Following the leader

Michael Cucek catches a comment from LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru at a public appearance in Kagawa. 

Ishiba said, "The Liberal Democratic Party is a party for doing what?...First and foremost, it a party for the revision of the Constitution." 

Cucek raises some useful questions about what this statement means, but I wonder whether Ishiba wasn't just being extremely literal.

After all, revising the constitution is right there in the party's founding documents. In the party platform of 15 November 1955, the sixth and last (but arguably not least) proposal says that the party will "plan for independent revision of the current constitution and reexamine Occupation-era laws, changing them to conform with national conditions." The same plank says "in order to protect world peace, state independence, and popular freedom," the LDP will create a self-defense force and prepare for the removal of foreign troops stationed on Japanese soil (i.e., the US military). 

But to try to answer Cucek's questions, I don't know if the Westminsterization is really all that stealthy. If a prime minister knows what he wants to do, has the public behind him, and faces no real opposition from within his own party, one should not be surprised that even a politician with an independent base of support like Ishiba would have to follow the leader, right down to his rhetoric. 

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot standing in the way of Abe Shinzō's completing the work of his grandfather and the other fathers of the LDP.

The Kan system

The Kan government has formed, having retained eleven ministers from the Hatoyama government (as expected). Among the new faces in Kan's cabinet of "irregular forces" are Noda Yoshihko (finance), Yamada Masahiko (agriculture), Arai Satoshi (national strategy), Genba Kōichirō (administrative reform), and, perhaps most prominently, Renhō (government revitalization).

Looking at the transition from the Hatoyama-Ozawa regime to the new DPJ cabinet, Michael Cucek reviews the history of the DPJ's coming to power and the nature of the Ozawa's strategy and concludes that under Kan, "the DPJ, the classical DPJ, is back."

It is hard to disagree. Indeed, the haste with which Kan Naoto and his "Seven Magistrate" deputies have tried to break with Ozawa — Kan's telling the former secretary-general to keep quiet, new DPJ election chief Azumi Jun's decision to review Ozawa's strategy of running two candidates in three-seat districts — are surely just the beginning of what will be weeks and months of distancing the party from Ozawa. More than that, Kan's emphasis on grassroots politics, the basis for Kan's calling his cabinet a "cabinet of irregulars" (or commandos), stands in marked contrast to Ozawa's courtship of the same interest groups that had long sustained the LDP in power.

What does this "classic" approach mean for the DPJ's plans to build a top-down policymaking process?

Perhaps the biggest change is that under Kan and DPJ secretary-general Edano Yukio the party will undo the concentration of power in the office of the secretary-general that occurred under Ozawa. Most notably the party has accepted the restoration of the policy research council, the primary demand of the reform movement that emerged earlier this year.

The new PRC, however, will look nothing like the LDP's PRC, not least because there is no indication that Kan will roll back the restrictions on contact between backbenchers and bureaucrats that the Hatoyama government promulgated upon taking power. Genba, the minister for public service reform, will serve simultaneously in the cabinet and as the PRC chair. Genba himself said in his first press conference that the "former PRC" is not being restored, that the new PRC will not pose a threat to the government's plans to unify policymaking in the cabinet. Instead it appears, at least based on Genba's remarks, that the PRC will serve as a forum for two-way communication between cabinet and party. As a member of the cabinet, Genba's responsibilities will include explaining the government's policies to backbenchers in addition to facilitating debates about new policies among MPs. The principle of collective responsibility ought to restrain Genba from using his post to challenge the government: as a cabinet minister he is obligated to defend the government's decisions once they have been made.

The new PRC will enable backbenchers, especially first-term backbenchers, to participate in policy debates and perhaps generate new policy ideas — but there is no sense that it marks a return to bottom-up policymaking in which party members wield a veto over every government decision.

In addition to creating a new PRC that is directly linked to the cabinet, the Kan government will keep the new secretary-general closer to the government — literally. Edano may occupy an office within the Kantei. The result would be that the secretary-general would act more like a political adviser to the prime minister than the autonomous strategist that Ozawa had become, and, as Edano said in his initial remarks, would be responsible for defending the government's decision before the voting public. (The Kan-Edano relationship will invariably differ than the Hatoyama-Ozawa relationship not least because Kan will not be overshadowed by his secretary-general in the public's eye.)

