hatoyama and Ozawa were quick to reject the proposal.

That these backbenchers felt compelled to petition the government for some sort of policy role is a good sign that the Hatoyama government's efforts to change the policymaking process — at least as the ruling party is concerned — are working. Backbenchers, after all, have the most to lose from the shift to the Westminster model. Whereas under LDP rule a fourth-term Diet member like Ubukata could be aspiring to posts in the policy research council that would give him a stake in policymaking, both mid-career and first-term DPJ members have little to do but show up to vote for legislation and go home to their districts to campaign. Unlike LDP backbenchers, there are few channels for them even to try to intervene in order to direct pork-barrel spending to their districts. To a certain extent, their fates as politicians rest in the hands of a government over which they have little or no leverage.

And so it should remain. If the Hatoyama government is to fix any of the problems facing Japan, it will have to be able to formulate policy without having to worry about backbenchers working behind the cabinet's back to develop and advance their own policies. Creating a new policymaking outfit in the party would also give bureaucrats opposed to the government an outlet to leak information that could undermine the cabinet, playing divide and rule among the politicians. And given the Hatoyama cabinet's struggle to keep ministers on message, a DPJ policy shop could only muddle matters further.

Perhaps one day the DPJ might find it useful to create a party think tank that would keep backbenchers occupied and explore new ideas. But for now the new policymaking process is too fragile and restoring a policy role to the party will simply invite trouble.

Credit where credit is due

Another poll, more bad news for the Hatoyama government.

In Jiji Press's February public opinion poll, the Hatoyama government's disapproval rating surpassed its approval rating for the first time, with the former rising twelve points to nearly 45% and the latter falling eleven to nearly 36%. Disapproval among self-described independents rose thirteen points to roughly 46%. The LDP managed to gain little more than a percentage point in its support.

And yet despite sinking public approval numbers, the government has does not appeared to be fazed. Indeed, in a speech Sunday Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya stressed that the poll numbers had reached a floor and would improve from here.

Whether Okada's optimism is merited or not, the Hatoyama government deserves credit for not panicking in response to slumping public approval. If there was one problem with LDP governments for much of the party's rule — at least in recent years — it was hyper-sensitivity to public opinion. In just the last three years, we watched the process unfold like clockwork. Falling public approval led concerns about the prime minister's weakening "centripetal force" as LDP officials began to question his leadership; intra-party opponents to the prime minister's agenda would intensify their resistance; some party elder (usually Mori Yoshiro) would call for a cabinet reshuffle; and so on until resignation and ultimately a general election in the worst of circumstances.

For the most part, we are not witnessing the same downward spiral unfold under DPJ rule. The Hatoyama government has not panicked in response to newspaper polls, and appears to be carrying on with business as usual, insofar as we can call the work of this government "usual." While there have been murmurs within the DPJ about Ozawa Ichiro's staying on as secretary-general, the prime minister's grip (or perhaps, more properly, the cabinet's grip) on the party appears firm or even firmer than ever, even as the media measures the prime minister's coffin. To a certain extent, the Hatoyama government may not be overreacting to poll numbers because it is focused on the task of implementing its agenda over the course of four years, and believes that the only numbers that matter are the results of the next general election (and to a lesser extent the upcoming upper house election).

But the other reason why the Hatoyama government has not overreacted is because it is not facing the same pressure from its parliamentary majority that its LDP predecessors faced. The DPJ simply deserves credit for keeping its backbenchers in line. By closing the policy research council upon taking office, clamping down on Diet members' leagues, and Ozawa's ordering newly elected members to make getting reelected their primary and only task, a dysfunctional LDP that was able to prevent its prime ministers and cabinets from effectively formulating policy has given way to a passive DPJ that is not standing in the way of its cabinet and prime minister. Of course, much of the credit here goes to Ozawa, who has centralized powers divided within the LDP in his office — and who continues to inspire fear among most DPJ members. Sankei provides an interesting example here: distributing a survey concerning money politics, voting rights for resident foreigners, and other issues to Diet members, only thirty-nine of the DPJ's 421 members in the two houses replied to the survey, a reply rate of only 9%. Naturally Sankei complains in this article about the DPJ's protecting its silence and its members being afraid of Ozawa, but Sankei's displeasure is an illustration of just how successful the DPJ has been at controlling its own members. Contra LDP members who have criticized the DPJ for lacking intraparty democracy, arguably the degree of democracy within the ruling party is inversely correlated with the effectiveness of national democracy as expressed in cabinet government. Allowing backbenchers to do whatever they please — which is what the LDP came to in its final years once the factions were unable to provide even a modicum of intraparty discipline — is a recipe for immobile government.

None of this is to deny that the Hatoyama government is without problems. Concentrating policymaking power in the cabinet is no guarantee that the cabinet will use its power wisely or effectively. But then that's part of democracy too. The newly empowered cabinet will succeed or fail at the polls based on its performance, having no one to blame but itself should it fail to deliver on its promises.

Edano joins the cabinet

Edano Yukio, one of the few DPJ politicians who was expected to receive a cabinet appointment last year but didn't, will no longer be outside of the government. He will take over responsibility for the Government Revitalization Unit (GRU), which was previously headed by Sengoku Yoshito, who since Kan Naoto moved to the finance ministry last month was also serving as minister responsible for the national strategy office. Sengoku will take sole responsibility for the NSO while Edano heads the GRU.

Coming in the wake of the indictment of three of Ozawa Ichiro's former secretaries, the media is reporting Edano's appointment as another blow to Ozawa, as Edano is marked as an anti-Ozawa partisan, having opposed the DPJ's merger with Ozawa's Liberal Party from the very beginning and continuing to criticize Ozawa in the years following the merger. Indeed, not long ago Edano publicly suggested that if Ozawa could not convince the public to see his side of the story, he would "have to take responsibility" for what he had done (i.e., resign).

Yomiuri wonders whether Edano's appointment — with Ozawa's acquiescence — signals a diminution of Ozawa's power.

That might be reading too much into an appointment that is not altogether surprising. There was considerable surprise back in September that Edano had been left out of the government, suggesting that he was at the top of the list of backbenchers waiting to join the cabinet. The budget review hearings conducted by the GRU last year show that the post is an important one, that needed to be filled by a full-time minister, especially with the government's submitting legislation that will elevate the national strategy office into a full bureau (and give the GRU's hearings legal standing). Sengoku will undoubtedly have his hands full building a bureau whose powers and functions remain a mystery. Perhaps the timing was intended to show that Hatoyama is in charge even as he confirmed Ozawa's staying on as secretary-general, but believe it or not, the story of the Hatoyama government is not entirely or even mostly a story about Ozawa Ichiro.

