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Paper short abstract:

This article explores the similarities and differences in the pre-legislative policy-making activities between Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito.

Paper long abstract:

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito have maintained their ruling coalition since 1999, except for about three years when they lost their power. As ruling parties, these two parties have the prerogative to scrutinise the government draft bills to be submitted to the parliament (preliminary review rules (jizen-shinsa)). However, these policy-making activities in the pre-legislative stage have yet to be thoroughly investigated. This article analyses the data of policy meetings by their Policy Research Councils(PRCs) from 2003 to 2022 and clarifies the similarities and differences between the two parties in policy-making. The result shows that, even with the size difference, both parties, especially the policy divisions, have held policy meetings in a very similar way - examining the guideline, the draft bills, the budget and the private members' bills through hearings since 2012. However, we can also find the differences in policy areas and participants. These findings suggest an important implication for understanding how two parties with different ideologies and support bases could manage a successful coalition.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the challenges that Japan’s rapid demographic aging poses for the democratic system along the dimensions of political participation, political representation, and policy-making. It furthermore explores the perspectives for generational pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

While the impact of demographic aging is (relatively) well documented for the welfare system, healthcare, or the labor market, the repercussions of an aging electorate for the democratic system have received less attention. This paper asks how democratic processes and norms change in the face of an aging population and explores these dynamics along three dimensions. (1) Political participation: Elderly voters increasingly make up a significant share of the constituency upending the power equilibrium between the generations; (2) Political representation: Parliaments in many liberal democracies are now dominated by elderly lawmakers; (3) Policy-making: Policy analyses in major OECD countries regularly reveal an imbalance in public spending favoring the older generations. These three dimensions are analyzed taking the case of Japan, the democracy with the oldest electorate. This paper examines if the changing political equilibrium in the aging democracy results in a marginalization of young people’s voices, as often assumed, and inquires the perspectives for strengthening generational pluralism.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to present the changing positions and the recent stances of environmental NGOs within the Japanese development aid framework by focusing on how environmental NGOs are affecting the policy-making dynamics and realization of the environment-driven development aid projects of Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental and societal change issues are incrementally rising on national and regional agendas of the global society. This agenda transformation also affects the national and international development aid strategies and processes in the recent years. Japan, as one of the long-standing and top aid-providing countries, has also been experiencing the forces of this change within its` development aid framework. Another change within the Japanese development aid program is the shifting stance of the Japanese NGOs. Since environmental and societal change issues have been forcing any segment of the society, environmental NGOs are also taking their stances vis a vis the accelerating issues of environmental change and degradation.

This paper is then looking at the changing positions as well as the recent stances of environmental NGOs within the Japanese development aid framework by focusing on how environmental NGOs are affecting the policy-making dynamics and realization of the environment-driven development aid projects of Japan. Most of the cases are taken from the environmentally challenged cycles of the Southeast Asia socio-economic clusters since an important part of the Japanese development aid has been channeling towards this region.

The first part of the paper looks at the changing direction of development and development aid framework of Japan with emphasis on the forces of environmental and societal change issues. Then the paper focuses on Japan`s ODA policies and environmental forces that transformed the ODA strategies in recent years by also presenting the changing position of NGOs within the overall aid framework. The last part examines how the Japanese environmental NGOs have influenced the Japanese development aid agenda by giving examples of various cases from Southeast Asia.