MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 49

cracy originated in the prewar structure. It persisted and was reinforced because of the harsh period of postwar reconstruction. During the late 1940's and early 1950's the bureaucracy fought for its policies, and against interference by the none-too-competent political parties of the time, by invoking the old idea that the bureaucracy speaks for the national interest and the political parties only for local, particular, or selfish interests. General wisdom was said to reside in the state and only particular wisdom in the society, a political philosophy that was not at all alien to Japan, in contrast to some of the democratic institutions founded by SCAP Kojima Akira traces this ideology to the state's monopoly in the Meiji era of the power to establish the "orthodoxy of the public interest," everything not so designated being, by definition, part of the private interest and therefore subordinate.

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Interest groups exist in Japan in great numbers, but there is no theory of pluralism that legitimates their political activities. The parties developed what strength they had before the war by representing private interests to the government, and this heritage too was passed on to their postwar successors. One of the reasons that there are so few private members' bills passed is that virtually all of them are based on appeals from constituents or are intended to serve some special interest. Many party politicians themselves accept the orthodoxy of a vertical relationship between the state's activities and their own activities. "They tend," writes Campbell, "to perceive voters as animated almost solely by particularistic, pork-barrel desires rather than by concern over issues of broad social policy."

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Although Japan's fused relationship between the executive and legislative branches may be disappointing to liberals, from the point of view of the developmental state it has some hidden advantages. In the postwar world the Diet has replaced the Imperial institution in the role of what Titus has called "the supreme ratifier," the agency that legitimates decisions taken elsewhere.

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Like the emperor under the Meiji Constitution, the Diet is the public locus of sovereignty, but the same discrepancy that existed earlier between authority and power is still maintained, and for at least some of the same reasons. There is, however, one major difference: the Diet performs these vital functions much more safely, effectively, and democratically than the Imperial institution ever did. For the bureaucracy to have mobilized resources and committed them to a heavy industrial structure as it did in postwar Japan, the claims of interest groups and individual citizens had to be held in check. Although the high-growth policies of the bureaucracy ultimately raised the economic level of all citizens and may thereby have served their diverse interests, the citizens themselves