East-West Center 218d ago

Japan’s defense policy has evolved dramatically over the past three decades. A large body of scholarship has focused on the growing role of elected officials in security and defense policymaking. Some scholars argue that individual political leaders—such as Shinzo Abe—played a critical role in driving defense policy change, while others emphasize the impact of institutional reforms since the 1990s that have empowered political leaders to initiate and control the policymaking process. As a result, it is widely accepted that seiji-shudō (政治主導), or political leadership, has emerged at the expense of a once-dominant bureaucracy that traditionally guided Japan’s major policies. This talk challenges this conventional wisdom by revisiting the role of bureaucrats in defense policymaking. Japanese policy officials not only play a crucial role in drafting policies initiated by elected leaders, but also actively pursue their own preferred policies—even when these preferences diverge from those of their political superiors. How do they do this? What techniques do they employ? Are there specific policy mechanisms that allow bureaucrats to advance their preferences? This presentation seeks to answer these questions.