Ozawa has pressured the government on certain issues and centralized functions in his office so that all requests to the government go through him, but the media's focus on Ozawa has overshadowed the important work the government is doing on building a new policymaking process, a project with which Ozawa is in full agreement (but stories about areas in which the government and the secretary-general are in full agreement apparently make for less interesting copy). In addition to the above-mentioned "political leadership" bill, the cabinet is also set to approve a civil service reform bill that could completely upend the traditional practices of the bureaucracy, doing away with the position of administrative vice-minister, restoring to the cabinet the right to make personnel appointments (and with it, the right to ignore seniority within the ministry and appoint younger officials or civilians to senior posts), and other reforms. These are remarkable changes under consideration — with remarkably little public protest from the bureaucracy — and they deserve more attention than they have received.

How the Hatoyama cabinet manages Ozawa has from the beginning been one of the more important challenges facing the DPJ-led government, but it is by no means the only challenge or the most important challenge. It would be nice if the news media remembered that from time to time and devoted a little less attention to the ongoing drama of Ozawa and a little more attention to what the Hatoyama government is actually doing with the majority the public awarded it last year.

Ozawa diplomacy

As Ozawa Ichiro waited for the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office to decide whether it would indict him along with his former secretaries, the DPJ secretary-general was busy meeting with Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who stopped in Japan last week along with Wallace "Chip" Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs for discussions with Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi.

Campbell and Ozawa spoke for an hour last Tuesday, with US Ambassador John Roos also in attendance. Neither revealed much about the meeting, although it seems that Campbell requested that Ozawa visit Washington in May with a large number of DPJ Diet members in tow, just like his December visit to Beijing along with more than 140 DPJ members.

Ozawa's response to what he called a "formal request" is a bit puzzling. At a press conference Monday he said that policy discussions are the job of the government, i.e. if the US government thinks that it can treat with Ozawa in order to find a breakthrough on Futenma it will be disappointed. Instead Ozawa views a Washington trip as necessary to build relations between the DPJ and the Democratic Party — and accordingly he wants a guarantee that a meeting will be scheduled with President Obama. That strikes me as an odd condition considering that Ozawa stated that he will not be going to discuss policy. Why should the president meet with a party official there on party business? LDP officials may have met with the US president when they visited Washington — Abe Shinzo, for example — but if foreign policy is being made by the cabinet, what business does a party official, even the secretary-general, have making a meeting with the president a precondition of his visit?

If Ozawa is serious about not interfering with the Hatoyama government's foreign policy making, he should make a point of having only brief, perfunctory meetings with administration officials, especially considering that sometime around Golden Week the government will presumably have reached a decision regarding the 2006 realignment plan. Indeed, if Ozawa really wanted to help the alliance he would travel with up-and-coming DPJ members whose foreign policy views are in the party mainstream and give US officials a better sense of the party's thinking.

While Ozawa caused considerable distress in Washington with his grand tour to Beijing — to which US officials overreacted to seeing as how symbolic visits by a politician outside of the government, no matter how powerful, will not resolve the thorny issues in the Sino-Japanese relationship — not going to Washington after having been explicitly invited would no doubt be another source of agitation.

But perhaps it would be better off if an Ozawa visit to Washington fell through. Even as Ozawa claims that policy discussions are a matter for the government, his actions undoubtedly have consequences for the government's efforts, as his China trip showed. And once in Washington, would Ozawa be able to control himself and refrain from saying anything that might undermine the government's work?

This might be a good occasion for Prime Minister Hatoyama to exercise his authority and order the secretary-general to stay home to focus on the impending upper house election campaign.

And the US government should probably get out of the habit of maintaining anything but perfunctory ties with ruling party officials outside of the government.

I find the idea of Diet members' diplomacy — giin gaiko, the idea that backbenchers can play an independent role in diplomatic problem solving — a pernicious notion characteristic of LDP rule, the foreign policy equivalent of backbencher policy intervention to secure pork-barrel projects. (not least in the case of Suzuki Muneo, now a DPJ ally as head of his New Party DAICHI). In a Westminster-style political system, foreign policy ought to be the sole province of the cabinet. Backbenchers, no matter how senior, ought to respect that or be reprimanded for interfering with government business. Ozawa has been tightening controls on the role that backbenchers can play in policymaking. Why should he be exempt?

Naturally the Hatoyama government should be doing a better job articulating the national interest and deserves at least some blame for creating a vacuum that has to some extent been filled by Ozawa. But the point remains: the prime minister and his cabinet ministers should think hard about whether they want Ozawa going to Washington at a sensitive moment for the government.

With Ozawa, there's no easy option

Ozawa Ichiro has escaped indictment by the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office again. Once again, his former secretaries were not quite so lucky, with three, including sitting Diet member Ishikawa Tomohiro, being indicted for political funds violations.

Michael Cucek rightly points to the gross misconduct of the PPO in its Ahab-like pursuit of Ozawa — and perhaps the more egregious campaign by the media to paint Ozawa as the conniving, monstrous puppet master of the Hatoyama government.

But I cannot treat Ozawa's escape from prosecution as a victory for the prime minister and the DPJ, and cannot but wonder whether the DPJ wouldn't be better off without its secretary-general.

If anything, the indictment of three of his former aides even as Ozawa survives with a vote of confidence from the prime minister will continue to be a drag on the government. As in the days when Ozawa was in charge and Hatoyama his secretary-general, Hatoyama sounds like Ozawa's chief apologist, explaining Ozawa's behavior to a skeptical public. Except, of course, Hatoyama is now the prime minister of Japan. Ozawa's presence at the head of the DPJ would be less of a problem for the Hatoyama cabinet if it had been able to dominate the media and dictate the narrative being told about the government. But the Hatoyama government has been so ineffectual in its public relations — not entirely its fault seeing as how certain publications are serving as the LDP's partners in opposition — that everything said or done by the government in relation to Ozawa contributes to the media's narrative of a government under Ozawa's thumb. Instead of reporting on the remarkable changes the Hatoyama government has made to the policymaking process, the media has been able to fixate on the superficial resemblance between the current government and the LDP in its heyday (which Ozawa of course participated in). As I've said before, I'm not convinced that DPJ government with Ozawa wielding outsized influence is worse than LDP government in which an army of backbenchers wielded influence in combination with the bureaucracy that was able to undermine all but the most determined prime ministers — and even determined prime ministers like Koizumi Junichiro did not win every battle with the backbenchers.

