Japan's Foreign Aid Research Articles

Explaining variations in responsiveness to external pressure: Japan's aid policy and bureaucratic politics

AbstractAlthough preceding studies on Japan's foreign aid tend to report that Japan's aid policy is receptive to US pressure, it remains unclear which direction the US wishes Japan to assist its aid programs and how bureaucratic politics of Japan reduces the magnitude of US influence. This paper pursues the first attempt to provide a theoretical framework for the direction of US influence on Japan's aid provision and to explore whether its impact varies across different types of aid. I utilize a new dataset on Japan's Official Development Assistance from 1971 to 2009 and employ both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares regressions to handle the issues of reverse causality and joint decision-making. The combined results of quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest that the US tends to urge Japan to complement its aid efforts rather than to substitute them as substitution will allow Japan to increase its clout in strategically important recipients and the US attempts to minimize this risk by asking Japan to disburse aid in tandem. I also find that the allocation of Japanese grants is more receptive to US pressure than that of loans because the former is left to the discretion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that uses external pressure to win bureaucratic turf wars, whereas loans are determined through consultations among multiple agencies with constituencies that prioritize Japan's domestic interests. The findings are robust across different model specifications and different samples.

Determinants of China's and Japan's Foreign Aid Allocations in Africa

Foreign aid plays an important role in promoting economic development in Africa. Recently, several countries, most notably China, have emerged as alternative sources of foreign aid. However, their motives for providing foreign aid have been questioned. The present study examines and compares determinants of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocations in Africa. It assumes that the distribution of foreign aid was determined by the aid donors’ self-interest and also by the aid recipients’ needs. Three panel model methods, namely, the pooled OLS method, the one-way fixed effects method and the two-way fixed effects methods, were employed to examine and compare the patterns of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocation in Africa. The main finding was that the provision of foreign aid by China and Japan was primarily driven by the aid donors’ self-interest. Additionally, the size of population in a recipient country was an important element to determine China's and Japan's aid allocations. The findings also suggest that Japan tended to pay more attention to the aid recipient countries’ needs as well as to the quality of governance and institutions in these countries. Overall, the findings indicate that there was no considerable difference in the motives for the provision of aid between the two aid donor countries.

Japan's foreign aid: old and new contests

Domestic and international contests explain the transformation of Japan's foreign aid programme begun in the early 1950s. Through contests between domestic players, Japan has streamlined its aid processes by introducing institutional innovations, accommodating new actors in aid policy and delivery, and responding more sensitively to public opinion and independent advice. At the international level, contests have come from the Development Assistance Committee/Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (DAC/OECD), the USA, and China. Through these contests, Japan has emerged as a more rounded aid donor. Its new aid model blends Western principles with concepts of ‘self-help’, favouring large infrastructure projects that serve both Japan's and recipient countries’ interests.

Japan Addresses the Global HIV/AIDS Crisis: The Roles of Media and Civil Society in Shaping Perceptions and Aid

Japan’s response to the global HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s was lukewarm, due mainly to the absence of a domestic perception of AIDS as an immediate threat The key determinants of that perception were rare cases of AIDS infections in Japan, a detrimental media role, and weak civil society. Japanese media contributed to shaping a flawed image of AIDS as a foreign disease or a disease of homosexuality and promiscuity. Moreover, civil society organizations were not strong enough to create momentum for reformulating the distorted perception or catalyzing specific policies. Not until the early 1990s did Japan’s global AIDS funding increase. The policy shift was in tandem with the rising influence of newly emerged civil activist groups.

Local Levels of Participation in Japan's Foreign Aid and Cooperation

This study will examine the determinants of local Japanese government involvement in decentralized international cooperation by taking an actor-specific approach to three outstanding cases: Shiga Prefecture, Kitakyushu City, and Yokohama City. It will look beneath the aggregate relationships to more qualitative evidence of localized motives for Japanese cooperation with developing countries.

Japan's Foreign Aid Policy to Angola and Mozambique

This article compares Japan's aid policies to Angola and Mozambique since 1950. It argues that East-West rivalry prevented Japan from providing aid to them, particularly after 1975. The post-Cold War period enabled Japan to assist the countries' transitions from war to peace as part of a peacebuilding approach originating in Japan's traditional development cooperation in Asia. As recipient countries of Japanese aid, they are contrasting examples of sub-Saharan Africa reform ownership and explain why Mozambique is a priority nation to Japan in development terms while Angola, until recently, was not. The article affirms that Japanese decision-making with regard to Angola and Mozambique reflects both international pressures and domestic interests influenced by international factors and domestic changes. It concludes that the TICAD's development approach, which emphasizes the applicability of the Asian experiences in Africa, peacebuilding, and human security as a component of Japanese foreign policy, has boosted Japan's ‘soft-power’ role in the international system.