The result is that under Kan the DPJ will try to replace a government in which the ruling party had fewer veto players but in which the party's one veto player was at least as powerful as the prime minister with a government in which the party may have more veto player but in which the prime minister is more powerful, more visible to the public, and more capable of controlling party officials. There will be more players involved in policy debates, but my sense is that Kan, with the help of Sengoku Yoshito, the new chief cabinet secretary, will not be reluctant to remind his subordinates of who is in charge of the government.

Of course, the question hanging over this new "un-Ozawa" system is whether Ozawa himself will accept it. Freed of formal responsibilities, Ozawa will now have the time to forge his political loyalists into an Ozawa faction should he want to, which would of course make life difficult for the Kan government. Inevitably the new regime will have to make its peace with Ozawa — or Ozawa will have to restrain himself from intervening in policymaking and political strategy.

Nevertheless, under Kan the DPJ has a prime minister who may be even more devoted to building a Westminster-style system than his predecessor. The DPJ may  have made some necessary concessions to the party's MPs, but the goal remains strengthening the role of the prime minister and the cabinet at the expense of bureaucrats and backbenchers.

Can the DPJ legislate a new relationship with the bureaucracy?

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives began debate on the Hatoyama cabinet's bill revising the National Civil Service Law, the first of three cabinet bills intended to introduce political leadership to be considered in the Diet (the others being bills establishing the national strategy bureau and increasing the number of sub-cabinet political appointees).

If passed, the revision will, among other things, introduce a Cabinet Personnel Bureau (CPB) attached to the Cabinet Secretariat. The cabinet will be able to control the promotion of senior civil servants — administrative vice ministers, division chiefs, and section chiefs — with the cabinet selecting senior bureaucrats from a list with an eye towards not just ability but also the willingness to perform, as suggested by Sengoku Yoshito, Hatoyama's administrative reform czar in an interview in Asahi's Globe section. The expectation seems to be that the government would move senior officials laterally, away from their "home" ministries, in the hope of overcoming compartmentalized administration. When asked whether appeals to expertise could render the revision a dead letter, Sengoku questioned whether the Kasumigaseki's level of expertise is as high as assumed, although when pressed he suggested that perhaps the Finance Ministry's budget bureau will enjoy a certain degree of insulation. Another reform included in the bill would enable the CPB to demote officials.

Looking over this plan — which shares certain features with plans for a basic law produced under by the LDP, and which has in fact been criticized by the LDP and YP leader Watanabe Yoshimi for being weaker than the Aso government's plan — it is unclear to me what exactly the government hopes to achieve. Sengoku stresses the importance of overcoming compartmentalization. This plan may be effective to this end, but I wonder whether it raises other problems in its place.

Under the Thatcher government, the British civil service faced a prime minister who intervened aggressively in civil service personnel administration, which had perverse consequences for the civil service. Traditionally, the job of British civil servants was to provide advice and options for ministers as they went about implementing the cabinet's program as outlined in the party's manifesto. Bureaucrats would push back against ministers, they would do their best to dissuade ministers from making poor choices, but ultimately they served political leaders as a matter of professional duty. Under Margaret Thatcher, bureaucrats became more circumspect about the advice they dispensed to political leaders as prospects for promotion became linked to sticking with the government's program, and were more inclined to tell ministers what they wanted to hear instead of offering frank advice. In other words, security in office for civil servants was linked to the quality of service that they provided political leaders. Colin Campbell and Graham Wilson consider the changes that occurred under the Thatcher government to have been so consequential as to have marked the "end of Whitehall."

Accordingly, it is unclear from this legislation how the government intends to ensure that the bureaucracy will provide quality guidance to the government when the bureaucrats will have incentives to please political leaders.

I understand why the Hatoyama government feels obligated to enshrine reform in law, as it gives the government's reform agenda a symbolic permanence that it otherwise lacks. And it it is understandable why in the near term the Hatoyama government wants to be able to control senior-level personnel appointments. It needs to sever whatever links remain between the bureaucracy and the ancien regime. Under LDP rule, after all, the LDP and the bureaucracy developed a symbiotic relationship, in which the party preserved the prerogatives of the bureaucracy while the bureaucracy served as a policymaking staff for the party and cooperated with LDP backbenchers' desires to direct national resources to particularistic ends. To build a new system that DPJ needs to be able to forestall sabotage, shirking, or foot dragging on the part of the bureaucracy.