What should the Hatoyama government, Ozawa, and the DPJ do going forward? As Hokkaido University's Yamaguchi Jiro — a DPJ sympathizer — notes, the fate of political change and with it the Japanese people's hope for their democracy hang in the balance. He recommends that Ozawa let the trial proceed and let the PPO's evidence (or lack thereof) speak for itself. At the same time, he suggests that Ozawa forthrightly answer every question surrounding doubts about his political funds in the court of public opinion. I wonder whether Ozawa is capable of this. I know that Hatoyama and other DPJ leaders are not capable of making Ozawa do it. At the very least, Ozawa has to restrain himself and at least appear as if he is the prime minister's subordinate, not his equal (or superior).

Meanwhile, the Hatoyama government must fundamentally reconsider how it presents itself to the public via the media. The time of letting the facts speak for themselves has passed, because the facts about the government do not speak for themselves. The government needs begin aggressively making its case. Whether that will entail a new chief cabinet secretary, a media strategy team attached to the prime minister's office, or some other scheme will depend on the government, but the current arrangement is simply not working. And the prime minister needs to start showing some ability to lead, or step down.

No matter how skilled a campaigner he is, no matter how zealous a reformer he is, Ozawa's baggage imperils the government — and more than that, it jeopardizes Japan's political future and provides further impetus to cynicism among the Japanese people. There is no easy answer to the Hatoyama government's dilemma. Fire Ozawa, and it loses a skilled campaigner trusted among party supporters in the provinces. Retain Ozawa, and the prime minister continues to look weak and the media continues to feast upon the Ozawa scandal.

Ultimately, I fear that Hatoyama is simply incapable of solving this dilemma and saving his government.

Why the Hatoyama government matters

As the Hatoyama government's approval numbers have faltered and more recently plummeted, as reports about the inappropriately large role being played by Ozawa Ichiro in the government (despite not being a cabinet minister) have grown, as doubts about Hatoyama Yukio's abilities as a leader have deepened, and as the court of public opinion internationally has handed down the verdict that the Hatoyama government is not only embarrassing to Japan but "risky," I have struggled to keep an eye on the big picture. The twenty-four-hour news cycle makes it difficult to do so: our attention spans shortened, we expect immediate results and solutions to problems that have emerged over years and decades and will take nearly as long to solve. Every drop in public opinion polls triggers panic, every note of discord becomes a crisis, and, closer to home for this Bay Stater, every by-election holds the fate of the nation in the balance.

But given that Japan is in the midst of unprecedented political change, it is essential to take a longer view, to not get so bogged down in cabinet bickering or opinion polls and to consider why the DPJ government matters in the first place.

Many analysts — U.S. alliance managers impatient for Japan to play a wider security role regionally and globally, investors hungry for supply-side reforms — implicitly measure the Hatoyama government's successes and failures on the basis of its progress in advancing their policy goals for Japan. (I don't think it would be wrong to say that these groups are nostalgic for the days of Koizumi Junichiro.) Others might measure the government's success in terms of whether it deliveries on its manifesto promises. Still others might look to raw economic indicators. Few analysts, if any (myself included) have articulated what success and failure mean for a DPJ government. We are sailing in uncharted waters. We do not know how to judge this new government. Should it be judged by the above standards? By comparison with the LDP? If so, which LDP? With Koizumi's LDP? With Koizumi's successors? With foreign governments? How do we judge this government?

In the longer term, we will have to judge it on the basis of its policy achievements — ultimately any democratic government will bejudged on whether the voters believe that they are "better off" since the government took power than before — but for now, a mere 100 days into the Hatoyama government, there is but one way to judge the Hatoyama government. Is it restoring the Japanese public's faith in their government?

The "lost" decades did not just erode Japan's prosperity. It also eroded the public's confidence in their elected officials and public servants. Corruption, trillions of yen of wasteful spending, non-responsive institutions, stymied reform, the promise and despair of the LDP during and after the Koizumi years: the combination of these developments was to shred whatever trust the Japanese people had in their leaders. They watched as their institutions struggled to restart the economy, as poverty increased, as public services withered and even vanished from some corners of the country, as pensions vanished. The election of the DPJ was both evidence of the extent of the breakdown of public trust — at last the voters would try another party — but also of the limits of the public's cynicism, as they were willing to see whether another party could do better.

Accordingly, the DPJ's mandate, above administrative reform, above economic reform, above pensions reform, is restoring the Japanese people's trust in their government. The Japanese government has to be made transparent and accountable. The Japanese people deserve to know what their government has done and will be doing in their names. Because few of the problems that Japan faces can be solved without the government's being able to ask for sacrifices from the Japanese people — and the Japanese people will not accept sacrifices, particularly financial sacrifices, unless they can trust the government that is asking for them. How, for example, can Japan build a more robust welfare regime without raising taxes? And how can the government raise taxes if the public does not trust the government to use the public's money wisely and transparently?

The Hatoyama government has to restore public confidence in Japan's political leadership. Reform that weakens the bureaucracy and strengthens the cabinet helps, but it is not enough. The government has to look like a government that can be trusted. None of the problems facing Japan can be solved if the government does not have the trust of the people. And it is for this reason that Ozawa is a problem.

The Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office may well be fighting a spirited battle on behalf of the old guard, as Michael Cucek argues. But to a certain extent that is besides the point. In going all out to defend Ozawa, the Hatoyama government risks looking like anything but a force for greater transparency and accountability in Japanese politics. Even if he manages to survive this latest investigation, Ozawa still ladens the DPJ with his and Japan's recent political past. At some point the Hatoyama government will have to break with Ozawa simply because any government that depends on Ozawa will have to contend with his tendency to secretiveness, his messiah complex, and his political baggage, a terrible combination of qualities.

I recognize that Ozawa is still in some ways indispensable for the DPJ, seeing as how he is able to control the party's backbenchers and manage the party's elections. But it may be worth losing his skills if it helps the DPJ rebuild public trust and pass the reins to a new generation of political leaders with the public confident in the government and some reforms already in place. Because ultimately the Hatoyama government is something of a placeholder, a transitional government from LDP to post-LDP government. The problems facing Japan took years to emerge, and solving them — and adjusting to relative decline — will take just as long or longer to resolve. It will be on Hatoyama's successors to make the greatest progress in fixing them, but whether they will be able to succeed will depend on whether Hatoyama is able to restore the public's trust in government.