Japan's Foreign Aid and Its Dynamics in Southeast Asian Politics

Japan's Foreign Aid and Its Dynamics in Southeast Asian Politics

Japan's Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions. Edited By David Arase. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2005. 312 pp. £75.00. Cloth and paperback.

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Japan's Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions (review)

Japan's Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions (review)

Japan's Foreign Aid Policy to Africa Since the Tokyo International Conference on African Development

Japan celebrated its fiftieth year as a major donor in official development assistance in 2004, it is appropriate to reflect on the forces and motivations behind the implementation of foreign aid.1 While the literature on Japan's foreign aid has been informative overall, most of it has focused on the relationship between Japan and other Asian recipient countries. Certainly there is good reason for this emphasis, considering that 90 percent of Japanese aid targets Asian countries. However, the reasons for Japan's official development assistance (ODA) policy to Asia are different, in many significant ways, from its reasons for providing aid to Africa. Previous research has tended to conflate information about Japan's motives towards Africa with its motives towards Asia. This article seeks to

News Media Coverage Influence on Japan's Foreign Aid Allocations

This study explores the role that news coverage plays in the allocation of Japanese development aid. Conceptually, it is expected that democratic foreign policy officials, including those working in bureaucratic governmental structures will try to match the magnitude of their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of the recipient. News media salience serves an easily accessible indicator of that domestic political importance and, in the case of foreign aid, this suggests that higher levels of news coverage of a less-developed country will lead to higher aid commitments. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in Japanese aid distributions. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that separating grant aid from other forms of aid is critical for the empirical examination of the determinants of Japanese aid.

Japan and Greater China: Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century (review)

Reviewed by: Japan and Greater China: Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century Marie Söderberg (bio) Greg Austin and Stuart Harris. Japan and Greater China: Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. 338 pp. Hardcover $38.00, ISBN 0-8248-2469-5. The theme of this book, the relationship between Japan and China, is of great relevance to development in Asia and indeed to the world at large. This relationship is, as the writers point out, a highly asymmetrical as well as a complex and emotional one. The book assesses this relationship at the start of the twenty-first century by looking at how the mutual interactions of these two countries have shaped or been shaped by domestic and international circumstances. It seeks to go beyond a documentation of what either of the two governments does with regard to the other. It seeks to explain why they have pursued their respective policies in bilateral relations and to ascertain how these relations affect the domestic and international priorities of each and how any adjustment of these priorities then feeds back into the bilateral relations. This is a wider approach than what is usually taken; the authors claim that traditional approaches to the theory of international relations that analyze military or security imperatives independent of domestic social and economic imperatives are inadequate to explain great-power relations in today's complex world. The relationship revealed in their research in this sense speaks to issues relating [End Page 359] to theories of political economy and of military power. The authors do not really address these theoretical issues, however, but instead offer the reader a picture of the Chinese-Japanese relationship from a variety of angles. This study is based on the authors' collaborative research over a five-year period, with numerous visits to both Japan and China. The research is thorough, and the book contains an abundance of references to secondary sources on both countries. The authors begin with a chapter positioning Japan and China relative to the global order, following an introduction on lessons from history focusing on four major issues: interests, structures, institutions, and norms. We are presented four different stories of the relationship relative to the global order, but, to a certain extent, these four are interrelated, which means that there is also a considerable amount of overlapping and repetition. Chapter 2 is about images and attitudes and again brings us back to the issue of wartime history but from a different angle; it then continues with a discussion of public opinion and cultural relations. The third and fourth chapters deal comprehensively with bilateral security relations and the issue of Taiwan, and they consider the role of the United States in the relationship. The next chapter concerns the nature of Japan's foreign aid to China and starts off with the statement that Japanese development assistance to China is, in political terms, the single most important dimension of economic relations between the two countries. This is a highly questionable statement considering the fact that total foreign aid only amounts to 0.2 percent of Chinese GNP. Foreign direct investment as well as trade are much more important dimensions of the economic relationship. In assessing the impact of the China aid program on Japan's economic interests, two levels of analysis are used, and these are related to the different motivations involved. One is that aid fosters friendly relations and the other that it provides opportunities for Japanese business firms. This is a far too simplistic view. Improved infrastructure, financed with aid money, in the form of roads, railways, ports, and power plants has been necessary for the industrialization of China. This infrastructure has enabled firms from Japan, as well as from other countries, to start production in China by utilizing an abundant labor supply that allows the firms to cut costs. The potential market of a more developed China also has had an impact on Japanese economic interests. The history of this aid relationship gets detailed coverage, but the chapter would have profited from an updating of more recent developments. The table showing the sector allocation of aid...

