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Japan Formal Policy Development
After a largely informal process within elite circles
in which
ideas were discussed and developed, steps might be taken
to
institute more formal policy development. This process
often took
place in deliberation councils (shingikai). There
were about
200 shingikai, each attached to a ministry; their
members
were both officials and prominent private individuals in
business,
education, and other fields. The shingikai played a
large
role in facilitating communication among those who
ordinarily might
not meet. Given the tendency for real negotiations in
Japan to be
conducted privately (in the nemawashi, or root
binding,
process of consensus building), the shingikai often
represented a fairly advanced stage in policy formulation
in which
relatively minor differences could be thrashed out and the
resulting decisions couched in language acceptable to all.
These
bodies were legally established but had no authority to
oblige
governments to adopt their recommendations.
The most important deliberation council during the
1980s was
the Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform,
established
in March 1981 by Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko. The
commission had
nine members, assisted in their deliberations by six
advisers,
twenty-one "expert members," and around fifty
"councillors"
representing a wide range of groups. Its head, Keidanren
president
Doko Toshio, insisted that government agree to take its
recommendations seriously and commit itself to reforming
the
administrative structure and the tax system. In 1982 the
commission
had arrived at several recommendations that by the end of
the
decade had been actualized. These implementations included
tax
reform; a policy to limit government growth; the
establishment, in
1984, of the Management and Coordination Agency to replace
the
Administrative Management Agency in the Office of the
Prime
Minister; and privatization of the state-owned railroad
and
telephone systems. In April 1990, another deliberation
council, the
Election Systems Research Council, submitted proposals
that
included the establishment of single-seat constituencies
in place
of the multiple-seat system.
Another significant policy-making institution in the
early
1990s was the LDP's Policy Research Council. It consisted
of a
number of committees, composed of LDP Diet members, with
the
committees corresponding to the different executive
agencies.
Committee members worked closely with their official
counterparts,
advancing the requests of their constituents, in one of
the most
effective means through which interest groups could state
their
case to the bureaucracy through the channel of the ruling
party.
Data as of January 1994
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