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Paper short abstract

This paper proposes the “coordination state” as a new interpretation of postwar Japanese industrial policy. It offers a more accurate account than earlier concepts, such as the “developmental state,” and integrates them as well as several disparate research strands that have developed in isolation.

Paper long abstract

This paper introduces the concept of the “coordination state” to reinterpret postwar Japanese industrial policy. Since the publication of Chalmers Johnson’s \textit{MITI and the Japanese Miracle} (1982), the “developmental state” has been understood as a state in which a capable and autonomous bureaucracy—centered on MITI—shaped industrial development through market-conforming policies that guided private firms towards national economic goals. In the decades since, however, numerous scholars have questioned Johnson’s thesis, arguing that MITI’s role was more limited and that industrial policy was shaped by private firms' dynamism.

Yet no consensus has emerged. While comparative political economy and global economic history often still rely on a “strong MITI” interpretation, research directly focused on postwar Japan tends to reject the developmental state. Japanese-language scholarship has mostly refrained from engaging with the concept. This resulted in a fragmented field lacking a shared conceptual framework.

Drawing on my Ph.D. thesis—the first study to integrate a wide range of archival sources with prior studies—and informed by a theoretical approach based on market sociology, I propose the coordination state as an alternative concept capable of bridging these divides. I argue that negotiation, rather than bureaucratic leadership or private dynamism, was the principle of business–government relations in the postwar era. MITI neither directed firms nor merely provided market institutions; instead, it acted as a coordinator. It enabled coordination by creating incentives to participate in negotiation processes, participating in them itself, and underwriting the resulting compromises that enabled firms to resolve the many coordination problems they faced in rapidly transforming markets.

The coordination state offers a more accurate account of MITI’s role and clarifies how industrial policy functioned in practice. It also integrates prior concepts of postwar business-government relations and disparate areas of industrial policy research, connecting strands of scholarship that have developed in isolation. Given the growing significance of industrial policy in political and academic debates, this reinterpretation of the postwar Japanese state is crucial for providing context when Japan is cited as an example of either successful or unsuccessful policy initiatives today.