MITI and the Japanese miracle

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reaucrats allied themselves with the military against old-line ministries such as Finance and Foreign Affairs to advance their industrial development schemes. However, during the war MCI and MM civilians clashed constantly with the military bureaucrats. MITI was born of a struggle between the Foreign Affairs and industrial bureaucrats. High-speed growth saw MITI constantly pitted against the Fair Trade Commission and, to a lesser but probably more important extent, the Ministry of Finance. All the established ministries compete with each other to extend their influence over the smaller agencies (Economic Planning, Defense, Environment, and the others) and to place their transferees in positions of influence throughout the government.

This kind of conflict fulfills important functions for the developmental state; not least of all, it invigorates the bureaucracy, giving it a strong esprit de corps and providing competitive checks to complacency, bureaucratic rigidity, and arrogance. The greatest threat to a bureaucrat's security comes not from the political world or private-interest groups but from other bureaucrats. On the other hand, conflicts among bureaucrats can also cause slow decision-making, distortions in policy to accommodate competing bureaucratic interests, and avoidance of high-risk problems. There is no way to avoid these drawbacks entirely, and coordination (

chosei

*) of the bureaucracy is easily the most frustrating and time-consuming, yet critical, task of the leaders of the state.

The Japanese have developed several innovative practices to try to mitigate bureaucratic competition. One is to give the jobs of initial policy formation and coordination to younger, not-so-exposed officials, a tactic that leaves their seniors in the position of appearing only to approve policies coming from below. Senior officials can thus help make and coordinate decisions without being constrained by attributions of personal authorship. Another useful practice is the recruitment of ministers and other senior political leaders from among former senior bureaucrats, thereby giving powers of coordination to leaders with expert knowledge of the bureaucracy, "old boy" connections, and hierarchical relations with serving bureaucrats. (This practice can, of course, merely raise the bureaucratic infighting to a higher level, as occurred in the case of Yoshida versus MITI). Still another Japanese practice is the use of the budgetary process to effect coordination, which requires that budget-making be kept in bureaucratic hands and greatly elevates the influence of the Ministry of Finance. A fourth innovation is the use of bureaucratic proxies to try to effect coordination, as in the deliberation councils. Other practices of bu-