Managing Interests in the Japanese Bureaucracy: Informality and Discretion

Abstract

The study of Japanese bureaucracy presents a distinct class of concerns. The substance of bureaucratic informality and discretion is anything but administrative and is quite far removed, even by most practical standards, from the Weberian ideal of neutral competence, and the processes of informality and discretion are a good deal more than flexible practices that complement and flesh out formal rules and procedures. They are organizational strategies crucial to the functions and performance of bureaucracy and government in Japan. These informalities are powerful enough to bound the scope and content of political leadership by determining what gets into the Diet, how issues look once they get there, and how they are dealt with. They can also provide ministries with the means to accomplish through discretion what they cannot attain through normal parliamentary processes. This can allow ministries to resurrect legislative failures as administrative successes, and can consign parliamentary authority to the role of validating ministerial actions already taken. An important case in this regard involves the Ministry of Construction and its creation of Japan Teleway.1