That is how we should observe the Hatoyama government. Its policy successes and failures matter. Its budget deficits matters, although I am with Taggart Murphy in wondering whether the Japanese government might have more time than many think when it comes to its indebtedness. But above all, its conduct in the eyes of the Japanese public matters. And on this score, it is simply too early to declare one way or another — although the resolution of this latest Ozawa affair could have considerable significance in determining whether the DPJ is able to rebuild public trust.

The Ozawa saga continues

Say what you will about Ozawa Ichiro, but he is nothing if not resilient. In the nearly three years since the DPJ took control of the House of Councillors, he has resigned as party president twice, reversing his decision the first time in November 2008, returning as acting president in charge of elections the second time in 2009 and surviving to serve as secretary-general of the DPJ in power. Despite investigations into illicit real estate deals and connections with the construction company Nishimatsu, despite the indictment of his aide, despite being the target of attacks by the LDP and the media, Ozawa has remained, bloodied, perhaps, but undaunted.

Has his long and storied career finally come to an end?

The latest blow to Ozawa is a criminal investigation by the Tokyo prosecutor's office of Ozawa's support group, the Rikuzankai, for failure to report properly a 400 million yen donation that was used to purchase housing for Ozawa's aides. Ishikawa Tomohiro, a former Ozawa secretary now serving as a member of the House of Representatives, may be indicted for his role in the scandal.

As perhaps a sign of the gravity of the situation, the Hatoyama government declined to comment. Unlike last year, when DPJ leaders joined Ozawa in questioning the motives of the prosecutor's office, the Hatoyama government is taking a wait-and-see approach. For his part, Ozawa apologized to the Japanese people for the "misunderstanding" and said that there was no criminal intent in the misreporting of the donation suspected to have come from the Kajima construction company.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Ozawa has begun a tour of the country in anticipation of July's upper house election. Sankei and Yomiuri, which have enthusiastically cataloged Ozawa's political interventions, have both reported that Ozawa is shifting to a "low posture" and question whether it is a function of the deepening investigation or the approaching upper house election.

For that reason, there may be a silver lining to Ozawa's being under investigation and increasingly away from Tokyo on the hustings. Namely with Ozawa preoccupied, the Hatoyama government may find it easier to dispel the notion that it is under Ozawa's thumb and use the forthcoming Diet session to move its agenda instead of having to fend of accusations that Ozawa is the real ruler of the country. Meanwhile, the Ozawa scandal is also keeping the LDP from becoming a more effective opposition party, which is good for the DPJ if not for Japan. Like the Hatoyama scandal before it, the Ozawa scandal seems like an inviting target for the LDP, an easy way to attack the government without having to consider the party's future. Yamamoto Ichita warns his party that the DPJ's mistakes will not be sufficient for the LDP to regain the trust of the public, but I suspect that his warnings will go unheeded.

Of course, that is slight comfort compared to the risk that Ozawa could take the government's support down with him. For now the government and the DPJ have little choice but to hope for the best.

Whatever the reality of Ozawa's role in the policymaking process, he is casting his shadow over the Hatoyama government. Remarkably, the Faustian bargain the DPJ made with Ozawa to merge with his Liberal Party — a deal made when Hatoyama was last the president of the DPJ — continues to dog the DPJ. Ozawa was instrumental in positioning the party to unseat the LDP and take power, but only if it took on Ozawa's baggage: his history as Tanaka Kakuei's lieutenant and a leader of the LDP's largest and most notorious faction, his secretiveness, his tendency to lunge for fleeting opportunities that backfire (cf. the breakdown of the 1993-1994 non-LDP coalition), and his tendency to speak a bit too freely for his own good. The DPJ, for better or worse, knew exactly what it was getting when it joined hands with Ozawa — and it has not been disappointed.

Regardless of how the investigation plays out, it may be time for Ozawa to leave, at least after the upper house election if he survives this latest scandal. As indispensable as he is on the campaign trail, he is hurting the government. If Ozawa is serious about wanting to change Japan for the better, he must ask himself whether the Hatoyama government would be better off with him in retirement — provided that the Tokyo prosecutor's office does not determine the terms of Ozawa's exit from politics.

Why the DPJ should defend Hatoyama

As Japan heads into the final week of the political annus mirabilis that has been 2010 2009, Hatoyama Yukio, the face of political change as the first leader of a party other than the LDP to win a majority in more than a half century, finds himself under siege.

The immediate cause — beyond falling public approval — is Hatoyama's lingering political funds problem. Sankei, the "opposition" newspaper that sometimes appears to be little more than a mouthpiece for the LDP, wonders whether the Hatoyama government is, in the words of an LDP official, in "dangerous waters" as prosecutors assemble the case against two former Hatoyama aides indicted for violations of the political funds control law. On Thursday evening, the prime minister held a press conference on the indictments, taking responsibility for the violations but dismissing calls to resign.

In response to Hatoyama's press conference, Tanigaki Sadakazu, the LDP's president, offered the absurd idea that the prime minister should immediately resign, dissolve the House of Representatives, and call a general election.

What Tanigaki's response tells us is that Hatoyama's problems have little or nothing to do with the LDP. The LDP is no more ready to receive the confidence of the Japanese people today than it was on 30 August — indeed, it may be even less capable of earning the trust of the Japanese public. Hatoyama's problems instead lie with the media, which is capable of offering much more potent resistance to the sitting government than the LDP at this moment in time. "Public opinion" as packaged by Japan's media outlets has long played an outsized role in determining the fate of Japan's prime ministers, the monthly opinion polls conducted by newspapers and TV stations effectively providing an EKG for their governments. The last years of the LDP provided example after example of the power of "public opinion." LDP barons worried more about the sitting cabinet's approval ratings than whether the sitting government was fixing Japan's numerous and multiplying problems. Somehow in their pursuit of "public opinion" the public interest got left behind.

The DPJ was effectively elected on a platform that rejected this approach to politics. Taking its manifesto seriously, the party viewed its electoral victory as a mandate for implementing — or at least trying to implement — its policy proposals. Its manifesto included a four-year timetable for its proposals. In other words, the only register of public opinion that would matter to the DPJ would be the next general election, when the Japanese people would judge the DPJ on its record in office. It would not be obsessed with the month-to-month fluctuations of newspaper opinion polls.

