Can the BRIC university systems greatly increase the quantity of graduates in these developing countries and simultaneously achieve high enough quality to compete successfully at the higher end of the global knowledge economy?
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in 2009 with a commanding majority, ending fifty years of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Then, in 2012, just over three years later, the DPJ lost power in an equally stunning landslide loss to the LDP. This volume examines the DPJ’s remarkable ascendance, its policies once in power, and its dramatic fall.
What explains the DPJ’s rapid rise to power? Why was policy change under the DPJ limited, despite high expectations and promises of bold reform? Why has the party been paralyzed by internecine conflict?
Chapters in the volume cover: DPJ candidate recruitment; the influence of media coverage; nationalization of elections; electoral system constraints on policy change; the role of third parties; municipal mergers; the role of women; transportation policy; fiscal decentralization; information technology; response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; security strategy; and foreign policy. Japan under the DPJ makes important contributions to the study of Japanese politics, while drawing upon and advancing scholarship on a wider range of issues of interest to political scientists.
Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.
The Politics of Transition and Governance
Japan Studies Program at Shorenstein APARC has received a grant from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan for the New Channels project. The project aims to broaden the dialogue and understanding between the United States and Japan and to reinvigorate the alliance with a focus on 21st century challenges faced by both nations.
Under this multi-year project, the center will lead a new bilateral policy dialogue on U.S.-Japan relations in the 21st century. The annual dialogue will be held alternately at Stanford and at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, between Japanese scholars, entrepreneurs, and policymakers and their American counterparts, mostly from the West Coast of the United States, with an emphasis on engaging the rising experts in both countries.
The dialogue will be supported by creation of a Sasakawa Peace Fellowship in U.S.-Japan Relations at Stanford University, based at Shorenstein APARC. This fellowship will bring top notch scholars or policymakers to Shorenstein APARC for extended visits with responsibility for organizing the annual dialogue.
The close U.S.-Japan relationship has endured for 60 years, a tribute to the shared interests and friendship forged in the aftermath of World War II between the two former foes. It now must reinvigorate itself in the new century to face not only the traditional challenges of security but also common concerns that both countries are now facing in the era of globalization. Stanford University and the Shorenstein APARC look forward to taking on the challenge of creating New 21st Century Channels between the U.S. and Japan.
Update: In the elections held on July 21, Hirofumi Takinami was voted in as a member of the upper house. Takinami won the Fukui District, garnering over 70 percent of the votes, which is the largest vote margin in the history of the district. Takinami is not only the first non-incumbent to be elected in 18 years, but also the youngest candidate ever to be elected in the district.
The forthcoming Japanese upper-house election scheduled for July 21 will determine whether the ruling Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition, which returned to office last December, can gain a powerful majority in both houses of Japan’s parliament. But the election will also have a particular interest for the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Hirofumi Takinami, one of the LDP candidates for the upper house, running in the Fukui Prefecture, is a proud alum of Shorenstein APARC. Takinami spent two years (2009-2011) at Stanford as a visiting fellow in the Corporate Affiliates Program at Shorenstein APARC while he was employed in Japan’s Ministry of Finance. During his time here, he worked closely with APARC faculty, including former Ambassador to Japan and Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow Dr. Michael Armacost and Dr. Phillip Lipscy, on research that focused on the political economy of the financial crises in Japan and the United States. Takinami also co-authored a paper with Dr. Lipscy comparing financial crisis response in Japan and the United States, which is forthcoming in the Japanese Journal of Political Science.
Over the past few months, Takinami has been busy travelling all over Fukui Prefecture, which has received attention in recent years due to a city that shares its name with the current U.S. president, Obama. On some days Takinami might travel two hundred miles, visit more than ten different places, and meet a thousand people, but Takinami feels that the hard work will all be worthwhile.
When asked what inspired him to run for office, Takinami replied:
Starting from 1989, the ruling party of Japan has been annoyed by its weak power in the upper house. Thus, the upper house has been the center of a “political war” in Japan, which was one of the major reasons for the delayed policies of Japan during the “two lost decades.” In order to regain a decisive and progressive Japan, I determined I would run for the election.
Should Takinami be successful in his campaign, his term as a member of the upper house, or sangi-in, will be six years. Lipscy commented that Takinami’s chances for victory are very high: “Not only is Takinami well-qualified for the position, but the LDP is traditionally strong in Fukui and riding high on the popularity of Abenomics,” referring to the economic growth policies being pursued by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Should Takinami win office, we hope his experience here at Stanford will help to contribute to his goals for Japan.
A well-known puzzle in the study of Asian democratization is the inverse relationship between the level of democracy and the support for the "D" word. According to the latest Asian Barometer survey, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Cambodia have a much higher level of overt support for democracy than those well-recognized democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. To unravel this puzzle, the authors develop a new regression method for the two-dimensional typological analysis including the "D" word and the liberal democratic attitude. Four ideal types of democratic orientation are defined and analyzed: Consistent Democrats (high support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Critical Democrats (low support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Non-Democrats (low support for democracy, low liberal democratic value), and Superficial Democrats (High support for democracy, low liberal democratic value). Different from most of the regression methods, the dependent variables in typological regression include the radius and the azimuth and therefore transform the categorical nature of the two-by-two typology into distinctive types with a continuous character. The preliminary result indicates the high support rate of the "D" word in those less democratic countries is associated with a phenomenon that the word "democracy" has lost its distinctive semantic meaning and could embrace all desirable political values, covering any variety of political systems in the world.
In our current era, the advent of digital technologies and accelerating globalization is driving ever-faster commoditization of firms and products. With rapidly improving Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools, manufacturing is decomposed with finer granularity, and corporate functions can be outsourced and offshored more than ever before. Services can be unbundled into activities that can be taken apart, reconfigured, and transformed with the application of algorithms. Overall, firms are experiencing accelerating shifts in the sweet-spot for markets and business models in their search for sustainable advantage.
As firms struggle to adjust in this global, digital world, governments are also under pressure to examine their options to retain value in their national contexts; wealthy nations face the challenge of how to remain wealthy.
Japan is no exception, and from this vantage it is worth reconsidering the potential role that industrial policy can play in its growth strategy. We will proceed in three sections, each of which builds from our previous research (indicated below the title), towards a set of recommendations for thinking about industrial policy in this digital, global era. Each point contributes something new to Japan’s discourse about a new growth strategy.
