Government-Industry Relations in a Dual Regulatory Scheme: Engineering Research Associations as Policy Instruments

Abstract

The concept of policy community is not new to Japanese or non-Japanese researchers on Japanese politics. Indeed, many would argue that the policy-making process in contemporary Japan is best conceptualised in terms of tripartite communities comprising government bureaucracies, business associations and the governing Liberal Democratic Party — in particular, the zoku (tribes) within the LDP, differentiated groups of LDP Diet members concerned with, and involved in, specific sectors of government policy. Within these communities, actors with resources of their own may interact with each other, using a variety of strategies under sets of well-developed rules of the game, so that their power position may be maintained or enhanced. One must, however, guard against hasty generalisations concerning the policy-role played by zoku. It is true that there are some zoku that are powerful enough to take policy initiatives, for example the Education zoku. But many others are not so much policy initiators as petitioners for favourable allocation of benefits, such as government procurement and subsidies, on behalf of the interests they represent. Moreover, in many instances, the activities of these zoku are said to have been manipulated by government bureaucracies.KeywordsIndustrial PolicyJudicial ReviewVery Large Scale IntegrateLegal ProcessLegal ProvisionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.