Faced with open speculation about who will replace Hatoyama should he step down in January before the 2010 ordinary Diet session, including speculation that his replacement might be Ozawa Ichiro, whether the DPJ will be able to stay true to this new style of politics will be sorely tested in the coming weeks.

Defending Hatoyama — even to establish a new principle — is less than ideal. His political organization's accounting "irregularities" were known even before the election, and his hold on his own government appears at times to be tenuous, even if I wouldn't go so far as to declare that Ozawa is using Hatoyama as a puppet. (The LDP, drawing upon its own history, has taken to calling the government the "Ohato" government, alluding to the description of Nakasone Yasuhiro's first government as the "Tanakasone" government for the role supposedly played by Tanaka Kakuei in its formation.) And there is a certain political sense in not lashing the party's fortunes to its leader.

But despite these negatives, the DPJ is better off rallying behind the prime minister. To abandon Hatoyama now is to continue to afford the media an extraordinarily powerful role in picking who leads Japan. The DPJ's political reforms do not necessarily call for a presidential-style premier, but to retain the LDP's revolving door at the Kantei would undermine the image of the DPJ's election as signifying genuine political change — and it would invite even more attacks from the media on the government. If the mass media can dog the DPJ into an abandoning a prime minister once, why not a second time? And why stop at changing prime ministers? Why not pressure the government into calling a snap election too? Finally, a change of prime ministers mere months into Hatoyama's term would reinforce the image abroad that Japan is ungovernable, an image which Hatoyama, through his travels during his first months in office, has tried to change.

The Hatoyama government has an opportunity to fight back in the weeks before the ordinary session. With its budget in hand — the cabinet agreed to the 92.3 trillion yen budget for 2010 on Friday — the government can push back against its critics by showing that it is taking the first steps in following through on its campaign promises. It has weeks during which it can defend its choices regarding which promises to maintain (universalistic child allowances, free secondary education) and which promises to scale back (retaining the gasoline surcharge). The LDP is already attacking the budget as a "violation of the manifesto," and criticizing the government for not referring to a consumption tax increase as a way to address mounting social security outlays. The Hatoyama government should take this opportunity to steer public discussion away from the prime minister and back to the policy agenda upon which it was elected.

As Nakasone himself said recently, the government is still in its early stages; it is too soon to expect results. The agenda is bigger than any single politician — Ozawa included — but for the moment the DPJ's success depends on surviving this initial period with the public still behind it. Hatoyama may not last four years in office, but if the DPJ is to show him the door, it should do so on its own terms, and not because the media has dictated that Hatoyama's head should roll sooner rather than later. And if the DPJ can successfully defend Hatoyama from the media in the short term, it may improve Japanese politics over the long term by weakening the ability of media organizations to shape political outcomes.

Winter of discontent?

December has brought little but bad news for the Hatoyama government, which has now been in office for just over three months.

The economy continues to struggle (and deflationary pressure continues to grow), US officials are displeased over the government's decision to delay on Futenma, and polls show the public souring on the new government.

Two recent polls show that the Hatoyama government's approval rating has fallen below 50%. Asahi's poll recorded a fourteen-point drop in the government's approval rating, from 62% to 48%, with its disapproval rating rising from 21% to 34%. The biggest blow to the government's approval came from independents. The poll found disenchantment with Hatoyama Yukio's leadership — and 60% disapproved of the government's handling of the Futenma dispute. The Asahi poll is not all bad news: the DPJ continues to enjoy considerable support, 42% of respondents to the LDP's 18% (the DPJ's support fell four, the LDP's rose four).

Jiji's poll found the government's approval rating fell more than seven points to 47%, with respondents similarly voicing their disenchantment at the prime minister's leadership. In Mainichi's poll, the government is still above fifty percent approval, but its support fell nine points to 55% — and nearly 70% of respondents said that they were "worried" about the government's approach to the US. The DPJ continued to hold a wide advantage over the LDP in the Mainichi poll.

One more poll number is worth mentioning: the Jiji poll asked respondents who they think is the most influential actor in the government. 71% said Ozawa Ichiro. Hatoyama was second, with 10%.

Back in September, the day before the Hatoyama government took power, I listed what I thought were the strengths and vulnerabilities of the Hatoyama government. In the latter category, I listed Hatoyama, Ozawa, and the media. I anticipated that the combination of these vulnerabilities could produce a vicious cycle that could unravel the government. In these figures I wonder whether that is exactly what we are seeing. I do not think that Ozawa is actually the most important figure in the government. What the 71% figure tells us is that the media has succeeded in constructing a narrative that shows Ozawa as the most influential figure in the government. After all, a poll question on who respondents think is the most influential figure in the government is asking respondents not what they think of some policy question that has some bearing on their lives but what they've heard on TV or read in newspapers. Naturally with articles like this one from Sankei — "Mr. Ozawa's leadership gaining strength — 'Government Unification' becoming a dead letter" (referring to unifying cabinet and ruling party) — the Japanese public might get the idea that Ozawa is considerably more significant than the prime minister.

The latest concerns about Ozawa are the result of a dispute between Ozawa and the prime minister over the 2010 budget. Aware of the need to control spending, especially with this year's tax revenues falling below 40 trillion yen for the first time since 1985 even as debt issuances increased to 53.5 trillion yen, the government and the DPJ are debating how to modify the party's election promises. The government will try to limit new debt issuances to 44 trillion yen next year, which, barring a massive and unlikely increase of tax revenue, means that the party will have to scale back its spending plans. Naturally Ozawa and the government have different opinions on what should be scaled back.

The DPJ — i.e. Ozawa — has submitted a proposal to the government for what the budget should look like. On the spending side, the plan calls for, among other things, introducing a 13,000 yen/month child allowance in the first fiscal year of the program, ending fees for public high schools, introducing income support for farmers, and paying out new subsidies for local governments. On the revenue side, it includes proposals to increase fees for medical services, retain the temporary gasoline surcharge but cut the automobile weight tax, change the highway toll system gradually, and begin investigating an environment tax. Combined with Ozawa's intervention with the Imperial Household Agency to secure a meeting between the Emperor and Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice president reputed to be Hu Jintao's likely successor, Ozawa appears to be inordinately powerful as a policymaker.

But his influence has, I think, been overstated, in part because the media has wanted to treat Ozawa as the government's "shadow shogun" from the moment Ozawa passed the reins to Hatoyama, in part because the media's expectations concerning the unification of cabinet and ruling party are unrealistic.

