The few cases of rapid economic growth in the Third World in the last 30 years have occurred in democratic, quasi‐democratic and non‐democratic polities. They are thus clearly not a function of common regime type. I suggest that they are best explained by the special character of their states, understood ‘as developmental states’. This article outlines some common characteristics of these states. However the forms and features of these states are not simply a function of their administrative structures or principles of governance, but of their politics. The article thus also underlines the importance of political analysis in both development theory and policy, from where it has been extruded for too long.

Bringing politics back in: Towards a model of the developmental state

1. Laws, bureaucratic autonomy and the comparative study of delegation 2. Rational delegation or helpless abdication? The relationship between bureaucrats and politicians 3. Statutes as blueprints for policy making processes 4. A comparative theory of legislative discretion and the policy making process 5. Legislation, agency policy making and Medicaid in Michigan 6. The design of laws across separation of powers systems 7. The design of laws across parliamentary systems 8. Laws, institutions, and policy making processes.

Deliberate Discretion? The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy. By John D. Huber and Charles R. Shipan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 304p. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper

Current western aid and development policy aims to promote ‘good governance’ in the third world. Few would deny that competent, open and fair administration is both a worthy aim and a self-evident requirement of development. However, the current orthodoxy clearly illustrates the technicist fallacy, which is implicit in the following quotation from Pope, that the effective administration or ‘management’ of development is essentially a technical or practical matter. This article argues that development is fundamentally a political matter and that it is illusory to conceive of good governance as independent of the forms of politics and type of state which alone can generate, sustain and protect it.

For Forms of Government, let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered, is best. (Pope, 1734: Bk 3, lines 303-4).

Governance, the State and the Politics of Development

Institutions have played a central role in political economy explanations of East Asia’s growth, from the developmental state to the micro-institutions of industrial policy. A review of these institutional explanations finds that few if any of the postulated institutional explanations involve either necessary or sufficient conditions for rapid growth. This finding suggests two conclusions. First, there are multiple institutional means for solving the various collective action, credibility, and informational problems that constitute barriers to growth. The search for a single institutional “taproot” of growth is likely to be a misguided exercise, and more attention should be given to understanding the varieties of capitalism in East Asia. Second, institutions are themselves endogenous to other political factors that appear more consequential for growth, including particularly the nature of the relationship between the state and the private sector.

Institutions and growth in East Asia

The Free Economy and the Strong State. The Politics of Thatcherism@@@Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations

This article extends the recent empirical work on the perceptions and role of bureaucrats and politicians in policymaking. The question of the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats and the role of each in policymaking is especially important in the case of Japan, because the prevalent models of Japanese politics and policymaking are those of the “bureaucracy dominant” or of a closely interwoven “ruling triad” of bureaucracy, big business, and the governing Liberal Democratic Party.Data are from a systematic survey of 251 higher civil servants and 101 members of the government and opposition parties in the House of Representatives, supplemented by data from other surveys and, wherever possible, compared to equivalent data from western democracies.The results indicate that Japanese politicians and bureaucrats resemble Western European elites both in social background and in the fact that although the roles of politician and bureaucrat are converging, there are still differences in their contributions to the policymaking process. However, politicians influence policymaking more than most models of Japanese politics have posited, and even government and opposition politicians share some consensus about the most important policy issues facing Japan. A factor analysis demonstrated that higher civil servants' orientations toward their roles vary significantly with their positions in the administrative hierarchy.The 27-year incumbency of the LDP as ruling party has been particularly important in determining the Japanese variant of the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats. We suggest that the Japanese case shows that the bureaucracy's increasing role in policymaking is universal; however, in late-modernizing political systems like Japan's, where the bureaucracy has always been a dominant actor, the growing power of politicians in postwar politics has been the most significant actor in bringing about more convergence in the two elites. Our data on this trend argue for a more complicated and pluralistic view of Japanese policymaking than that provided by either the bureaucracy-dominant or the ruling-triad model.

Bureaucrats and Politicians in Policymaking: The Case of Japan

Using evidence from surveys of top administrators, we examine differences between Japanese and American administrative elites. Our findings are far more complex than the reigning stereotypes of an apolitical, technocratic and elitist Japanese bureaucracy contrasted to a politically charged, conflict-oriented and social-reformist American federal executive. For example, senior Japanese bureaucrats take political considerations into account, compared to technical ones, no less than top American officials. American administrators have a more negative view of the role of political parties than their Japanese counterparts and, on average, an equally negative view of politicians interfering in their work than the supposedly more elitist, autonomous and technocratic Japanese bureaucrats. The article closes with a discussion of why popular conceptions of the two bureaucracies break down in practice.

Comparing Japanese and American Administrative Elites

The Conservative Policy Line and the Development of Patterned Pluralism

What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats?Despitetheimportanceofthisquestionforpolicymaking,democracy,and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups’ decisions. That is, central to interest groups’ decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politicians currently in power will continue to be in the future. We deduce logical, but totally contrasting hypotheses, about how interest groups lobby under such conditions of uncertainty and then test these using a heteroskedastic probit

/pdf/when-do-interest-groups-contact-bureaucrats-rather-than-2imb2u87f0.pdf

Michio Muramatsu

Papers

Bureaucrats and Politicians in Policymaking: The Case of Japan

Comparing Japanese and American Administrative Elites

The Conservative Policy Line and the Development of Patterned Pluralism

When Do Interest Groups Contact Bureaucrats Rather than Politicians? Evidence on Fire Alarms and Smoke Detectors from Japan

9. The Dominant Party and Social Coalitions in Japan