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- Convenor:
-
Giulio Pugliese
(Oxford University - EUI)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Tomohito Shinoda
(International University of Japan)
- Discussant:
-
Tomohito Shinoda
(International University of Japan)
- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 05
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel enriches the fields of Foreign Policy Analysis and Japan's policy-making and argues that political leadership and professionalized input by military officials, PR strategists and an increasingly politicized decision-making system account for change in Japan's foreign and defense policy.
Long Abstract:
East Asia's rapidly deteriorating security environment has fuelled Japan's insecurity. The Abe Shinzō administration, in particular, has forcefully responded to the challenges posed by North Korea and an assertive China through important change in Japan's national security system. This project engages with the wider implications of such a change by tracking the evolution of three distinct aspects of Japan's foreign and security policy-making: the conduct of diplomacy in tandem with PR objectives, Japan's strategic arms export policy, and civil-military relations within the Ministry of Defense.
By enriching the study of Japan's policy-making and the broader field of Foreign Policy Analysis, this panel argues that, along with systemic factors at the international level, political leadership and professionalized input by military officials or key strategists accounts for change in Japan's foreign and defense policy. It focuses on recent Japanese administrations as case studies, especially the sitting Abe government and its important reforms in security and diplomatic practice. In so doing, this panel gauges the growing impact of the Kantei, the Prime Minister's Office, in foreign and defense policy-making to measure the growing "presidentialization" of Japanese decision-making, an under-researched and highly topical aspect of Japanese politics.
This panel is multi-disciplinary in spirit, also in terms of methodologies adopted: it will combine traditional Political Science approaches with narrative accounts that are closer to political history. As understood by diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis, historical narratives qualify as a useful common ground with Political Science's process-tracing 'to extract generalities from unique sequences of events.' Lastly, the panel makes active use of primary sources, including newspaper articles, official documentation, leaked State Department cables and elite interviews. This work is the culmination of the authors' recent, extensive fieldwork experiences in Japan. Each panel presentation sheds light on new thinking on Japanese diplomatic and security practice, while presenting new empirical evidence on topical matters, such as Sino-Japan and Japan-Russia relations, Japan's security activism, and the role of the military in policy-making.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Giulio Pugliese (Oxford University - EUI)
Paper short abstract:
Abe Shinzo's Grand Strategy aimed at balancing an assertive China points at the primacy of international factors in explaining foreign policy output. At the very same time, it will be argued, Abe's foreign policy has catered to the vagaries of domestic politics and Premier-centered "spin."
Paper long abstract:
A progressively changing post-Cold War order has brought along mounting insecurity and the need for states to respond to such changes through a reformulation of their main foreign policy line. In the Asia-Pacific, like elsewhere, the growing insistence by public officials on lofty strategic pronouncements is however also the by-product of a changed domestic political landscape, where charismatic leadership rests on the growing vagaries of a media-saturated public opinion environment.
Traditional theories of foreign policy have presented a dichotomous separation of foreign policy formation: the inside-out perspective stresses the domestic determinants of Japan's foreign policy; an outside-in (or systemic) approach favours broader international structural forces and dynamics, such as the distribution of power in the international system. More complex theories have presented a dualist or dialectical framework, where both international and domestic variables impact on foreign policy. This paper uses the case of Abe Shinzo's Grand Strategy and foreign policy formulation to make the case for the primacy of a systemic approach that, at the very same time, caters to the above-mentioned strictures of domestic politics. The presentation will try to advance a novel conceptualization of foreign policy formation in Japan and other mature democracies.
Sebastian Maslow (Sendai Shirayuri Women's College)
Paper short abstract:
Abe Shinzō's return was followed by broad changes to Japan's arms export policy. Integral to Abe's doctrine of a 'proactive pacifism', this paper traces the domestic security discourse driving these changes and looks at the institutions in place for governing the new weapons export policy.
Paper long abstract:
In stark contrast to the depiction of postwar Japan as a 'peace state' (heiwa kokka), on the cover of its June 2016 issue the liberal monthly Sekai asked if Japan will indeed become a 'merchant state of death' (shi no shōninkokka). This headline was meant to draw attention to the significant, yet little discussed, changes in the regulation of Japan's defense industry following Abe Shinzō's comeback in late 2012. As Abe pledged to 'reclaim' Japan's strength in international affairs, he lifted Japan's long-standing ban on weapons exports in April 2014 and established the 'Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology'. Japan has since pushed for joint research and export of arms technology. To facilitate this development, the Abe administration installed an Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency (ATLA) within the Ministry of Defense and allocated a staff of 1,800 to oversee Japan's new arms industry. The new agency is also meant to actively promote Japanese weapon exports. Moreover, the Abe government introduced funding to promote university-based research on weapon technology. Hence, tentative exports of Japan's Soryu submarine technology to Australia and the provision of seeker sensors for missile systems to the US and UK in 2014 epitomize the swift but fundamental change in Japan's arms policy.
This marks a clear departure from the 1967/1976 established restrictions on arms exports, which constituted the core of Japan's postwar pacifism. Tracing the domestic security discourse, the paper first explores the strategic causes driving Japan's changing arms export policy. In a second step, with a focus on the newly established National Security Council and the role of ATLA, the paper discusses the policy-making and screen mechanisms in place for governing Japan's new arms export policy. In sum, this paper illustrates how Japan's new arms export policy is an integral part of its evolving security doctrine of 'proactive contribution to peace' designed to strengthen old and to establish new security partnerships and to hedge a rising China.
Keywords: Japanese national security, arms exports, decision-making, proactive contribution to peace, Abe Shinzō
Simon Schwenke (Freie Universitaet Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
Recently, Japan changed its civilian control mechanism inside the MOD in several ways. The antagonism between civil bureaucrats and uniformed members of the Self-Defense Forces was replaced by a new system aiming at unity, effectiveness and political leadership in a severe security environment.
Paper long abstract:
Japan's civil-military relations have been unique among democratic states for various reasons. In the wake of WWII, a system of civilian control was created that assigned the control of the armed forces, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), to civilians, albeit non-elected bureaucrats rather than politicians. This system was called 'bunkan tōsei' or bureaucratic control of the armed forces, and also reflected Japan's post war security policy trajectory.
In 2007, the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) was upgraded to full ministerial status, but this was only the visible start of reforms that culminated in the institutional change of civilian control in Japan. Over the course of a few years, critical elements of the former system were dissolved. For example, the 'defense councilor' system (bureaucratic elites in charge of the internal bureaus), which hailed back to the creation of the JDA and has been the mainstay of bureaucratic influence, was abolished. Other important changes followed. Today, the uniformed members of the JSDF are much more influential inside the Ministry of Defense, thus affecting national security and defense policy-making.
The English and Japanese language literature on Japan's changing security policy has neglected issues of civilian control and lacks a close scrutiny of this subject. This essay fills that gap and argues that the incentives for reform were rooted in different configurations of the security environment and unit-level factors, such as domestic politics. Specifically, with the end of the Cold War, Japan faced a security environment marked by heightened uncertainty and unpredictability. Entering the 2000's, uncertainty was slowly replaced with more evident threats from North Korea and China. The nature and quality of security challenges and threats therefore have changed over time and created a different motivation for reform. Thus, the change of civilian control was initially aimed at creating a framework for overseas operations such as Peace Keeping Operations (PKO), but later aimed at coping with emerging threats. This process further increased the leverage of uniformed members in the decision-making process.