Regarding the former, Ozawa simply overshadows every other DPJ politician, Hatoyama included — although when I say overshadow, I do not mean overshadow in terms of influence. Rather everything Ozawa says or does is dissected by the media. He is charismatic in his way, has interesting things to say when asked, and is always good for headlines, very different from Hatoyama in these respects. Hatoyama is a bit professorial, and, well, boring. And now that he is prime minister, he has to be careful with his words in a way that Ozawa, not holding a cabinet post, does not have to be.

As a result, Ozawa looks and sounds influential. But that does not make it so. There was never going to be a way to completely silence Ozawa or to entirely subordinate the ruling party to the cabinet. Ozawa, guardian of the party's majority and therefore its electoral prospects, was never going to be completely silent on policy, at least insofar as the government's policy decisions affect the party's political outlook. The question is whether political considerations are considered as one concern among several in cabinet deliberations or whether they are the dominant concern. It is at this point that I part ways with the press. I do not think that Ozawa is issuing marching orders to the government. In fact, I think the reports of mutual displeasure may be signs of the limits of Ozawa's influence. Ozawa has suggested some ways of trimming the party's manifesto that he thinks maximizes the party's chances in the next year's upper house election. Others will disagree. Ozawa himself has said that the final decision belongs to the government. Will he accept that decision without complaint?

In fact, this debate over Ozawa's influence obscures the fact that we are talking about one man. Under the LDP we could not have this debate because it was not just one man in the LDP who wielded a veto but a vast network of committees and subcommittees in PARC, faction leaders, the election strategists, and the party elders in the general council. As troublesome as Ozawa can be, is he more meddlesome than the LDP's policymaking system, when a debate of this nature would mean input from every committee chair or subcommittee chair with the slightest interest in the forthcoming budget (i.e., everyone)? A single veto player can be overruled or coaxed into cooperation. The same could not be said for the LDP's policymaking system. Any discussion of Ozawa's role must keep sight of the alternatives.

Ultimately these developments reinforce the idea that there was no way to completely neutralize Ozawa's negative influence on the Hatoyama government. And the bigger problem — as the opinion polls suggest — may be Hatoyama and not Ozawa. As in the case of Kamei Shizuka in the early days of the Hatoyama cabinet, Hatoyama has allowed a political vacuum to form and allowed someone else to fill it, in this case Ozawa. Hatoyama has won a small victory, with the Tokyo prosecutor's office announcing that it will not seek to indict the prime minister, but he has bigger problems. Can he show enough backbone to dispel the impression that he cannot lead his own government?

The public has not abandoned the DPJ yet. But it needs some sign that the prime minister is actually in control of his own government. Disagreements and discussion among cabinet ministers — and between Ozawa and the government — are acceptable, as long as Hatoyama is able to make clear that the final word truly is his. He needs to inject his voice into the debate more. We need to hear more of what he thinks. Otherwise Ozawa's outsized personality will continue to dominate the public image of the government, the media will continue to feast on the disorder, and the Hatoyama government's approval rating will continue to fall. The Hatoyama government is perilously close to the vicious cycle that I feared would endanger the government from the start.

Ozawa whips the DPJ and the Diet into shape

Speaking at a convention of the Osaka branch of the DPJ, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi spoke succinctly of the role of the DPJ's backbenchers in the new government. Hirano said that not only is it unnecessary for DPJ backbenchers to ask questions in Diet proceedings, but also the DPJ's many first-term Diet members should be focused on consolidating their support bases in their districts.

Welcome to life in Japan's emerging Westminster system, in which the job of backbenchers is — contrary to the argument made by Paul Scalise and Devin Stewart that a major problem with Japanese politics is backbenchers lacking policymaking resources (discussed here) — to show up and vote as the party, acting at the behest of the cabinet, requests.

Hirano's remarks dovetail with Ozawa Ichiro's unfolding plans to reform the mechanics of the Diet. Upon his return from Britain last month, Ozawa outlined plans to revise the Diet law to, among other things, prohibit testimony by bureaucrats so to strengthen debate among legislators. (This ban would also prevent officials of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau — a longtime Ozawa target — from appearing as witnesses in the Diet.) Ozawa also wants to trim the number of Diet committee members so that Diet members can focus on a specific policy area instead of dividing their time between multiple committees — and he wants cabinet and sub-cabinet officials to participate in committee deliberations so to clarify government policies for legislators.

Ozawa met with the secretaries general of the SDPJ and the PNP, the DPJ's coalition partners last week to discuss his plans for revising the Diet law, although the SDPJ is skeptical of the need to revise the law and it seems unlikely that revising the law will figure highly on the Diet agenda for the forthcoming extraordinary session after Hirano met with Yamaoka Kenji, the DPJ's Diet affairs chair, and suggested that the bill should be delayed until next year's ordinary session.

Ozawa is otherwise working to consolidate control of the DPJ caucus and to exclude the ruling parties from the policymaking process. Concerns about Ozawa's forging a dominant Ozawa faction out of the so-called "Ozawa children" seem to be giving way to complaints that Ozawa is consolidating his control of the DPJ and the Diet through more conventional means. Ozawa has announced the lineup of the new party executive, and is being criticized for streamlining the party leadership by folding up a number of deputy leadership posts and concentrating party in his hands and in the hands of Koshiishi Azuma, an upper house member who is not a longtime Ozawa loyalist but who has reportedly moved closer to Ozawa in recent years. (It is less than clear who is doing the criticizing: the conservative press or DPJ malcontents who would prefer to remain anonymous.) There is a greater number of upper house members among party members tapped for leadership posts, which may simply reflect the importance of the upper house for moving the government's agenda. According to Mainichi, six of ten members of the party executive are upper house members. Ozawa was also less concerned about preserving balance among the DPJ's different groups, and did not include party members from groups that have opposed him in the past, most notably Edano Yukio, a senior party member who was given neither a cabinet post nor a party leadership post.

Far from wanting to forge first-termers into a force capable of controlling the policy agenda, Ozawa does not want to see first-term DPJ members in Nagata-cho: Ozawa's group for first-term members has been suspended, and Ozawa has commanded first-termers to focus on political activities in their own districts, telling them "the work of a freshman member is to win the next election."

It is not only first-term DPJ members who have to fear Ozawa. At the meeting with his SDPJ and PNP counterparts last week, Ozawa flatly rejected an SDPJ request to convene a regular meeting among the governing parties to coordinate coalition parties, saying that it was for precisely that reason that the SDPJ's Fukushima Mizuho and the PNP's Kamei Shizuka were included the cabinet, rendering an extra-governmental meeting of secretaries general at best irrelevant and at worst harmful to cabinet government.