But I would argue that the most effective reforms to the policymaking process have been those that have limited interaction between bureaucrats and backbenchers, and intra-party reforms that have sharply limited the ability of backbenchers to participate in policymaking. Without being able to play backbenchers off against the cabinet, bureaucrats have already had to accommodate DPJ rule to an extent that few expected.

As for the goal of building a politically neutral civil service that dutifully serves the government of the day, perhaps the only way to build such a civil service is regular changes in ruling party. The British civil service has been described as "politically promiscuous," willing to serve any government even when successive governments have contradictory aims.  If there is not regular alternation in power, the bureaucracy will wind up simply shifting its loyalties to the new long-term ruling party, bending to the interests of the ruling party instead of dispensing guidance with an eye towards national and public interests.

In short, the process of building a new policymaking system will require at least as much change in the minds of actors in the system as change in formal institutions, if not more. As the DPJ comes to see the bureaucracy not as a hostile remnant of the ancien regime but as the source of expert advice, as the bureaucrats come to recognize the legitimacy of a government in power on the basis of a public mandate for its electoral program and come to recognize that there is a realistic chance of a different party with a different program taking power, the system will change to something approximating top-down political leadership. The new system will not come about through bullying the bureaucracy — except perhaps in very rare instances — but through the bureaucracy's recognizing the role it has to play in the new system, and the DPJ's (and whatever ruling party succeeds it) recognizing that no advanced industrial democracy functions without an effective civil service.

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.

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.

Assembling the new coalition government

The DPJ has been in intense negotiations with the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) and the People's New Party (PNP) to finalize the terms of their coalition government.

The DPJ's goal in negotiations is naturally to minimize the disruptiveness from having two parties (and their internal politics) interfere with the DPJ's plans for a streamlined policymaking process in which the cabinet will control the ruling party, and through its control of the ruling party, the Diet. In order to ensure that the same process works for the upper house, the cabinet will have to represent the will of the ruling parties — Hatoyama, in a conversation with SDPJ leader Fukushima Mizuho, stressed the importance of the government's policies reflecting the SDPJ's positions. Naturally the best way to have the ruling parties represented is by having their leaders take up positions in the cabinet. Indeed, the three parties — with Kan, the likely minister responsible for the national strategy bureau sitting in for Hatoyama, representing the DPJ — will form a committee within the cabinet to coordinate policies, the "Basic Policy Cabinet Committee," perhaps the first instance of a DPJ commitment to form a cabinet committee. (In his report on the British system of government and his article in Chuo Koron, Kan was particularly impressed by Britain's cabinet committees as a means of overcoming unanimous decision-making and stovepiping within the government, but until now it has been unclear just how the DPJ will use cabinet committees, if at all.)

As of Tuesday, the parties had agreed that leaders would join the cabinet, but were still negotiating joint positions in foreign policy, not surprisingly the area not included in the joint manifesto produced by the three parties during the campaign (which this Sankei editorial called "irresponsible"). The sticking point appears to be text related to the coalition's position on how to deal with opposition to the bilateral agreement on realignment as it pertains to a Futenma replacement facility: the DPJ and PNP have accepted a statement that stresses a bilateral solution without identifying the particular grievances (i.e., actually naming Futenma), while the SDPJ wants the statement to include specific details. The SDPJ also wants a commitment to involve only the Coast Guard in anti-piracy activities off the Horn of Africa.

Nevertheless, the parties are still trying to reach an agreement Wednesday. There appear to be few difficulties with the PNP: PNP leader Kamei Shizuka will join the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. The problem for the DPJ is, will probably continue to be, the SDPJ. The SDPJ wants to take a harder line than the DPJ is prepared to take, and given that its votes are needed in the upper house, it has power far disproportionate to its seven lower house and five upper house members. The difference is not necessarily a matter of policy preferences, but of tactics and emphasis. The DPJ appears to recognize that it can only push the US so far before it causes real damage to the alliance. I hope the Obama administration recognizes the difference between the DPJ and the SDPJ when it comes to the bilateral issues the new government wants to address — and that Washington finds some consolation prize to help the DPJ save face in lieu of full-blown renegotiation.

Managing the DPJ's relationship with the SDPJ will be much more troublesome than managing the left wing of the party, not least because the DPJ — with some credit going to Ozawa Ichiro — has forged a working consensus on foreign policy that is probably more acceptable to the left of the party than the right. (Revealingly, Yokomichi Takahiro, the unofficial leader of the party's left and an Ozawa ally, has been tapped to serve as the speaker of the House of Representatives after serving for four years as deputy speaker.)

