THE NEW GOVERNMENT’S AGENDA

The Democratic Party of Japan won a resounding victory in the August 30 election for the House of Representatives. Now that a DPJ administration is taking shape, the focus shifts to what this new government will attempt to do. Below I examine the changes the Democrats are proposing for Japan’s administrative structures and the content of the policies they intend to pursue, based on an examination of the party’s manifesto outlining its election platform and policy goals.

My evaluation looks in particular at the planned administrative changes. An article in the July 2009 issue of Chûô Kôron by Kan Naoto, now acting president of the DPJ, provides an overview of these reforms; we carry its translation in this section.

According to the Democrats, three key problems that have come to the fore under Liberal Democratic Party rule are (1) the fact that politicians have left many decisions up to the bureaucracy; (2) the wielding of decision-making power by both the cabinet and the ruling party, with the latter group of politicians focusing on delivering largesse to their electoral districts while leaving other decisions up to the cabinet; and (3) the weakness of the Kantei, the prime minister’s executive office, which led to a lack of coherence in cabinet actions and a tendency for individual ministries to draw up piecemeal policy plans for their respective fiefdoms.

The DPJ presents three solutions to these problems. First, politicians must take the lead in crafting the nation’s policy. Second, there must be a "unitary system" of policymaking centered on the cabinet, rather than spread among other ruling-party organs. And third, the Kantei must be prepared to wield decisive leadership.

In specific terms, the party has outlined five plans for revising Japan’s administrative structures. First, it will select over 100 Diet members from its ranks and assign them to work within the bureaucracy as ministers, senior vice-ministers, parliamentary secretaries, and ministerial assistants. Second, it will establish cabinet committees of several ministers each; the ministers will make their decisions following discussion in these small groups. These committees are to replace the meetings that have taken place in the past to coordinate policy among multiple ministries. Third, the party will form a National Strategy Bureau within the Kantei to work on laying down the basic direction of key national policies, such as annual budget outlines. Fourth, the party has stated its intent to carry out personnel decisions for senior civil servants “based on performance evaluations in a context of politician-led decision-making.” This is not entirely clear, but it appears to signal a more active role than before for the ruling party in managing high-level appointments in the bureaucracy. And fifth, the Democrats will establish an Administrative Reform Council tasked with carefully reviewing previous budgets and programs and overhauling the nation’s administration.

This Democratic program to alter the nation’s administrative structures is an extension of the reform course set with the political and administrative reforms of the 1990s. The office of the prime minister saw its power increase with the electoral system reforms in 1994 and the reorganization of the nation’s central bureaucracy in 2001. In this sense, the cabinet has already gained an enhanced role in the policy formation process. However, while the policymaking organs in the LDP maintained significant power following those two major reforms, it is unlikely that the DPJ’s internal decision-making institutions will retain the same degree of power. For this reason, the cabinet will play a larger role in the process of crafting policy, leading to the achievement of the Democrats’ second stated goal, the creation of the unitary, cabinet-centered policymaking system. It should also be noted that even under LDP rule, politicians were in fact wielding greater leadership than the mandarins. This means that DPJ reform efforts aimed at wresting power away from the bureaucracy are not likely to bring about real change in the way policy decisions are made.

While the Democrats’ planned reforms may well boost the authority of the cabinet, this does not necessarily mean that the Kantei will see its functions bolstered, or that the prime minister himself will gain greater leadership. The reason for this lies in the nature of the party’s proposed National Strategy Bureau and cabinet committees.

The National Strategy Bureau is today attracting considerable attention. It is far from clear, however, whether the establishment of this new organ will enhance the Kantei’s authority. The Kantei has already become somewhat bloated. Since the reorganization of the nation’s central bureaucracy, the Cabinet Secretariat has seen its organization expand, and there is also the Cabinet Office, a supplementary institution to the secretariat, to reckon with. If the National Strategy Bureau is set up within the Cabinet Secretariat, the resulting opacity in the chain of command will be a problem. The DPJ also has yet to clarify the relationship between this bureau and the proposed Administrative Reform Council. Unless it is clear who makes the calls, the policymaking process is likely to be muddled.

It is of course possible that the Democrats will set the bureau at the apex of the Kantei to clearly display the chain of command. Even in this case, though, there will be problems to deal with. The head of this bureau would wield formidable influence. If this is a minister with this bureau as his sole portfolio, we will see a complicated power dynamic between him and the chief cabinet secretary, and the Kantei itself may end up lacking a coherent control structure as a result. If the bureau chief has significant discretion in designing policies, there will be less room for the prime minister to exercise power in policy formulation. Tapping a deeply trusted politician to fill this position would be one way for the prime minister to head off this situation, but there is no guarantee that their opinions would remain in sync throughout the bureau chief’s period of service.

The proposed multiministerial cabinet committees, too, are problematic. Installing the prime minister as the head of each of these committees would greatly boost his leadership, but it is hardly realistic for one person to serve in all these posts. This gives rise to another problem. The very creation of these committees grants new levels of authority to the various ministers in them vis-à-vis the prime minister: even the premier would be hard-pressed to ignore the policy recommendations of several of his cabinet’s ministers.

Still another problem arises in the positioning of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy. This council has been a useful tool for the prime minister, who chairs it, to flex his leadership muscle within the cabinet. But Hatoyama Yukio, the DPJ president and incoming prime minister, has stated his intention to abolish this body. The CEFP has played a guiding role in policy on a broad range of key domestic issues to date, serving also as a means for the prime minister to make his presence felt on the policy scene. Hatoyama evidently sees the creation of the cabinet committees as sufficient to replace this organ, but these new committees come with the potential problems I describe above.

In conclusion, I will move beyond how the Democrats intend to reform Japan’s administrative structures to examine the policies they seek to implement. The DPJ election manifesto includes new benefits for households with children, a renewed medical care system, income subsidies for farmers, and the repeal of the “provisional” gasoline tax, among other steps. Implementing all these new measures would cost an additional ¥16.8 trillion.

The policies now being trumpeted by the DPJ are all meant to provide new services to the Japanese people. The question is how the party intends to back up these promises fiscally. The party stresses that it can obtain the required funding by reviewing public-works expenditures and central government subsidies, as well as by slashing overhead from the “special budget” accounts. When a new party comes into power, it is a given that it will review the policies put in place by its predecessor and trim budgets where it can. Realistically speaking, though, it will be very difficult to implement all the policies the DPJ is now calling for without higher taxes, in particular a higher consumption tax rate. Despite this, Hatoyama has indicated he is not willing to consider hiking the consumption tax for the time being.

It is also important to examine what does not appear in the DPJ’s policy promises. Namely, the platform contains no hint of how the party intends to promote the healthy growth of the Japanese economy. Tax revenues are needed to fund the various services the nation provides for the people, and economic growth is a requirement if those revenues are to be secured. But the Japanese economy today faces a host of serious challenges, including the global economic crisis, the rapid graying of Japanese society, and fierce competition from other Asian nations in an increasingly globalized economy. Other than a few words calling for the promotion of technological innovation in environmental fields, though, the DPJ is largely silent on these issues.

As I have noted, the Democrats’ plans for administrative reform and government policies are fraught with problems. These are compounded by the fact that the party is taking the reins for the first time ever, with very few members who have actual experience in running a government. For the DPJ, a major challenge will be how well the party can address the various other policy issues that crop up in addition to the ones already on its agenda. We must hope that the process of transfer of political power will bring new depth of experience to politicians across the board, thereby raising the caliber of policy and bringing about the legislation that Japan truly needs. (Takenaka Harukata, Associate Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

© 2009 Japan Echo Inc.