13 - Neoliberal Turn of State Conservatism in Japan

Summary

This chapter explores the shifting modes of authoritarian legality in postwar Japan. In spite of the sweeping democratization reforms implemented during the US Occupation, elements of bureaucratic authoritarian legality persisted in postwar Japan as many institutional and cultural legacies of the prewar state survived the change of constitutional regime. Their lasting influence finally came to be challenged when the neoliberal reform discourses impacted on the political, economic, and social life of the Japanese in the final phase of the Cold War. The neoliberal paradigm, at that time still couched in the larger liberal trends worldwide, looked set to liberate and empower the people. A priori bureaucratic control was to be replaced by a posteriori partisan checks and balances. The enhanced leadership of the prime minister that has thus resulted from the political and administrative reforms of the 1990s, however, transformed itself into a new mode of corporatist authoritarian legality when the party system collapsed in December 2012. The government of the day has since been left without any significant institutionalized check, critic, or opposition to speak of, and acts as if it can freely make and implement laws and interpret the constitution as it sees fit.