Accordingly, even as the three parties were negotiating the terms of the coalition, Ozawa was meeting with Rengo, the labor organization, to ask for its support in next year's upper house election — stressing that the DPJ "must win a majority in next year's upper house election by any means necessary."

UPDATE: The three parties have finalized their agreement, which reportedly reflects the DPJ's softer line. Jiji's report adds that the DPJ can now accelerate the process of filling in the remainder of the cabinet.

Yomiuri contemplates the British model

Following the discussion on Fuji TV's Shin Hodo 2001 that I referenced yesterday, Yomiuri today has three articles addressing the flaws in the Westminster model, suggesting that the conservative approach to attacking the DPJ's administrative reforms will be to warn of the dangers of too much power concentrated in the cabinet.

One article warns of "voices" (no word on whose) questioning whether the DPJ's plans to introduce upwards of 120 Diet members into the government could hinder administration. The same article goes on to note that Britain's two-party system and political leadership emerged since the nineteenth century. It then warns that in Britain there is a problem with sub-cabinet officials using their positions to grandstand and otherwise advance their careers, and notes that a committee in the British House of Commons earlier this year recommended reducing the number of sub-cabinet officials.

A second article continues in the same vein as Fuji TV, warning of the over-concentration of power in the prime minister's office despite the constitution's giving decision making power to the cabinet — in effect reporting on the presidentialization of the British premiership under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Like Fuji TV, it cites Britain's participation in the Iraq war as an example of the dangers of the over-concentration of power in the hands of the prime minister, noting the use of special advisers as a means of sidestepping the cabinet. (No mention of how Prime Ministers Nakasone Yasuhiro and Koizumi Junichiro did precisely that to make for a more presidential Kantei capable of evading veto points within the government and the LDP.)

A third article looks at the recommendations that followed from Kan Naoto's study trip to the United Kingdom, in particular his recommendations for personnel appointees. The article quotes an anonymous DPJ member as saying, "The point is not the structure or system but the matter of the people. If politicians with leadership abilities are appointed, the bureaucrats will follow."

It is remarkable that for all the words used to denigrate the British system of government and link its flaws with the supposed dangers of the DPJ's desire to introduce political leadership, I come away with the impression that the DPJ's opponents have few good arguments to make against the DPJ's plans. It is easy to address all of Yomiuri's questions, in what, after all, are editorials disguised as reporting.

Regarding sub-cabinet officials, there are obviously risks associated with introducing so many inexperienced politicians into government positions. But the DPJ has already stated that cabinet ministers will pick their own sub-cabinet officials, which should give cabinet ministers a bit more control over their subordinates. Second, I expect that the DPJ will be putting former bureaucrats among its Diet members to work in ministries, presumably introducing greater professionalism into the work of political appointees. While their numbers are comparatively few, the former bureaucrats should help keep their amateur colleagues in line. Third, I can imagine that if a sub-cabinet official were to embarrass the cabinet through grandstanding, the official would face punishment from the party leadership, i.e. Ozawa Ichiro.

As for the idea of over-centralization in the prime minister, it is remarkable how Yomiuri can write this article but provide not a single example or precedent from the Japanese experience. Indeed, the most amazing thing in these three articles is a total lack of references to the policymaking process as it has existed under LDP governments. Based on Yomiuri's reports, one could be excused for thinking that Japan had a properly balanced system in which politicians and bureaucrats have clearly defined roles and responsibilities and that the decision making process worked well. Clearly that is far from the case: the LDP system has been characterized by power being so widely distributed among actors within the bureaucracy and the LDP that effective leadership by LDP leaders often depended on individual leaders sidestepping the formal decision making process to impose decisions on reluctant politicians and bureaucrats. Yomiuri talks of the dangers of concentrating power in the hands of the prime minister and his unelected advisers as if Koizumi Junichiro never existed. On this score its critique is particularly disingenuous because Kan — who will undoubtedly play an important role in building a new policymaking process — has stressed the importance of government by the appointed politicians in the cabinet. As I've argued, it appears that the DPJ is planning not for a presidential-style government but for cabinet government in the textbook British sense. It is particularly noteworthy that Kan has expressed his admiration for Britain's cabinet committees, which would provide a way to sidestep the custom of unanimous decision making in cabinet.

