Japan and the United States face many similar challenges of governance. Japan is confronted with a serious crisis of governance with profound implications for its ability to deal with the decade-long economic stagnation and the deteriorating public trust of political processes. Governance for a New Century explores the evolving patterns of governance in the two countries as they grapple with the changes wrought by the forces of globalization, international events, and domestic crises.

Focusing on the volatile period of Japanese politics since the burst of the bubble economy in the 1990s, this volume discusses Japanese public opinion, elections, political finance, party politics, policymaking, institutional reform, and the role of the private sector in public affairs. Five Japanese scholars and practitioners write about the efforts under way in Japan to restructure its electoral and governing processes and to cope with its major policy challenges, and five American policy experts respond with insights from American experience. Contributors endorse a positive but measured approach to political reform in Japan, and American experience recounted here offers both encouragement and pointed cautions for Japanese reformers.

Chapters

Overview

Thomas E. Mann, W. Averrell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies, Brookings Institution

Takeshi Sasaki, President, University of Tokyo

Distrust of Politics: Will Voters Transform the Nature of Governance?

Shin'ichi Yoshida, Editor of News Projects and Opinion, Asahi Shimbun; Visiting Professor, University of Tokyo

Why Does the Wind Blow? The Economy and the Future of Japanese Political Reform

E.J. Dionne Jr., Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program, Brookings Institution

Breaking the State Monopoly on Public Affairs

Hideki Kato, Representative, Japan Initiative; Professor of the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University

The Tides of Reform Arrive in Japan

Paul C. Light, Vice President and Director of the Governmental Studies, Brookings Institution

Change in the Japanese Policymaking Process

Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Member of the House of Representatives [Liberal Democratic Party]

The Promise and Peril of Legislative Reform

James M. Lindsay, Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program, Brookings Institution

Money and Politics in Japan

Masaki Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Policy, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, Warsaw University

Managing the Problems of Political Finance

Thomas E. Mann

The Changing Shape of Party Politics and Governance in Japan

Takeshi Sasaki

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Japan

R. Kent Weaver, Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program, Brookings Institution

Index