For all the concerns that surrounded Ozawa's appointment as DPJ secretary-general, one month into the Hatoyama government it appears that many of them were overblown. As was becoming clear even before the government took power, Ozawa sees his job as ensuring that the ruling party and the Diet are not obstacles to the cabinet's implementing its policy agenda. Ozawa has been largely silent — at least publicly — on policy questions and at every opportunity has stressed the importance of enhancing the cabinet's ability to govern. Far from dictating terms to the government, Ozawa has thus far been nothing but loyal to the Hatoyama government. There is plenty of time for that to change, but sooner or later Ozawa critics who argued that Ozawa's "army" of youngsters would be a DPJ version of the Tanaka faction will have to admit that they were mistaken about Ozawa's intentions.

Ozawa's role as the buckle linking cabinet to ruling party and Diet is critical, but ultimately he is working to strengthen the cabinet, not to undermine its power.

The DPJ's quiet revolution

In a contribution to Foreign Policy's "Think Again" feature, Paul Scalise and Devin Stewart maintain that the DPJ victory will result in "the same old stagnation in Tokyo." While there are points worth considering in their piece — especially on foreign policy and the notion that the DPJ is "anti-capitalist" — on the whole Scalise and Stewart, far from offering new thinking about the DPJ, offer the same old cliches about the DPJ's policy priorities and its internal dynamics. [For the record, I know them both — indeed, Scalise and I have argued many of these points in person.]

First, they argue DPJ politicians are not revolutionary: "Like those of the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they are political opportunists without any long-standing ideological position or dominant constituency. Their only common desire is to be elected." They repeat the standard claim that "many members of the DPJ leadership were at one point members of the LDP," implying that the presence of former LDP members in the DPJ means that the party couldn't possibly stand for change. (Because apparently the most important fact about Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio, among others, is that they began their careers in the LDP, not that they spent nearly the past two decades trying to destroy LDP rule and usher in a new style of politics.)

This argument also ignores the fact that the party's candidates were remarkably unified behind the DPJ's manifesto during the general election. Far from being "political opportunists," the bulk of the DPJ's newly elected members are true believers in the party's agenda, which can be simplified as "Seikatsu dai-ichi" (Livelihoods first, i.e. pensions reform, building a new safety net, etc.) and "Seiken kotai" (regime change, mainly changing the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats in Tokyo, decentralizing the government, etc.). The point is that the DPJ has a remarkably clear agenda, which enjoys the support of the party's Diet members. Indeed, as Michael Cucek, the no longer anonymous author of Shisaku, worried before the election, the problem may be that the party members are too loyal to the agenda and not opportunistic enough. The opinions of DPJ backbenchers, however, may not matter much one way or another (more on this momentarily). The politicians in the cabinet — the DPJ politicians who do matter — are not mere opportunists, but they are not naive idealists either. The standard caricature of the DPJ and its leaders is simply wrong.

And in any case, the DPJ does not need to be "revolutionary" to deliver meaningful change to how Japan is governed.

Second, they express dismay that the DPJ is not the party of economic reform. Perhaps this is the case, although they make the same mistake that they criticize the media for making: they treat "economic reform" as an "empty buzzword," as nowhere in this section do they bother to define what they mean by economic reform. Surely there is no single way for Japan to reform, beyond the broad idea that Japan ought to transition to a more balanced model of economic growth, as I recently discussed here. There is not a single path to a new Japanese model, and as with any major institutional change, it will entail bargaining and compromises among various social actors.

Scalise and Stewart expect a new economic system to emerge in the manner similar to Koizumi Junichiro's style of reform: "Were the DPJ to change this system, it would need to bolster party unity, appeal to progressive constituencies with a transformative economic plan, and then gin up grass-roots support." One, as I have already noted, the DPJ is as unified as it is going to get, and is certainly more unified than the LDP probably ever was when it was in government. And in the event that DPJ backbenchers disagree with government plans, administrative changes already implemented will make it difficult for them to register their disagreement (see the subsequent section for more on this). Second, I'm not quite clear what they mean by "progressive constituencies." Consumer groups? Activist groups? Foreign investors? Who exactly do they mean?

Finally, they anticipate a lack of reform due to the structure of the DPJ — and its "bickering," "fragmented," "hodgepodge" coalition government indebted "to many masters" — and not, as I argued the other day, the fact that transforming an economic system is challenging in the best of times, and even more challenging in light of the LDP's having left the new government with a gross debt/GDP ratio now in excess of 200% and the global economy's recovering from a historic crisis. The obstacles facing the new government are without question considerable, but far from being hindered by a divided, bickering party and government, Hatoyama and his senior ministers have taken a number of steps that should give the DPJ-led government a fighting chance of succeeding in changing the Japanese economy for the better. The government may well fail, but it won't fail because of irreconcilable divisions within the cabinet. Indeed, what Scalise and Stewart see as "heated internal bickering" (a code word for Kamei Shizuka) I see as a massive step forward: note that the bickering is internal not to the ruling party or between ruling party and cabinet as under the LDP, the debate is occurring within the cabinet, among cabinet ministers. Cabinet ministers are actually debating what the government's policy should be! They're not just signing off on some document handed to them by administrative vice ministers or the party general council! What they see as bickering I see as a feature, not a bug. No government in the world — no democratic government anyway — is characterized by perfect unanimity among its leaders. The question is how the system manages disagreements and whether it is capable of making decisions and following through on them. The LDP system failed in large part because disagreements crossed institutional lines, undermining the cabinet's ability to establish policy priorities and lead.

Which brings me to the biggest flaw in their argument: they completely misunderstand the nature of the changes proposed by the DPJ when it comes to the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats. In describing the system of LDP rule, they see bureaucratic dominance as the result of the failings of Diet members, not the result of the institutional weakness of the cabinet relative to the LDP's internal organs (most notably the policy research council) and the bureaucracy itself: "...Politicians lack the time, energy, staff, and expertise necessary to write bills."

Undoubtedly individual backbenchers have had few resources of their own — but again, they ignore the power LDP backbenchers were able to wield as members of the PRC, working in cooperation with bureaucrats against the cabinet. But the answer to making Japan's government more effective is not strengthening the power and expertise of individual backbenchers. Indeed, the answer lies is ensuring that backbenchers have fewer avenues to exercise influence while concentrating all policymaking power in the cabinet.