This idea of the textbook British model is important: the latter-day failings of the British system, while worth studying, ultimately say little about the dangers of the DPJ's plans. The DPJ is trying to copy Britain in a very broad sense, to move Japan in the direction of a system in which political leaders in the cabinet have the initiative in policymaking, with fewer veto players. It may take years before we can speak of a new Japanese "system," but just because it took Britain years to arrive at a point at which it could speak of political leadership is hardly an argument against the DPJ's taking the first steps in that direction. It is a matter of shifting the balance of power. Even Britain, for all its political leadership, has had to contend with supercilious bureaucrats.



As for the idea that appointing "politicians with leadership abilities" is essential, I do not deny that having the right people in the right positions can be tremendously important, but I disagree with the suggestion that good leaders — how does one know in advance who a good leader is, after all? — are more important than proper institutional design, especially because the LDP system's flaws are so readily apparent. The idea that the LDP's failures were simply the result of bad leaders strikes me as farcical.

Ultimately if the DPJ-led government is going to legislate and implement its policies, it is essential to introduce a policymaking process with fewer veto points, which is precisely what the DPJ means to do. This goal explains why the DPJ is so adamant about including SDPJ and PNP party leaders in the cabinet, so ensure that they are at the heart of the policymaking process. Decisions made by the cabinet will be that much stronger if the leaders of the smaller parties have signed on to them from the beginning.

It is also why the DPJ's leadership is trying to crack down on contact between bureaucrats and backbenchers. There is more than a whiff of disorder coming from the DPJ as it prepares to move into government — self-styled transition teams have contacted ministries for documents, prompting warnings from the DPJ leadership to its parliamentarians to exercise self-restraint when it comes to putting in requests to ministries. (The party has also instructed its newly elected backbenchers to exercise discretion in their contact with the media.) A certain amount of disorder is to be expected as the DPJ transitions into government, but this kind of freelancing is precisely the kind of behavior that Ozawa as secretary-general will have to police.

There is another factor that Hatoyama will have to consider as he finalizes his cabinet picks. He must ensure the cabinet is representative of the various viewpoints within the DPJ — most notably he'll have to pick a member or two from the Maehara-Noda section of the party. These members ought to be included in the cabinet simply on the basis of their policy expertise, but including them in the cabinet also makes for good politics. Jiji implies that Ozawa wants them excluded, but even under Ozawa's leadership Maehara held party leadership posts. However he dealt with rivals in the past, Ozawa seems to understand the value in what Lyndon Johnson reportedly said of J. Edgar Hoover: "I would rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." I would be surprised if Hatoyama didn't give posts to Noda and Maehara, or some other representative from their groups.

In any case, we should learn the composition of Hatoyama's cabinet soon enough — the major positions are expected to be confirmed Monday afternoon — although Hatoyama is giving few hints as to his thinking.

It bears noting that even as the public is skeptical of other portions of the DPJ's agenda, a Sankei poll found that 87% of respondents indicated their support for the DPJ's plans for restructuring the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats and altering the budgeting process. When it comes to the most important piece of the DPJ's manifesto, the Hatoyama government will have the public on its side.

The DPJ unveils its manifesto (part one)

At an event at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo Monday evening the DPJ released its 2009 general election manifesto to the public.

Running to twenty-four pages, the manifesto is centered around five major areas: (1) cutting waste (essentially political and administrative reform); (2) child care and education; (3) pensions and health care; (4) regionalization; and (5) employment and the economy. After providing general outlines of the party's plans in each of these areas, it provides details about fifty-five specific proposals in these five areas, as well as in the areas of consumer and human rights, and foreign policy. While not all of these policy descriptions go into great detail — many are quite vague — the DPJ has provided a concrete plan for how it will go about governing should it win next month's general election. Its priorities are clear and reflect the public's priorities (at least the public's priorities as repeatedly expressed in public opinion polls). There are shortcomings: foreign policy, for example, is a particular weakness, despite the realism of recent remarks by the party's leaders.

Cutting waste: I am glad that the DPJ gave this section pride of place in the manifesto, because it is the most radical portion of their agenda. As far as I'm concerned, the various spending programs that have received much of the attention from the press and the LDP are bread and circuses compared with the party's plans for administrative reform. The title of "cutting waste" isn't mistaken, because the goal of changing how Japan is governed to shift responsibility for the nation's finances from unelected bureaucrats to elected officials serving in the cabinet (as written in Article 73 of the Japanese Constitution). Accordingly, as the heading in the "cutting waste" section proclaims, "Completely rearranging the country's 207 trillion yen general budget."