Rent-Seeking and India's Electric Power Development-The Interaction of Internal Political Economy and Japan's Foreign Aid Policy

Rent-Seeking and India's Electric Power Development-The Interaction of Internal Political Economy and Japan's Foreign Aid Policy

Why did Japan suspend foreign aid to China? Japan's foreign aid decision-making and sources of aid sanction

The Japanese government has suspended part of its foreign aid to China twice in the past 12 years: first in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square incident, and secondly in response to China’s nuclear testing in 1995. These two foreign aid suspension cases illustrate that the Japanese government has established extension and suspension of its foreign aid as a multiple-use foreign policy tool, as the country became the top aid donor in the world in the 1990s.The cases also indicate the importance of Japanese domestic politics and its public opinion in supporting the government’s unilateral foreign policy actions, as foreign aid becomes an important policy tool aiming to enhance the security environment for Japan. Both of these conclusions go beyond the conventional theoretical understanding of Japan’s foreign policy-making, which has emphasized Japan as a reactive state with single-minded pursuit of its economic interests.

Japan's Foreign Aid after the San Francisco Peace Treaty

AbstractThe year 2001 marks the fifty-year anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Conference that concluded the U.S. occupation of Japan, and defined the future course of Japan's foreign relations with the rest of the world, particularly with Asia. During these fifty years, Japan transformed itself from a war-devastated nation of poverty and instability to the second richest economy of the world after the United States. Japan's foreign relations with Asia remains of critical importance, and Japan's foreign aid, the largest of the world in the past decade, contributed significantly in shaping the relationship.

Gaiatsu and Japan's Foreign Aid: Rethinking theReactive-Proactive Debate

This article examines the role of the United States in Japan's foreign aid policy. The Japanese government often alters its course of action under U.S. pressure even if doing so would apparently undermine its own interests. Japan's unusual responsiveness to U.S. preferences appears counterintuitive given the fact that at least in the realm of foreign aid Japan's power clearly surpassed that of the United States. This article posits that Japan's responsiveness stems in large part from the asymmetry of interdependence between the two countries. After critically reviewing the existing literature, it conducts two case studies to examine the validity of the argument. The article concludes that the United States played a crucial role but Japan's responsiveness to American pressure reflects an act of will rather than a lack of coherent policy stemming from bureaucratic politics. The findings have important implications to the ongoing debate over whether Japan is a “reactive state.”

New Challenges to Japan's Aid: An Analysis of Aid Policy-Making

I N THE LAST DECADE, Japan has emerged as the largest aid donor in the world. Recently, though,Japan's foreign aid has reached a turning point in the face of domestic and international challenges. The political and economic conditions affecting Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) have been rapidly changing, forcingJapanese decision makers to reexamine their existing aid programs. Meeting these challenges, however, has been difficult as the Japanese aid administration is fragmented and involves intense competition and bargaining among various policy-making units. Contrary to the popular Western notion ofJapan as a monolithic entity, Japanese aid policy-making groups exhibit diverse views and opinions as they perceiveJapan's ODA from their own sectarian interests. Therefore, to analyze howJapanese aid leaders have viewed and dealt with these emerging challenges necessitates careful scrutiny of the interests, goals, and policies of a variety of Japanese aid organizations and groups. Circumstances surrounding Japan's ODA to Vietnam and Cambodia typify the international and domestic challenges tojapanese aid. The reduced U.S. presence in Indochina has leftJapan with a major opening for achieving economic and diplomatic influence in the region. Japan resumed full-scale aid to Vietnam in 1992, well before the U.S. had lifted its own embargo on that country. Tokyo also sent Self-Defense Forces to Cambodia in 1992-93 to take part in peace-keeping operations of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), representing the first deployment of Japanese forces overseas since World War II. Japanese aid and involvement in Indochina can be seen as an opening shot in defining a new Japanese role in the post-cold war world. This has brought about conflict, at times sharp, among various policy-making leaders in Japan about the role that Tokyo's aid to Indochina can and ought to play. While Japan is devoting substantial aid resources to the region,' exactly how and for what purposes aid policies should be carried out is a focus of contention.

Japan's Foreign Aid to Thailand and to the Philippines, by David M. Potter

Journal Article Japan’s Foreign Aid to Thailand and to the Philippines Get access Japan’s Foreign Aid to Thailand and to the Philippines by David M. Potter. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1996. 206 pp. $45.00. Miranda A. Schreurs Miranda A. Schreurs University of Maryland at College Park Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 112, Issue 3, Fall 1997, Pages 513–514, https://doi.org/10.2307/2657581 Published: 15 September 1997

Japan's Foreign Aid to Thailand and the Philippines

Introduction - Overview of Japan's Aid Programme - Overview of Japan's Foreign Aid to Thailand and the Philippines - Japan's Aid and Thai Development - Japan's Foreign Aid and Philippine Development - The Accommodation of Interests in Japan's Aid to Thailand and the Philippines - Case-Studies in the Accommodation of Interests - Conclusion - Bibliography - Index

Japan's Foreign Aid to Thailand and the Philippines.

Japan's Foreign Aid to Thailand and the Philippines.