Which is precisely what the DPJ plans to do. Scalise and Stewart don't seem to appreciate the significance of what the Hatoyama government has done in just the first few weeks of power: "The ruling party has called for the creation of a few smaller cabinet-focused committees to replace a few older party-centric and ministry-centric committees. It has also restricted the media's access to the bureaucracy -- hardly signaling its commitment to a more democratic and transparent legislative process."

What they miss here is just how powerful an actor the "party-centric" committees — the LDP's PRC — was in the policymaking process and how having powerful policymaking institutions outside the cabinet prevented it from controlling the policymaking process. And the idea that replacing bureaucratic press conferences with press conferences by political appointees is somehow undemocratic is laughable, and is indeed intended to ensure that the government's policy message is conveyed to the public clearly by the officials responsible for drafting it.

Scalise and Stewart simply miss the idea that the DPJ is trying to implement a Westminster system in Japan — and they simply miss just how radical an idea this is when one considers it in contrast to the LDP's "un-Westminster" system of government, in which the ruling party and its organs, together with the bureaucracy, had extensive veto power over the cabinet. The DPJ is trying to create a cabinet-led system of government that will be able to attempt some of the reforms desired by Scalise and Stewart, reforms that LDP-led cabinets struggled to maneuver through a cumbersome policymaking progress laden with veto points. At the very least the DPJ is creating a system of government that will be capable of experimentation and government by trial and error, which, after two lost decades, may be the only way for Japan to get a new economic system.

So what do we know about the DPJ's system of government so far?

Quite a lot, actually, because in its first days in office the Hatoyama government stated precisely how it plans to govern.

First, the DPJ as a ruling party is weak and — unlike the LDP — has no formal role in the policymaking process. The DPJ's policy research council has closed up shop; policy coordination will be managed by a national strategy bureau attached by the cabinet and headed by Kan Naoto, deputy prime minister and one of the DPJ's most senior politicians. Ozawa, the new DPJ secretary-general, has been given tremendous power over the ruling party and its Diet majority, making him the essential figure for getting the cabinet's policies passed into law.

Indeed, Ozawa will perform a function essential to a Westminster system: his job will be to ensure that the cabinet has the confidence of the ruling party, through which it controls parliament. Ozawa is hard at work on ensuring that backbenchers follow his lead, and by extension the lead of the cabinet. Far from strengthening the power of backbenchers, which Scalise and Stewart for some reason see as essential to changing how the government works, the DPJ intends to reform the system so that the job of a DPJ backbencher is to receive instructions on how to vote from Ozawa, show up to vote at the right time, and take the necessary steps to get reelected and so preserve the government's majority. Unlike under LDP rule, when backbenchers were busy with endless party committee and subcommittee meetings, participation in which being essential for getting ahead in the party, the cabinet and the party leadership expect that DPJ backbenchers will be seen and not heard.

To make this point absolutely clear, the DPJ has informed its Diet members that legislation introduced by Diet members (as opposed to legislation introduced by the cabinet) will be banned "in principle," with exceptions made for legislation related to elections and "political activities." (Presumably the latter exceptions will enable Ozawa to move legislation related to liberalizing campaign activities, long one of his pet issues and the subject of his recent study trip to Britain.) Also while in Britain Ozawa studied the daily activities of parliamentarians — in other words, what backbenchers do with their time since they have little to do when it comes to policymaking.

Beyond these changes, perhaps the biggest oversight on the part of Scalise and Stewart is their failure to appreciate the radicalism of the DPJ's changes to the budgeting process. As I argued before the general election, the DPJ's idea of "regime change" cannot be understood without looking at its plans for the budgeting process. In their plans to transfer budgetary authority to the cabinet — which, after all, is given budgetary authority by the constitution — the DPJ is positioning itself to deliver a democratic revolution in Japan by enabling political leaders to determine how the public's money is spent, and to redirect funds in the direction of policy priorities desired by voters.

The Hatoyama government has already taken the first steps towards a new budgeting process. Just as it said it would, on Tuesday the cabinet approved a cabinet decision that canceled the Aso government's budgetary guidelines, instructed cabinet ministers to establish budget priorities from a "zero base" and to make substantial cuts to the extent possible, and stressed once again (as the DPJ did in its manifesto) that the government will be redoing the budget from scratch. It will not simply make incremental adjustments to last year's budget. At the same time, under the leadership of Furukawa Motohisa, deputy minister for the new national strategy office and the administrative renovation council, the Hatoyama government will devise a framework for next year's outlook for tax revenues and bond issues, a job in recent years done by the Council on Fiscal and Economic Policy (replaced by the NSO), but, as Asahi notes, "The finance ministry decided the specific size of the budget." The NSO will be taking the lead in all facets of the budgeting process. We will know more about the new budgeting process after 15 October, the new deadline for ministries to submit requests to the cabinet.

There are plenty of questions about how the NSO, the new budgetary process, and the new policymaking process more generally will work, but Scalise and Stewart miss several key points that suggest not only does the new government have radical ideas for the policymaking process, but also will likely succeed in making the government more top-down, more cabinet-centered, and more streamlined than any of its predecessors: (1) the Hatoyama government has clear ideas for how it wants to change the system of government (indeed clearer ideas here than in any other policy area), (2) relatedly, its members have spent years studying the LDP's failures, the failures of the Hosokawa government (in which several Hatoyama cabinet members participated, including Hatoyama himself), and of course the British system, (3) there is more public support on this issue than any other, as public opinion polls have shown overwhelming support for the DPJ's plans to redraw the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, especially concerning budgeting, and (4) the bureaucracy is not nearly as opposed to the DPJ's plans as one might expect. Kan, for example, has been reaching out to reformist bureaucrats. The finance ministry, far from standing in the new government's way, accommodated the DPJ's request to hold off on budgeting for 2010 despite the ministry's desire to stick to the customary schedule. Spending ministries, the targets of the DPJ's desire to cut waste, have softened their once vocal opposition to the new government. They may yet attempt to derail the government through sabotage or foot-dragging, but there are enough reports out there of bureaucrats eager for political leadership to suggest that it is far too early to write off the DPJ's administrative reforms as doomed.

In short, the changes set in motion by the Hatoyama government will likely result in a stronger cabinet actually capable of leading Japan, and by leading I mean making difficult decisions instead of punting on every decision as the LDP did when in power. A new policymaking process is no guarantee of success, but the Hatoyama government is taking the right steps to give it a chance to change Japan for the better. It may not look like much of a revolution, but a quiet revolution is still a revolution.