Changing Laodicean Politics in Japan-I : What China Can Learn from Japan's Experience
Introduction As the second decade of the 21st century approaches, China has been in the spotlight among academics, media, businesses, and politics. The book, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by Martin Jacques, represents an excellent example. From the book title, one can assume what Jacques discusses in his book. Sound familiar? Yes, this is déjà vu all over again. About three decades ago, the book, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America by Ezra Vogel, also discusses Japan, addressing how it was going to overtake the United States. Vogel’s expression – Japan as number one – became a famous phrase in contemporary Japanese history describing Japan’s economic superpower during its heyday. Furthermore, since the 1980s some naïve scholars called Japan Pax Nipponica, expecting that Japan would dominate the “Pacific Century” in the 21st century. Recently, a similar term -“Asian Century,” referred to an irreversible political and economic shift from the global power from West to East (i.e., from the US to China), coined by a scholar in Europe. Yet, the “Pacific Century” is no longer a credible reality for Japan. Unfortunately, Japan’s phenomenon is lasted only decades, basically disappearing from the front page of media attention, as well as, fervent discussions among political leaders, academic cycles, and business communities. As the financial and economic crises have loomed, Japan is no longer viewed as a model to be followed, respected, and appreciated. What happened inside Japanese politics? How did Japan slip from “number one” to number “nothing?” Why did the Japanese take so long to change the regime in the 2009 election? What can China learn from Japan’s experiences? This paper analyzes contemporary Japanese politics, especially political reforms since the 1980s, which ultimately lead to the end of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 8 domination. After more than 20 years of the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy, to change and to reform LDP, is too difficult, too little, and too late. In addition to the incomplete series of reforms and the ill-fated domestic policies implemented by political leaders, the never-ending corruption scandal cycle
Japan's Postwar Party Politics Masaru Kohno Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, pp. xii, 172
So what should the West do? Crnobrnja advocates an extended military presence under United States direction and European-led financing of reconstruction. He warns that the alternative could be a new war in and over Bosnia, with the wider consequences of which many have warned through the conflict. He is right to do so. The Balkans are full of weak and fractured states, as Albania's recent collapse underlines. If anything, the risk of overspill has increased. At the same time, the US has been tiring of its leadership role in European security, while in European capitals budgetary rigour has become the mantra. The big picture is not encouraging. The strong points of The Yugoslav Drama are many. The author is a practitioner, a former Yugoslav diplomat who represented his country in Brussels, and who has keen insight into the workings of the various institutions that have been involved in the conflict. Himself a Serb, he castigates those members of the Serb elite who misused their community's nationalism in a desperate effort to stay professionally afloat in post-Cold War Europe. He writes then with credibility about how similar concerns were played out in Yugoslavia's other republics, and why the responsibility for the country's breakdown and, in part, even the atrocities that came in its wake, has to be shared. He dispenses convincingly with an argument that was often tossed about in the West as its governments agonized over the cost and terms of engagements. For Crnobrjna, there is no Balkan national megalomania, including indelible grudges and bestial behaviour, to which communities of the area succumb whenever they are released from the containing grip of superior force. Less than expert Yugo-watchers will have to read the book in tandem with a chronology, a supply of maps (larger than the three provided here) and a who's who. Beyond that, the editing in the final chapters is substandard and the analysis is sometimes ambiguous. A prime example of this can be found in the passages relating to Marshal Tito's track record and legacy. Did the Yugoslav leader stand up to Joseph Stalin or was he pushed out of the emerging communist bloc? Was he a creative patriot or an apparatchik-opportunist? And what was really his part in the dissolution of his country? But these are hard questions, and Mihailo Crnobrnja is not the first to fail to come completely to grips with them.
To Devolve or Not To Devolve? Welfare Reform in the States
This article analyzes variation in the degree to which states have responded to the devolution of welfare at the federal level by devolving authority over welfare policy to local government. I find that to the extent that states have devolved authority to lower levels of government, they tend to be states that already had a high degree of involvement of local government in welfare provision. In states without this record of local government involvement, the devolution that has occurred has not generated greater involvement of local government, but rather responsibility has been devolved to regional entities with ties to workforce development and with a substantial degree of business involvement. As states gain increasing authority over a redistributive policy, they may begin to treat it as a subset of a larger developmental policy—workforce development.