To do that, the DPJ proposes to ban the practice of amakudari completely, simultaneously reforming public and semi-public corporations and the special accounts that support them; cutting personnel costs by twenty percent (which will be done in part by moving some public services to local governments); making the government contracting process transparent; and reviewing how politicians and bureaucrats interact, which includes the party's proposal to appoint more than 100 ruling party members to cabinet and sub-cabinet posts and provisions for greater transparency in how politicians and bureaucrats interact (this proposal is a bit too vague for me). Also included in this section are proposals for political reform, including a plan to cut the number of proportional seats by 80, which would reduce the number of PR seats to 100 and the total number of lower house seats to 400. This plan would presumably be fiercely resisted by smaller parties in coalition with the DPJ. The DPJ also proposes to ban corporate contributions and fundraising party ticket purchases from companies with contracts with the national government and local governments over 100 million yen.

Finally, and most importantly, the DPJ alludes to making the budgeting process transparent. The manifesto does not include the proposal — included in the party's 300-day transition plan and discussed by Kan Naoto in his Chuo Koron essay (discussed here) — to move budgeting authority to the cabinet entirely, giving elected officials responsibility for collating requests and compiling a national budget. Without a shift of this sort, the DPJ will be hard-pressed to rearrange the general budget completely as it promises.

Complementing this plan for government is the party's plan for internal governance, which is not included in the manifesto but without which the DPJ will not be able to make much headway in wresting power from the bureaucracy. Briefly, having studied LDP rule, it is essential for a DPJ government to control the activities of its members and to disable the party's internal organs. DPJ backbenchers must not be able to undermine the cabinet's plans as outlined in this manifesto. Their responsibility, if not serving in an administrative position, will be to show up for votes and vote in the manner ordered by the government. Under Ozawa Ichiro's leadership the DPJ was criticized for being a "dictatorship:" given the anarchy that has characterized the internal politics of the LDP in recent years, a dose of intra-party dictatorship might not be such a bad thing, especially if the DPJ is going to have to manage complex coalition partnerships. The party has already taken steps in this direction, starting with the decision made a decade ago to replace the party general council with a shadow cabinet. A DPJ-led cabinet would also be strengthened by the weakness of the party's policy research council, which, thanks to the relative lack of information flowing from the bureaucracy until fairly recently, has been under-institutionalized and dependent on outside expertise.

The party's policymaking role would be further diminished by the party's plans for a "national strategy office" under the direct control of the prime minister. While it was not directly referenced in the manifesto, should the DPJ take power this office will be an important actor in coordinating the DPJ's plans for the transition from bureaucratic to political rule. The office will be responsible for compiling the budget and drafting foreign policy documents. Its staff will include as many civilians as bureaucrats and its head will have ministerial rank (and will likely be occupied by the head of the policy research council). Hatoyama Yukio has further stressed that the creation of the national strategy office would contribute to undermining the power of the administrative vice ministers' council, which Hatoyama wants to abolish outright. Hatoyama should probably listen to Kan — one of the few DPJ leaders with ministerial experience — who, while noting the pernicious influence of the council, acknowledged that it may be beyond the power of the government to abolish it, as it could very easily reemerge under a different name. In Chuo Koron, Kan suggested that it might be better to include it in the policy process by introducing political appointees into the meetings. Ultimately the DPJ may be better off developing the power of cabinet institutions instead of combating the administrative vice ministers directly. If a DPJ government could credibly establish a top-down policymaking process the administrative vice ministers' council may simply wither away.

I am not under the illusion that the DPJ will be able to write all of its administrative reform proposals into law. I have doubts about various proposals included in this section of the manifesto (will the DPJ really be able to send more than 100 political appointees into the ministries? what does the DPJ plan to do with the retiring bureaucrats cast into a labor market still unaccustomed to hiring workers mid-career?). But I do think that the DPJ is aware of the challenge it faces in implementing this portion of its agenda — and knows that building a Westminster system, in which politicians in the cabinet wield administrative power in full view of the public, is critical to making progress in tackling the other policy areas in the party's agenda.

(Part two here.)