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Japan's Top-Down Policy Process to Dispatch the SDF to Iraq

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2006

TOMOHITO SHINODA
TOMOHITO SHINODA
Affiliation:
International University of Japan, Minami Uonuma City, Niigata 949-7277, Japantshinoda@iuj.ac.jp
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Abstract

In July 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi successfully passed the legislation to dispatch ground SDF units to Iraq in the Diet. His top-down policy process was completely different from Japan's traditional bottom-up system, which Aurelia George Mulgan calls the ‘Un-Westminster System’ in which the bureaucrats in the ministries play a central role with the LDP being the only political power to negotiate with them. Mulgan also argues that the system has not changed despite recent institutional changes. On the contrary, this paper illustrates how Koizumi and his Cabinet took advantage of the strengthened authority of the Cabinet Secretariat to initiate policies, and successfully pushed the controversial national security legislation through LDP decision-making organs and the Diet by gaining support first from the coalition partners, presenting a new style of Westminster system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 2006 , pp. 71 - 91
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author is grateful reviewers of this journal for useful comments on the draft of this study, and to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science's Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research for financial support to this study. This case study was first introduced as Chapter 3 of the author's Japanese language book, Kantei Gaiko [Foreign Policy by the Prime Minister's Residence] (Tokyo: Asahi Sensho, October 2004).